The old story about John Draper calling up Richard Nixon and warning him about a toilet paper crisis in LA is beginning to make a lot more sense, now...
>The legendary antics of phone phreaks in the 70s are as numerous as they are unverifiable. There's the story of a couple of phreaks — of which one was allegedly Draper — who called up the White House, dropped President Nixon's secret codename 'Olympus' and were soon put through to the President himself — only to tell him of a 'national emergency' that was occurring because Los Angeles had run out of toilet paper.
>We had the code word that would summon Nixon to the phone. Almost immediately, another person was starting the process of dialing the number. I stopped them just in time and recommended that they stack at least 4 tandems before looping the call to the White house. Sure enough, the man at the other end said "9337", my other friend said "Olympus please!", the man at the other end said "One moment sir!"... About a minute later, a man that sounded remarkably like Nixon said "What's going on?". My friend said "We have a crisis here in Los Angeles!", Nixon said "What's the nature of the crisis?", My friend said in a serious tone of voice "We're out of toilet paper sir!". Nixon said "WHO IS THIS?" My friend then hung up. Never did learn what happened to that tape, but I think this was one of the funniest pranks, and I don't think that Woz would even come close to this one. I think he was jealous for a long time.
>To the best of my recollection, this was about 4 months before Nixon resigned because of the Watergate crisis.
The run on toilet paper started here (San Francisco Bay area) a week ago when the shelter-in-place order was announced. I figured I'd wait for stores to be restocked, since by then all the hoarders wouldn't need to go out an buy more. But I went out yesterday and the TP shelves were still empty. No pasta either. Canned tomatoes and coconut milk (which we cook with a lot in our house) are all gone too.
Happily, we were reasonably well stocked before this all hit the fan, but I'm a little surprised to still see empty shelves after a week. How long does it typically take to restock non-perishables?
Here in Australia, one of the major supermarket chains (Coles) made a statement about this. They said their biggest week of the year is the Christmas week. They spend 6 months preparing for this. Each of the last 3 weeks has essentially been a Christmas shopping week. That's the scale of the problem.
We have enough food and supplies. We have the distribution to get it to stores. We have the capability to sell it in store. The only scarcity we have is because of the hoarders. That hoarding and resulting scarcity is creating more hoarders.
What I found interesting was as the run on toilet paper began, people in my office started to spread the good word about bidets, and then a couple of days later, sure enough, those were selling out on Amazon.
Which is amazing because bidets are very far from being a thing in the US.
This is just speculation, but I think people are continuing to overbuy toilet paper in fear of a further shortage. So it's a kind of vicious circle. Consumers are afraid toilet paper will be unavailable, because consumers keep buying up all the available toilet paper as soon as it hits the shelves.
For example here, a large rice "manufacturer" (distributor?) at normal times has pre-orders from asia for deliveries 3 months in advance for typical amounts that are sold. If people start buying at 5-10x the normal rate, it will deplete the current stock quickly and it will take time to ramp up the deliveries and packaging. Also intermediate storage facilities and silos/packaging lines are not inflatable. So it's not all that easy to ramp up distribution 3x.
After a couple of weeks, toilet paper seems to be back with a vengeance in Irish supermarkets; there's heaps of the stuff. And canned tomatoes are back. The panic buyers seem to have given up on it, and have moved onto weirder targets. Based on my visit to Tesco last night, the new hoarding targets seem to be lightbulbs and chewing gum, for some reason.
Your supermarkets are probably restocking this stuff every day, and possibly multiple times a day, but it doesn't take much change in buying patterns to cause temporary shortages.
I am thinking some of it has to do with the fact that more people are buying groceries now (rather than eating out) and groceries that are staples rather than buying a wider variety of food (stuff that lasts, is easy to make and is packaged so it can be cleaned easily).
Statewide Shelter In Place was, what, Thursday AM the.. 19th? Bay area was Monday the 16th? I've been working from home since the 6th. At least a week before the 6th, my wife made a Costco run to make sure we were topped up on non-perishable stuff, and bought another "case" of TP even though we had almost an entire full one on hand. (usually we buy it once we get below 50, because we don't go to Costco very often). That was the extent of our "stocking up", but I think it happened in late Feb, and we were almost immediately hearing of others doing the same in the region.
