One time I was at a grocery store and they sold out of a particular drink I liked.
A manager was standing nearby and I asked when they would restock it.
“Never.” He said. “It always sells out and I don’t want to constantly order and restock it, so I’m not going to get more.”
Reminds me of the story of the warehouseman who refused to give someone the last of an item in the warehouse because that would mean they’d be out of stock.
Ah. There’s a reasons for that, as told to me by a supply sergeant in the military. A lot of suppliers had a BEL (Basic Equipment List), which says all stock must have a minimum and a maximum of XYZ in order to meet government spec. Some large items, like diesel generators, have a BEL minimum of 2, but also because of their size and storage complexity, have a maximum of 2. So it order to get a new one, you must get rid of one of the old ones. But if you get rid of the old one, you are below minimum BEL, and could fail inspection or an inventory check, if it takes a while to get a new one. Large items don’t always “hang around,” but they get manufactured on demand, so the only way to get a new one is to be without one for a very long period of time. Thus, you risk failing inspection. The best way to avoid that is to keep two and never order any.
Military logic.
Reminds me of my buddy’s story from his time as a warehouse manager for Blockbuster (yeah, we’re old…) Blockbuster’s management did loss prevention and breakage based on item count, not item value. If a new hire shoved a $30 DVD down their pants and walked out with it every week, corporate wouldn’t care. After all, it was only 1 DVD each week. And 1 is an acceptably low number. But if that same hire shoved a $5 box of 100 pencils down their pants, corporate would lose their fucking minds. Because each pencil was counted as 1 item, so they were suddenly 100 items short.
It was sort of an open secret in the warehouse that if you were going to steal something, you should only go for the high value shit. And only do it if nobody else had already done so recently. So if the system said you had 5 in stock and there were 5 in the bin, it was open season. Because as long as you only stole one of them, corporate wouldn’t care. But if you pocketed a dozen 50¢ “impulse buy next to the register” toys, loss prevention would be patting people down as they clocked out.
On top of that, everything is ordered by article number. So it happened on a boat that they needed two replacement bolts for the engine. The engineer wrote the order, and the captain signed it and sent it to HQ.
They were informed the order would take (a long time). When they finally got the word that the order was in, they were astonished that two heavy load trucks were waiting for them. Each containing a turbine nearly as big as their boat. Which had nearly the same inventory number as the bolts. With two digits switched.
While I get the joke, I feel obliged to point out that the military is one of the very few places this could potentially makes sense (not saying it does in this case): You can basically decide that the warehouse is responsible for holding emergency stock, not ordering materiel that is produced on-demand for daily use. Essentially, if it’s produced on-demand, why would you want to go via to warehouse to get it? There are plenty of reasons you could want that of course, but if we ignore those, then the rationale can make sense.
I worked at a printing factory once, and we often needed to replace roller pins for paper, it’s an enormous metal cylinders that, despite being couple of tons hunks of metal, were very prone to being harmed. They were in pairs and should’ve been changed in pairs so they wear out evenly. The problem is, in a warehouse, the item is “a pair of pins” but the task for a repair crew is “change a pin” which includes ordering a transportation. The problem is, if you’re making a “change of a pin” you can only order a “transportation of a pin”, but warehouse can only issue a “pair of pins”, which transportation can’t move. The corpo spent weeks trying to solve this conundrum, until the machine broke completely (a roller pin snapped if you can imagine that). After spending the entire year’s revenue on fixing it all, they fired a bunch of people for following their corporate rules too precisely.
I asked about a certain type of cake that was on sale and wasn’t in stock. I asked when it would be in stock. The manager launched into a big complaint, because they always sold out when it was on sale. See, he only ever ordered 10, because they never sold more than 10, and when it was on sale, they would sell out immediately.
He got very upset, calling me stupid when I said “If you only have 10, it would be pretty hard to sell more than 10”.
I worked in retail for a while, and it was staggering to uncover that the majority of people with the control over inventory thought the same way.
