OCTOBER 14, 2021 – “Supply chain” problems plague us. Reasons abound for shortages of parts, materials, dock space, truck drivers, and other disruptions. Recently, however, my wife the discriminating consumer, stumbled upon a simple solution: stop junking up the system with . . . “crap.”
Her revelation led us to hysterical laughter, but this required preliminary effort on her part. Ever the bargain hunter, she doesn’t react well to the rare experience of having been taken to the cleaners, especially at a cost of $60. But you get what you pay for, and when you pay 60 bucks for utter, unadulterated, plastic-on-plastic bullshit in wholesale contrast with the online photos and description appearing in a Facebook ad, you get a hearty laugh worth at least 60 bucks.
Having suffered insomnia one night recently, she checked her Facebook feed and succumbed to an ad featuring a “gerbera” wreath and decorative baskets. The cinching endorsement at the end of an enticing description and promising photos: “I think this wreath is probably one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life.” My discerning wife clicked on “order now,” and a few days later, the global supply chain delivered.
Extruded and assembled in China, “wreath and baskets,” so called, had then been stuffed into a shipping container, loaded onto a ship, unloaded at one of three American container ports, tossed into a semi-trailer, hauled halfway across the continent, unloaded at a distribution center, stacked atop a two-story-high storage rack, pulled from same, dropped onto a conveyor belt, separated from other molded, consumer plastic, packaged for the final leg of the journey, and loaded onto a delivery truck. The goods were then dispatched to our house.
Except . . . nothing good could be said of the “goods.” What emerged from the package was a parody of what had appeared in the Facebook ad. The only suitable display of “wreath and baskets” was inside a garbage can.
How bad were the “goods”? Picture an ancient Sinclair service station—the kind where the restroom has a bent, metal door that won’t close all the way. Once you’re inside the restroom—so small there’s insufficient space for changing your mind—you discover the facility hasn’t been cleaned since the Age of Dinosaurs, hence the company’s logo. But to freshen appearances, near the outset of the Anthropocene Epoch someone had tossed onto the cracked lid of the leaking toilet tank, plastic flowers stuck in a chunk of Styrofoam—“probably [not] the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
My wife’s discovery can be distilled to three conclusions: 1. The reason you can’t get that new stove delivered until March 2022 is that too much “supply chain” capacity is clogged with junk; 2. Facebook is a go-to pit for snake oil; and 3. If the Chinese sure know how to produce crap, we Americans sure know how to buy it, and the middlemen sure know how to sell, ship, and deliver it to us.
Oh yeah, there’s a fourth lesson: The world is a beautiful place.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
