Merchandise Shortage

[ImperfectPixie]

I had 2 paper routes as soon as I turned 10 in 1981. One was a more normal route, The Daily Journal, riding my bicycle through the neighborhood, maybe 35-40 subscribed customers. The other was The Citizen, one of those freebie papers that went to every house. 500+ papers I had to individually wrap the night before, walk with a giant bag and leave one at every house, and inevitably get yelled at by someone who didn't want it. I got paid 2 cents per paper for that one. And I learned stuff.

I worked for my mother's second husband. He had a part time carpet cleaning and building maintenance job in addition to his full time factory job. I would vacuum, clean carpets, empty trash, clean toilets. $5 here, $5 there.

Then came the aforementioned bakery. If I worked from 7AM to 11AM, the guy handed me $10 cash when I left. If I worked from 7AM to 10AM, it was $5. If I stayed until noon, it was still $10. And I learned stuff.

Then I worked for a blind old lady doing whatever she needed: stuff in her office (her late husband left some kind of business behind) reading her mail to her, having my grammar corrected, entering basic accounting into her ledger, wrapping her Christmas presents, watering her plants, checking up on whether her other employees really had done what they were supposed to have done. Pretty sure that was $5 an hour. And I learned stuff.

Through all this time, there were plenty of lawns mowed, driveways shoveled - $5 per house. Babysitting - $5 per hour. Oh - chores at home - $1 per week.

And that was all before I was of legal age to work.

But I never had to hear my mother say, "No," when I needed to put in money for some school trip or pictures, or when I wanted some baseball cards or a new Star Wars action figure.

As soon as I was old enough to get a "real job," I was part time at a retail store and part time at a bank simultaneously.

I've worked on salary in retail management for $19K to $28K, putting in 60 to 80 hours per week. When that wasn't enough and I had no skills or training to earn better, I worked overnight shifts at the port - first unloading, then promoted to loading, RPS trucks.

That's. What. You. Do. If you don't rate a higher paying job, you don't demand it, anyway. You work harder, you learn something, you make yourself more valuable, and you earn raises. You use your experience to get a better salary elsewhere. You cancel cable, you drive a crummy car, you eat ramen, you enjoy the little things. You go back to school if that's your thing. Nobody ever thought they made enough money. That was just life.

The minimum wage should have gone up a long time ago, incrementally.

Yup...I started out the same way and at the same age...but my paper route was miles long and I had to bike it because the houses were very far apart for most of it. Got sick of that, so started to care for 5 show horses...$3 an hour and riding whenever I wanted at 11-12 years old. I started working for the woodcarving shop at 13, and with the exception of a couple of super short stints in retail to pay bills right after leaving there, only held skilled positions from then on. I had to leave the workforce when my oldest was a toddler because he was constantly sick while he was in daycare...12 ER visits in less than a year (they stopped as soon as he stopped going to daycare). 13 years later, I'm about to re-enter the workforce at about the same pay rate I left at, but more than likely in a job far below my skill set. Fortunately, my husband's pay is such that we'll be in pretty good shape regardless. (And I'm still working on growing my very small business.)

 

[CntrlFlPete]

now that Halloween merch has made its way to the outlet, Christmas merch has found its way to shelf space.

 

[FeelsSoGoodToBeBad]

@Tony the Tigger Interesting you run a record store. I have a fiend who also runs one that started in the Evansville, IN area and has expanded. Newest location is in South County, St. Louis area, iirc.

/snipped as it was probably starting to lean a little too far political re: corporate wages

I agree that moving more production domestically is a necessary move that will help many sectors of society and the economy. It will be a slow process and likely cost the consumer more, but as was said by someone before, how much "stuff" do we really need? In addition, the benefits to our local communities will hopefully show benefits that will take a bit of the sting out of the prices.

 

[ImperfectPixie]

@Tony the Tigger Interesting you run a record store. I have a fiend who also runs one that started in the Evansville, IN area and has expanded. Newest location is in South County, St. Louis area, iirc.

/snipped as it was probably starting to lean a little too far political re: corporate wages

I agree that moving more production domestically is a necessary move that will help many sectors of society and the economy. It will be a slow process and likely cost the consumer more, but as was said by someone before, how much "stuff" do we really need? In addition, the benefits to our local communities will hopefully show benefits that will take a bit of the sting out of the prices.

