[tinfins]

I'm a Whole Foods employee, having one of those rare (for me) moments where I can reasonably be considered very well-informed on the subject of a news article, and it's a little bit disturbing just how misinformed and one-sided the article is.

The author seems to have talked with 10-20 disgruntled employees at a few stores nationwide, and a few customers on top of that. Maybe she should have reached out to Whole Foods corporate and asked for comments?

About the only thing she did get right was that Amazon isn't behind this. They haven't really messed with our supply chains much yet.

[IkmoIkmo]

> I'm a Whole Foods employee, having one of those rare (for me) moments where I can reasonably be considered very well-informed on the subject of a news article, and it's a little bit disturbing just how misinformed and one-sided the article is.

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

[irrational]

Heh, it is amusing that the quote ends with "far-off Palestine". In the mid-90s I returned from living in the middle east for 6 months as a student (Jordan, Israel and Egypt). I personally witnessed an event and upon returning I was reading about said event in a US newspaper and was shocked at how wrong it was. This was the first time I experienced this effect. However, instead of turning to other parts of the paper and trusting what they said, I lost all faith in newspapers on that day and have not read one since. If I know they lied or, more generously, misunderstood what happened about something I know personally about, how can I ever trust anything they write about things I don't know about personally? I can't, I won't, and I haven't.

[caseysoftware]

My wife was a political reporter in DC, covering the Hill, the Pentagon and White House at various times. One time we were watching CNN and they mentioned a briefing at the Pentagon and she noted she was in the same one. Halfway through the coverage, she jumped up and said "that's not what they said!" I was confused.. she went back to her bag and handed me her notebook which contradicted their coverage.

It's not unique to any particular medium, news source, or person. Many, many people have an agenda and/or ignorance and portray things accordingly.. not always malicious but incomplete at best, wrong at worst.

[Natsu]

This is why I assume most political coverage, especially that from partisans of either party, is mostly nonsense. To get the real story you have to find and read primary sources. Any "news" sites that don't give those I assume are lying, at best, until I have sources to corroborate what they said. The "news" these days is mostly made up of opinion pieces and it spends entirely too much time looking to troll us with cheap outrage articles as clickbait.

Random independent coverage from bloggers, e.g. Popehat, tends to be much better informed than people rushing to incite us on a deadline. This goes double for anything the least bit technical, like law.

Sadly, there just aren't enough sources like that to actually dig into most stories.

[chiefalchemist]

It is nonsense. The problem is it's not something most people realize and/accept. They hear "The sky is purple" on the channel they usually watch, said by the pleasant looking and sounding talking head they're so fond of. No need to look up and double ckeck. Yup! The sky is purple. Case closed.

Facebook and Twitter would be ghost towns without this disconnect.

[kbenson]

Well, that's because the only way to get through life in this day and age is to pick some people you accept as authorities on sobjects, and listen to their opinion and use it to form an initial basis for your own if you haven't already got one.

The trick, which people seem to be generally bad at, is:

a) limiting the scope of authority you attribute to someone

b) not immediately discounting contradictory evidence but using it to judge whether you need to pry deeper yourself or to discount some of that authority you've vested in them

c) actually remembering how authoritative the source was when repeating the information or using it as the basis for other assumptions

d) actually looking into issues deeper that you decide to care about and find the truth, not just was some semi-authoritative mouth piece repeated to you

For example, I try to make a habit of prefixing or postfixing statements in conversation with disclaimers ("At least that's what I heard or seem to remember reading, but I'm not sure how that I'm not sure how true it is.") if I'm not fairly certain of the information.

[WalterBright]

I also know of a news event first hand, and then watched with shock the news coverage of it later. It wasn't remotely political, it was clearly just sloppy "get it in the can and move on".

The umbrage taken by the mainstream media in the last year being called "fake news" is a bit amusing. I've often wondered what percentage of it all (and what we know of history) is complete nonsense.

[Natsu]

A lot of our news reports are quick summaries written up in a few minutes by a busy person who quickly gathered whatever info was at hand and not so much of the long, in-depth investigations of the past.

