Real World Anecdotes

[Guest cherzeca]

...  firms that know what they are doing will be unimpaired. ...

 

Pure & utterly nonsence to me.

 

something can't be utterly nonsense.  utterly is an adverb, utter is an adjective and therefor grammatical.  so, utter nonsense, yes, but only if you spell it correctly. 

[gfp]

...  firms that know what they are doing will be unimpaired. ...

 

Pure & utterly nonsence to me.

 

something can't be utterly nonsense.  utterly is an adverb, utter is an adjective and therefor grammatical.  so, utter nonsense, yes, but only if you spell it correctly.

 

 

just wait till you see my Danish spelling and grammar - that’ll really bug you

[DTEJD1997]

Hey all:

 

Here in the Detroit area, we have been hard hit by the Corona virus.

 

We have another problem in that the Post Office is collapsing.

 

I had noticed that some days I would not receive any mail.  Hard to know if I simply had no mail for the day, which sometimes happens.  HOWEVER, I checked with other business owners, and they were also not getting mail, and did not see the Post Man.  What are the odds that a whole block of businesses NOT get any mail?  I've also noticed that some of my packages coming in were frequently taking longer to get than they should have.  For instance, a package took 13 days to come in from PA.  All of this was intermittent and hard to get a handle on the exact situation.

 

Here is where it gets really bad though.  I send packages out to customers in various parts of the country.  The outgoing package is dropped off at my local Post Office's customer counter.  From my local Post Office, it goes to a regional sorting center.  Detroit has 3 regional sorting centers.  At one of these sorting centers, they will typically have 700 workers per shift.  I've heard reports that at some of these centers, they have had up to 675 workers not show up.  How do you run a 700 person operation with only 25 workers?  This massive outage occurred a bit over a week ago, and the situation is getting somewhat better, but they have massive worker outages and shipping backups.

 

End result is that packages are piling up at these sorting centers, some of my shipments have been there for over a week.

 

This is going to be profoundly bad for my business.  I have crazy angry customers.  I have thousands and thousands of dollars of product stuck at the Post Office. 

 

I will have to try and ship with other companies, perhaps Fed-Ex ground AND start to curtail my business for small packages/low value that don't have a viable alternative to shipping.

 

Why is it that the Post Office has collapsed, but Fed-Ex and UPS seem to be functioning?

 

The problem I have with the Post Office is that they should be making it abundantly clear that they can't get shipments out of Detroit.  That this is not a 1-2-3 day delay.  When they were having a systemic breakdown, they should have alerted customers.  If I had known the true situation, I would have made adjustments much sooner, not having inventory get stuck.

 

If the USPS has collapsed, could Fed-Ex & UPS be next? 

 

So this is a real world collapse of the supply chain, at least for me.

[rb]

...  firms that know what they are doing will be unimpaired. ...

 

Pure & utterly nonsence to me.

 

something can't be utterly nonsense.  utterly is an adverb, utter is an adjective and therefor grammatical.  so, utter nonsense, yes, but only if you spell it correctly.

LOL. Gotta love it when someone makes spelling mistakes while correcting someone else's spelling. No to meting that sentence structure.

 

Pro tip: If you're gonna pompously correct someone else's spelling be sure to spell check your work.

[DooDiligence]

...  firms that know what they are doing will be unimpaired. ...

 

Pure & utterly nonsence to me.

 

something can't be utterly nonsense.  utterly is an adverb, utter is an adjective and therefor grammatical.  so, utter nonsense, yes, but only if you spell it correctly.

LOL. Gotta love it when someone makes spelling mistakes while correcting someone else's spelling. No to meting that sentence structure.

 

Pro tip: If you're gonna pompously correct someone else's spelling be sure to spell check your work.

 

It's a typical neo-con deflection tactic.

 

They learned it from the obfuscater in chief.

[BG2008]

...  firms that know what they are doing will be unimpaired. ...

 

Pure & utterly nonsence to me.

 

something can't be utterly nonsense.  utterly is an adverb, utter is an adjective and therefor grammatical.  so, utter nonsense, yes, but only if you spell it correctly.

LOL. Gotta love it when someone makes spelling mistakes while correcting someone else's spelling. No to meting that sentence structure.

