Mon, Sep 20, 2:31 PM (5 days ago)

to me

James,

Hope you are well and derive some use or entertainment out of this note.

Supply chain.

It could just be a coincidence, maybe it’s just a slight hitch in the supply chain that really represents a minor disruption but...

Thursday Sept. 16, 2021 I’m in my local supermarket in NYC [key food] and they announce that the computer is having problems, they can process credit/debit payments but it’s slow so please use cash, that lane over there, etc.

The next day, Friday, I’m in there again and they’ve got printed laminated or something signs saying the same thing.

Friday night I’m talking to a relative and, what a coincidence, out on Long Island her local supermarket [King Kullen] had their cash registers’ computer crash too. Coincidence? Same firm doing the maintenance?

Saturday I’m on Long Island and had to make a run to CVS. They’re out of the first aid stuff that I want for an elderly person. In fact they’re out of a lot of bandages, etc. The vitamin section looks like it shrunk too.

Talking to a caregiver here and he tells me he was in a 3rd store (Stop N Shop) and yeah, an unusual amount of empty shelf sections, he says.

Saturday and Sunday that Long Island supermarket’s computer is still down; they’re honoring last week’s sales but not this week’s.

PS: Thank you. Let me take this chance to clarify that the supermarkets were able to make sales but asserted some problems with their computer systems —for the first, slowing down card transactions, for which they encouraged cash, for the other, preventing them from honoring this week’s sales prices (although I’ve always used cash at the second so maybe they had card problems too I don’t know). No mentions of this computer stuff from other friends/relatives at other places so guessing now it was just a coincidence.

The emptier stock, on the other hand, seems to me more evidence.

Pardon, Thursday - Friday City.

Friday-Sunday Long Island

-Crux Cross

A picture of empty freezer cases accompanied by the text:

"Five empty doors. maybe they are doing maintenance. Every store is understocked."

-Lynn, 9/21/21

Before addressing the three items here, I should preface my comments with the suspicion that since the U.S. became a third world nation during the initial year of the Shamdemic, that help wanted signs are everywhere, especially anywhere that sells food or does physical work.

Union Pacific railroad has offered me a job! My old ass? Freight train traffic has remained at four-five times pre-shamdemic levels since the Reign of Fear was mandated.

Five million acres of wheat in Alberta was snowed under and unharvested this year.

My bank just sent me a notice that the U.S. Postal Service is reducing their first class postal standard from 3 days to 5 days. Of interest is the fact that for a year, it has taken 15 days to get a letter to any address in Baltimore City, while Harford County and Cecil County, Maryland can receive the same items mailed the same day in five days. Baltimore County is 5-8 days.

So, there will be shortages and empty shelves, because there is no layout flexibility in standard retail food outlets. there is not the work ethic or initiative necessary for the grocery manger to make or be permitted to make shelf set changes based on product availability. The key to just on time wholesaling is a cookie cutter set. The quality of help available to work in supermarkets is going to preclude most chain outfits from adjusting retail space to product availability.

Metropolis Supply

Places like New York that are severely congested and where rents are high, will have the least stockroom space and be most tied to just on time supply. In addition, Northeastern Corridor trucking is a huge hassle. There are so many bottlenecks that I knew down in Baltimore, pulling from warehouses in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Connecticut that for every day that travel is shut down due to snow, three days will be needed for delivery recovery. This is because it is not just about getting the truck from the warehouse to the store, but getting the trucks from the manufacturer to the warehouse [which, due to the extreme number of skews have space problems like retailers] and that the driver has to find a way to get to the warehouse as well. Labor supply is a problem that has been overlooked during the war on the middle class and working class.

Point of Sale Computer Systems

I know nothing about how these systems work, other than these facts:

-99% of retail food management are as techtarded as i am. On site IT troubleshooting is typically handled by a middle aged woman who is one of the few people in the store able to do phone-calls and emails with the contractor who installed and maintains the $15k a register POS system. Only major chains do this stuff in house.

-Service calls to fix a problem at a location are difficult to arrange. If an entire chain is having a problem then one or two guys will be on it and it might take a week to get things back on line. Someone has to get to the site and actually reboot the computers—not the kind of stuff you can let a retard like me armed with a case cutter and pen take care of.

-IT people are rarely available on weekends.

-Corporate HQs basically shutdown for the weekend even though stores do most of their business between Friday afternoon and Sunday evening.

-The ability to manually ring orders is a lost art, with young cashiers usually dependent upon customers to calculate change.

Freezer Cases

These come in 4 and 5 door units, cabinets that have no intrinsic refrigeration ability. Before 2005 most freezer runs were powered by individual transformers in an engine room or on a roof, with a given transformer usually powering 8-20 doors. 20 years ago, i'd say that a transformer was probably stuck in defrost or low on refrigerant. In a big store, you now have a rack system, which powers all of the low-temp on one line and the mid-temp on another line and if that goes down, you are way screwed.

So, my assessment, if I were the manager on duty would be looking at why a single cabinet was not holding temperature:

-Is the drain clogged. A frozen drain in the base of one of these things is a bitch.

-Is there a short?

Both of the above can cause fans not to work

-Is the door heater malfunctioning [it does not look like that from the pic.]

I think from the picture that these cases are holding temp and that they have been emptied for a new lineup. The good thing about low stock levels, is that a manager with any brains can look at the cut sheet and out of stocks on the invoices, make some phone calls, and adjust the set to make room for something that is available, most easily done when you are just moving shelf labels and not shelf stock. For instance, there are entire lines of frozen vegetables that come from China. The Chinks are suffering a famine this year.

Another argument for a reset is that inventory taxes were paid last month [in Maryland, anyhow] and that the Holiday Season and Lockdown Season are coming. Retail food volume is currently 1.5 times pre-Shamdemic levels and is about to go up to 2 to 3 times former normal levels. All those fuckers that got fat will be eating even more. All those folks who had to stand in line to get into a store are cued on pre-panic buying and ready to shop like food-stamp mammas.

Let the bad times roll!