Some people are wondering, “How long will it be before you can buy a new couch and have it delivered in a timely manner?”
I know this for a fact, because the question was posed in an article in The Atlantic about the “supply chain” — which I had previously thought was, like, a chain, the kind of chain that Harry Houdini was expert at escaping from.
Now many of us are learning that there’s a very complicated web of industrial and agricultural industries located in various counties, all dependent upon one another, and especially dependent upon the availability of cardboard boxes. When this or that necessary industrial or agricultural component fails to arrive as scheduled, the co-dependent products can’t be assembled or packaged… so stuff is sitting in warehouses all over the world, lacking what we thought were insignificant little parts.
As a result, people are waiting for things to arrive. And waiting. And waiting. Because something has gone wrong with the supply chain.
As writer Amanda Mull explained in her Atlantic article:
As everyone has been forced to learn in the past year and a half, when the works get gummed up — when a finite supply of packaging can’t keep up with demand, when there aren’t enough longshoremen or truck drivers or postal workers, when a container ship gets wedged sideways in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes — the effects ripple outward for weeks or months, emptying shelves and raising prices in ways that can seem random. All of a sudden, you can’t buy kettlebells or canned seltzer.
Not that I’m looking to buy kettlebells. Never entered my mind. In fact, I didn’t even know what ‘kettlebells’ were; I had to look it up. (I guess that reveals something about my workout routine, which consists of picking up my cat a few times a day, and calling it good.)
Nor have I ever had a craving for canned seltzer. And do I want a new couch? No. My old couch is perfectly functional. Plus, I probably couldn’t afford a new couch, if one were available. Not the way prices have been going up.
The supply chain problems is apparently very frustrating to people who want new couches and cans of seltzer. As if that would make them happy.
I have a slightly different approach to life. When I find there’s no Jif peanut butter stocked on the shelf at City Market, I just buy Skippy. They taste pretty much the same, to me. And if you’re lucky, the jar of Skippy is on sale for the same price as the Jif.
The people who try to run the world and keep the wheels of commerce turning haven’t been able to figure out what, exactly, went wrong. They understand that ‘social distancing’ is part of the problem, but here in the U.S. the main problem seems to be, nobody wants to work. It was hard enough to find truck drivers before the pandemic started, and now it’s well nigh impossible.
Who knew that truck drivers were the grease that keeps the wheels turning? Not me. I thought it was the millionaires and billionaires and stock market traders, but it turns out to be truck drivers and hog farmers and shoemakers and the people who put seltzer in cans.
Then the politicians get these great ideas, like putting vaccine mandates in place, and they only make a bad problem worse. Truck drivers don’t want vaccines, and they don’t need vaccines; they’re truck drivers, for heaven sake.
Anyway, this whole mess has taken the “fun” out of buying things… when you find the price jacked way up, or when you’re told your order might be delivered in 2021, or it might not. Shopping was supposed to be fun. Shopping was supposed to be the activity that made us feel loved and appreciated. Shopping was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Now we’ve reached the end of the rainbow, and we find, not only is there no gold — there’s not even a pot.
Speaking for myself, I’m sticking to peanut butter. Not once in this whole pandemic have I walked into City Market and been unable to find either Jif or Skippy, come hell or high water.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.