 

Pro tip: If you're gonna pompously correct someone else's spelling be sure to spell check your work.

 

Growing up, I hated grammar *#$%.  I outscored most of them on tests and exams and had much more common sense.  But If I pronounced the b in debt or said pant instead of pants, I got so much crap for it in that really obnoxious Long Island way.  English is a super weird language.  Why put the b in debt if it is going to be silent?  That's probably why I enjoyed Spanish as you pronounce the words the way that it is spelled.  My son is three and every time we go through the ABCs, I'm like Apple, Bottle, Cat kat kat kat.  So freaking annoying.  My son is picking it up just fine, although he is confused from time to time.  But that little boy also says things like architect and engineer and he's barely 3.  I started learning English at 10.  Man, your brain is all wired up and not as flexible.  Plus people don't think you are as cute when you are stumbling for words at the age of 10 versus if you are 2 or 3.  Anyway, stop being grammar *#$% to foreigners or foreign born people.  I think it's okay to born-in-the-USA people who are too "know it all" and too arrogant.  It is one of the most condescending things that I experienced growing up.  If you really want to help, just point out little details like the "b" is silent in debt and that the pants are always plurals.  Pants, haha, it's one contiguous article of clothing.  Yes, it has 2 legs, but it's connected as one.  Socks makes sense, pants can eat my shorts. 

[Gamecock-YT]

 

Why is it that the Post Office has collapsed, but Fed-Ex and UPS seem to be functioning?.

 

If the USPS has collapsed, could Fed-Ex & UPS be next? 

 

So this is a real world collapse of the supply chain, at least for me.

 

Well for one thing, FedEx and UPS have their own planes. USPS usually flies in airline cargo holds. So with flights being reduced, you are seeing the supply chain having issues. Take a look around 10pm, seems like there’s way more fedex/ups/prime air/dhl flying around these days. I suspect USPS isn’t getting as good a deals flying the mail on those planes.

[BG2008]

I have been impressed by the flexibility of capitalism allowing certain vendors to sell directly to consumers.  We have seen seafood vendors that normally would sell to restaurants pivot to consumers.  My wife was able to order some lobsters lately an they are reasonable at under $10 a pound delivered to your door.  I have seen Florida stone crab claws as well. Overall, capitalism is still working.  Yay!

[Jurgis]

- Traffic definitely has picked up since the lockdown started. When lockdown started, streets were dead. Now we are still in lockdown, but traffic is ~50% volume (approximately).

- We got single use masks sent by Amazon from Kentucky on March 27. Arrived yesterday. I already got refund for that. There are some issues with USPS I guess.

- There was toilet paper in grocery store. Hurray!

- Still waiting for toilet paper I ordered from Walmart.com

- Standing in line outside the store to get into the store sucks. Soviet Russia is calling!

- We are going for walks. Installed bird recognizer app that records bird song and does recognition. Cool stuff.

- The town did leaf bag removal. I almost expected they gonna cancel this service.

- I don't eat meat, but shop seemed well stocked despite the meat plant closures.

- Our cashier in the grocery store was coughing. Oh well.... Goodbye CoBF.

[Pelagic]

- Our cashier in the grocery store was coughing. Oh well.... Goodbye CoBF.

 

I've been frequenting stores with self checkout more, and actively choosing locations that have self checkout. Probably irrelevant in the grand scheme of covid risk factors but I figure it's one less interaction, although most stores have placed plexiglass barriers for cashiers.

 

Parks opened back up here for a limited number of activities today. Interestingly the county hired several hundred additional park staff to enforce social distancing in parks. Wondering how long these jobs and the restrictions they're enforcing will last. Catching covid outdoors here would be something of a challenge given 90* temps and very high relative humidity.

 

 

[Gregmal]

It baffles me why some stores are putting saran wrap over the keypads at self checkout. You still have to touch the same surface as everyone else unless it gets changed after every customer and we all know it doesnt...

[rb]

They obviously don't want their self checkout stations to catch COVID. Can you imagine how much that would cost to fix?

[arcube]

It baffles me why some stores are putting saran wrap over the keypads at self checkout. You still have to touch the same surface as everyone else unless it gets changed after every customer and we all know it doesnt...

