Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
MAKE NO BABBYS
Jan 28, 2010
Well, order from Sysco and reap what you sow?

Our chickens come to us from our farm within like, 12? hours of slaughter, intact other than feathers and bowels and we break them down so it’s loving fine.

I’ve also eaten raw chicken in japan and Berkeley (torishasi) multiple times and been completely fine, although I did get horrifically sick as a small child eating eggs from the factory farm up the street from my house in the 80s 🤷🏼‍♀️

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Scarodactyl
Oct 22, 2015


Chicken sashimi is not safe to eat.

Reiterpallasch
Nov 3, 2010



Fun Shoe
chicken sashimi rules, actually

iospace
Jan 19, 2038


Scarodactyl posted:

Chicken sashimi is not safe to eat.

Elizabethan Error
May 18, 2006

check out the time travellers from 1950 itt
https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/chicken-tartare

Organza Quiz
Nov 7, 2009



I'm open to the concept but given that part of what "everyone knows" about chicken cooking safety is that you have to cook it all the way through, it seems odd that this recipe says that the inside is completely sterile and you just have to sterilise the outside and you're good to go.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Scarodactyl posted:

Chicken sashimi is not safe to eat.

There are countries where the chicken flocks are not infected with salmonella.

The only problem I have with it is that the texture of raw chicken is utterly repulsive. I don’t know what it is. I’m not squeamish, I hunt and clean and butcher and cook things. I think it’s that domestic chicken has no muscle tone at all and is slightly sticky, it’s like meat jello instead of actual muscle tissue from a real animal.

Phanatic fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Aug 10, 2019

Hauki
May 11, 2010


Phanatic posted:

There are countries where the chicken flocks are not infected with salmonella.

The only problem I have with it is that the texture of raw chicken is utterly repulsive. I don’t know what it is. I’m not squeamish, I hunt and clean and butcher and cook things. I think it’s that domestic chicken has no muscle tone at all and is slightly sticky, it’s like meat jello instead of actual muscle tissue from a real animal.

yeah, i do not like the texture of raw or rare chicken at all, it's got an unpleasant crunch at first plus a bit of the sticky meat jello aspect you mention

i'll happily chow down on some actual tartare or laab though

Scarodactyl
Oct 22, 2015


Phanatic posted:

There are countries where the chicken flocks are not infected with salmonella.
As I understand it people in Japan get sick from it fairly frequently. Salmonella isn't the only risk.

AdorableStar
Jul 13, 2013

:patriot:


MAKE NO BABBYS posted:

Well, order from Sysco and reap what you sow?

Hell yeah; I had to go help someone for six loving hours today so now I get to start tommorow at 08:20! Oh boy everyone's going to be mad because I'm starting 4 hours later than I wanted oh good joy.

Where the gently caress have you been all day!? I'm out of chicken

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also if anyone here regularly gets lovely poo poo from us and has questions please ask me as I have lots of things to bitch about this place and nowhere on SA to express it. (Or maybe other areas other than Minneapolis-St Paul are run better and no one has any issues)

AdorableStar fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Aug 10, 2019

Coasterphreak
May 29, 2007
I like cookies.

AdorableStar posted:

Hell yeah; I had to go help someone for six loving hours today so now I get to start tommorow at 08:20! Oh boy everyone's going to be mad because I'm starting 4 hours later than I wanted oh good joy.

Where the gently caress have you been all day!? I'm out of chicken

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also if anyone here regularly gets lovely poo poo from us and has questions please ask me as I have lots of things to bitch about this place and nowhere on SA to express it. (Or maybe other areas other than Minneapolis-St Paul are run better and no one has any issues)

All I can say is I appreciate every driver that understands "don't show up in the middle of a meal period" and "don't try to give me product that is obviously damaged"

Please tell stories.

Dimloep
Nov 5, 2011

AdorableStar posted:

(Or maybe other areas other than Minneapolis-St Paul are run better and no one has any issues)

Nope, the trucks that come to us (in Columbus) from Cleveland are constant poo poo shows.

AdorableStar
Jul 13, 2013

:patriot:


Coasterphreak posted:

All I can say is I appreciate every driver that understands "don't show up in the middle of a meal period" and "don't try to give me product that is obviously damaged"

Please tell stories.

The only places that I know of that have this hard rule is Jimmy Johns. And there are a select few that will take you from the 11:00-13:00 deadzone. Most other places I have no loving clue about - at least I haven't had that issue.