You might compare what huge corporations do to strip-mining...they force all the smaller, local companies out of business, both limiting the employment opportunities in a community AND reducing consumer's purchasing power by limiting the local shopping options. They make their money, leaving a destroyed local economy in it's wake, and as per usual, those at the top have grown wealthier and those at the bottom, poorer. I've lost count of all the locally owned shops and restaurants in our town that have closed their doors only to be replaced by big money hiding behind a cutesy name.

 

[lazyboy97o]

1. I am not.
2. I would not.

I was responding to @Lilofan who was responding to @GimpYancIent - perhaps out of context, if you are referencing @Sir_Cliff ?

My point to Sir Cliff would be it is important to be careful of what kinds of rules we make, because if you treat a small business like a Walmart, you're liable to kill it without any good reason.

This also applies to those who say, "Well, if you can't pay a living wage, then you shouldn't be in business." Nonsense. Do we not have permission to grow a business from the ground up? Have you (not "you," @lazyboy97o ) ever gone into hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, risking your home, to cover the bills because you think the business will grow to a self-sustaining size over time? I have. Big businesses don't have to. But big businesses go under, too. Not everyone is rich just because they are an owner or a certain level of management. We choose to take these risks, but people with no experience in doing so should be careful of judgments like the one with which I opened this paragraph.

With all that said, back to the original question(s) up top: it is very likely I will have to let a couple of people go over the next few years. They are not high functioning enough to make the $15 an hour the State of Florida will require me to pay them. I am encouraging them to take some at-home online courses (in Excel, for example) and to improve certain things. I've offered to pay for some such training (though much of it is available for free.) I'm presenting it in a very positive way. I'm not going to drag them along, it's up to them to take the initiative. But when it comes down to it, once we get to about the $13 threshold, and I know I can hire someone on the spot who will do better, I'm going to have to do that. Walmart might be able to afford low-skilled workers in certain positions. An efficient small operation needs all firecrackers, at least in my business.

The comments to which you responded was a typical, tired reduction of the argument that intentionally ignores the vast difference in scale between a small business and a multinational conglomerate. @Sir_Cliff commenting on the high margins of large companies was reduced to a small business losing out on revenue. Yes it’s money being given up but the scale and impact is completely different.

I’m having trouble finding it at the moment, but a couple of years ago @lentesta did the math on increasing wages at Walt Disney World to MIT’s calculated living wage. I’m not interested in arguing about the concept of a living wage. It’s not something for which I argue and would most certainly not advocate legislating. I have hired people to work minimum wage jobs and some of them are ones i do not at all think warrant $15 per hour. What is important though is the scale. Whenever people talk about increasing Cast Memher pay some talk about the huge price increases that would be required to support such and a change and that just isn’t true. Disney increasing pay by several dollars per hour and just eating the cost was an incredibly small reduction in their margins, more like a rounding error than an actual hit. He also looked at raising various prices to cover the increased costs and they were generally measured in cents. That’s the point that was being made. For companies like Disney they don’t actually need the super cheap offshore labor to maintain very healthy margins and big profits, their massive scale really changes the equation.

That regulation is a big, clumsy hammer is exactly why small business owners shouldn’t jump to the defense of seemingly any and all actions taken by large companies. You aren’t the same and even things that seem the same like cost of goods or cost of labor get distorted by scale. What could ruin you might go completely unnoticed.

There are also other changes that make going that extra mile like you did harder. You tell the story of earning $5 here and there, but $5 in January 1985 had the purchasing power of just over $12 in January 2020. But that doesn’t fully take into account other areas that have seen their own additional inflation. 8 know places that despite having jobs we think of as teenage jobs pretty much won’t consider anyone who isn’t a drop out because due to increases in homework, increases in the school calendar and laws limiting working and/or driving hours the availability of teenagers just isn’t worthwhile. The cost of tuition and housing has increased dramatically. The jobs that could support someone going to school no longer due and just saying people need to work harder doesn’t help, it reinforces negative perceptions and increases the calls for that big regulatory hammer and the longer those conditions are allowed to be exacerbated things became dangerous because it starts to shift from regulating a sense of fair to outright vindictiveness and punishment.