So... likely quite a lot. I trust verifiable sources a lot more than I trust any outlet, even the supposedly reputable ones. I mean, just how long did it take for Jayson Blair to get caught fabricating stories in the NYT? [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair

[meri_dian]

This conversation has progressed for a while without anyone mentioning that the sentiments expressed are essentially in support of Trump's accusations of fake news. So we can have a conversation on HN in support of Trump's "fake news" and in recognition of severe bias in media that would indicate "fake news" isn't as much a slur as it is a matter of fact statement.

What am I missing?

[Natsu]

A dismissal of something as 'fake news' is a bit too facile, that's mere namecalling without more backing. A better analysis is to note what sources of information were drawn upon, how they can be corroborated (or not), and whether they're sufficient to make the case the author wants. I admit to using a simplistic heuristic of "if I can't see any of your sources, your 'news' is just a rumor" but I use it even on news I would be inclined to agree with. The articles that pass this filter are far fewer than those which fail it for any remotely partizan subject. There's just so much noise of the form "my inside sources say that X will finally put [Trump|Hillary] in jail!"

And a more facile analysis obscures the fact that there is yet a bit of fact-based reporting getting lost in the noise. Authors who normally link to actual primary sources and do real analysis instead of only cheap opinion, albeit sometimes imperfectly. So more Glenn Grenwald, Popehat or Groklaw and less Fox/Buzzfeed/CNN.

There are real problems here, but political partisans tend to make more fake news instead of doing anything useful to solve it.

[aero142]

Trump uses this to promote a worldview that facts are whatever you want them to be. As with most things Trump, any kernel of truth is immediately ruined by some even more false, stupid and incompetent idea he wants to promote.

[intended]

Becuase trump attacks facts which people know are true from multiple corroborated sources.

But even that is wrong.

Firstly fake news is exactly that - actually fabricated websites designed to look like “the Sacramento beast” or what have you, filled with content that will sound legitimate to an American conservative and trick them into clicking on ads.

That’s fake news and it’s actually not even news, it’s more like surprise literature/acting to con people.

Trump on the other hand argues for example that he has the biggest crowds, when he doesn’t by every device that recorded images of the subject.

Fake news is in this case is just a term that relies on the audience to impute meaning to it.

[burfog]

Crowd images don't tell the whole story.

There is grass on the National Mall. During the Obama inauguration, people walked on it as you would expect. The damage cost several $million to fix. In photos of the Trump inauguration crowd, notice that the sparsely-occupied area is white. It was covered in translucent boxes to protect the grass. (the boxes were borrowed from stadiums that use them for events like concerts) The boxes can be walked on, but people would hesitate. They are not inviting like grass. This kept many people out of the photos.

Another issue is that the central area of the photo was blocked off into different security sectors. Due to violence, entry was often blocked. Many people showed up for the inauguration but were unable to get to where they could see it, which would be the empty areas of the photos.

In the usual pair of photos, the Trump photo is cropped relative to the Obama photo. The physical area seems to differ by roughly a factor of two.

There is also the question of time when the photos were taken.

[caseysoftware]

Fascinating, isn't it?

Almost like people believe the same thing said very much the same way but from a completely different source. Thanks, I'm here all weekend. ;)

[RyanZAG]

It's not the same way though, is it? Trump has the whole 'average American' speech pattern down. Headline grabbing, 'high energy', and a call to action.

> FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!

He doesn't use the intellectual tone when he talks about it.

> Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows.

For a certain type of person -- the type that reads HN -- this scholarly style is what we expect. It lays out the biases and beliefs we hold in a manner we expect. It backs it up with some seemingly solid logic that we can relate to. We've all seen at least one badly written scientific article where we know the facts better. So we take it as fact and agree with it.

Is there any difference between them? Of course not, they're saying the same thing, but in a different linguistic style. It does take a bit of work to recognize that as most people have fairly deep biases towards linguistic style that are difficult to suppress. As an exercise to prove this to yourself, try sum up the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect in a way that would appeal to a non-academic.

Here's the interesting part: Trump picked up this linguistic style only in the last few years. While we don't like it, his voter base probably wouldn't have voted for him if he started his sentences "briefly stated". Know your audience, often the presentation of your argument is far more important than the argument itself.

[RockyMcNuts]

Seeing something like a football play, a highly trained, alert, well positioned observer like a referee gets it wrong a pretty significant percentage of the time.