OUR main problem is being understaffed. For the past month and a half drivers have been constantly leaving the gate at 07:00 to even loving NINE. When you're supposed to leave at 4 or 5. So great. Now I can't get into any of these places with a big rear end truck that a truck isn't supposed to be in in the morning. Now I have morning rush hour. Now everyone's pissed that we're starting 3-4 hours in the hole.

I remember one day I had to start at loving nine and I delievered all 700 in 7 hours somehow. Guess what I had to do? Go loving help someone else - great, now I'm starting late the next day. Yesterday I finished at 16:30 and I had to help another driver and was out until 22:30 because his truck was all hosed. He didn't get to leave at 9 and the last place we went to had a pissed off owner because "you're supposed to be here at 10:00".

No, he's loving not if he's leaving an hour beforehand. The salesman loving lied to him too because we were told to skip straight to his last stop (because it was so big and important) and we spent 3 god drat hours there working around 4 other stops in his tiny 28 foot trailer. So I started 4 hours late today. That's great. They always tell me to go out and help because I always say yes. And it fucks them over the next day because drivers who were helping deliver the poo poo yesterday are hosed for today. "We'll deal with today today and tommorow tommorow" is Sysco's motto.

Hell one day I managed to deliver 650/900 cases in the first 8 hours after getting to start at 08:00. I was going to skip straight to Benihana because I knew it was the kind of day people were going to be closing on us and I had the ability to do it. Well I called them and was told, "no uh we can't be skipping stops these retirement homes are really important" blah blah blah. Well guess what? Benihana closed. Great. Now it's going on a reship. It's also fun when I KNOW some customers close at 15:00 or such, and I skip straight to them so that that doesn't happen like I did on thursday.

We have one loving router (who basically controls everything) that constantly adds random poo poo or moves stops around. On one route I am familiar with, a certain US bank needs to be and is usually #2. Well one day they're loving #4. So I get to leave late at like 6 and I call them and let them know I'm probably going to be there at 11-12. They appreciated that. One loving saturday I was switched around last minute because a driver didn't show up. I called the casino (because I know they prefer you to do this even though only drivers with experience loving know this and any random person wouldn't know to call), that I'd be there at 7. No one was mad because I had called. And then when I somehow finish that poo poo in 8 hours, I go and help the person who was on what MY saturday route was supposed to be. And we were out until like 21:00.

There are a lot of loving problems to deal with on a route normally (Which I can't think of atm) - I do not need these problems starting BEFORE I come to work.

Also a lot of customers seem to think that their poo poo is all by itself. No, it's not; your poo poo is mixed in a pallet with 3 other stops (or 6-7 if we're unlucky :eng101:) in random arrangement that we have to dig through, pick up unrelated boxes, toss somewhere, and find your poo poo. Which is probably in the bottom middle of 500 lbs of other poo poo. It took me 6 and a half months to be able to just subconciously know where they put your poo poo. This is the biggest reason I stopped taking 40 loving minutes at a small 20-30 case stop and can generally get it done in 20-30 unless you got long rear end walks or stairs or something else.

Here's the care and attention our other employees (Just because of our poo poo management going "let the driver deal with it just get it in there") give to us. Go find your stuff. Why is this rotated holy poo poo.



Also, sysco's "schedule" is bullshit and don't believe it for a second. They gave me 18 minutes to do a long walk from the street into a building and deliver 45 cases. And they're fairly regular oil/onions/freezer poo poo so it's not like it's tiny boxes. If they ever give you an ETA, don't loving believe it. Maybe you got one of the superman senior drivers with a nice easy route who's badass and always early and almost always there at the same time. Lucky you.


OOOOH and one saturday I remember I worked 19 hours. Ok so I finish my route in 12 hours because I got 15 stops and random poo poo not supposed to be on there. It's like 17:00 at this point. Well a driver had to lay over and he had to come back to sysco the next morning, not even being home, to start a route. He ran out of hours and only did 5/13 stops. So I had to take the truck. I was able to drive to 2 of them and I got the "why is sysco so late" spiel again. Well one, I had nothing to do with this route until like 30 minutes ago. Second, I ran out of hours and then ANOTHER person from the warehouse with a CDL got to drive the truck and I was in a van. Oh and there was a 3rd driver in a van. Oh and a 4th driver in his pickup. And we loving had to finish the route - we were out until like loving 23:00. So I ended up working a good 19 hours that day on TWO god drat routes. The last stop we were at I'm glad the dude was pissed but not at us. He even called his salesperson a useless POS. Good.

