as supplies run low

[solarbird]

I’ve been checking hardware stores the last couple of weeks, mostly because there are things I need, but a little because I’m watching their stocks fall.

Smaller hardware stores are having a harder time covering the stock gap than larger ones. That makes obvious sense; they have less to begin with, so the duplications and outright gaps are more clearly visible. Hand tools in particular are getting pretty thin on the ground at this point; screwdriver bit replacements – well, lots of particular varieties are no longer available. Stuff like that. It’s been a multi-week process, not all-at-once – though it will probably look that way in retrospect.

Today, though, I had a somewhat more pointed experience.

Yesterday, Home Depot had 34 of a particular China-made mini circular saw available. It’s inexpensive because it’s corded; it’s from WEN, who make very basic but generally adequate enough kit for people on a budget. A chonkier Ryobi, perhaps. And last night, they had 34 of these saws available for store pickup or delivery.

This morning, when I woke up, they had 17.

An hour later, they had 15.

I was going to buy this with credit union rewards points, but it seems that was going to take too long. So I shelled out the cash, buying it immediately instead. It’s not a big deal for me, we’re still within our current tight budget this month.

So now they have 14.

Maybe that big drop was a one-off, a fluke – an organic surge, rather than someone grabbing a set for their employees while they could. Maybe Home Depot’s remaining 14 are enough that they’ll still have 10 in another month.

Or maybe it was scalpers. I don’t know how quickly these things sell, as a rule.

But that… that was a surprise.

Most people won’t notice stock thinning, I don’t think. Not quickly. I don’t have a reason for that other than recent experience shows that most people don’t notice a single goddamn thing until it punches them, personally, in the face. They to go get a thing, and it won’t be there, and then they notice.

A lot more people are probably pretty close to that moment of noticing.

They’ll notice it even more when their Medicare gets its $350 billion dollar cut.

It’ll be a moment of awareness, a moment of panic. It won’t last long – the fascist noise machine will do everything it can to patch it over – but it’ll be there.

Are you ready to take advantage of that? Particularly with your Trumpy relatives?

Maybe you should be.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Comments

[solarbird]

Exactly. That kind of shifting is what I see going on at Costco and McLendon's - though even McLendon's has some outright gaps at this point. (One big one in particular in hand tools.)

It's the smaller retailers like the little hardware store in Lake Forest Park Town Centre where there are just gaps, because they don't have the wider stock needed to fill them.

[gwydion]

When I went to get my piece of wood I poked around the garden section. They had lots of hoes and big shovels, but the hand tool display was smaller than usual and the planter collection was... odd. Lots of the high end things, lots of small cheap planters, but the mid-sized/mid-priced selection was all odd ornamental shapes. The ones you get for raised tub or patio container gardening if you are planning to eat out of them were not there, as if a whole bunch of people were looking at threats to skyrocket the price of food and decided to grow vegetables the most efficient way you can if you live in an apartment or only have a small space to do your growing.