 

[Nubs70]

But are you actively looking to replace your entire staff? Will you fire someone on the spot to hire someone who says they will work for less?

@Sir_Cliff isn’t talking about giving up profit or disavowing the notion of profit. He’s talking about incredibly small percentage reductions in margins that with many of these giant companies can be huge real numbers with significant impacts.

If you give everyone that works at DIS a $1/hr raise. Just based in straight hours, how much would that cost?

223,000 x 2080 hr/yr = $464,000,000.

Now how has a $1/hr raise really improved tour life?

 

[jinx8402]

If you give everyone that works at DIS a $1/hr raise. Just based in straight hours, how much would that cost?

223,000 x 2080 hr/yr = $464,000,000.

Now how has a $1/hr raise really improved tour life?

Are you just assuming all employees at Disney are hourly minimum wage and work 40 hours a week?

 

[lazyboy97o]

If you give everyone that works at DIS a $1/hr raise. Just based in straight hours, how much would that cost?

223,000 x 2080 hr/yr = $464,000,000.

Now how has a $1/hr raise really improved tour life?

Quips make more sense when you first bother to read what was stated.

 

[JMcMahonEsq]

Are you just assuming all employees at Disney are hourly minimum wage and work 40 hours a week?

It doesn't matter what the actual hourly wage is as this post is only discussing the effect of raising everyone's salary $1

 

[jinx8402]

It doesn't matter what the actual hourly wage is as this post is only discussing the effect of raising everyone's salary $1

The discussion has been about raising the living wage of employees on the low end of the pay scale. Tell me how that equates to raising Chapeks pay $1 per hour. Or anyone else who is salary based compensation.

 

[zapple]

I’m at the parks now and there’s lots of Christmas merch everywhere that wasn’t here in November. Animal Kingdom currently has 2 coffee cups in stock at Discovery Trading Co. (Donald Duck and Pizza Planet). Very few plushes.

Wishables are now $15!!!!! They were $10 like a year ago!

 

[TikibirdLand]

I’m at the parks now and there’s lots of Christmas merch everywhere that wasn’t here in November. Animal Kingdom currently has 2 coffee cups in stock at Discovery Trading Co. (Donald Duck and Pizza Planet). Very few plushes.

Wishables are now $15!!!!! They were $10 like a year ago!
View attachment 617085

That's how you keep the shelves stocked now-a-days. Bring in old merch and mark up all the stuff you've got. If you don't sell it, you don't have to re-stock it.

 

[TP2000]

I’m at the parks now and there’s lots of Christmas merch everywhere that wasn’t here in November.

Just in time for Valentine's Day!

Meanwhile, off the coast of Southern California, the cargo megaship backlog continues to remain very high. This is yesterday's weekly report from the Marine Exchange of Southern California. Currently 131 ships waiting at various stages in the backlog, as of January 28th.

 

[JoeCamel]

The Marine Exchange also tracks all the ships waiting further out in the Pacific, beyond US territorial waters.

Back in November, the US news media reported that any ships waiting within 25 miles of the American coastline would begin to be fined every day they weren't offloading their cargo. So, the big shipping companies responded accordingly because the US ports were still not able to give them a berth, as seen in the graph above. The megaships began waiting further out beyond the 25 mile mark, and thus avoided US fines. Smart!

Here's the number of ships waiting to get into the Port of LA within 25 miles off shore since mid November, although the total number waiting beyond that 25 mile mark has increased since November, as seen in the graph in the graph above.

Data as of January 28th, 2022.

View attachment 617683

Marine Exchange of Southern California - Home

this is a homepage

mxsocal.org

Why would the US fine a company for sending a boat that couldn't be unloaded? Because they want them to keep them in port over there wherever there is?
The backlog is growing no?

 

[TP2000]

Why would the US fine a company for sending a boat that couldn't be unloaded? Because they want them to keep them in port over there wherever there is?

I believe it was an attempt by the Federal Government to speed up the process of unloading ships. Although, I would trust that a giant and profitable private industry like Trans-Ocean Shipping had already found all the efficiencies it could over the last 50 years since containerized cargo, megaships and megaports became the norm.

The backlog is growing no?

The backlog has sort of flatlined at about 130 to 135 ships per day, as seen in the charts posted above. The backlog is definitely not shrinking, but it's been at basically the same rate for the past 60 days.