Costco lines have been a thing for weeks. Which I didn't get; I popped into my local grocery store a few times (granted, in the morning) the week of the 9th, and it was always quite well-stocked, even as I was hearing of lines and chaos at Costco.
Granted, I went back on the afternoon of the 14th or 15th and it looked like it had been ransacked :) but until then, I thought the strategy was JUST DON'T GO TO COSTCO.
Why is there a run on toilet paper? The supply chain isn’t disrupted. Even if it is and there is a shortage, what’s the big deal if you run out and have to poop before you shower? How about instead of buying 40 pounds of toilet paper now, taking some of that money and time at home and installing a bidet? I have a Toto and it’s the best, I will never not have a bidet in my home. Do you wipe peanut butter off a plate with a napkin or do you rinse it with water? It’s a world of difference and uses 95% less toilet paper.
Because the shelves are empty, I'm guessing far more reasonable people are thinking to just pick up a single pack when they do see a store stocked. Just in case they miscounted the amount they have at home. But when you count the number of items of TP on the shelves and compare it to the number of families, there is a large mismatch. Far more families than TP. So even a minority of those families making the quite reasonable 'buy one just in case, not like it will go bad' decision will quickly leave a store bare, meaning the rest of the day is filled with shoppers seeing bare shelves and thinking 'next time I see some, I should grab one just in case'.
While there are some panic buyers who are buying far more than just 1, I wonder if they are making as much an impact as all the non-panic buyers who are just picking up one just in case.
Maybe not, I could be off on the impact, but it does seem reasonable at first glance and explains why even purchase limits can have a hard time combating TP shortages in the short term.
My local shop seems to have had the presence of mind to order extra beforehand, they had a pallet of TP out and they had it on sale as well - but it was the smaller packet, so not the most economic anyway. Anyway that shop hasn't had a shortage as far as I know.
But yeah same, I would've expected things to have calmed down by now - how much toilet paper can people hoard? That's not even the main issue, we're still having problems finding fresh produce and meat and the like. I mean sure, some (like bread) can be explained by more people working from home (we like our lunch sandwiches), but people should still be eating dinner as normal.
The statistics are that grocery shops are seeing 35% more revenue, bigger even than around christmas.
But again, I hope things settle down a bit once people realize they can't physically cram more supplies into their house. After this I think we'll see a big decline in e.g. toilet paper because people have stocked up on so much.
I've heard some truckers on radio shows saying that it's typically a three day window between restocking a particular product type at any given grocery store. I've also heard the toilet paper manufacturers saying that there's no shortage in supply. However, from what I'm seeing in my area and hearing of in other areas, either the truckers or the manufacturers (or both) are incorrect.
Buy and install one of those hand faucets. It's cleaner anyways and you'd need way less toilet paper (pretty much only used to make sure everything is clean and to dry a bit): https://www.amazon.in/b?ie=UTF8&node=10079354031
It took about a week for retailers in the midwestern US to restock and put buying limits in place on TP and staple foods. The buying limits (i.e. limit 2 packages of 12 rolls of TP) were pretty sensible, and for the most part, solved the problem here. It was surreal seeing 1/2 empty shelves at grocery stores, though.
Here in Canada, lots of out-of-stock items are returning to shelves. Not all of them, but my grocery store has had toilet paper all week and they got flour/pasta recently too
They might be over-thinking it. Toilet paper is incredibly cheap to produce, but most people put a very high price on their last roll, when they know there might not be more. That makes for some interesting economics.
The "answer", at least for those with space, is to keep and rotate three or six months of it, even though that sounds ridiculous. Or, alternatively, do the bidet thing or even have a standby outhouse in back.
An outhouse doesn't actually solve the need for paper though. My backup plan of last resort is to cut up a few old t-shirts into tp-square sizes. Wipe & run them in a washer load by themselves and repeat as needed. I think I'd choose darker ones-- it's not like they'd be any cleaner after a washing, but I'd feel better about it.
I've been doing this unintentionally. The top of my linen closet isn't good for much else; it's awkward to reach up there so it's only good for lightweight, bulky things.
