Ok, what is wrong with people! Hoarding toilet paper...

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by nstg8a

Woollies has stopped ordering toilet paper and paper towels in large quantities now. The orders we’ve been dispatching have gone from 5-7 pallets per store per day to 2-3.

Paper towels are so over stocked it’s ridiculous. I think we have 600 pallets in stock and we aren’t supposed to be a storage facility, just cross dock.

That's the issue with corporates, they were too slow to ramp up for the demand and now they're too slow to ramp down.

That's the problem when you track lost sales by demand, you're chasing the curve upwards always behind the 8 ball then when the peak comes you're overstocked.

I'd say their category manager is going to join the unemployment queue.

[wodahs]

Originally Posted by nstg8a

Woollies has stopped ordering toilet paper and paper towels in large quantities now. The orders we’ve been dispatching have gone from 5-7 pallets per store per day to 2-3.

Paper towels are so over stocked it’s ridiculous. I think we have 600 pallets in stock and we aren’t supposed to be a storage facility, just cross dock.

and yet we keep transporting it
and in 48' containers
that 44 pallets a container
and we do a fair few a day

[nstg8a]

Originally Posted by wodahs

and yet we keep transporting it
and in 48' containers
that 44 pallets a container
and we do a fair few a day

Ours have been coming by double, 70 odd pallets at a time. We are only for overflow so I’d hate to see what the dc looks like.

Oh noes I have caught the hoarding disease !!

[whynot]

Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo

That's the issue with corporates, they were too slow to ramp up for the demand and now they're too slow to ramp down.

I think you are being a bit harsh there. When the plague of locus descends, there is very little one can do (except ration).

A neighbour works in a major chemist chain. They normally sell 300 asthma puffers per month. Then the rumours started, and next they were selling a 1000 asthma puffers per week. They were completely cleaned out and resupply date is unknown. Ditto with kids Panadol.

I think the trouble is that these days, we are used to being able to go to the shop and get what we want. Don’t want to dive down to the shop, just uber it! Pre-2020, if anyone admitted to having even a small stockpile, they were mocked as “a prepper”. Because households don’t have any buffer stock, they are “close coupled” to their local shop. Which in turn runs a very lean, just in time, supply chain.

Lesson to current generation, have a stockpile of non-perishable items at home.

[aussiblue]

https://daily.jstor.org/your-brain-e...rs-doing-same/

The word “hoarding” might bring to mind relatives or neighbors whose houses are overfilled with junk. A small percentage of people do suffer from what psychologists call “hoarding disorder,” keeping excessive goods to the point of distress and impairment.

But hoarding is actually a totally normal and adaptive behavior that kicks in any time there is an uneven supply of resources. Everyone hoards, even during the best of times, without even thinking about it. People like to have beans in the pantry, money in savings and chocolates hidden from the children. These are all hoards.

Most Americans have had so much, for so long. People forget that, not so long ago, survival often depended on working tirelessly all year to fill root cellars so a family could last through a long, cold winter – and still many died.

Similarly, squirrels work all fall to hide nuts to eat for the rest of the year. Kangaroo rats in the desert hide seeds the few times it rains and then remember where they put them to dig them back up later. A Clark’s nutcracker can hoard over 10,000 pine seeds per fall – and even remember where it put them.

Similarities between human behavior and these animals’ are not just analogies. They reflect a deeply ingrained capacity for brains to motivate us to acquire and save resources that may not always be there. Suffering from hoarding disorder, stockpiling in a pandemic or hiding nuts in the fall – all of these behaviors are motivated less by logic and more by a deeply felt drive to feel safer.

My colleagues and I have found that stress seems to signal the brain to switch into “get hoarding” mode. For example, a kangaroo rat will act very lazy if fed regularly. But if its weight starts to drop, its brain signals to release stress hormones that incite the fastidious hiding of seeds all over the cage.

Kangaroo rats will also increase their hoarding if a neighboring animal steals from them. Once, I returned to the lab to find the victim of theft with all his remaining food stuffed into his cheek pouches — the only safe place.

People do the same. If in our lab studies my colleagues and I make them feel anxious, our study subjects want to take more stuff home with them afterward.

Demonstrating this shared inheritance, the same brain areas are active when people decide to take home toilet paper, bottled water or granola bars, as when rats store lab chow under their bedding – the orbitofrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens, regions that generally help organize goals and motivations to satisfy needs and desires.

Damage to this system can even induce abnormal hoarding. One man who suffered frontal lobe damage had a sudden urge to hoard bullets. Another could not stop “borrowing” others’ cars. Brains across species use these ancient neural systems to ensure access to needed items – or ones that feel necessary.

So, when the news induces a panic that stores are running out of food, or that residents will be trapped in place for weeks, the brain is programmed to stock up. It makes you feel safer, less stressed, and actually protects you in an emergency.
More than a fair share

At the same time they’re organizing their own stockpiles, people get upset about those who are taking too much. That is a legitimate concern; it’s a version of the “tragedy of the commons,” wherein a public resource might be sustainable, but people’s tendency to take a little extra for themselves degrades the resource to the point where it can no longer help anyone.

By shaming others on social media, for instance, people exert what little influence they have to ensure cooperation with the group. As a social species, human beings thrive when they work together, and have employed shaming – even punishment – for millennia to ensure that everyone acts in the best interest of the group.

And it works. Twitter users went after a guy reported to have hoarded 17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer in the hopes of turning a profit; he ended up donating all of it and is under investigation for price gouging. Who wouldn’t pause before grabbing those last few rolls of TP when the mob is watching?