- It takes 21 days for an ordered item to arrive at the store
- A manager orders 5
- 21 days later, 5 come in
- 2 days later, all 5 are sold
- A month goes by and the person sighs, frustrated that they have to order more while simultaneously not understanding why sales are down.
Have you ever considered ordering 10 or 20 to see if they sell out in 4 to 8 days or less? Maybe then order 40 or 60?
Funnily it’s the same people that also insist on having 6 weeks worth of stock, even if the supplier delivers in 7 days 95% of the time.
That’s how Dylan Moran runs his bookstore in Black Books.
Paraquoting off the top of my head: “Customers?? Who wanted to buy something??? What the hell do you treat them nicely for?!” … “You don’t get it; Paying customers who get what they want means books get sold. Which means you have to restock them and deal with additional customers!”
seems like a funny joke tbh
Which would have been funny. They didn’t ever restock the drink, though.
My father told me I shouldn’t use regular table salt because “they” were mixing powdered glass in so that it would work its way through your system and embed itself in your heart muscles.
He had called me after I got high though, so I gave him the best kid glove treatment I’ve ever managed.
Told him that was very interesting. Explained that he could easily prove and expose the conspiracy by pouring salt into a bucket of distilled water. The salt would dissolve, but the glass would sink to the bottom. He could then filter the glass out, then boil the water off to recover the salt safely. He hasn’t brought it up since.
My dad is a sweet guy and good at handyman stuff, but dear lord, almost nothing higher level. I truly think it’s the lead exposure.
My dad is a sweet guy and good at handyman stuff, but dear lord, almost nothing higher level. I truly think it’s the lead exposure.
I think we may be brothers
Just now…
“I hear what you’re saying, but have you considered losing your convictions and compromising your principles?”
— average politician
I was once stopped by an elderly couple.
One side of the couple was arguing that the sun went out at night.
The other couple was arguing that the moon covered over the sun at night, and that’s why we couldn’t see the sun.
They asked me to clarify which one of them was correct as an independent third party, and I told them that the earth rotates, and so when you can’t see the sun, it’s because it’s on the other side of the planet.
They both paused for a moment, looked at each other, and then looked at me and said, “oh, yeah”, and that was the end of the argument.
Sounds like they were made for each other.
I‘m sure both agreed that what you said was stupid when you left 😂
Some old lady was over fir dinner and she asked me why i only eat certain things. I told her that i don’t eat meat. It took some time for her to compute and fired back: but you can eat fish. I said, no, because they are animals too. You could see the gears spinning again before she said that banger: i don’t think that’s true, because they don’t even bleed.
I never got why people think fish is not meat.
I’ve already told that story but anyway: a relative told me that the GDPR was a conspiracy from Europe to destroy the European internet (why? why not!)
So that guy literally deleted his own web site (full of old stuff, it was a big project) so that… he would not be forced to delete his own web site by the big bad Europe.
He is also anti-vax, and allergic to Wifi and Bluetooth… except when he is in our house filled with Wifi and Bluetooth (but we have never told him, he could die!)
He is also anti-vax, and allergic to Wifi and Bluetooth… except when he is in our house filled with Wifi and Bluetooth (but we have never told him, he could die!)
A relative of my husband always requests we turn off the router, because she’s allergic to 5g. She starts feeling nauseous and itchy when it’s turned on. We used to sigh and just do it.
However, I’ve found out she’s not actually allergic to 5g or wifi, it turns out she’s actually developed a reaction to the power light. Ever since I put a tiny bit of tape of the little green power light, she stopped complaining about the wifi entirely! My husband won’t let me tell her about this amazing medical breakthrough though, I wonder why.
Crank it up to 15!
What kind of knob has 1.3076744e+12 notches?
Best thing I can find is a 15! knob. Is that what you were thinking of?
A teacher in highschool put this up on the screen and told us to read it to ourselves,
“Aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.”
Then some bright light in the back of the room asked if that was actually true after fully comprehending what was in front of them.