Given that I'm only gonna use it for TP or paper towels, there's no reason NOT to keep it completely full; there's nothing else I'd be doing with that space anyway. And actually I have the paper towels stored somewhere that's more convenient to the kitchen and garage, where they get used, so the closet top is all TP.
If my girlfriend moved in, it would probably be a 3-month supply. As a single guy, it's closer to a year.
My friend owns a pharmacy in Canada. She said that it started with the previous Wednesday when in a single night they suspended the NBA, Tom Hanks announced he had coronavirus, and I think Trump stopped flights from Europe.
Her store and others were caught in a flurry of buying. Her daily sales were double or triple what they normally should have been and her shelves became empty because they didn’t anticipate it. It caused multiple days of empty shelves because they order on Wednesday for the Friday and Saturday for Monday, so basically they got hit hard Wednesday evening and then they could only order for Monday. So the shelves were empty from Wednesday to Monday. That creates fear.
However all the stores were hammered so the warehouse was empty. Since then she has been getting half orders and the further shelter orders caused more buying. So it hasn’t abated yet.
She has been sold out of masks since January and hand sanitizers for weeks. Only recently did she get sold out of rubbing alcohol and cleaning products. And then after the Wednesday she started selling out of basically everything. It hasn’t stopped yet but she is getting shipments of sanitizer and cleaning products but they are getting bought up immediately.
I went to a Toronto Wal-Mart last Friday, and they were out of just about every pain-reliever. Like, that's not going to save you your life from anything!
Just bought a bidet (I've been wanting one for years) and man I think it will change my life. Just being able to clean off every time feels SO much better. Absolute luxury!
As a toilet paper user I've never experienced any problems that I can trace back to having a dirty butt. I don't think my wiping technique is anything special. Are you saying when you use toilet paper you're unable to clean yourself well enough that it becomes an issue for you? What exactly is the issue? What about your world changed other than the lack of toilet paper?
Two of my siblings were raised in cloth diapers due to our finances in those years. A clean butt isn’t difficult to achieve cheaply. It just requires getting a little more dirty than normal.
I wonder what the current toilet paper manufacturers are going through right now? I'm an industrial engineer, so production issues and supply/demand issues are always of interest to me. A few possibilities:
* Adding shifts at overtime pay to meet demand (lower profit/unit, but more equipment utilization and total profit)
* Potentially higher freight charges (entirely unsure how freight rates are going these days compared to normal)
* Calloffs from employees from illness, exposure, or fear
* Lacking supply if they're working on a Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) system - where the supplier owns inventory until pulled by a customer, at which time the supplier gets paid. These agreements often have parameters about stocking and forecast levels, which are typically fine, but then Sales talks about the "customer relationship" and wants to make drastic changes to how the factory runs (sub-optimizing production) to keep $bigCustomer happy.
Per the manager, the grocery store near me averages 10 units/day of toilet paper sold (good size town in the Midwest, with many grocery stores). One day about 2 weeks ago they sold 3,000 units. They have ~75 feet of shelf space (4 shelves high) dedicated to toilet paper. Literal semi's full of toilet paper flying off the shelves. They now have a limit if 1 unit per trip.
I've been to the store twice since then and always check the toilet paper aisle as a gauge of how they're doing. Still completely empty when I visit after work.
COVID-19 doesn't show GI issues as a symptom. Consumption isn't going up notably, but demand has been bonkers. Everybody will have months of toilet paper in their inventory at home, causing demand in the coming months to drop significantly. They may need to reduce the number of shifts or eliminate overtime at the factories.
Shelf space at grocery stores is expensive. If the toilet paper companies pay for less shelf space, they may not get it back. Grocery stores won't be excited to use that much space for a product that's moving at <50% of previous volumes.
It really is a weird issue and I don't envy the people figuring out how to deal with it.
You missed one obvious reaction, the one I'd use: business as normal.
Why? Because spiking supply now will hurt them later. Usage hasn't/doesn't actually go up. In fact, usage will go down by whatever percentage of the population succumbs.
The shortages in NY could be solved if shops just placed a limit on how much you could buy. It’s all these wannabe preppers buying more than they need who make it difficult for everyone else.
The reason not to do that is that you don't want to cause customers - especially those from NY - to have "that argument" with your staff, multiple times each day.