AdorableStar fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Aug 11, 2019

Sandwich Anarchist
Sep 12, 2008

pile of brown
Dec 31, 2004
I have all that and more in rage rants as a Sysco customer. For every big holiday (Valentine's, Thanksgiving, Xmas, new year) they just absolutely gently caress me onna crucial ingredients for one of my prix fixe dishes.

AdorableStar
Jul 13, 2013

:patriot:


pile of brown posted:

I have all that and more in rage rants as a Sysco customer. For every big holiday (Valentine's, Thanksgiving, Xmas, new year) they just absolutely gently caress me onna crucial ingredients for one of my prix fixe dishes.

Haha it's on a different truck. Haha it's mispicked. Haha it's buried in a pallet it's not supposed to be at and I found out 2 hours later but can't go back to you because I still have 5 other people to get to then hope I have enough time to drive back.

pile of brown
Dec 31, 2004
I've never gotten an "I'll drive back and get it" even if it was gonna be later, ever.

My favorite was "well we ordered your pork belly from a new purveyor, and they sent it in the mail, but the packing center is closed between Xmas and Thanksgiving so please enjoy your 10 day old unrefrigerated pork on Jan 2.

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
I wonder how many restaurants that talk about their locally sourced poo poo isn't so much about either wanting to be more environmentally/local economy friendly or just playing that up for selling purposes versus just not wanting to deal with Sysco? I've worked at a couple places that only got paper products and cleaning supplies from them.

Shooting Blanks
Jun 6, 2007

Real bullets mess up how cool this thing looks.

-Blade



Skwirl posted:

I wonder how many restaurants that talk about their locally sourced poo poo isn't so much about either wanting to be more environmentally/local economy friendly or just playing that up for selling purposes versus just not wanting to deal with Sysco? I've worked at a couple places that only got paper products and cleaning supplies from them.

Dealing with Sysco is like dealing with any other major purveyor though, it's completely luck of the draw in terms of what kind of service you receive. The biggest issues with Sysco that I've heard from chefs were around product quality and consistency more than anything else, and of course local/sustainable does tend to be good marketing. So it's a win-win. I've had to fire distributors for poo poo service, including the liquor distributor at the first club I managed since they seemed unable to work with my schedule for deliveries.

Sandwich Anarchist
Sep 12, 2008
I've ditched seafood and commodity vendors before for sucking, happens. I use Cheney Brothers as my main purveyor, and they do really well with mixing the sort of infrastructure you'd expect from someone like Sysco, with better quality product that is often locally sourced. All our beef comes from our state, locally grown micro greens, etc.

AdorableStar
Jul 13, 2013

:patriot:


Skwirl posted:

I wonder how many restaurants that talk about their locally sourced poo poo isn't so much about either wanting to be more environmentally/local economy friendly or just playing that up for selling purposes versus just not wanting to deal with Sysco? I've worked at a couple places that only got paper products and cleaning supplies from them.

Hey man, I love you guys. Less work for me.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



I never gave the SYSCO guy poo poo at my old place after I saw where he had to park. Also the SYSCO people for Austin tended to have their poo poo together so there wasn't too much to yell at them for. Our stuff was generally in good condition from them (why we switched over to leaning more on SYSCO than local suppliers) even if he did tend to get there around noon.

Anyways guy had a semi with a 50' trailer and we were in the packing lot of a tiny, busy as hell shopping center on the side of a hill full or rich people (and their rich people cars). There was no way you could get that monster trailer in there in the day. So he had to park on the far side of a busy four lane road, load up his pallet jack, haul it across traffic (and there sure as hell wasn't a nearby crosswalk) and across the wonky as hell parking lot while still controlling the pallet jack. And he had to do this 6-8 times for our load.

MAKE NO BABBYS
Jan 28, 2010

Organza Quiz posted:

I'm open to the concept but given that part of what "everyone knows" about chicken cooking safety is that you have to cook it all the way through, it seems odd that this recipe says that the inside is completely sterile and you just have to sterilise the outside and you're good to go.

....because that’s true? The center of a steak is fine, it’s when you grind it with all the parts exposed to air it becomes more sketchy.