Now suppose someone reported on a game without seeing it and getting the narrative from different fans up in the stands.

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence, but of course, sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

[bovine3dom]

Surely the metric should be "Do they know more than me?"

Or are you concerned that you'll move towards the apex of the Dunning Kruger chart?

[IncRnd]

> Surely the metric should be "Do they know more than me?"

That's not a good metric. A better metric would be, "are they trustworthy and correct?"

> Or are you concerned that you'll move towards the apex of the Dunning Kruger chart?

Disqus is over there.

[bovine3dom]

Why is that a better metric? There are levels of correctness. Do you sincerely believe that each article you read will push you backwards in knowledge? Even an untrustworthy source can contain valuable information; just ask an historian.

The Dunning Kruger joke was only partially a joke - I was trying to explain that there are levels of expertise. My view is that anything that increases my knowledge is good; I was trying to elicit a response as to why someone might think otherwise.

[JetSpiegel]

> are they trustworthy and correct?

So well-meaning idiots trump experts that might be trying to trick you?

[ric2b]

If the experts are both incorrect and untrustworthy, of course.

[coupdejarnac]

What was the event you witnessed?

[pacaro]

Here’s an example: while in college, I was in a building that was on fire. A passerby ran into the entrance and asked us if we knew the building was in fire (we didn’t).

When the fire was reported by the student newspaper, the only details they got correct was the date and that there was a fire. The journalist spoke with me and with the student whose dorm room burned. Nothing we said made it into the article. It was far more interesting to invent a story about how nobody knew if he was in his room when the fire started, than the prosaic truth that I knew he was in the library.

This happened in 1990 and the cause of the fire was a pc catching fire while engaged in the slow and perilous task of reformatting a hard drive.

[kemiller]

The only outlet I trust is the Economist, even though I don’t always 100% agree with their editorial stance, for the simple reason that when they report on things I know about they DO get it right, but simplified in a reasonable way. I think the weekly format helps too.

[ju-st]

From where do you get information when you don't read news articles?

[pbhjpbhj]

One can be wrong about events that you witness yourself. We witness things through physical limitations and the biased lens of our own minds.

IMO the correct response is not to reject the source but to give it less weight, add other sources and realise you'll only ever get an approximation of the truth at best.

[WalterBright]

> One can be wrong about events that you witness yourself.

So true. Back in the 1950s, a fighter plane off an aircraft carrier had its wings fall off and fall into the ocean. That model of aircraft had had a couple incidents before where the wings came off. Numerous experienced and educated witnesses were interviewed, including the captain of the carrier, who all said the wings fell off.

Except for one lowly seaman on the deck, who said the aircraft was intact when it hit the water.

The airplane was eventually retrieved from the sea floor, and it was proven the wings were on it when it hit the water.

The other experienced officers all (quite sincerely) observed what they expected to see.

I'll believe forensic evidence every time before I believe eyewitness accounts.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

I've gone for months and years long periods of avoiding the news, including sites like this, and live has always been qualitatively better during those periods.

I'm not convinced I understand what purpose being informed of global politics or local dramas serves, other than maybe having something to talk about with friends and colleagues.

[majormajor]

Serious question: What do you picture the long-term extrapolation of ignoring events around you looks like? Are you so independent of other people's actions that you can't imagine any events that would impact you in a way that you'd want to try to have a voice in, or at least be informed about? Isn't that how people end up in dead end jobs where 15 years later the industry has moved on and they no longer have skills companies are looking for?

[yorwba]

There is a difference between following the news and being informed about events around you. That difference is in the specificity of the information you receive.

Most news coverage is relevant to someone, but utterly irrelevant for the majority. As a non-US citizen, the US presidential election can be summarized by who won and what changes they intend to make. I don't need 24-hour coverage of he-said/she-said style reporting.

On the other hand, it can be useful to subscribe to some industry-specific news source to be aware of general trends. But then you're not following the news in general, but just the tiny sliver that actually affects you, which makes it much easier (not less) to stay informed.

Most general news articles are actually much more useful once they are archived (and no longer news), since then you can just seek them out when their topic has become relevant to you, and it lets you make actual use of the constant recaps the news cycle tends to include for context.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Reasonable question. Short of living in the wilderness or in solitary confinement it's probably difficult to go completely in the dark.