 

Easier to clean saran so frequently and not ruin the hardware! Everyone is cleaning way multiple times.

[DooDiligence]

eBay sales have been brisk.

 

I've been cleaning out my closets for the past year or so & using the funds to finance music gear (studio & live).

 

The month of March saw my sales go to zero & over the past few weeks things have picked up a lot.

 

I'm just selling to get cash back out of stuff that I haven't touched in years.

Some I actually make a profit on & some is just for cash flow (50/50).

 

---

 

Shameless plug follows.

 

I have a chunk of gold & silver jewelry listed, including some nice gold & diamond fleur de lis for the Louisiana lovers & Francophiles out there!

 

www.ebay.com/usr/tunawish

[TrashIsCash]

I own a mobile home park in the Midwest.  Many of the tenant work at a nearby Tyson Foods beef processing plant. 

 

I visited the property on Saturday and spoke to a ton of my tenants.  The tenants are concerned about CV, but are definitely not panicking.  The plant is operating at about 85% capacity, the workers are having their temperature taken before starting their shift and they are practicing social distancing, etc.  Other than this, it was business as usual.

 

[BG2008]

I own a mobile home park in the Midwest.  Many of the tenant work at a nearby Tyson Foods beef processing plant. 

 

I visited the property on Saturday and spoke to a ton of my tenants.  The tenants are concerned about CV, but are definitely not panicking.  The plant is operating at about 85% capacity, the workers are having their temperature taken before starting their shift and they are practicing social distancing, etc.  Other than this, it was business as usual.

 

Thank you for this update

[DooDiligence]

I just got a stimulus check even though I didn't apply for it & sure enough, the douchenozzle in chiefs name is on it. Not his signature, just his name.

 

What an ass clown.

 

I'll cash it anyway.

[arcube]

I just got a stimulus check even though I didn't apply for it & sure enough, the douchenozzle in chiefs name is on it. Not his signature, just his name.

 

What an ass clown.

 

I'll cash it anyway.

 

Don't worry, you will get a letter in mail with a mile long signature reflective of VIX pattern.  ;)

[JRM]

I just got a stimulus check even though I didn't apply for it & sure enough, the douchenozzle in chiefs name is on it. Not his signature, just his name.

 

What an ass clown.

 

I'll cash it anyway.

 

You could give the money away to a worthy charity.

[rb]

Can somebody post a picture of a Donald Trump cheque. I'm dying of curiosity.

[LC]

I just got a stimulus check even though I didn't apply for it & sure enough, the douchenozzle in chiefs name is on it. Not his signature, just his name.

 

What an ass clown.

 

I'll cash it anyway.

 

You could give the money away to a worthy charity.

 

One such worthwhile charity is the Democratic Party :D

[Castanza]

I just got a stimulus check even though I didn't apply for it & sure enough, the douchenozzle in chiefs name is on it. Not his signature, just his name.

 

What an ass clown.

 

I'll cash it anyway.

 

You could give the money away to a worthy charity.

 

One such worthwhile charity is the Democratic Party :D

 

You’d get a better return giving it to the Italian Mafia

[rb]

They're more of a cash only outfit.

[ERICOPOLY]

Real world anecdote:

 

Last week because my wife was showing symptoms, she was ordered to stay home from work for a week.  She took a flu and covid-19 test on Thursday last week.  Flu result came back negative on Saturday and covid-19 result came back negative yesterday.

 

Today she reported her negative results to Employee Health at her healthcare company and they still will not let her go back to work for another 7 days because she is still showing symptoms.

 

Reason?  CDC mandate that you cannot go back to work when you have symptoms despite a negative Covid-19 result.

 

Federal government!

 

She has allergies.  We live in the Sacramento area and this season is really bad -- she developed a sinus infection and has been sneezing, coughing, and lost her sense of taste and smell.

 

[ERICOPOLY]

And this counts as paid administrative leave and does not use up her paid sick days. 

 

The Federal government is reimbursing her employer for this.  Yes, the taxpayer is paying her to stay home even though she tested negative for Covid-19 yesterday.

 

All because her allergy symptoms check off the boxes for covid-19 symptoms.

 

This is so stupid you cannot make this up.

 

Who is running this CDC?  It's crazy.