Naelyan
Jul 21, 2007

Fun Shoe

MAKE NO BABBYS posted:

....because that’s true? The center of a steak is fine, it’s when you grind it with all the parts exposed to air it becomes more sketchy.

This is true for some meats (steak), not true for others (chicken that's been exposed to salmonella, pork back in the 1950's), because different meats are more or less likely or able to carry certain bacteria or organisms. Salmonella is one of those that doesn't just exist on the surface of meat, which is why you need to cook chicken all the way through. Poulet de Bresse in France is raised in such a way that it rarely contains (and some say is genetically less likely to have, though a cursory google search isn't giving me decent sources one way or the other) the salmonella strain, and pretty much the entire chicken population of Japan (as of the last time I did a bunch of reading about this) is salmonella free because it's so insulated. You can legally serve raw chicken in those places (France, it needs to be tested while alive and then eaten the same day it's slaughtered). If a chicken is exposed to salmonella at any point in its life (which can be at birth or from contact with other chickens) it will carry it forever, and if you eat any part of that chicken that hasn't been cooked to a proper temperature, you can get ill.

That's also why if you ask any of your grandparents about eating rare pork they're probably going to look at you like your head's on sideways, but it's generally safe to eat medium rare or rare pork these days. Trichinosis is much less of a risk because of cleanliness and processing standards, and ringworm etc is basically nonexistent in pork in North America these days. Neither of those things were true 60 years ago.

Naelyan fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Aug 12, 2019

AdorableStar
Jul 13, 2013

:patriot:


Alkydere posted:


Anyways guy had a semi with a 50' trailer and we were in the packing lot of a tiny, busy as hell shopping center on the side of a hill full or rich people (and their rich people cars). There was no way you could get that monster trailer in there in the day. So he had to park on the far side of a busy four lane road, load up his pallet jack, haul it across traffic (and there sure as hell wasn't a nearby crosswalk) and across the wonky as hell parking lot while still controlling the pallet jack. And he had to do this 6-8 times for our load.

At this point I want to yell at people "Go ahead and run me over to put me out of my misery"

At least he had a pallet jack.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



AdorableStar posted:

At this point I want to yell at people "Go ahead and run me over to put me out of my misery"

At least he had a pallet jack.

Time's faded my memory but I think he was basically our non-perishable (i.e. boxes of cans of beans and olive oil) and packaging delivery guy that came about once a week and we had another, smaller Sysco truck every day earlier in the morning. Basically he'd show up once a week to drop 4-5 pallets of boxes out and usually I'd have to go chuck them to our storage area "upstairs" (crawlspace on top of the front/retail walk-in fridge we used a ladder to reach) while someone else took the few bits of actual food into the kitchen.

You know what, gently caress it. Ain't worked there for 2 years so they certainly can't fire me if I doxx myself. I can't really get this across by words. here is the google maps view of where he parked. He couldn't get much closer or he'd cut off someone's driveway. Pan the camera left and you see the shopping center behind the trees? See how the buildings are barely peeking out? That's how low the parking lot and buildings are below the road level. He'd have to hoof it down this driveway and through the parking lot to set that stuff outside out front door. The moment I figured out what that guy had to do with a pallet jack I never ever bitched at him again. Instead I mostly grumbled about having to chunk 20-30x boxes of plastic containers up into the crawl area since I was the tallest/biggest guy and therefore the designated teamster.

AdorableStar
Jul 13, 2013

:patriot:


Alkydere posted:

Time's faded my memory but I think he was basically our non-perishable (i.e. boxes of cans of beans and olive oil) and packaging delivery guy that came about once a week and we had another, smaller Sysco truck every day earlier in the morning. Basically he'd show up once a week to drop 4-5 pallets of boxes out and usually I'd have to go chuck them to our storage area "upstairs" (crawlspace on top of the front/retail walk-in fridge we used a ladder to reach) while someone else took the few bits of actual food into the kitchen.

You know what, gently caress it. Ain't worked there for 2 years so they certainly can't fire me if I doxx myself. I can't really get this across by words. here is the google maps view of where he parked. He couldn't get much closer or he'd cut off someone's driveway. Pan the camera left and you see the shopping center behind the trees? See how the buildings are barely peeking out? That's how low the parking lot and buildings are below the road level. He'd have to hoof it down this driveway and through the parking lot to set that stuff outside out front door. The moment I figured out what that guy had to do with a pallet jack I never ever bitched at him again. Instead I mostly grumbled about having to chunk 20-30x boxes of plastic containers up into the crawl area since I was the tallest/biggest guy and therefore the designated teamster.