With regard to not having a voice, probably doesn't matter if I don't, but I'll concede it's probably a poor choice for the populace at large.

[ekianjo]

> What do you picture the long-term extrapolation of ignoring events around you looks like?

You are basically asking what it would be like to live like most of Humanity before the advent of mass media. Did not seem they had far worse problems than we do or that they were incapable to adapt. I'd return the question to you, how was mass media improved your life in any meaningful way and can you prove it was not just noise?

[phyller]

I wish I could upvote this twice. I know its just anecdotal data, but the rare occasions I have had personal knowledge of news articles they have been grossly inaccurate, every time.

Where is the quote from? Edit: from another comment: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...

[loeg]

> Where is the quote from?

Michael Crichton. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Murray_Gell-Mann#Quotes_about_...

[specialist]

Oh. Crichton coined that phrase? That's some potent unintentional irony right there.

[fouc]

How so?

[rootusrootus]

He vocally let his political ideology direct his selective interpretation of facts around climate change. So it's perhaps a little ironic that he would make an observation about biased reporting coming from other people or organizations. I would argue that it's not ironic, it's expected. IMO people most easily observe the faults in others that they themselves exhibit.

[ghostbrainalpha]

I'm guessing he is just saying that Crichton's writing was known for sensationalizing science, rather than accuracy.

So he basically did the same thing he criticizes reporters for.

(Which isn't totally fair imo, because the news should be held to a higher standard than a book about a dinosaur park)

[hueving]

He's not purporting to report news. So no irony that I can see?

[specialist]

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Michael_Crichton

[casefields]

It comes from his amazing essay called 'Why Speculate' which you can read here: http://docdro.id/4wgVecr

[asciimo]

Amen. Because it would be terrifying to admit that very few of the people who inform the world actually know what they're talking about.

[jxramos]

"All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things." Bob Knight

[danieltillett]

I have never seen a "news" report where I personally knew what happened reported accurately. I am sure we have reporters here so I have a question for you - why is this? Do you just not care about the details, are too rushed and it is faster to just make up crap, or something else I have not considered?

[IkmoIkmo]

Devil's in the details, I guess. It's really hard to be a subject matter expert at everything, yet we find journalists are often required to write pieces about topics in fields they've never worked.

The Paul Krugman model (PhD, nobel prize winner, professor at MIT/Princeton, writing for the NYT) is quite rare. And even then, he doesn't exclusively write about his field of expertise.

You mentioned reporting though... reporting facts is actually the one thing that journalists do often get right, and that's largely viewed as something holy. Analysis of journalism often finds that western journalists are incredibly accurate in their reporting, but they (un)wilfully frame stories, omit (sometimes by ignorance) important details or focus on meaningless anecdotes.

For example, there was a time when in my region the local news kept reporting that 'real estate boom: 60% of homes are being sold for or above the asking price'. All news agencies took it over, a rare few even omitting 'for or' and just reported '60% above asking price'. If you looked carefully, they cited data from a RE agent association that had an interest in making it seem as if you could make an easy buck by buying a home before it rose even more. The association's media reports focused on the 60% figure, but didn't mention the flipside of the underlying data: about 40% of homes were sold below the asking price and 40% were sold for approximately the asking price. In other words, news agencies could have also reported the exact same data by stating '80% of homes were sold for or below the asking price'.

I'd been reading these news reports (among others) for a year before I decided to buy a home and had a certain impression of the RE market going into it (a sellers market, had to bid aggressively and wave various rights to recourse to convince a seller). Not until I dove into the data did I find the reporting mischaracterised the market, despite citing factual data. The reason I think in this case and others, is that the journalists aren't RE agents, they're mostly just 29 year-olds with a journalism degree reporting on the 8 different industries they were assigned to, from RE to dairy to, relying heavily on industry associations' brief media reports and representatives to shape a narrative.

[redleggedfrog]

IkmoIkmo, that's an exceptionally insightful and informative reply. I've never heard of that effect before, but the gist of the idea has bothered me for a long time. I was about to reply to tinfins "And now realize that most news stories are probably just as misinformed."