People will continue to hoard to the extent that they are worried. They will also continue to shame others who take more than what they consider a fair share. Both are normal and adaptive behaviors that evolved to balance one another out, in the long run.

But that’s cold comfort for someone on the losing end of a temporary imbalance – like a health care worker who did not have protective gear when they encountered a sick patient. The survival of the group hardly matters to the person who dies, or to their parent, child or friend.

One thing to remember is that the news selectively depicts stockpiling stories, presenting audiences with the most shocking cases. Most people are not charging $400 for a mask. Most are just trying to protect themselves and their families, the best way they know how, while also offering aid wherever they can. That’s how the human species evolved, to get through challenges like this together.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

[Citroënbender]

I note the hoarders opposite one of my jobs are still shopping. Kind of wondering where they are stashing it, given they’ve chocked their double garage.

Bunnings still seem low on metal fuel cans.

[xxx000]

Bunnings are crazy busy. There were large social distanced lines to the registers yesterday. We left

[Citroënbender]

Thanks for confirming what I feared. :-(

I have to go in there today, most likely. Got a range hood install that requires re-making the top cabinet and I haven’t quite enough of those push-on screw caps. In other circumstances I’d just come back another day for these, but I understand my clients’ desire to have it done and dusted so they can spray the whole kitchen down with carbolic (or whatever) once I’m out of their space.

[GasoLane]

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

Thanks for confirming what I feared. :-(

I have to go in there today, most likely. Got a range hood install that requires re-making the top cabinet and I haven’t quite enough of those push-on screw caps. In other circumstances I’d just come back another day for these, but I understand my clients’ desire to have it done and dusted so they can spray the whole kitchen down with carbolic (or whatever) once I’m out of their space.

Take a packed lunch, you'll probably need it standing in line waiting to get in

[Bossxr8]

Noticed the supermarket is now way overstocked with toilet paper. By the time the extra supplies got in the demand had dropped off. Now they are facing the other side of the hill where people are overstocked and won’t need to buy anymore for ages. They will probably have to stop production till the excess stock goes. Just shows how freaking stupid the whole thing was. If people just bought tp as normal there would never have been any supply problems. Can people really be this stupid?

[Tassie f100]

Originally Posted by GasoLane

Take a packed lunch, you'll probably need it standing in line waiting to get in

Yeah where is the sausage tent when you really need it.

[ford71V8]

-------

[ford71V8]

Originally Posted by Bossxr8

Noticed the supermarket is now way overstocked with toilet paper. By the time the extra supplies got in the demand had dropped off. Now they are facing the other side of the hill where people are overstocked and won’t need to buy anymore for ages. They will probably have to stop production till the excess stock goes. Just shows how freaking stupid the whole thing was. If people just bought tp as normal there would never have been any supply problems. Can people really be this stupid?

Yes, and often

[wodahs]

Originally Posted by GasoLane

Take a packed lunch, you'll probably need it standing in line waiting to get in

lol think ill take my next door neighbor up on his offer to acquire anything i meed from bunnings at his discounted rate as he works there and can bring it home for me

[DFB FGXR6]

This weeks haul. And yes, the toilet paper shelves were just about full.



I'm starting to notice certain things are coming back into stock.

[black13]

Originally Posted by xxx000

Bunnings are crazy busy. There were large social distanced lines to the registers yesterday. We left

was a ghost town here at my local bunnings in Adelaide

[Citroënbender]

Shelves are still pretty bare in my local Aldi.

Pasta comes and goes, today they had (for the first time I’ve seen it in some weeks) their budget laundry liquid. Most was already bought.

Paper products well down, a pitiable array of bruised tissue boxes about all.

Clientele looked more of the usual crowd; an engaging mix of backgrounds, demeanour and couture. Staff looked happier.

[MercuryT]

I'm hoarding Nippys Strawberry milk.

A shortage there and I'm done for......

[lra]

Originally Posted by Bossxr8

Noticed the supermarket is now way overstocked with toilet paper.

Not in my neck of the woods where bears do what they do in the woods. Dunny rolls are as plentiful as rocking horse ****.

[Citroënbender]

Can’t get a pallet off nstig8a? He was kvetching about the excess they had at work.

[danzvtil]

My local Bunnings Saturday morning had a line up to get in from one end of the carpark to the other, pharkk that, I left. Went back Sunday with no line up, but needed some cable ties, got to the aisle, max 4 people permitted...... 4 people were standing there scratching their *** not actively buying anything, waiting,waiting,waiting, pharkk it again, walked straight through and grabbed what I wanted.

[Fed]

Gunning's exposure for what, cable ties? :-(

[Citroënbender]

Item 1 is somewhat familiar!

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www....eamed-ussr/amp

[Fed]

In the late 50s I was using a pen and ink, all the desks had a hole in them to take the inkwell.

[Citroënbender]

My mother (in the UK) had the same stories, plus junior classes weren’t segregated and the boys would furtively dip the girls’ plaits into the inkwells.

Konfetka has the most beautiful Soviet-era cursive hand, even when she writes in English. I have perpetual envy.

[.:4:.]

I went to my local iga today. Still no bog rolls. Not really an issue for me. I have 8 left. Thats about 2 years worth for a single male living alone. Speaking to my kid, his mum theives rolls from work. But its industrial 80 grit.

Wrong... bog roll from work is smooth as

[Citroënbender]

Double blind test required for verification.

[arronm]

I now have 1000 rolls , that should be enough.......