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The Co-Op (grocery store chain) was hacked around the same time in likely the same incident. It took three weeks for them to get food back on the shelves at my

The Co-Op (grocery store chain) was hacked around the same time in likely the same incident. It took three weeks for them to get food back on the shelves at my local store. I don’t understand how that’s even possible… what happened to all the meat and vegetables in the supply chain? They just stopped flowing? They rotted? Why couldn’t they use pen and paper? It’s unbelievable to me that a business would go three weeks without stocking inventory.

Henchman21 1y ago
You forget we have entered the “Who the fuck cares?” era. When no one in the chain is incentivized to care, things just fall apart.
- chatmasta 1y ago
  Interestingly Co-Op is so-called because it’s a cooperative business, which vaguely means it’s owned by its employees, and technically means it’s a “Registered Society” [0]. If you check CompaniesHouse [1], which normally has all financial documents for UK corporations, it points you to a separate “Public Register” for the Co-Op [2]. So, your comment has more basis in reality than simply being snark… the fact that “nobody is incentivized to care” is actually by design. That has some positive benefits but in this case we’re seeing how it breaks down for the same reasons nobody in a crowd calls an ambulance for someone hurt… it’s the bystander effect applied to corporate governance with diluted accountability. [0] https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/company-taxation-manual/ctm40507 https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/company-taxation-ma... [1] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/IP00525R https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... [2] https://mutuals.fca.org.uk/Search/Society/7240 https://mutuals.fca.org.uk/Search/Society/7240
  - Henchman21 1y ago
    I guess this is more snark, but honestly I am genuinely shocked when people care about anything anymore. Sad times.
    - chatmasta 1y ago
      There is a serious crisis of competence and caring all throughout society and it is indeed frightening. It’s this nagging worry that never goes away, while little cracks keep appearing in the mechanisms we usually take for granted…
  - marbletiles 1y ago
    I’m not following your logic. The co-op is designed for everyone to care _more_ because they are part-owners and because the organisation is set up for a larger good than simple profit-making. In practice the distinction has long been lost both for employees and members (customers), but the intent of the organisational structure was not for nobody to care; quite the opposite
    - chatmasta 1y ago
      But there are millions of part-owners. Every “member” of co-op (i.e. a customer in the same membership program that just lost all their data to this hack) is an owner of it. Maybe the employees get more “shares” but it’s not at all significant. And at the executive governance level, there are a few dozen directors. There is a CEO who makes £750k a year, so it has elements of traditional governance. I’m not saying the structure is entirely to blame for the slow reaction to the hack, or that there is zero accountability, but it’s certainly interesting to see the lack of urgency to restore business continuity. My family used to own a local market, and as my dad said when I told him this story, “my father would have been on the farm killing the chickens himself if that’s what he had to do to ensure he had inventory to sell his customers.” You simply won’t get that level of accountability in an organization with thousands of stakeholders. And a traditional for-profit corporation will have the same problems, but it will also have a stock price that starts tanking after half a quarter of empty shelves. The co-op is missing that sort of accountability mechanism.
      - Henchman21 1y ago
        Responsibility diluted to the point of no actual responsibility?
        chatmasta 1y ago
        Exactly, the bystander effect. But it’s not strictly due to the large size. Other big companies get hacked too. But if they have a stock price then there’s an obvious metric to indicate when the CEO needs to be fired. It’s the dilution of responsibility combined with a lack of measurable accountability that causes the dysfunction.
tonyhart7 1y ago
You can say this because ignorant, stock inventory is really hard especially huge warehouse where many items come and go 24/7 they can "move" it of course but who can guarantee how many amount goes from where and who ???? paper and pen where there are thousand items in single rack is nightmare, I can tell you that
- chatmasta 1y ago
  well, apparently co-op couldn’t answer those questions with their computers because they got locked out of them…
- gosub100 1y ago
  Don't call someone ignorant for asking a question. He said "I don't understand how". If you know the answer, answer. Don't call him ignorant.
  - tonyhart7 1y ago
    Yeah, I can do better in that part at first I thought he underestimate this part of industry, I initially thought this because its common on HN mock tech company
coliveira 1y ago
When everything is done by computers, no human really knows what needs to be done even for a simple thing as buying vegetables.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  Buying and distributing vegetables for stores is not remotely a simple thing. It includes statistical analysis with estimates of demand for every store, seasonal scheduling, weather awareness, complicated national and/or international logistics, plus accounting and payments. Some or all of those may be broken during a cyberattack.
  - chatmasta 1y ago
    That’s a good point but perhaps you underestimate the ingenuity borne from constraints. If you’ve got trucks arriving with meat that’s going to expire in a week, and all your stores have empty shelves, surely there is a system to get that meat into customer mouths before it expires. It could be as simple as asking each store, when they call (which they surely will), how much meat they ordered last week, and sending them the same this week. You could build out more complicated distribution mechanisms, but it should be enough to keep your goods from perishing until you manage to repair your digital crutch.
- halpow 1y ago
  [dead]
- 7952 1y ago
  The suppliers will know and be able to predict what a large customer like M&S is likely to order. They will probably be preparing items before they are even ordered. And surely their must be some kind of understanding of what a typical store will receive.
glenjamin 1y ago
I chatted to a staff member on the checkout of my local coop supermarket She said that every shelf item is ordered on a JIT basis as the store stock levels require them - there are no standing orders to a store Based on that, I presume they didn’t really know what any store would need Even when they were struggling my local store still had a decent stock of lots of stuff - just some shelves were empty
- bobthepanda 1y ago
  You could (and people did) run this in the pre-internet days with basically just phone calls and a desk to receive them. The problem is that by now this represents an incredible increase in manpower required overnight.
  - chatmasta 1y ago
    I remember when I was a teenager working the register at a local store. The power went out one day, and we processed credit cards with a device that imprinted the embossed card number onto a paper for later reconciliation. That wouldn’t work today for a number of reasons but it was cool to see that kind of backup plan in place.
    - phinnaeus 1y ago
      I’ve seen cc impression machines within the past 5 years in small town america
      - fredoralive 1y ago
        In the UK the credit / debit cards I've had issued in the last few years have been flat, with details just printed, so that level of manual processing is presumably defunct here.
        OJFord 1y ago
        Don't forget chip & PIN is state of the art novel tech in the US. (From memory I think it was required here in the UK from Valentine's day^ in something like 2005.) (^I remember the day better than the year because the ad campaign was something like 'I <3 PIN'.)