The same amount of toilet paper - all of it - gets sold either way.
[+] [-] DonHopkins|6 years ago|reply
https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2015/11/the-hacker-who-inspire...
>The legendary antics of phone phreaks in the 70s are as numerous as they are unverifiable. There's the story of a couple of phreaks — of which one was allegedly Draper — who called up the White House, dropped President Nixon's secret codename 'Olympus' and were soon put through to the President himself — only to tell him of a 'national emergency' that was occurring because Los Angeles had run out of toilet paper.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060226021102/http://webcrunche...
>We had the code word that would summon Nixon to the phone. Almost immediately, another person was starting the process of dialing the number. I stopped them just in time and recommended that they stack at least 4 tandems before looping the call to the White house. Sure enough, the man at the other end said "9337", my other friend said "Olympus please!", the man at the other end said "One moment sir!"... About a minute later, a man that sounded remarkably like Nixon said "What's going on?". My friend said "We have a crisis here in Los Angeles!", Nixon said "What's the nature of the crisis?", My friend said in a serious tone of voice "We're out of toilet paper sir!". Nixon said "WHO IS THIS?" My friend then hung up. Never did learn what happened to that tape, but I think this was one of the funniest pranks, and I don't think that Woz would even come close to this one. I think he was jealous for a long time.
>To the best of my recollection, this was about 4 months before Nixon resigned because of the Watergate crisis.
[+] [-] bryanrasmussen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lisper|6 years ago|reply
Happily, we were reasonably well stocked before this all hit the fan, but I'm a little surprised to still see empty shelves after a week. How long does it typically take to restock non-perishables?
[+] [-] cletus|6 years ago|reply
We have enough food and supplies. We have the distribution to get it to stores. We have the capability to sell it in store. The only scarcity we have is because of the hoarders. That hoarding and resulting scarcity is creating more hoarders.
It's textbook illusion of scarcity.
[+] [-] NoSorryCannot|6 years ago|reply
Which is amazing because bidets are very far from being a thing in the US.
[+] [-] mordechai9000|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megous|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsynnott|6 years ago|reply
Your supermarkets are probably restocking this stuff every day, and possibly multiple times a day, but it doesn't take much change in buying patterns to cause temporary shortages.
[+] [-] agilebyte|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rconti|6 years ago|reply
Statewide Shelter In Place was, what, Thursday AM the.. 19th? Bay area was Monday the 16th? I've been working from home since the 6th. At least a week before the 6th, my wife made a Costco run to make sure we were topped up on non-perishable stuff, and bought another "case" of TP even though we had almost an entire full one on hand. (usually we buy it once we get below 50, because we don't go to Costco very often). That was the extent of our "stocking up", but I think it happened in late Feb, and we were almost immediately hearing of others doing the same in the region.
Costco lines have been a thing for weeks. Which I didn't get; I popped into my local grocery store a few times (granted, in the morning) the week of the 9th, and it was always quite well-stocked, even as I was hearing of lines and chaos at Costco.
Granted, I went back on the afternoon of the 14th or 15th and it looked like it had been ransacked :) but until then, I thought the strategy was JUST DON'T GO TO COSTCO.
[+] [-] jliptzin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SkyBelow|6 years ago|reply
While there are some panic buyers who are buying far more than just 1, I wonder if they are making as much an impact as all the non-panic buyers who are just picking up one just in case.
Maybe not, I could be off on the impact, but it does seem reasonable at first glance and explains why even purchase limits can have a hard time combating TP shortages in the short term.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|6 years ago|reply
But yeah same, I would've expected things to have calmed down by now - how much toilet paper can people hoard? That's not even the main issue, we're still having problems finding fresh produce and meat and the like. I mean sure, some (like bread) can be explained by more people working from home (we like our lunch sandwiches), but people should still be eating dinner as normal.
The statistics are that grocery shops are seeing 35% more revenue, bigger even than around christmas.
But again, I hope things settle down a bit once people realize they can't physically cram more supplies into their house. After this I think we'll see a big decline in e.g. toilet paper because people have stocked up on so much.
