Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages • Hacker News Board

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#211

Post by tinfins » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 1:58 AM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #205

tinfins wrote: post #7

I'm a Whole Foods employee, having one of those rare (for me) moments where I can reasonably be considered very well-informed on the subject of a news article, and it's a little bit disturbing just how misinformed and one-sided the article is. The author seems to have talked with 10-20 disgruntled employees at a few stores nationwide, and a few customers on top of that. Maybe she should have reached out to Whole Food…

I find it funny/odd that the eye of sauron has focused its attention at Whole Foods. Depending on the day of the week, especially late Sunday afternoon/evening but also random weekdays when I run in after work, my local Kroger looks very barren in the produce department. So much so that I have sent picture texts commenting about it. This is quite normal behavior when weather events in the area are expected, but latel…

Yeah, I wonder. We definitely aren't used to all the media attention - honestly, I got a little carried away in the comments here.

I wouldn't say I even particularly care about Whole Foods' reputation, it's more the false narrative that bothered me and I just happened to know how wrong it was. Must be so much worse for employees at the big tech companies or others that are in the news all the time.

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#212

Post by IncRnd » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:02 AM UTC

sudosteph wrote: post #174

Spoilage due to overstocking isn't just problematic because they have too much stuff sitting in the backroom that will never get sold. It also means they spent too much money buying and shipping that food, with shipping sometimes being the more expensive part (in addition to it being hard on the environment if you think of the fuel used to ship it and emissions it produces). I'm not their ideal customer, mostly becau…

> Spoilage due to overstocking isn't just problematic because they have too much stuff sitting in the backroom that will never get sold. It also means they spent too much money buying and shipping that food, with shipping sometimes being the more expensive part (in addition to it being hard on the environment if you think of the fuel used to ship it and emissions it produces).

That doesn't matter to consumers. One of the purposes of a local store is that they buffer enough stock, so they almost always have available stock to sell. Otherwise, I'll stop going to that store.

------ Q: What should you call an advice column for queueing theorists? A: Q-Tips!

On a serious note, though, a store should understand how to queue stock, not just to minimize overages but to optimize sales. A store should never have an empty shelf, even if they have to put something else there temporarily.

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#213

Post by majormajor » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:04 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #202

majormajor wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: What do you picture the long-term extrapolation of ignoring events around you looks like? Are you so independent of other people's actions that you can't imagine any events that would impact you in a way that you'd want to try to have a voice in, or at least be informed about? Isn't that how people end up in dead end jobs where 15 years later the industry has moved on and they no longer have skills…

> What do you picture the long-term extrapolation of ignoring events around you looks like? You are basically asking what it would be like to live like most of Humanity before the advent of mass media. Did not seem they had far worse problems than we do or that they were incapable to adapt. I'd return the question to you, how was mass media improved your life in any meaningful way and can you prove it was not just no…

To answer that I'll need to pick a media cut off point. Let's say before the printing press? Seems like a good place to start, although of course unwritten news traveled before. This might not be what you had in mind as "mass media" but I think it's a more useful cutoff point for modernity.

The printing press, like writing before it and phone/telegram/TV/internet after it, was a fairly transformational technology, but it's hard for me to imagine living without large-scale reliable distribution of knowledge. The concept of history as an accessible field of study for the average person is a pretty big one.

The ideas that led to modern democracy spread through a network that utilized the printing press and discussed the nature of existing society quite a bit. The general view of the vast majority of the pre-modernity era is summed up with well-known cliches like "dark ages" or "nasty, brutish, and short." There's some dispute about what the true "happiness" level was in early societies, but it's interesting to note that very few anti-technological movements achieved much of note, speaking to the definite appeal of technology.

My own personal talents never would've had a chance to flourish in a hunter/gatherer, agrarian, or feudal type society. So no thanks from me. I'm glad every day I was born where/when I was. Maybe a hundred years later would've been an interesting gamble if I could choose, but now's good. :)

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#214

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:06 AM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #150

caseysoftware wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife was a political reporter in DC, covering the Hill, the Pentagon and White House at various times. One time we were watching CNN and they mentioned a briefing at the Pentagon and she noted she was in the same one. Halfway through the coverage, she jumped up and said "that's not what they said!" I was confused.. she went back to her bag and handed me her notebook which contradicted their coverage. It's not uniq…

This is why I assume most political coverage, especially that from partisans of either party, is mostly nonsense. To get the real story you have to find and read primary sources. Any "news" sites that don't give those I assume are lying, at best, until I have sources to corroborate what they said. The "news" these days is mostly made up of opinion pieces and it spends entirely too much time looking to troll us with c…

I also know of a news event first hand, and then watched with shock the news coverage of it later. It wasn't remotely political, it was clearly just sloppy "get it in the can and move on".

