We order groceries online for home delivery. In a small way, it’s an adventure. You know what you asked for; you just don’t know what you’re not going to get. You almost never get it all.
This week, we didn’t get cottage cheese or yogurt. They were “in stock” at 11 pm when I placed the order. They were “out of stock” eight hours later, when the groceries arrived. Like, who’s in charge here? Why does this happen?
I went to reddit for an answer. You can start a discussion on just about anything there. And I found a moestly actie subreddit called r/GroceryStores. Where people who appeared to be grocers told me things I didn’t want to know about short staffing, corporate greed, and supply chain problems.
Medicine, education, housing, the legal system, agriculture: they’re all degrading under the weight of greed. Why not supermarkets?
What everybody agreed on: the supply chain is still a mess, and getting worse; shortages continue. Goods on the shelves run out. When they do come, there may be delays on getting them to the shelves and, beyond that, sending them out for delivery..
Because grocery chains are cutting floor staff to the bone to save money (or increase profits, your choice), and that means fewer people stocking. Even after they’ve arrived, the goods don’t get out on the shelves as fast for the delivery order pickers to get at.
A store manager said: “(People who pick those orders for delivery) are likely overworked and not particularly invested in the success of the store, and if they can't find something easily they are going to mark it "out of stock" and move on to the next item. I see this with internal pickers AND Instacart pickers.”
On top of that, unsavory practices. One grocer wrote from the Pacific Northwest, which suffered a bomb cyclone that knocked out power in many areas. “Many (grocery) stores have not fully recovered. I would honestly be leery of buying anything frozen for at least a month. Why? Stores were putting items back onto the shelf that probably should not have gone back. Coupled with (my store) didn't even fully toss out everything and just started restocking :/“
Understaffing, demoralized workers, supply problems, disregard for human safety in the name of profit, and probably mediocre wages at best. One guy summed up: “The urge to maximize profits at any cost is hurting the local communities. I don’t know how we fix this. We seem to be giving power to the people and businesses who are the biggest problems.”
That sounds like America. And as the world’s environment and politics destabilize, more and worse supply chain challenges are no doubt coming.
In the meantime, cottage cheese seems to be back in stock. Or did it ever really leave? We’ve put in another order. Knock on wood.