Whenever I come to a new place I've never been to before, I always check out the satellite view and plan my poo poo before even heading there. A lot of people seem to just drive there and figure it out as they go, but that's not me. So with this location I would have 3 plans.



X marks the spot for parking on the road, The red and blue arrow for backing up into that SOB if I want to deal with being yelled at to move.
Yellow for what I would really like to do if the truck can fit.

And I can totally imagine after he hauled all that rear end for you, sysco only gave him 30 loving minutes to do the delivery so he's late according to "their schedule." Then he gets the nice talking to from other customers, "Where have you been all day?!" blah blah blah.

Today I managed to do 680 cases in 8 hours out of 940. I am so loving tired. I love that this is the route our fastest driver does (Who gets a lot of loving cases on his truck because he's insane) and I'm getting calls twice from Sysco today because customers have been asking where their poo poo is. Well gently caress me, I'm actually running on time according to sysco's schedule but it's not the time that HE gets there. At least at my last stop the dude complimented me that I got there at 16:00 whereas another driver (who doesn't do this) got there at 20:00. How the gently caress do they cram 940 cases in a 36 foot trailer. Got to argue with 2 random people today though while out on my route, so there's that too. gently caress you. I'm in this alley. I'm not moving. gently caress you.


Hey I remember another story. So I was parked in between two buildings delivering to some piece of poo poo place where I had to shovel their pathway down myself because of all the snow. And we had all this melty slushy poo poo in April, so it took me a good while to wheel all 80 pieces of poo poo through the slush downhill AFTER I had gotten everything set up for myself. Then some piece of poo poo from the pawn shop, because I know he looked like he worked there, came to yell at me when I was done. "What's taking so long!?" "Well look around you what do you think is taking me so long? You have eyes." Then he threatened to call Sysco and the cops. I don't care. I left; I was done there after 90 painful minutes. Apparently he did do that, but I was long gone. Waste of loving oxygen that man.

AdorableStar fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Aug 16, 2019

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Aww that's cute, you think I worked at The Grove. No, I worked at Snap Kitchen. Though 99% chance they got their poo poo on the same Sysco truck we had. Brothers Produce tried to coordinate our deliveries. They paid better but I was pretty sure I had the better job because I worked on a schedule of "poo poo's done when it's done" instead of a schedule of "short order cook". (we stuck our head into each other's kitchens regularly to ask to borrow supplies, usually bags of spinach to be paid back next delivery)

And I'm just gonna say right now that while you have good ideas, in reality there was no loving way to get a proper semi and 50-ft trailer into that parking lot in the day without crushing a few rich-people cars. We could barely get our own refrigerator trucks in and out during the day sometimes. Also your chosen parking location would probably pick up 3-4 passenger side mirrors every time you parked. So in short, it would be the most ideal place for me to watch you park because I'd just start laughing and laughing and laughing as all these overpriced mid-life crisis cars got crushed under your rig.

Seriously that entire shopping center is clueless rich white person central. I remember walking up front to use my employee discount to get my lunch and having to spend over 5 minutes explaining to some lady that it doesn't matter which trashcan she threw her now empty container in. Yes we have two trashcan slots in the counter next to each other. Yes they each have an individual trash can beneath them as if one was recycling. Yes we use recyclable materials. No we don't have recycling, we just really really wish we did just so we could toss our 500 empty produce boxes into it each day. It was so hard to get through to this woman that unless and until the landlord sprung for a recycling dumpster and collection service the entire shopping center was without recycling and the dual layout was just style and wishful thinking on our part.

So of course the landlord sprung for recycling about 1.5 months before the kitchen in the back of the shop closed down, after production was already dropping precipitously because the USDA facility in Dallas was taking over our production one recipe at a time.

Papa Was A Video Toaster
Jan 9, 2011





Does anybody know any goons in agriculture or food manufacturing? I feel like there's a wealth of gripes further up the supply chain.

SymmetryrtemmyS
Jul 13, 2013

I got super tired of seeing your avatar throwing those fuckin' glasses around in the astrology thread so I fixed it to a .jpg

TVsVeryOwn posted:

Does anybody know any goons in agriculture or food manufacturing? I feel like there's a wealth of gripes further up the supply chain.