I hate to be so skeptical of the mainstream media, but it's hard not to whenever they report on something I know about they seem to get it all wrong.

[dhimes]

I heard this called the "Gell-Mann Paradox."

[rikkus]

I spent too long being exasperated at the clueless BBC ‘Technology reporting’ before I realised that if it was this wrong about tech (a domain I humbly believe I know fairly well - at least when it comes to hard facts) then how wrong might it be about other things it was reporting on?

I stopped assuming any veracity in reporting from _any_ source and quite quickly saw that there was very little accuracy anywhere. There were of course opinions - or voiced ‘opinions’ I understood the motivation for, but with the facts missing, that’s all I was consuming. The opinions of reporters or the ‘opinions’, carefully guided by the media bosses or governments. Interesting? Not when they were so predictable.

That’s when I became one of those hipster/snob/weirdo people who doesn’t consume standard news anymore, and can only barely stand some tech publishing.

[sjwright]

The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is great and all, but you also have to factor in the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. How many news articles are you reading which comport with your pre-existing knowledge?

We remember the times when you're sure an article is wrong, we have amnesia towards all the of the other times.

[nhebb]

Someone in the LA Times / union thread referred to journalists as "knowledge workers". With Gell-Mann Amnesia in mind, I thought, "Well, that's being generous".

[adrianratnapala]

Or, like me, you end up beleiving journalists are mendacious idiots.

And lo! Polls say that Journalists are less trusted than politicins and used car salesmen. And I know that must be true because I read it in a newspaper somewhere.

[z3t4]

Knowing the facts while the news reports the wrong ones - is a perfect moment to write a blog/article yourself about it.

[chiefalchemist]

This is America's Mainstream Media. This is why our Fourth Estate has failed us.

[noetic_techy]

Ok, and..? So what about this story is not accurate? Is your store seeing this issue? Even if your branch is doing fine, what makes this story about other location inaccurate?

You left us all hanging. Why is this the top comment?

[dbatten]

"Whole Foods did not respond to several requests for comment on this story."

[tinfins]

Ah, I missed that, sorry.

[Johnny555]

Maybe she should have reached out to Whole Foods corporate and asked for comments?

Then they'd talk to a PR person who is only interested in guiding the narrative to whatever makes the company look better.

So yeah, employees aren't fully informed, and while Corporate may be fully informed, they are rarely going to tell the full story -- the truth probably lies somewhere between what employees are saying and what Corporate says (if they say anything at all, and in this case, it seems they did not respond to requests for comment)

[dajohnson89]

for someone who is well-informed on the the subject, it's amusing that you offered zero information in your comment.

[outworlder]

At many companies, unless you have “PR” in your job description, it’s a violation of policy to do such a thing, or even comment after identifying that you work for the company, even if it is to defend or otherwise comment positively.

[yuhong]

I dislike the forum posting approval policy for Whole Foods executives (in the code of conduct). It was not a good solution to the problem.

[tinfins]

I gave my opinion on the causes elsewhere in the comments.

[KKKKkkkk1]

I worked at an Amazon-Apple-Google-Facebook company when this type of article was published about our project. Our management vigorously denied what was in the article and pointed us to details that were clearly false. Ultimately, as time went by, we realized that although some of the details in the article were false, the general spirit of it was actually correct.

So please take the skepticism that your management is feeding you with a grain of salt. The news media's business model hinges on its reputation of being truthful and accurate. If it was regularly publishing "disturbingly misinformed and one-sided" articles, it would be out of business.

[dylan604]

I find it funny/odd that the eye of sauron has focused its attention at Whole Foods. Depending on the day of the week, especially late Sunday afternoon/evening but also random weekdays when I run in after work, my local Kroger looks very barren in the produce department. So much so that I have sent picture texts commenting about it.

This is quite normal behavior when weather events in the area are expected, but lately it has been occurring regardless of weather. From my outside observer position, it could be a simple miscalculation of how much to order, someone getting burned by ordering too much and stock went bad, or any other reason of which I have no inside knowledge.

Is this attention to "Whole Paycheck" unfair or are people just super attentive due to the new ownership and judgements being rushed to be "ahead of the curve"?

[tinfins]

Yeah, I wonder. We definitely aren't used to all the media attention - honestly, I got a little carried away in the comments here.