[+] [-] outworlder|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stronglikedan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wsc981|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] kortilla|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] welder|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobbyd3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] downerending|6 years ago|reply
The "answer", at least for those with space, is to keep and rotate three or six months of it, even though that sounds ridiculous. Or, alternatively, do the bidet thing or even have a standby outhouse in back.
[+] [-] paulddraper|6 years ago|reply
But unlike other inelastic things -- say, critical healthcare -- it's so cheap that its demand/supply behavior comes seemingly out of nowhere.
[+] [-] ineedasername|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] myself248|6 years ago|reply
I've been doing this unintentionally. The top of my linen closet isn't good for much else; it's awkward to reach up there so it's only good for lightweight, bulky things.
Given that I'm only gonna use it for TP or paper towels, there's no reason NOT to keep it completely full; there's nothing else I'd be doing with that space anyway. And actually I have the paper towels stored somewhere that's more convenient to the kitchen and garage, where they get used, so the closet top is all TP.
If my girlfriend moved in, it would probably be a 3-month supply. As a single guy, it's closer to a year.
[+] [-] remote_phone|6 years ago|reply
Her store and others were caught in a flurry of buying. Her daily sales were double or triple what they normally should have been and her shelves became empty because they didn’t anticipate it. It caused multiple days of empty shelves because they order on Wednesday for the Friday and Saturday for Monday, so basically they got hit hard Wednesday evening and then they could only order for Monday. So the shelves were empty from Wednesday to Monday. That creates fear.
However all the stores were hammered so the warehouse was empty. Since then she has been getting half orders and the further shelter orders caused more buying. So it hasn’t abated yet.
She has been sold out of masks since January and hand sanitizers for weeks. Only recently did she get sold out of rubbing alcohol and cleaning products. And then after the Wednesday she started selling out of basically everything. It hasn’t stopped yet but she is getting shipments of sanitizer and cleaning products but they are getting bought up immediately.
[+] [-] Scoundreller|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LordAtlas|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foxyv|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbrameld|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] person_of_color|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] divbzero|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheschire|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] froindt|6 years ago|reply
* Adding shifts at overtime pay to meet demand (lower profit/unit, but more equipment utilization and total profit)
* Potentially higher freight charges (entirely unsure how freight rates are going these days compared to normal)
* Calloffs from employees from illness, exposure, or fear
* Lacking supply if they're working on a Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) system - where the supplier owns inventory until pulled by a customer, at which time the supplier gets paid. These agreements often have parameters about stocking and forecast levels, which are typically fine, but then Sales talks about the "customer relationship" and wants to make drastic changes to how the factory runs (sub-optimizing production) to keep $bigCustomer happy.
Per the manager, the grocery store near me averages 10 units/day of toilet paper sold (good size town in the Midwest, with many grocery stores). One day about 2 weeks ago they sold 3,000 units. They have ~75 feet of shelf space (4 shelves high) dedicated to toilet paper. Literal semi's full of toilet paper flying off the shelves. They now have a limit if 1 unit per trip.
I've been to the store twice since then and always check the toilet paper aisle as a gauge of how they're doing. Still completely empty when I visit after work.
COVID-19 doesn't show GI issues as a symptom. Consumption isn't going up notably, but demand has been bonkers. Everybody will have months of toilet paper in their inventory at home, causing demand in the coming months to drop significantly. They may need to reduce the number of shifts or eliminate overtime at the factories.
Shelf space at grocery stores is expensive. If the toilet paper companies pay for less shelf space, they may not get it back. Grocery stores won't be excited to use that much space for a product that's moving at <50% of previous volumes.
It really is a weird issue and I don't envy the people figuring out how to deal with it.
[+] [-] jiveturkey|6 years ago|reply
Why? Because spiking supply now will hurt them later. Usage hasn't/doesn't actually go up. In fact, usage will go down by whatever percentage of the population succumbs.
[+] [-] souprock|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] graton|6 years ago|reply
Johnny Carson jokes about it and then people rush out and buy toilet paper causing a shortage.
[+] [-] booleandilemma|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ceejayoz|6 years ago|reply
There are limits on pasta, canned goods, meat etc. as well.
[+] [-] gridlockd|6 years ago|reply
The same amount of toilet paper - all of it - gets sold either way.
[+] [-] foxyv|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmhsieh|6 years ago|reply