I don’t think I ever encountered anything than most of trumps tweets.
We won’t tax the rich more, coz they are gonna leave if we do.
If they don’t pay taxes now, why would them leaving even be an issue?
I’ve mentioned this one before, but it’s worth retelling.
I briefly knew a guy, absolute hick ass trailer trash, who said a large number of incredibly dumb things to me, but this one stands out. He once told me that Southern Baptist was the one true religion, because, and this is a direct quote, “His name is John the Baptist, not John the Catholic!”
And for him that was a QED moment.
Dumbest motherfucker I’ve ever encountered.
I was at a trailer park party once as a non-white person in the south.
Apropos of nothing, I was approached by probably the skinniest human on the planet. Like, he was so skinny you couldn’t tell if you were looking directly at his bones, or if his skin was actually a paper thin covering over his bones. He was so skinny, he could have performed in some sort of advertisement explaining how the price of a cup of coffee could help feed the starving southerners.
As I was scanning my periphery to see if I could identify the Necromancer that was animating this creature, this person told me, of their own volition, that in church they had learned that white people were made by God and therefore had souls and black people evolved from monkeys and therefore did not have souls.
In his mind, this was a way of reconciling the truth of evolution with the faith of his church.
He had no idea that he had just lobbed the most racist thought that I had ever been exposed to in my entire life at me.
the most racist thought that I had ever been exposed to in my entire life
Damn, the white southerners have started behaving themselves since I left a couple of decades ago if that’s the worst you heard! Barely even joking, I’ve met so many people where I live now who are from the south that say ‘I just had to get the fuck out’. Gorgeous places, tiny clusters of great people, and vast swathes of shit straight out of Deliverance.
On one hand, I think what makes it so deeply racist is how genuine it is. It doesn’t sound like he’s saying it with an explicit intention to hurt, but just as a “matter of fact” that he thinks this.
On the other hand, that could also be a bit redeeming: If he honestly believes what he said (I can’t even make myself repeat it), but doesn’t hate black people for it, is he then truly racist or just deeply misinformed? To be fair, there’s a decent overlap between the two. I’m arguing from a “don’t attribute to malice what can accurately be explained by stupidity” standpoint.
The thing about it to me that is racist is that it is specifically black people. Like, I was not emotionally equipped to ask him what his church thought about Indians like me and Asians.
Or what happens when a white person and a black person have a child? Does the child have half a soul? Like, if somebody is predominantly white but 17 generations ago, there was a black person in their family, do they have like a piece missing from their soul?
Or what if they got it wrong? What if white people evolved from monkeys and black people were made by God and so white people don’t have souls?
After all, genetically, the only pure humans with no Neanderthal or Denisovian or other hominid ancestor genetics in it are black people.
How do you test for soul? How can you evaluate the soul percentages?
It’s so beyond the pale that I was stunlocked. I honestly wish I could go back and ask these questions.
First of all, to be perfectly clear, I have no intention of defending this person. As far as I can tell from your description, they’re probably a raging racist.
Regardless, I think the discussion around where the line between stupidity and racism goes is an interesting one. In my mind, racism requires malice: It requires that you actually see some group as less worth than others, or otherwise dislike or hate them. The counter-example (which I’ve actually met in the wild once) is a person that genuinely believes that some group is less adept in some way, but that still argues that they have the same inherent worth as others.
To put it bluntly, it’s not controversial to say that some people are smarter/taller/stronger/faster etc. than others, while still acknowledging that all human life has the same inherent value. Does it make someone a racist if they hold that stance, combined with a belief that <insert group> is less adept at <insert skill/property>? I would argue not, because (as previously stated) in my mind racism implies that you believe some people are inherently worth more than others, and that belief is not really tied to any measurable property. Basically, I think a true racist uses “they don’t have a soul/ are less intelligent / etc.” as a post-hoc justification for a hatred they already hold.
I experienced both benevolent and antagonistic racism as a brown kid in the south.