I wouldn't say I even particularly care about Whole Foods' reputation, it's more the false narrative that bothered me and I just happened to know how wrong it was. Must be so much worse for employees at the big tech companies or others that are in the news all the time.

[sjwright]

Whole Foods is the retailer equivalent of an in-vogue celebrity. News about celebrities are far more interesting than competent businesspeople.

[goialoq]

Businesss Insider is a clickbait website that takes little snippets of comments and spins fanciful stories about them, and wraps them in junk titles with "how" and "why" but never deliver explanations. It's a shame this site allows that website to be posted here.

[donarb]

How about the real pictures from customers of bare shelves? Those should count just as much, or are they disgruntled as well?

[tinfins]

I don't find it hard to believe that a few stores ran out of bananas or whatever for a day. That's all it would take for a customer to snap a picture. The picture of a meat department cooler with empty slide racks was obviously in the middle of a reset - notice the lack of price tags on all the racks because they were just installed.

[gamblor956]

The problem isn't that a few stores ran out of bananas or one item for the day. Take a look at the pictures: entire sections like produce are basically empty.

The only time I've seen shelves that bare were at Kmart and Sears locations before they went bankrupt and shut down.

[tinfins]

I took another look at the pictures. Notice all those stores where whole sections are out are in the Northeast. Probably they missed a delivery or two because of the weather. Plus during extreme weather grocery stores get shopped hard.

There was one picture of an empty banana set with a pineapple in the wrong spot - that's what I was referring to before.

The sole picture in San Francisco was the reset I mentioned.

[onli]

But that's exactly the problem the article describes: That the moment something goes wrong the stores don't have any reserves anymore, because the system is too strictly set on reducing costs and spoilage, seemingly with a total disregard to consumer satisfaction and overall profit. Add to that crazy-sounding control schemes - which maybe is kinda normal in a country like the US without real employee protection laws, but is unthinkable in less free market capitalist societies.

Not sure why you defend your employer here. If the problem is real - which I'm in no position to judge - it would be in his best interest to notice it.

[tinfins]

So you think stores should just keep a huge backstock of fresh produce just in case an extreme weather event or some other rare issue hits? That's going to lead to less fresh produce for the 350 days a year when everything goes smoothly.

The OTS system in the article also allows for exceptions - if there were bananas available the store could have stocked up on them. It's just so wrong on many levels - I could spend all day pointing them out, but this thread is getting bigger than I thought and I don't know if I can spend much more time on it. I was going to edit my original comment with more information but it doesn't look like I can anymore.

[bearcobra]

Anecdotally, I have experienced the same phenomenon at several major grocery chains in Canada. City gets hit with a winter storm and Safeway, SuperStore, & Walmart all had empty produce & bread sections. I've also seen it in certain stores during summer months in the run up to a long weekend. Not saying the new supply chain software can't be the cause, but there does seem to be other reasonable explanations.

[dgacmu]

The article came out a day or so after I went to the Whole Foods in Pittsburgh, and for the first time, when the cashier asked if I'd found everything, I said quite strongly: "No!". There were really surprising gaps in availability -- there was no soy milk (fresh or shelf-stable), no rice milk, no stock of several types of yogurt, surprisingly slim pickings in several of the veggie sections, no vegetable stock, only the most expensive types of diced tomatoes left (no 365 brand), and a few other things. The cashier said it was probably because the delivery truck didn't make it the previous day because of snow, but was surprised because the truck had made it earlier that day. IANA whole foods employee, but this certainly jibes with reduced stocking levels increasing fragility under delivery misses. I've never seen my WFM that empty before.

[gamblor956]

The header image where the veggie section is basically empty is actually from Houston, so I'm going to assume that you're being willfully blind about the issues raised in the article.

It's not a regional issue, it's systemic.

[rdiddly]

Well, it's the result of a decision made by a company that was, at the time, having some difficulty competing, and was desperately trying to cut prices, and then soon thereafter, sold itself to Amazon. So the resemblance is not altogether coincidental.

[dingaling]

Why are they resetting a section during shopping hours?

Even 30 years ago when I was a student worker in a food store that sort of task only happened after 22:00 when the last customers had left.

[tinfins]

Most meat teams at WFM don't have overnight crews.

The thing is too, it's a snapshot. We don't know how long it looked like that, what time of the day it was, whether someone called out sick, etc.

[briandear]

Not particularly relevant to the article, but a fun fact is that in France -- there's no such thing as after hours reseting in grocery stores. When the store closes -- everyone goes home.

[ethbro]

If store sales > shelf capacity, you have to intraday restock.

[donarb]

A lot of grocery stores have non-employees stocking shelves now, usually during the day. These are reps from the vendors, like potato chips or specialty foods that rent shelf space in the store are and responsible for maintaining them.

[slyall]

They say most of the pictures of bare shelves are from customers

[jrowley]

Here's an anecdote.

This week I was sick and went to whole foods like 3 times over 5 days to get soup. The soup shelf became more and more empty over time and didn't seem to be getting restocked which struck me as odd.

[ztjio]

You just explained that your behavior itself was odd (you are sick.) Have you considered that you've not normally done this and so you've never noticed that this is always what happens? My local grocery store has premade foods, like soups, and they get made in bursts and slowly run out over several days. So what you observed could be the norm.

[jrowley]

I'm talking about the aisle, like the shelves being empty, not the premade section. But your point totally stands!

[charlieflowers]

Yes, with catchy slogans, like "Hole Foods". Turn them into memes, let some go viral. That will get some attention.

[gojomo]

"…having one of those rare (for me) moments where I can reasonably be considered very well-informed on the subject of a news article, and it's a little bit disturbing just how misinformed and one-sided the article is."

Nearly everyone who has personal knowledge of something reported is similarly disturbed. That they rarely then remember that the same level of error applies to all the other things reported, outside their areas of personal knowledge, has been termed the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect by Michael Crichton:

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...

As one gets older (& a bit more cynical), you learn to apply this credibility discount to more journalism. But don't just use this insight as a synergizer for confirmation bias! That is, don't just remember, "this is mostly bungled reporting" on stories with details/implications that go against what you wish were the case. The stories supporting your cherished beliefs are mostly bungled reporting, too.

[foobarbazetc]

Do you work in a store or at HQ?

Because the article is right. At least in some stores around SF the stock situation is dire. Some days I can’t even buy whole milk.

[IncRnd]

Since tinfins wrote, "Maybe she should have reached out to Whole Foods corporate and asked for comments," the answer is likely HQ. People don't say, "ask Whole Foods _corporate_" in the normal course of events.

[briandear]

Could you buy two half-milks?

[dsmithatx]

That product is only available at Half Foods.

[oh_sigh]

Sure, or buy half and half and use your personal centrifuge to separate it

[JoeAltmaier]

Not sure I'm convinced. Your store does ok; that's certain. But you know about exactly one more store than I do; do you know the article is wrong for all stores? For a majority? For any? Not sure how far that induction can go.

If even one store did ok, we could see an employee from there posting here. Not sure that is information; more like a data point.

[tinfins]

Good point, but I'm not necessarily disagreeing that there were a few days with high out-of-stocks, just that the employees criticizing the OTS system in the article are being very misleading and exaggerating.

[JoeAltmaier]

Fair. At worst, it sounds like it could work, and they didn't put in the brainpower to sort it out.

[praneshp]

> it's a little bit disturbing just how misinformed and one-sided the article is.

Redundant, you are reading Business Insider.

[bradleyjg]

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...

[gisely]

The article indicates she contacted Whole Foods corporate and they didn't respond. So what exactly is wrong with her coverage? Also, you say you are Whole Foods employee. But are you store employee or a corporate headquarters employee?

[jimmywanger]

> The article indicates she contacted Whole Foods corporate and they didn't respond. So what exactly is wrong with her coverage?

Because it doesn't mean anything. No large company will respond to supply chain questions.

> But are you store employee or a corporate headquarters employee?

What is the relevance?

[deftnerd]

I think it's very relevant. The article points out that store employees have tried to bring it up to the new Amazon Management team who was unaware of the problem and that everything looks good on paper, but the view "from the trenches" is very different.

One of the points of the article is that corporate isn't aware of these problems.

[jimmywanger]

I don't think so, because corporate would especially not comment on employee complaints if they were aware of them.

Let's take this from the other side. Your employees have gone to the press, and the press is asking you for your side of the story. Why would you give the press anything to write about? Pictures of empty shelves have much more impact than in-stock statistics. You clam up, try to find the employee (probably disgruntled) and terminate him/her.

In other words, corporate not responding is not a signal one way or another, it's the sign of a mature company. Not to kick a dog, but Uber might have responded and made things worse.

[jwn]

Can you offer any more insights? What's the reality behind OTS?

[tinfins]

OTS is really just a collection of pretty common-sense guidelines like don't have more than a certain percentage of inventory in backstock, don't have backstock of stuff that doesn't sell well, keep your backstock organized, etc.

There are a few details about it that can be irritating, but the comments from employees in the article are extremely misleading. If they're having a hard time passing their inspections it's because they're doing something very wrong - no one is failing an inspection for having 1 box facing the wrong way like it says in the article.

[macintux]

> no one is failing an inspection for having 1 box facing the wrong way like it says in the article

Usually when I see (or say) something like that it's an exaggeration with a significant amount of truth behind it.

[jimmywanger]

> Usually when I see (or say) something like that it's an exaggeration with a significant amount of truth behind it.

So by your logic, any accusation has the cachet of a significant amount of truth behind it?

The press needs clicks. Their needs (more click and revenue) is diametrically opposed to our needs (a somewhat unbiased view of reality).

Just by saying "<outlandish accusation> has to be backed by something" is ridiculous. It can be backed by nothing. As long as you click through, they get what they want.

[macintux]

No, my point was merely that dismissing that accusation because it’s ridiculous doesn’t mean you can assume there is no merit to the point at all. I have no idea whether the system is as employee-hostile as the sources indicate.

[notyourday]

This reminds me of a SaaS product roll outs where customers are complaining, revenue is falling, sales people are complaining but the bosses point out at the great new metric they found which says "Everything is great as long as the day name ends with a 'Y'"

[tinfins]

I'll add some more info in a few hours.

[asciimo]

I'm surprised Amazon isn't behind this; I assumed this was their warehouse fulfillment algorithm applied to supermarket retail, for everyone to witness firsthand.

[Angostura]

So I'm a bit confused. Are you saying that there is no stock control issue and those photos are deliberately misleading?

[tinfins]

Not necessarily, I'm saying that even if there is, the article has no clue why.

[throwwwwaway9]

So shelves are stocked as they were, say last year, and the media in trying to give the company a bad name?

>>Maybe she should have reached out to Whole Foods corporate and asked for comments?

When ever you want the truth, just call their PR department.

[dmix]

Corporate could at least explain why this might be happening and what they are doing.

A PR department is still better in my books compared to a few disgruntled employees from a few high traffic stores after a major change in both store traffic and company processes.

All companies go through growing pains and scaling issues, and I hardly expect much insight on those issues from the teenage stock boy at a Whole Foods.

[pbhjpbhj]

The "teenage stock boy" isn't supposed to be providing insight, the thread was questioning the facts of whether the shelves are empty.

The stock boy probably has more insight to that than any of us, and anyone at corporate. Indeed I'd expect only their direct manager, if anyone, to have a better insight on what is on the actual shelves.

Corporate will tell you what should be there; stock check will tell you after the fact what was there, ...

[ekianjo]

> When ever you want the truth, just call their PR department.

PR has their own bias but if they tell lies they can be sued for hiding/misrepresenting the truth, because they represent the company's official stance. Unless the company is doing something wrong that they need to cover up, I can't think why a PR answer could not be close to a honest answer.

[Aloha]

So, what is the actual cause?

[IncRnd]

> Maybe she should have reached out to Whole Foods corporate and asked for comments?

From the article, "Whole Foods did not respond to several requests for comment on this story."

[gist]

I was thinking that the article didn't come close to describing the Whole Foods store where I am which is as well stocked as ever.

[notyourday]

Well, the article has photos. So unless it is your claim that the photos are fake or were taken during the time the store was closed to customers, I can tell you it looks worse than a 4th grade chain that sells barely passable products.

Wegmans/Fairway/Shoprite would destroy WF unless it quickly fixes this issue.