What I heard was that the main reason for the shortage of TP was that commercial TP ( the crappy single-ply stuff found in office and restaurant bathrooms), and household TP (the fancy stuff you and I use) are two separate products with two separate supply chains. When everything shut down, the combination of people hoarding household TP along with the increased use to more people taking shits at home instead of the office led to the shortage.
Right now, I hear all kinds of crap about everything, so it’s difficult to know what to believe.
Those are both small anecdotes, and one was “a joke” and the other seems to have failed to sell it, seeing as he tried to get a refund. I really don’t think there’s evidence that a significant fraction of the TP shortage was from people trying to corner the market and build a fake shortage.
No, I’m not ignoring the alternative scenario; I’m simply trying to refute your argument that limiting sales actually addresses/prevents shortages due to hoarding.
If EVERY customer entering the store buys a package (or two packages, or whatever the limit is), the shelves will be wiped clean a little bit later in the morning than if the first person can buy everything, but most customers will still be met with empty shelves for days on end, because your average store doesn’t stock anywhere near enough to meet that demand. Most customers will see a “Limit 1” sign AND empty shelves, which reinforces in their mind that a shortage exists and they’d better buy whatever they can whenever they see it, which in turn reinforces hoarding behavior. As I acknowledged in my first response, limiting sales does distribute what remains a little more broadly, but it does not prevent shortages due to hoarding. Your expectations of what the sign can do or will do is unrealistic.
Not exactly. Here in the highly efficient just-in-time US distribution chain, the total production capacity is pretty close to the normal consumption. Which means the rate of buying matters a LOT.
IOW in one month the factories make the amount of toilet paper America uses in one month. Next month they do the same. As long as only a tiny percentage of the populace increases their backstock target from e.g. 2 weeks to 4 weeks, buying an incremental 2 week’s worth, that incremental demand is a) short-lived and b) within the slack capacity ceiling of the whole system from tree farm to retailer shelf.
But if 50% of America decides this month that they want an extra month’s worth (i.e. maybe 4 rolls per person in their household, so not an insane number individually) then suddenly the combined effect is the manufacturing system is 15 days behind demand.
In the modern world with negligble stocks between the factory and the retail shelf to absorb any demand spikes, that’s a recipe for lots of stores with zero product.
Spread over a year, the USA could deal with everyone bumping from 1 month’s backstock of TP at home to 2 months. But not if everybody tries to do it in 1 or 2 or even 3 months; that will IMO starve the supply chain. Which will then trigger panic buying, would-be eBay profiteering, etc. The whole adverse snowball of shit.
At this point the supply chain’s had over five months to adjust – and, judging by what I see in the stores, it has in fact adjusted. While some of the brands are different, it’s been weeks since I saw bare toilet paper shelves; and I’m usually in the stores midafternoon.
Encouraging this just-in-time supply chain (and at least some of the problems we’ve seen do indeed indicate the problem with that technique) to now adjust back to most people having little spare toilet paper in stock strikes me as a much worse idea than encouraging people to gradually build their at-home stocks up.
– Some of the items that are missing right now in my area have, and have had, no limit signs on the shelves.
The corn crop devastation caused by last weeks derecho storm in Iowa could possibly lead to the cost of gasoline rising as corn is the source for most ethanol used in gasoline. Granted other gasoline sources not using ethanol are out there but there could be uncomfortable supply chain issues. Iowa is the #1 producer of corn in the US. Frozen corn, canned corn or corn on the cob shortages are the least of our worries. Animal feed and ethanol are. The high fructose corn syrup (and it is in most processed foods) supply chain could be problematic, all of which rolls downhill.
That’s how my mind works, and how I somehow accidentally accumulated a quite unreasonable quantity of hand sanitizer (I have something like 2+ gallons of the stuff). Kept seeing those bare shelves, developed a reflex to nab some when it was available, and simply lost track of how much I already had on hand.
If I can remember that I have a decent supply of something on hand , then I’m inclined to skip over it to leave it for those who might have a more pressing need. Gotta figure out better inventory tracking.
We’ve kept three 12-packs of TP on hand ever since we were able to buy that much – open a pack, buy a new one to replace the pack that was just emptied.
We’re also slowly stocking up on tinned fruits, veg, tuna, &c. Noticed at Walmart this afternoon that the amount of tinned corn on the shelves was quite low – people already starting a run on it?
Either that, or the backstock from prior harvests is finally running low. We’ve sold a LOT of canned stuff since February. Corn harvest hasn’t quite happened yet.
I find that if I haven’t got one I not only forget something I do need, but am likely to come home with three things that I don’t need. This is not a new problem – I’ve been doing my best to have a list with me for many years.
– note that a shopping list can say ‘don’t buy this’ as well as ‘do buy that.’ Mine occasionally do.
Side note . . .this explanation is common and it drives me batty because it assumes everyone is a dude. Half the population uses TP every time they use the restroom and for a wider variety of uses. Saying it’s “because now people poop at home” is as one sided as saying “now people wrap tampons at home”, but since boy = normal and girl = weird variant, it keeps getting repeated.
People started using much more TP at home for all sorts of TP tasks.
Well, more people using their home bathrooms for whatever purpose because they aren’t using their office bathrooms for any purpose because they’re never at the office.
I was surprised yesterday to find that my local giant supermarket was completely out of Kleenex, the brand. And almost all other facial tissues. There was a small section of the half-size store brand boxes and four full-size boxes of Puffs and nothing else.
Facial tissue’s been pretty erratic here all through this. For quite a while there would be only a few odd boxes; the last couple of months it’s been better, but still generally not full shelves and availability of any particular brand or size can’t be counted on – sometimes there’s a good bit of actual Kleenex, for instance, and sometimes there isn’t.