I'm not expert in containerized cargo, I mainly specialize in obscure Disneyland trivia and cocktail recipes. But I would guess that this current backlog level is about the max amount of cargo megaships this planet has plying the trans-Pacific routes and it can't grow much more than this current huge backlog.

 

[Touchdown]

The Marine Exchange also tracks all the ships waiting further out in the Pacific, beyond US territorial waters.

Back in November, the US news media reported that any ships waiting within 25 miles of the American coastline would begin to be fined every day they weren't offloading their cargo. So, the big shipping companies responded accordingly because the US ports were still not able to give them a berth, as seen in the graph above. The megaships began waiting further out beyond the 25 mile mark, and thus avoided US fines. Smart!

Here's the number of ships waiting to get into the Port of LA within 25 miles off shore since mid November, although the total number waiting beyond that 25 mile mark has increased since November, as seen in the graph in the graph above.

Data as of January 28th, 2022.

View attachment 617683

Marine Exchange of Southern California - Home

this is a homepage

mxsocal.org

Based on your two charts, it seems like the ship backup has flatlined and even begun to fall. With omicron now peaked in CA, plus it being a more quiet shipping time (not the holidays) i would hope they continue to eat into this backlog. Another thing that will “help” is that China is on the cusp of its omicron wave. The world is coming to China for the Olympics and omicron is almost certainly tagging along. I suspect this will be resolved in the next few months.

 

[TP2000]

Based on your two charts, it seems like the ship backup has flatlined and even begun to fall. With omicron now peaked in CA, plus it being a more quiet shipping time (not the holidays) i would hope they continue to eat into this backlog. Another thing that will “help” is that China is on the cusp of its omicron wave. The world is coming to China for the Olympics and omicron is almost certainly tagging along. I suspect this will be resolved in the next few months.

One would hope. And honestly, this mess can't go on forever. At some point, someone or some group of people will figure out how to fix this ongoing problem.

That said, my hunch is that the numbers have flatlined the past 60 days at around 130 ships because we've basically run out of ships to keep in a queue. There are only so many cargo megaships sailing the Pacific at any one time. Many of them are smaller Panamax ships designed to fit into the Panama Canal headed to Houston or Florida, but the ships headed to/from California are dramatically larger. No canal, no problem!

I just Googled: The ships headed to LA are mostly "Chinamax" size, built since 2005 for megaports in China and California and they are over triple the size and capacity of a Panamax ship that can go through the Panama Canal to Houston or Florida. There are only so many Chinamax ships plying the oceans of the world. I imagine the Port of LA has simply run out of Chinamax ships to put in a queue.

When the media first went nuts over this story in September/October, there were about 90 to 100 ships waiting to get into the Port of LA. Then when the story got another big round of media attention in mid November under the salacious headline "Christmas Gifts Will Be Delayed!", there were 110 ships waiting to get into the Port of LA.

For the last month there has been anywhere between 130 and 136 ships waiting to get into the Port of LA or at a berth. The problem got worse since November. My hunch is the global economy finally ran out of Chinamax ships.

 

[TP2000]

Here's the latest backup from the megaport of LA and Long Beach... Still a huge number of ships backlogged offshore. A few less than last week, but more than six weeks ago. And over six times the amount of backlogged ships than two years ago. In short, it's still a giant mess.

 

[seascape]

Here's the latest backup from the megaport of LA and Long Beach... Still a huge number of ships backlogged offshore. A few less than last week, but more than six weeks ago. And over six times the amount of backlogged ships than two years ago. In short, it's still a giant mess.

View attachment 619172

I dont know who to believe, the US Admintration or your charts. I know this sounds like political but the Biden Administration claims they fixed the port problem.

 

[TransportationGuy]

I dont know who to believe, the US Admintration or your charts. I know this sounds like political but the Biden Administration claims they fixed the port problem.

The answer is somewhere in between due to the slow steaming policy. Yes, there are now very few ships within 25 miles on a daily basis (aka White House numbers). TP2000’s premise is that the slow steaming ships could have and would have already been there, but due to the port’s queueing system, are purposefully taking long to save money on fuel and avoid fines for sitting near the port. So, both are “correct,” they’re simply defining success against drastically different objectives.