I’ve noticed some of my suppliers are having issues with fulfillment or other problems and when asked what the delay is, the answer lately seems to be “because Covid”
I understand this may be legit in light of shipping restrictions or staff shortages, but sometimes it sure sounds like a convenient excuse.
Anyone else seeing similar patterns?
I dunno. I think a lot of things are failing because of a domino effect from covid.
My brother works at a large grocery warehouse. They had stuff back to running pretty smoothly after a rocky start, when people were “hoarding” early on. The company was paying everyone an extra $2/hr hazard pay. Now they’ve stopped paying that hazard pay. There isn’t a strike but the union is encouraging people to take extra sick days (covid-time contract negotiations gave everyone unlimited unpaid sick days). Trucks are getting hella backed up. Product isn’t making it to the stores on time, if at all.
This issue is definitely because of covid, it’s just in a different manner than you’d expect (as in, there is not an abundance of covid cases and there is not a manufacturing delay).
I’m sure they are, but businesses do this all the time, even pre-Covid. “Why didn’t you make your numbers this quarter?” Too much snow, too much rain, too much sun, the Cubs won the series. Easier than admitting fault.
Not that I’ve seen; shortages all seem unsurprising. Supply chains are all out of whack. Nothing I’ve noticed missing has seemed unreasonable, considering.
Covid has hit a lot of the supply chain and there are all kinds of weird follow-on effects. I’m not really sure how you’d manage to tell that Covid is just an excuse rather than a reason unless the supplier is entirely local (like someone who chops wood and sells it from their truck). Shipping is overloaded and often slow, sending things across borders has more checks and delays than it did, manufacturers get closed or partially closed, demand for items shifts in unexpected ways, and so on.
I’ve also head that post office shipping has gotten a lot worse with the recent new appointee in charge, which really affects a lot of small online businesses.
It’s not just businesses. Where I live, there’s this weird experiment / initiative (from the city) called “shared streets” that purportedly is in response to Covid. But when you understand what the experiment really is, it’s clear that Covid is an excuse for doing this experiment, and it really has nothing to do with Covid.
What is it?
UPS, at least locally, has utterly gone to shit.
I had a Next Day Air package shipped to me. When did I get it? Never. It went out for delivery on the day after it was shipped, took a lovely sightseeing tour of the region, and went back to the depot that night. They never even attempted delivery. Next day, same thing, but with an email at 3:00 in the afternoon saying there was an “exception” and delivery would be delayed one business day. Ummm, it already was delayed one day? Lather rinse repeat for the rest of the week. I asked if it would be possible to send it to the UPS Store about two miles from me. The agent decided on their own to hold the package for pickup at the depot on another landmass across the bay, then had the nerve to say they’d have to charge me to re-route it to my house. By that time, the time to fetch it from 35 miles away had passed and it had been sent back to the shipper.
I asked UPS customer service what was going on, and their response was essentially “Duhhh, the Covid! We’re super extra busy because of the Covid!” FedEx, the Post Office, and Amazon’s internal shipping service are doing things on time, so I’m not buying the excuse.
The postmaster general cutting post office operations when people are delivering more packages than ever hasn’t helped, but that isn’t really covid.
So what is it?
In Seattle, “Shared Streets” are a recently imposed experiment whereby certain neighborhood streets are closed to thru traffic, to create blocks where kids and bicyclists can have free reign or something. Some are next to parks, but others are plopped in the middle of neighborhoods. They were imposed on us with little warning or public input, and were supposed to be a temporary thing. With CV-19, the powers that be have announced that since the “Shared Streets” are so good at reducing traffic and allowing for safe outdoor play and distancing (?) during the pandemic that maybe we’ll just keep them! Residents are very divided in their support or nonsupport. Especially since the city DOT is notorious for enacting measures to make traffic worse by closing street lanes to make bike lanes that are mostly used by a tiny % number of white guys.
Same for Cambridge, MA.
A grocery store near me shut down in May. Employees showed up to see locked doors and a closed forever sign.
They blamed it on Covid, which was what the local paper reported (because of course, the “reporters” at the local paper don’t question anything. They just function as basic scribes who copy down what other people write/say, and repeat it while adding typos and grammatical mistakes)
It then came out that this particular store was failing to pay suppliers back in November. Many suppliers had stopped sending product. They had missed payroll on a number of occasions recently. An employee group was ready to walk out months ago. They were going down the pipes in late 2019, and nothing was going to stop them. Covid was simply a bullshit excuse.
Moderator Note
Given that shared streets is a borderline tangential topic in this thread (the OP refers to businesses), let’s not drag the thread further afield by bringing racial issues into the mix. Feel free to discuss racial issues, just not in this thread.
Sorry, it was meant as a class issue, not a racial one, but I get it.