I work in food manufacturing and distribution.

I'll write up something about sugar later, when I get home.

I hate sugar so much.

SymmetryrtemmyS
Jul 13, 2013

I got super tired of seeing your avatar throwing those fuckin' glasses around in the astrology thread so I fixed it to a .jpg
gently caress sugar

okay, so first of all, let's go into how sugar makes its way from the producers and refiners to you

first, millions of farmers in china and south america harvest the cane and extract the juice, then cook off that juice to make sugar crystals

then, those sugar crystals are batch-measured for humidity and other parameters

meanwhile, they're put into bags of varying sizes. Generally at the level I deal with, these are either 50# (or 55# whatever) bags, or 1300-1400kg supersacks, pictured below


those bags are sent around the globe after being sealed. this is seriously thick material, it's like a few layers of tarp, and it's sturdy enough to hold a squareish shape when fully loaded with sugar

now, there are some problems that come in here, and this is why I hate sugar

the US government holds all imported sugar in bond, then releases it on a seasonal basis. The amount of sugar left behind is called the tranche. You can pull a certain amount of sugar from tranche at market price, but if you want to pull more than that, you pay a stiff tariff. The problem here is that the USDA doesn't tell you how much is being released from tranche with any amount of forewarning: they just tell you how much you can pull at nominal rates. So you get locked into contracts for say 5 million pounds, except it turns out you only can buy 4 million pounds at the rates you were promised.

This year, tranche releases were devastatingly low, about 30%, thanks to this administration's trade wars. So we got hosed there, and now we're buying sugar from most of the other distributors in the entire USA. There are only a few companies large enough to pull from tranche to begin with, and we're paying the other ones a premium so we don't have to pay the tariff. So we get hosed on that, and our margin goes in the toilet.

And then when you do finally get the sugar (which is released on delay, so you're scrambling to keep the bread and cookie companies you deal with running) it turns out some of the pallets they're on are chipped, and the uneven weight distribution makes them break in transit or when being unloaded or, more commonly, when we're shipping with outside freight. Or there can be boulders that form in the super sacks because of moisture ingress. Or that moisture can be a little lower than required to form boulders and instead just promote growth, so we have to do our own in-house bacteria testing.

At least half of my day is dealing with sugar bullshit. That's not even our core product, but it is just so much all the time.

Despite all of these issues, we keep getting return business. Everyone experiences the same problems, but we hire people who actually give a poo poo, so we go the extra mile to figure out what happened and fix it, or at least give an explanation.

Another fun thing that happened, we shipped four drums of safflower oil to a company - small order, but whatever, we're still making money. As is industry standard, we put four drums on a pallet. When our customer received the oil, they received three drums on a pallet, plus one drum on a hosed up, patched together pallet that I'm pretty sure was homemade. The fourth drum was upside down, rewrapped, and had a hole in the bottom (now the top). So what happened was, the freight company went to a central hub to transfer goods, sort of like how airports work, and they unloaded our oil, and in so doing they punctured one drum. They noticed the leak, and instead of issuing a return authorization, they decided to just say gently caress it and hope that nobody would notice. What the gently caress.

I didn't realize this thread would be a good place to post stuff about my job. I'm going to definitely start doing that now.

Naelyan
Jul 21, 2007

Fun Shoe

SymmetryrtemmyS posted:

gently caress sugar

I didn't realize this thread would be a good place to post stuff about my job. I'm going to definitely start doing that now.

Do it, that's interesting. Also hilarious.

Coasterphreak
May 29, 2007
I like cookies.
Yes, please post more supply chain stories.

And yes, I'm the stop that tells the Sysco driver to gently caress right off if he shows up at a stupid goddamn time (like 12:30)

Mercedes Colomar
Nov 1, 2008

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
:f5:
Please tell us more stories, this is good fascinating poo poo.

