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

#191

Post by tinfins » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 1:18 AM UTC

jwn wrote: post #15

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…

Can you offer any more insights? What's the reality behind OTS?

OTS is really just a collection of pretty common-sense guidelines like don't have more than a certain percentage of inventory in backstock, don't have backstock of stuff that doesn't sell well, keep your backstock organized, etc.

There are a few details about it that can be irritating, but the comments from employees in the article are extremely misleading. If they're having a hard time passing their inspections it's because they're doing something very wrong - no one is failing an inspection for having 1 box facing the wrong way like it says in the article.

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

#192

Post by intrasight » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 1:19 AM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #123

gist wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Did you find everything that you were looking for?" They don't do that at the store I go to anymore either but it has nothing to do with inventory (which as I mentioned in another comment is the same as it's always been). Could be that they just discovered that it had little upside but some downside. As a customer I sometimes get annoyed being asked that question all the time.

i've always wondered who actually answers "no" to that question. If i've made it to the checkout, i've made the decision that i've found everything i'm going to purchase today. even if it wasn't everything i originally came for. If i needed help finding something, i would have asked for help before i got to the checkout. I'm not going to stand in line at the checkout only to not actually check out, and hold up the li…

The correct answer would always be "yes" because it is highly improbably that what it in stock would not meet your basic nutrition needs. They may not have what you "want" - but that's a different matter.

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

#193

Post by intrasight » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 1:21 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #54

Our local food chain here in Rochester NY is Wegmans, and they've had a bunch of produce shortages recently due to bad weather in California. They've also dropped their line of soy milk because the supplier couldn't keep up. This may not be entirely a Whole Foods issue.

I love Wegmans :)

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

#194

Post by kbenson » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 1:23 AM UTC

chiefalchemist wrote: post #178

Natsu wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is nonsense. The problem is it's not something most people realize and/accept. They hear "The sky is purple" on the channel they usually watch, said by the pleasant looking and sounding talking head they're so fond of. No need to look up and double ckeck. Yup! The sky is purple. Case closed. Facebook and Twitter would be ghost towns without this disconnect.

Well, that's because the only way to get through life in this day and age is to pick some people you accept as authorities on sobjects, and listen to their opinion and use it to form an initial basis for your own if you haven't already got one.

The trick, which people seem to be generally bad at, is:

a) limiting the scope of authority you attribute to someone

b) not immediately discounting contradictory evidence but using it to judge whether you need to pry deeper yourself or to discount some of that authority you've vested in them

c) actually remembering how authoritative the source was when repeating the information or using it as the basis for other assumptions

d) actually looking into issues deeper that you decide to care about and find the truth, not just was some semi-authoritative mouth piece repeated to you

For example, I try to make a habit of prefixing or postfixing statements in conversation with disclaimers ("At least that's what I heard or seem to remember reading, but I'm not sure how that I'm not sure how true it is.") if I'm not fairly certain of the information.

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

#195

Post by danepowell » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 1:24 AM UTC

I wonder to what degree is shrinkage a compounding factor.

I used to work at an outdoor retailer where we only did inventory once a year, and by the end of the year the computer inventory would differ from actual inventory by an order of magnitude, simply due to the fact that things get lost, damaged, stolen, etc... and don't get marked as such in the computer.

If you have enough backstock, this isn't a huge problem (I think most estimates put retail shrinkage at less than 5%). But if you are using a just-in-time stocking approach, those effects could quickly compound until you have nothing left on the shelf and no more inventory on the way.

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

#196

Post by Natsu » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 1:25 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?

A dismissal of something as 'fake news' is a bit too facile, that's mere namecalling without more backing. A better analysis is to note what sources of information were drawn upon, how they can be corroborated (or not), and whether they're sufficient to make the case the author wants. I admit to using a simplistic heuristic of "if I can't see any of your sources, your 'news' is just a rumor" but I use it even on news I would be inclined to agree with. The articles that pass this filter are far fewer than those which fail it for any remotely partizan subject. There's just so much noise of the form "my inside sources say that X will finally put [Trump|Hillary] in jail!"

And a more facile analysis obscures the fact that there is yet a bit of fact-based reporting getting lost in the noise. Authors who normally link to actual primary sources and do real analysis instead of only cheap opinion, albeit sometimes imperfectly. So more Glenn Grenwald, Popehat or Groklaw and less Fox/Buzzfeed/CNN.

There are real problems here, but political partisans tend to make more fake news instead of doing anything useful to solve it.

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

#197

Post by tinfins » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 1:27 AM UTC

Chaebixi wrote: post #169

tinfins wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few things that happen every New Year that combine to contribute to shortages: - Distributors have changed delivery schedules to work around New Year's Eve and Day. - There's a large increase in demand for produce and some other ingredients (resolutions) - Employees at the store and regional level take a few more vacations than usual, since we aren't able to during much of the holiday season. People also…

> So I would say there probably was a nationwide spike in out-of-stocks spread out over a few days. But it isn't really because of OTS. Is it though? If OTS drastically decreases the backstock, wouldn't it also decrease the ability of a store to respond to these kinds of changes?

You wouldn't want backstock for produce of more than a day or two, because that's going to reduce freshness. You can't just constantly keep tons of backstock of everything year-round just in case there's a storm one week.

Also, OTS allows backstock of top selling items or in emergencies. If you can predict a big storm like what probably caused most of the problems in the article, you are allowed to stock up on product.

That's why I have a problem with the article, it's just so factually incorrect.

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

#198

Post by IncRnd » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 1:29 AM UTC

bovine3dom wrote: post #110

irrational wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, it is amusing that the quote ends with "far-off Palestine". In the mid-90s I returned from living in the middle east for 6 months as a student (Jordan, Israel and Egypt). I personally witnessed an event and upon returning I was reading about said event in a US newspaper and was shocked at how wrong it was. This was the first time I experienced this effect. However, instead of turning to other parts of the paper…

Surely the metric should be "Do they know more than me?" Or are you concerned that you'll move towards the apex of the Dunning Kruger chart?

> Surely the metric should be "Do they know more than me?"

That's not a good metric. A better metric would be, "are they trustworthy and correct?"

> Or are you concerned that you'll move towards the apex of the Dunning Kruger chart?

Disqus is over there.

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

#199

Post by danans » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 1:29 AM UTC

Whether or not there is an actual stock crisis at WF, this reminds me of Nassim Taleb's general observation that systems that are hyper efficient (no redundancy) are more fragile when faced with unforeseen circumstances.

This is familiar to anyone in tech who has built a computer system with replication to achieve high availability and minimize data load risk, but it's rarely discussed in the context of human resources and processes. If anything, that field seems dominated by a desire for maximal efficiency at all costs.

Here's a blog post which provides examples:

https://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/08/04/two-is-one-and-one...

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

#200

Post by RockyMcNuts » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 1:36 AM UTC

irrational wrote: post #77

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Heh, it is amusing that the quote ends with "far-off Palestine". In the mid-90s I returned from living in the middle east for 6 months as a student (Jordan, Israel and Egypt). I personally witnessed an event and upon returning I was reading about said event in a US newspaper and was shocked at how wrong it was. This was the first time I experienced this effect. However, instead of turning to other parts of the paper…

Seeing something like a football play, a highly trained, alert, well positioned observer like a referee gets it wrong a pretty significant percentage of the time.

Now suppose someone reported on a game without seeing it and getting the narrative from different fans up in the stands.

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence, but of course, sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.