Unseen Costs

 We all know there are many costs related to the pandemic. There are obvious costs, most importantly the lives lost, and there are not so obvious costs. These are the ones that the average person doesn't see directly, though they may be effected peripherally.  I just spent the last hour dealing with one of those costs.

It is said all of the time, "The pandemic has completely jammed up the supply lines of the world.". We grumble because our package takes a little longer to get to us, or prices are going up on things, but believe me when I say that the average person has no idea at all of what chaos is happening.

My current example is shopping bags. Not a glamorous item, really, nor one that most people give any thought toward, but an item that is absolutely necessary for ANY retail operation. I placed an order for shopping bags with our supplier over a month ago, and it has been a horrible experience NOT of their making. 

Firstly, there is a limit on how many you can buy at once right now. I was allowed to order two boxes of 250 bags each for each color and size that we use.  Our store currently uses five different bags, each a different size and color, as we have products that range from the size of a single die to boxes that are nearly two feet by one foot by one foot.  It's crazy, but that's the comic and game industry for you. But that meant that I could only order approximately 500 bags of each size / color.  We go through that many bags of our most used size in a month or so. The other sizes not so much, but our main bag pretty much flies out the door because it is a perfect size for comic books, trade paperbacks (aka graphic novels), Funko POP! figures, a large number of hobby supplies, and so on. 

But I needed them, so even if I could only get a limited amount, it was no biggie, I would just place another order as soon as they shipped. Right? Yeah...no.  I ordered them in mid-August, and it is now mid-September. When I spoke to the supplier today, there will probably be another two-week delay before they get shipped out.  I'm completely out of three of the five sizes we use, and I won't get ANYTHING for another two to four weeks minimum.

When I spoke to the supplier, they highly recommended that I put in another order right now as the supply lines are so backlogged. It's easy to feel like they're just saying that so they get more of my money, but since they don't charge me until the stock is shipped out, that's not their reasoning at all. It was a logical suggestion, and I followed it after asking a couple of questions. Those questions led to me finding out that the order limit on plain Kraft-style (brown paper) bags is FIVE boxes each instead of two.

AH HA! Temporary solution! Order the brown bags (which are cheaper anyway) and get our logo stamped on them, and order as many as I can of each size. Maybe, if I'm really lucky, they'll get here before the serious holiday shopping begins.

In a way I'm lucky. Shopping bags aren't going to go bad. They're not going to age off the shelves and have to be thrown out at a loss.  I can't even imagine what it must be like for places like restaurants and stores that stock perishable goods.

On top of that, I'm going to have to find a short-term solution that will hold us over until at least SOME of these bags get here. That will cost me even more money. And believe me, there's a LOT of money tied up in these bags that are floating about in the ether right now. Let's just say that there's enough money there to pay a couple of months' mortgage payments for a house here in Historic Downtown McKinney.  It hurts to have that much of an investment just sitting there in the void, but it's a necessity.

I guess the long-story-short (too late!) of it all is to please, PLEASE have patience with the people who are out there trying to supply whatever needs you have right now. Most of them are honestly doing their best, but there's no getting around the fact that shipping and base materials are both in very, very short supply at the moment, and the people trying to help you are probably getting yelled at, abused, and otherwise treated like crap because of things totally out of their control.

Just be kind, please? You have no idea how frustrated they are with the situation as well, yet they will smile and do their best to put on a good customer service face.

Meanwhile, they probably have thousands of dollars tied up in those items that aren't there yet.