Henchman21 1y ago

You forget we have entered the “Who the fuck cares?” era. When no one in the chain is incentivized to care, things just fall apart.

chatmasta 1y ago
Interestingly Co-Op is so-called because it’s a cooperative business, which vaguely means it’s owned by its employees, and technically means it’s a “Registered Society” [0]. If you check CompaniesHouse [1], which normally has all financial documents for UK corporations, it points you to a separate “Public Register” for the Co-Op [2]. So, your comment has more basis in reality than simply being snark… the fact that “nobody is incentivized to care” is actually by design. That has some positive benefits but in this case we’re seeing how it breaks down for the same reasons nobody in a crowd calls an ambulance for someone hurt… it’s the bystander effect applied to corporate governance with diluted accountability. [0] https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/company-taxation-manual/ctm40507 https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/company-taxation-ma... [1] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/IP00525R https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... [2] https://mutuals.fca.org.uk/Search/Society/7240 https://mutuals.fca.org.uk/Search/Society/7240
- Henchman21 1y ago
  I guess this is more snark, but honestly I am genuinely shocked when people care about anything anymore. Sad times.
  - chatmasta 1y ago
    There is a serious crisis of competence and caring all throughout society and it is indeed frightening. It’s this nagging worry that never goes away, while little cracks keep appearing in the mechanisms we usually take for granted…
- marbletiles 1y ago
  I’m not following your logic. The co-op is designed for everyone to care _more_ because they are part-owners and because the organisation is set up for a larger good than simple profit-making. In practice the distinction has long been lost both for employees and members (customers), but the intent of the organisational structure was not for nobody to care; quite the opposite
  - chatmasta 1y ago
    But there are millions of part-owners. Every “member” of co-op (i.e. a customer in the same membership program that just lost all their data to this hack) is an owner of it. Maybe the employees get more “shares” but it’s not at all significant. And at the executive governance level, there are a few dozen directors. There is a CEO who makes £750k a year, so it has elements of traditional governance. I’m not saying the structure is entirely to blame for the slow reaction to the hack, or that there is zero accountability, but it’s certainly interesting to see the lack of urgency to restore business continuity. My family used to own a local market, and as my dad said when I told him this story, “my father would have been on the farm killing the chickens himself if that’s what he had to do to ensure he had inventory to sell his customers.” You simply won’t get that level of accountability in an organization with thousands of stakeholders. And a traditional for-profit corporation will have the same problems, but it will also have a stock price that starts tanking after half a quarter of empty shelves. The co-op is missing that sort of accountability mechanism.
    - Henchman21 1y ago
      Responsibility diluted to the point of no actual responsibility?
      - chatmasta 1y ago
        Exactly, the bystander effect. But it’s not strictly due to the large size. Other big companies get hacked too. But if they have a stock price then there’s an obvious metric to indicate when the CEO needs to be fired. It’s the dilution of responsibility combined with a lack of measurable accountability that causes the dysfunction.

