Category: Business

It has been six months since coronapanic started. Why is the local Target still out of paper towels, spray cleaners such as Formula 409, cleaning wipes, etc. People are actually using way more of these items? The Chinese can build a hospital for 5,000 patients in 10 days, but American factories can’t expand production in 6 months?

From August 26, 2020, the Target store in Watertown, Maskachusetts:

(shoppers were continuously reminded via the overhead audio system that wearing a mask was required, a bit like being at an airport and hearing warnings about unattended baggage over and over again)

Maybe AOC and Ed Markey are right? Capitalism is a failure?

With tens of millions of Americans on the “$600 per week and chill” plan, a lot of retailers shortened their hours. In theory, things should be getting back to normal (it was a brief shutdown to “flatten the curve,” right?), but at least our local supermarkets seem to have kept their new shorter hours.

Are we on track to become more like Europe, where if you don’t want to conform to the standard hours you won’t be able to get meals, food, etc.? (walk around Paris and see if you can find a 24-hour CVS!)

Readers: What have you seen in your regions of the country? Are hours still curtailed?

Happy International Workers’ Day, comrades!

How productive are you and your co-workers now that everyone has gone to work-from-home?

In my small survey of for-profit enterprises that are still up and running, but dispersed, popular answers are in the 75-80 percent range. (Massachusetts public schools, however, are down closer to 10 percent.)

One manager at a “Big Tech” firm said that he expected productivity to fall as new projects were undertaken, but that 75-80 percent was a good number for the current work. He’s in Silicon Valley where hardly anyone has children. A manager at a “Big Tech” coding plantation here in Cambridge, also said that her team was at 80 percent. “Really?” I asked. “What about the people with children.” Her response: “Oh, they’re useless.”

Readers: What are you experiencing? If companies can truly work at 80 percent without an (expensive) office, can this be boosted up to the point where office space can be cut out? And if remote work does become popular, why will people want to stay in high-tax high-cost mediocre-weather states such as Massachusetts, New York (#1 in overall state and local tax burden), and New Jersey? Why not sell the $1 million 2,000 square-foot house in MA and work from home in a $1 million 6,000 square-foot house in Texas or Florida, while paying nothing in state income tax?

Related:

• “Paul Graham: don’t hire anyone with children”
• Apple’s $5 billion HQ campus, about $400,000 per employee (even more than the $250,000/student cost of our town’s public school renovation), now empty/useless.

Stupid question… Why isn’t hand sanitizer back on store shelves?

I can understand how all of the product in stock as of a week ago got sold. But the production lines are still running. Do stores such as Target, Costco, and CVS have standing orders for hand sanitizer based on demand forecast? Or do they wait for supplies to run low and then zap an order automatically to the wholesalers?

Either way, it is tough for me to understand how hoarders, eBay and Amazon reseller profiteers, etc. could have bought up hand sanitizer that was still in production and/or still in transit. If there are standing orders, shouldn’t retailers now be restocked? Maybe they are, but 20 minutes after opening they’ve sold it all? How is that possible, given that they’re limiting to 2 per customer?

Plainly demand for this product is high, but a lot of businesses that would order it are now shut down. Health clubs, for example, theme parks, a lot of office buildings, etc. Shouldn’t the lack of re-orders from these folks balance out, to some extent, the panic buying from consumers?

Related:

• “FDA warns Purell its products can’t treat or prevent viruses” (The Hill, January 28, 2020), i.e., government regulators were harassing the company less than two months before other government agencies would be begging for more product