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It's a shame that people are learning new things and experimenting with new hobbies to keep themselves busy during quarantine. All change is bad, but especially

It's a shame that people are learning new things and experimenting with new hobbies to keep themselves busy during quarantine. All change is bad, but especially personal growth. But really though, a family buying 5 pounds of flour isn't the problem, it's the hoarders loading up shopping carts full of toilet paper and flour that give us empty shelves. I think we'd have enough for everyone if we didn't have greedy hoarders.

jdashg 6y ago
You don't really need hoarders to have a problem. If only twice as many households are cooking now than before, instead of stores having say 10% slack, they run out half way through the week. If you have four times as many people cooking, you run out your slack in two days. So the store increases their orders. But their suppliers only have X% slack. So they have to ramp up too. The whole supply/demand balance takes time to stabilize. The same number of people are eating the same calories as before, but the supply chains for those calories have shifted rapidly. Same for toilet paper: No one's pooping on company time anymore! Yes there are some hoarders, but we'd get temporary problems even with 0% hoarders.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  Yep. It was basically a Thanksgiving-level event without the usual months of prep work preceding it.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    The situation has given me a new perspective on the ultimate purpose of all those sales around Thanksgiving. The stores know they're going to be selling a large amount of items some time before Thanksgiving. But they can't just order large quantities of items, only to store them until people decide to buy them. Rather, the sales let the supply chain control when people will be buying the bulk quantities, so the goods can arrive in stores as close to being sold as possible.
khazhoux 6y ago
I don't care about people trying a new hobby. That doesn't account for the lack of TP, flour, and now even chips and butter. Like you say: hoarders. Everyone is acting selfishly, and the stores aren't policing purchases enough.
- nullc 6y ago
  Your claims are not supported by reports from industry experts: https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0 https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about... Our supply chains are optimized to have essentially no slack. When people switch from using the toilet at work to home, and when they buy a month at a time instead of a week at a time in order to comply with shelter in place orders, they drain the grocery stores extremely hard. No selfish or hoarding behavior is required to produce the effects you're talking about.

jdashg 6y ago

You don't really need hoarders to have a problem. If only twice as many households are cooking now than before, instead of stores having say 10% slack, they run out half way through the week. If you have four times as many people cooking, you run out your slack in two days. So the store increases their orders. But their suppliers only have X% slack. So they have to ramp up too. The whole supply/demand balance takes time to stabilize. The same number of people are eating the same calories as before, but the supply chains for those calories have shifted rapidly. Same for toilet paper: No one's pooping on company time anymore! Yes there are some hoarders, but we'd get temporary problems even with 0% hoarders.

ceejayoz 6y ago
Yep. It was basically a Thanksgiving-level event without the usual months of prep work preceding it.
- mindslight 6y ago
  The situation has given me a new perspective on the ultimate purpose of all those sales around Thanksgiving. The stores know they're going to be selling a large amount of items some time before Thanksgiving. But they can't just order large quantities of items, only to store them until people decide to buy them. Rather, the sales let the supply chain control when people will be buying the bulk quantities, so the goods can arrive in stores as close to being sold as possible.

khazhoux 6y ago

I don't care about people trying a new hobby. That doesn't account for the lack of TP, flour, and now even chips and butter. Like you say: hoarders. Everyone is acting selfishly, and the stores aren't policing purchases enough.

nullc 6y ago
Your claims are not supported by reports from industry experts: https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0 https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about... Our supply chains are optimized to have essentially no slack. When people switch from using the toilet at work to home, and when they buy a month at a time instead of a week at a time in order to comply with shelter in place orders, they drain the grocery stores extremely hard. No selfish or hoarding behavior is required to produce the effects you're talking about.