The umbrage taken by the mainstream media in the last year being called "fake news" is a bit amusing. I've often wondered what percentage of it all (and what we know of history) is complete nonsense.

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#215

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:13 AM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #129

ju-st wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From where do you get information when you don't read news articles?

One can be wrong about events that you witness yourself. We witness things through physical limitations and the biased lens of our own minds. IMO the correct response is not to reject the source but to give it less weight, add other sources and realise you'll only ever get an approximation of the truth at best.

> One can be wrong about events that you witness yourself.

So true. Back in the 1950s, a fighter plane off an aircraft carrier had its wings fall off and fall into the ocean. That model of aircraft had had a couple incidents before where the wings came off. Numerous experienced and educated witnesses were interviewed, including the captain of the carrier, who all said the wings fell off.

Except for one lowly seaman on the deck, who said the aircraft was intact when it hit the water.

The airplane was eventually retrieved from the sea floor, and it was proven the wings were on it when it hit the water.

The other experienced officers all (quite sincerely) observed what they expected to see.

I'll believe forensic evidence every time before I believe eyewitness accounts.

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#216

Post by danieltillett » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:20 AM UTC

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #37

tinfins wrote: post #7

I'm a Whole Foods employee, having one of those rare (for me) moments where I can reasonably be considered very well-informed on the subject of a news article, and it's a little bit disturbing just how misinformed and one-sided the article is. The author seems to have talked with 10-20 disgruntled employees at a few stores nationwide, and a few customers on top of that. Maybe she should have reached out to Whole Food…

> I'm a Whole Foods employee, having one of those rare (for me) moments where I can reasonably be considered very well-informed on the subject of a news article, and it's a little bit disturbing just how misinformed and one-sided the article is. "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show b…

I have never seen a "news" report where I personally knew what happened reported accurately. I am sure we have reporters here so I have a question for you - why is this? Do you just not care about the details, are too rushed and it is faster to just make up crap, or something else I have not considered?

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#217

Post by johan_larson » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:36 AM UTC

This sounds like one of those just-in-time delivery systems that were all the rage in manufacturing back in the 90s, but applied to retailing. They always were brittle; there's little or no slack in the system, so if something unusual happens, the process breaks.

If the system is new, and it seems to be, it probably needs some fine-tuning. Any workable system needs a little bit of slack in it to account for the variable and the unexpected. The question is how much. And it's not free.

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#218

Post by caseysoftware » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:39 AM UTC

meri_dian wrote: post #177

caseysoftware wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife was a political reporter in DC, covering the Hill, the Pentagon and White House at various times. One time we were watching CNN and they mentioned a briefing at the Pentagon and she noted she was in the same one. Halfway through the coverage, she jumped up and said "that's not what they said!" I was confused.. she went back to her bag and handed me her notebook which contradicted their coverage. It's not uniq…

This conversation has progressed for a while without anyone mentioning that the sentiments expressed are essentially in support of Trump's accusations of fake news. So we can have a conversation on HN in support of Trump's "fake news" and in recognition of severe bias in media that would indicate "fake news" isn't as much a slur as it is a matter of fact statement. What am I missing?

Fascinating, isn't it?

Almost like people believe the same thing said very much the same way but from a completely different source. Thanks, I'm here all weekend. ;)

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#219

Post by mikeash » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:41 AM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #139

mikeash wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. A grocery store being out of any normally stocked product is really unusual. If it happened with any regularity for stuff I wanted to buy, I’d stop going to that store. The concept of “never out” products doesn’t make any sense to me. That should describe everything!

It sounds like they're trying to optimise their just-in-time delivery. I think Lidl/Aldi do this, they have a very small "back area" so almost all goods are on the shelves. This presumably optimises so floor usage and reduces storage costs/wastage and such.

That's a great thing to do as long as you don't take it to the point where you end up with products out of stock. The moment you do, you're encouraging your customers to patronize the competition instead.

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#220

Post by siliconc0w » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:46 AM UTC

It's interesting if the intent really is to have employees unload directly to shelves. The creates a very small buffer with limited ability to handle supply problems or spiky customer demand. Also your store begins to look kinda crappy if your shelves are maybe even 50% stocked so your realistic queue is maybe 1/2 shelf space. Maybe they think their logistics and prediction tech are good enough to not need the buffer.

Anecdotally I shopped at a whole foods last week and it indeed had stocking issues. I had to stand on a shelf to reach far enough back to grab the last bottle of a salad dressing I was after. Sure your backrooms are empty but it's kinda a shitty customer experience.