The antagonistic racism was never so much like, get out of here, you darky, or calling me names or anything, although I have been called a “plains n-word” by an old white fuck in South Dakota, so there’s that.
But the antagonistic racism I most commonly experienced was being followed around stores.
So much so that it gave me a complex. It happened so often that I would go to a grocery store, or to some retailer, and I would be browsing around, and the people that worked there, which were always white people, would check in on me constantly, always watching me, following me around, staying six to ten feet away from me at times throughout my entire sojourn through the establishment.
But I, being a young kid, didn’t find any malice in this. I just thought, oh, maybe, I don’t know, maybe they’re time travelers, and I’m gonna be so awesome in the future that this is their opportunity to see me without changing the timeline.
But getting away from the south and magically the following me around in the stores thing completely and totally stopped so abruptly that it made me reevaluate what was going on. I’m like, oh no, they were watching the darkie because they thought he was gonna steal shit from them.
But on the flip side, I also got benevolent racism where they thought I was better than them because I was a Native American. They would ask me things like, can you actually talk to horses? And what’s it like being able to control the wind?
And what sucks is I’m really good with animals, so to some degree I could talk to horses and they would just sort of get me, but it’s not like I could understand what they were saying.
And the very first time I ever fired a bow and arrow I hit a bullseye.
So the instructor was like, if you do it one time, it’s luck, you do it two times, it’s skill, so I fired again and I hit another bullseye.
So you know, I’m doing my ancestors proud.
When the first Covid vaccine came out a coworker told me she wouldn’t get it. Supposedly the vaccine had “killed 90% of the population in Bulgaria already”. I told her I thought we’d have heard about it if that was the case, but she was convinced that the media was covering it up.
She later claimed she was deathly allergic to the vaccine, so I ask which part of it. From what I know you can react to a vaccine if you are allergic to eggs or chicken. That’s a pretty common food item and it would be good to know if your coworker has such an allergy. I also asked where she keeps her epipen so I could help her in an emergency. She claimed she always left her epipen at home and that she was allergic against a lot of medication. She never mentioned any allergies again afterwards and they seemed to have mysteriously disappeared after the pandemic was over.
bulgaria is such an ODD and specific place to make that claim.
I ended a close friendship over bullshit like this. For a year, one friend was so deathly allergic that her doctor told her that under no circumstances was she to receive any Covid vaccine.
Then, then-governor of Oregon Kate Brown required anyone in a Healthcare career to receive said vax. Wouldn’t you know it, this friend’s easy caretaking paycheck was about to end when she spontaneously rid herself of a life-threatening allergy.
Get the fuck out of here. We’re done.
The worst part is, this ends up hurting people with real allergies. I myself have an anaphylaxis to nuts so I also carry an epipen. Which is why I asked the coworker for hers, because I am trained to use it. I can’t tell you how often I’ve met people who don’t take it seriously and tell me I’ll be fine with just a little bit of nut or organic nuts. “I have a cousin who’s allergic to XYZ but since eating only organic she’s fine and she can eat it now.” This type of people will say they have allergies and then eat the item later and it leads dumb people to believe allergies are fake.
Trickle down economics.
You don’t get it though! If you just let the absolute greediest people in the world keep all their profit then they’ll definitely share with you!
I actually had a coworker say a few months ago that he’s a Regan Republican because he believed in trickle down economics… I literally said “really man? And how many more decades of being wrong do you need before you realize it still doesn’t work, is five decades enough?” To which he didn’t have a reply…
I’m amazed by some of the shit that falls out of my own mouth sometimes.
“The reason they call them “flu shots” and not “flu vaccines” is because they aren’t vaccines.”
I’m still reeling. I’m still trying to process how someone that I otherwise respect can say something so phenomenally stupid
In a leftist bookstore, talking with the proprietor who has an extensive collection of left-wing labor/union literature, and randomly he starts talking about how Lincoln was the worst president etc. and just launches into lost cause mythology of the Confederacy. Hardest conversational 180 I’ve ever experienced
