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

#281

Post by biiirdtime » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 8:53 PM UTC

bearcobra wrote: post #147

onli wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's exactly the problem the article describes: That the moment something goes wrong the stores don't have any reserves anymore, because the system is too strictly set on reducing costs and spoilage, seemingly with a total disregard to consumer satisfaction and overall profit. Add to that crazy-sounding control schemes - which maybe is kinda normal in a country like the US without real employee protection laws,…

Anecdotally, I have experienced the same phenomenon at several major grocery chains in Canada. City gets hit with a winter storm and Safeway, SuperStore, & Walmart all had empty produce & bread sections. I've also seen it in certain stores during summer months in the run up to a long weekend. Not saying the new supply chain software can't be the cause, but there does seem to be other reasonable explanations.

Are you from the Fraser Valley by any chance?

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

#282

Post by Natsu » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 12:11 AM UTC

ithkuil wrote: post #268

chiefalchemist wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that? Why can't you keep an open mind, traverse multiple sources and draw your own conclusions? Think of it as a diversified portfolio. I'm not asking for more time, just that it we spread out. Without that, we get the barely binary system that we have. The MSM can be lazy and non-journalistic because no one bothers to notice. No one cares.

unfortunately an average of two opposing lies is not always the truth

True, but some evidence is harder to fake than others, especially when there are multiple independent items that corroborate some fact or another.

Granted, there are definitely things that aren't amenable to this, but it's not exactly hopeless, either.

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

#283

Post by icelancer » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 1:04 AM UTC

ithkuil wrote: post #259

icelancer wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just judge them by their actions, not anything that is said. Examine their voting record, lobby donations, and primary information and action. Decide from there.

At some point you have to trust some sort of authority that provides you with those records, along with the required context.

Are you insinuating that voting records are faked? Because raw data of voting is what I'm referring to.

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

#284

Post by ithkuil » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 7:54 AM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #282

ithkuil wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately an average of two opposing lies is not always the truth

True, but some evidence is harder to fake than others, especially when there are multiple independent items that corroborate some fact or another. Granted, there are definitely things that aren't amenable to this, but it's not exactly hopeless, either.

No it's not hopeless, but when done right it becomes indistinguishable from true investigative and research work; wouldn't be nice if you could share the results of that extensive effort put into uncovering the truth so that others could benefit? Oh, wait...

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

#285

Post by rikkus » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 11:33 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 spent too long being exasperated at the clueless BBC ‘Technology reporting’ before I realised that if it was this wrong about tech (a domain I humbly believe I know fairly well - at least when it comes to hard facts) then how wrong might it be about other things it was reporting on?

I stopped assuming any veracity in reporting from _any_ source and quite quickly saw that there was very little accuracy anywhere. There were of course opinions - or voiced ‘opinions’ I understood the motivation for, but with the facts missing, that’s all I was consuming. The opinions of reporters or the ‘opinions’, carefully guided by the media bosses or governments. Interesting? Not when they were so predictable.

That’s when I became one of those hipster/snob/weirdo people who doesn’t consume standard news anymore, and can only barely stand some tech publishing.

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

#286

Post by meri_dian » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 1:19 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #280

burfog wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In the usual pair of photos" Those are not the usual pair of photos.

Its a pair of photos taken at the height of each event. Its also the ones I saw in the news at the time. If you are familiar with some that look like its fudged to show trump in a bad light its probably from stuff conservatives shared on facebook where they picked 2 dissimilar pics, made up a story surrounding them about how the news is out to disrespect trump, and yelled about fake news.

To be fair it is out to disrespect Trump, because he disrespects them. They chose to make a big deal out of the election crowd because they knew it would tweak him.

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

#287

Post by rurban » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 2:58 PM UTC

What does article describes us basically the systemic failure of communist economy. Centrally planned OTS might be considered superior amongst software hackers and esp their illuded managers, but it doesn't scale to the chaotic fluctuations down in the store, where the previous local decentralized ordering system worked fine. Only there you can anticipate the true number of stock to shelf. We saw that for centuries in the communist states.

Google or Amazon will not be able to run groceries with lifestock and fresh veggies, only electronics, gifts and books. It's a systemic matter, and highly technocratic manager hierarchies make it only worse.

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

#288

Post by robryan » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 12:21 AM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #258

bradknowles wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, as a customer, I can confirm that all the Whole Foods Markets I’ve seen do have digital pricing displays for most things - they are based on e-paper technology. But you don’t want prices changing between the time a customer has picked up a product and the time they get to the checkout. And then there’s the whole problem of the in-store prices not matching the published circular prices. So, lots of issues to…

If the price drops between picking up an item and paying for it, I don't think anyone would complain.

And you can handle the other direction with a lag. Charge the old lower price for 30 minutes.

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

#289

Post by ric2b » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 11:11 AM UTC

JetSpiegel wrote: post #262

IncRnd wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> are they trustworthy and correct? So well-meaning idiots trump experts that might be trying to trick you?

If the experts are both incorrect and untrustworthy, of course.

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

#290

Post by Jemmeh » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #266

Jemmeh wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whole foods has a lot of very niche specialty food. That is what they are probably scaling back on. For example there's a small organic food store near my house that no longer sells cocoa butter because it's very expensive and rarely purchased. And it's more common now, but I used to have to go to Whole Foods foods for things like almond flour, coconut flour, dairy-free products, and gluten-free products. (I used to…

>> Whole foods has a lot of very niche specialty food. That is what they are probably scaling back on. A lot of people go there because of those items. But hey, if they want to compete on price with Kroger more power to them.

And I did too, but I can already buy a lot of those foods elsewhere now. Even Walmart carries almond and coconut flour now, grassfed beef and butter, humane local eggs, generic brand almond milk, etc. Whole Foods does have a few more options, but I don't think I have very much reason to step into the organic food store/whole foods anymore. And it's lessening by the day as their competitors pick up those niche items more.

That was with my ex so I don't have to deal with it anymore, but when you have a limited budget and strict diet requirements in addition to medical bills we just looked for the cheapest place that sells what didn't kill him.