Phil Moscowitz
Feb 19, 2007

If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

SymmetryrtemmyS posted:

gently caress sugar

okay, so first of all, let's go into how sugar makes its way from the producers and refiners to you

first, millions of farmers in china and south america harvest the cane and extract the juice, then cook off that juice to make sugar crystals

then, those sugar crystals are batch-measured for humidity and other parameters

meanwhile, they're put into bags of varying sizes. Generally at the level I deal with, these are either 50# (or 55# whatever) bags, or 1300-1400kg supersacks, pictured below


those bags are sent around the globe after being sealed. this is seriously thick material, it's like a few layers of tarp, and it's sturdy enough to hold a squareish shape when fully loaded with sugar

now, there are some problems that come in here, and this is why I hate sugar

the US government holds all imported sugar in bond, then releases it on a seasonal basis. The amount of sugar left behind is called the tranche. You can pull a certain amount of sugar from tranche at market price, but if you want to pull more than that, you pay a stiff tariff. The problem here is that the USDA doesn't tell you how much is being released from tranche with any amount of forewarning: they just tell you how much you can pull at nominal rates. So you get locked into contracts for say 5 million pounds, except it turns out you only can buy 4 million pounds at the rates you were promised.

This year, tranche releases were devastatingly low, about 30%, thanks to this administration's trade wars. So we got hosed there, and now we're buying sugar from most of the other distributors in the entire USA. There are only a few companies large enough to pull from tranche to begin with, and we're paying the other ones a premium so we don't have to pay the tariff. So we get hosed on that, and our margin goes in the toilet.

And then when you do finally get the sugar (which is released on delay, so you're scrambling to keep the bread and cookie companies you deal with running) it turns out some of the pallets they're on are chipped, and the uneven weight distribution makes them break in transit or when being unloaded or, more commonly, when we're shipping with outside freight. Or there can be boulders that form in the super sacks because of moisture ingress. Or that moisture can be a little lower than required to form boulders and instead just promote growth, so we have to do our own in-house bacteria testing.

At least half of my day is dealing with sugar bullshit. That's not even our core product, but it is just so much all the time.

Despite all of these issues, we keep getting return business. Everyone experiences the same problems, but we hire people who actually give a poo poo, so we go the extra mile to figure out what happened and fix it, or at least give an explanation.

Another fun thing that happened, we shipped four drums of safflower oil to a company - small order, but whatever, we're still making money. As is industry standard, we put four drums on a pallet. When our customer received the oil, they received three drums on a pallet, plus one drum on a hosed up, patched together pallet that I'm pretty sure was homemade. The fourth drum was upside down, rewrapped, and had a hole in the bottom (now the top). So what happened was, the freight company went to a central hub to transfer goods, sort of like how airports work, and they unloaded our oil, and in so doing they punctured one drum. They noticed the leak, and instead of issuing a return authorization, they decided to just say gently caress it and hope that nobody would notice. What the gently caress.

I didn't realize this thread would be a good place to post stuff about my job. I'm going to definitely start doing that now.

Very interesting post, good job OP!

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



We're all fascinated with seeing how everything's a pure shitshow from top to bottom. We mostly have the view from the bottom.

I feel this is the same reason the Retail thread encourages me to post Amazon Fulfillment Center stuff.

SymmetryrtemmyS
Jul 13, 2013

I got super tired of seeing your avatar throwing those fuckin' glasses around in the astrology thread so I fixed it to a .jpg
One time two pallets, one full of chia seeds and the other one a tote of olive oil, were punctured by a forklift. The freight company tried to bill us. They sent pictures.

Can you imagine what that looked like? A semi truck's floor and part of one wall covered in hundreds of pounds of chia seeds and oil.

taqueso
Mar 8, 2004


:911:
:wookie: :thermidor: :wookie:
:dehumanize:

:pirate::hf::tinfoil:

Add some oats and sugar, bake the truck at 400 for awhile

nightly nopetopus
Feb 12, 2018

Possible Dexter.
Defective cat.
Mm, chia seed cake. All that fibre.

Working at a butcher shop nowadays. Almost an utter sausage party, but for me and another and the amount of turkeys I fist on a weekly basis.

Also, just got married yesterday.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

AdorableStar
Jul 13, 2013

:patriot:


Alkydere posted:

And I'm just gonna say right now that while you have good ideas, in reality there was no loving way to get a proper semi and 50-ft trailer into that parking lot in the day without crushing a few rich-people cars. We could barely get our own refrigerator trucks in and out during the day sometimes. Also your chosen parking location would probably pick up 3-4 passenger side mirrors every time you parked. So in short, it would be the most ideal place for me to watch you park because I'd just start laughing and laughing and laughing as all these overpriced mid-life crisis cars got crushed under your rig.


I mostly drive 36 foot trailers; we don't even have 53 footers at my location. Holy poo poo.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply