It seems like during periods of uncertainty, the main thing that many Americans worry about is running out of toilet paper. We saw this during the pandemic when store shelves were quickly stripped bare of the product. I recall seeing my neighbors unloading many multipacks of toilet paper from their car and carting them into their house.
We now see the same thing happening because of fears that the strike by dockworkers at eastern US and Gulf ports would lead to shortages. Whereas the pandemic fear had at least some basis in reality because everything was uncertain and we did not know how long the supply chain disruptions would last, this latest hoarding makes no sense since almost all the toilet paper sold in the US is made within the country or in Canada and thus is not affected by the dock strike.
Toilet paper shortages in stores across America are giving folks nightmarish reminders of the pandemic era. But the lack of toilet paper isn’t a direct result of a major port strike Tuesday. It’s because of panic buying.
Reports of shortages filled social media Tuesday, showing empty shelves where toilet paper and, to a lesser extent, paper towels were supposed to be.
“They cleaned out the toilet paper at my local Walmart in Virginia. Toilet paper hoarding 2.0!,” wrote one person in a post on X, along with a photo of empty shelves.
“Shelves at Costco & Target running low or out of paper towels in Monmouth County NJ,” posted another X user. “Seeing people buying TP & water too in reax to port strike. Costco employee told me they were sold out of TP/paper towels this am.”
But the strike at ports from Maine to Texas will have absolutely zero impact on the supply of these products.
The overwhelming majority — more than 90% by some estimates — of US toilet paper consumption comes from domestic factories. Most of the rest comes from Canada and Mexico, which means it most likely arrives by rail or truck, not ship.
Anyway, there has been a 9o-day pause in the strike due to promising developments in labor negotiations. If the talks fail to reach fruition, we can expect another round of panic buying of toilet paper in January.
If Sigmund Freud were alive today, I am pretty sure that he would have had some theories about our fear of running out of toilet paper.
What? There’s nothing irrational about this at all. In this screwed up economy, this global burning, lying murdercops, this inability to pay rent food or medical care, there is one certain thing.
Everybody poops.
Most of the shit going down, in particular the religious reich complicit with fascist techbros in turning this country into a shithole country, is beyond the control of the average US citizen.
Cottonelle is soft. Charmin is reassuring. Reel is highly absorbent. This particular ‘shit going down’ can be under control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whTTyVHFABw
This video went viral in NL during the “toilet paper shortage” in the pandemic, there’s not much translation needed, it’s basically a truck driver in a warehouse *very* full of toilet paper laughing at everyone panicking.
The shortage was caused by people panic-buying, so that supermarkets ran out of their usual supply… which then caused people to panic-buy again!
Of course, there’s a snowball effect once the hoarding begins. As I was reading this, my thought was “Uh-oh… I think we were getting low on toilet paper now anyway… maybe I should grab some before the hoarders take it all.”
I agree with @1; average people who have no confidence that their needs will be met when a crisis arrives (snowstorm, pandemic, hurricane, labor strike, etc.) will rush to make sure they have what they will need for several days or even weeks of predicted unavailability. Additionally, a lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck, so they might not keep a store of must-haves (e.g. a “toilet paper closet”). In the face of doing without for awhile, they feel forced to run out and buy what they can before someone else clears out the shelves. They might not be able to pay the rent that month, but they will have toilet paper.
Finally, some of this might arise out of the prepper mentality, and the government advising everyone to have at least 3 days’ supply of basic needs. Some people simply can’t afford to order a year’s worth of dehydrated meals or a crate of toilet paper on hand at all times, but the constant drumbeat to STOCK UP NOW becomes too loud to ignore in a crisis situation.
It’s only irrational if you have all the facts on hand, minus the fact where not everyone has all the facts on hand.
If you don’t know how the supply chains in question work, it’s rational. If you do know how the supply chains work, but also know that most people don’t, it’s rational. It’s only irrational from the perspective that you know there’s no actual reason to panic-buy but don’t know that other people are going to panic-buy anyway.
Fortunately, I won’t need toilet paper for awhile, so it’s not an issue for me personally.
We were on a field trip in a remote part of Shark Bay with a pack of undergraduates. We’d taken all the supplies we thought we’d need, and then some. However, half way through the stay our stock of toilet paper was looking rather depleted. Panic!
“I don’t know what the problem is” said our (Vietnamese-born) technician. “There’s lots of water and everyone has a left hand. My mummy taught me what to do when I was three years old.”
The word went out “ease up on paper usage or face a lecture from Hai”. Toilet paper usage declined markedly.
There are alternatives.
My mother has never forgotten how, in 1973, Johnny Carson made a joke about a toilet paper shortage that caused panic buying of toilet paper at a time when her household was short on the stuff. We will never be short on toilet paper again, for as long as she lives. There are two Costco packages in the other room, not counting the opened package filling up a shelf in the bathroom closet.
Anecdote: when I was a tot becoming a lad before emigrating to Oz, the toilet paper in our flat was Grandpa tearing off sheets of newspaper and pinning them to a nail on the wall.
As in, actual newspaper.
(Perceived needs vs real needs are intersecting sets)
@7: Johnny Carson is the reason for the term “toilet paper closet”.
@ Mano; you live in a nation where roughly half the people plan to vote for a malicious fraud because they imagine he’s a strongman and the next coming of their lord and savior…and you wonder why they do irrational things like panic-buy a product made in the USA and shipped by truck in the face of a port shutdown? They think emotionally and reactively.
@everyone else: hands? Really? Ew. Not just for the person, but for any caregivers. Nobody wants to touch someone else’s leavings.
Katydid,
Smearing oneself “clean” using paper is seen as rather icky in some of those other cultures to which you refer. So, feeling is mutual.
(It’s washing under running water, basically)
During the pandemic, the run on toilet paper had to do with toilet paper being bulky, consequently taking up a lot of shelf space. In depicting shortages caused by supply chain disruptions during the pandemic, the vast expanse of empty shelves of toilet paper were much more compelling than, say, the small amount of empty shelf space of canned tuna. So TV cameras focused on the lack of toilet paper. And the hoarding of toilet paper began.
Heidi, another (I reckon more significant factor) had to do with the lockdowns; people usually go to work or out or out and about, and so for a large part of the day it’s not their household toilet paper that is used.
So, suddenly (as these things go) there was (ahem) a shitload more household product demand and the concomitant drop in commercial demand.
Toilet paper for commercial use comes in bulk and without marketing, unlike the household version, and has entirely different distribution networks, and so there was a lag before the consequent retooling and rejigging required to adjust for the changed demand circumstances.
(Obs, the madness of crowds and FOMO played a bigger part, but still. Special circumstances there)