tonyhart7 1y ago

You can say this because ignorant, stock inventory is really hard especially huge warehouse where many items come and go 24/7 they can "move" it of course but who can guarantee how many amount goes from where and who ???? paper and pen where there are thousand items in single rack is nightmare, I can tell you that

chatmasta 1y ago
well, apparently co-op couldn’t answer those questions with their computers because they got locked out of them…
gosub100 1y ago
Don't call someone ignorant for asking a question. He said "I don't understand how". If you know the answer, answer. Don't call him ignorant.
- tonyhart7 1y ago
  Yeah, I can do better in that part at first I thought he underestimate this part of industry, I initially thought this because its common on HN mock tech company

coliveira 1y ago

When everything is done by computers, no human really knows what needs to be done even for a simple thing as buying vegetables.

TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
Buying and distributing vegetables for stores is not remotely a simple thing. It includes statistical analysis with estimates of demand for every store, seasonal scheduling, weather awareness, complicated national and/or international logistics, plus accounting and payments. Some or all of those may be broken during a cyberattack.
- chatmasta 1y ago
  That’s a good point but perhaps you underestimate the ingenuity borne from constraints. If you’ve got trucks arriving with meat that’s going to expire in a week, and all your stores have empty shelves, surely there is a system to get that meat into customer mouths before it expires. It could be as simple as asking each store, when they call (which they surely will), how much meat they ordered last week, and sending them the same this week. You could build out more complicated distribution mechanisms, but it should be enough to keep your goods from perishing until you manage to repair your digital crutch.
halpow 1y ago
[dead]
7952 1y ago
The suppliers will know and be able to predict what a large customer like M&S is likely to order. They will probably be preparing items before they are even ordered. And surely their must be some kind of understanding of what a typical store will receive.

glenjamin 1y ago

I chatted to a staff member on the checkout of my local coop supermarket She said that every shelf item is ordered on a JIT basis as the store stock levels require them - there are no standing orders to a store Based on that, I presume they didn’t really know what any store would need Even when they were struggling my local store still had a decent stock of lots of stuff - just some shelves were empty

bobthepanda 1y ago
You could (and people did) run this in the pre-internet days with basically just phone calls and a desk to receive them. The problem is that by now this represents an incredible increase in manpower required overnight.
- chatmasta 1y ago
  I remember when I was a teenager working the register at a local store. The power went out one day, and we processed credit cards with a device that imprinted the embossed card number onto a paper for later reconciliation. That wouldn’t work today for a number of reasons but it was cool to see that kind of backup plan in place.
  - phinnaeus 1y ago
    I’ve seen cc impression machines within the past 5 years in small town america
    - fredoralive 1y ago
      In the UK the credit / debit cards I've had issued in the last few years have been flat, with details just printed, so that level of manual processing is presumably defunct here.
      - OJFord 1y ago
        Don't forget chip & PIN is state of the art novel tech in the US. (From memory I think it was required here in the UK from Valentine's day^ in something like 2005.) (^I remember the day better than the year because the ad campaign was something like 'I <3 PIN'.)