Supply chain woes and other inconveniences

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         It's Thanksgiving! It's a day to be grateful. That seems a bit cliché, but despite all the tumultuous happenings, life has been all right for me for the most part.

         Can't say the same for work, though. Between dealing with understaffing and supply chain issues, things are maddening. On one hand, it makes you appreciate the times when things are smooth operations. On the other, the fragility of our infrastructure is mind-boggling.

         Why spend trillions on wars when we could annoy the hell out of people for much less? But, that's topic for another day.

         As I was saying, supply chain issues have been throwing monkey wrenches into the work machine. It's awful when you are running out of supplies. You go for the contingency. Then, you go to the contingency's contingency, so on and so forth. At some point, you are stuck. Your only other hope is that new supplies will arrive in time (or other facilities can spare some).

         When the supplies do come these days. They may not all be useable. You see, the issues extend far beyond shipping. It would appear even the production and QC have gone awry.

         It's definitely not uncommon to see broken plates here and there. Even in that state, they are not usable. Not for manual testing. Not for machine handling. Sure, they may be cheap per plate, but cost is not the issue here.

         Sometimes, the quality of items are also questionable. In the above image, the Chrome component (clear) had gone into the sheep blood (SBA) side. The Chrome component is what giving the blue hue on the left side. This messes with interpretation of preliminary results.

         Of course, for a seasoned microbiologist, that's only a mild nuisance. For less experienced staff, it's alarming to see "blue colonies" on a SBA. Blue color is usually suggestive of potential bioterrorist organisms. Well, not that shade of blue anyhow.


         When will this madness end? Who knows? It either gets better or worse from here.

         Whatever. I'll stick to the moment and enjoy my time and meal.

         Happy Thanksgiving for those who celebrate it this day!

Posted with STEMGeeks



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9 comments
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Bang, I did it again... I just rehived your post!
Week 82 of my contest just started...you can now check the winners of the previous week!
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I feel your pain as well. It’s hard to keep working when you are constantly waiting for the supplies to work. I haven’t hard quality issues yet but I’ve been delayed up to 8 weeks on stuff that already had a six week estimated delivery. Waiting over 3 months for stuff is crazy.

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And the workload just keeps on piling up while we are waiting. Not to mention delayed patient results, which sometimes costed lives.

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Whatever. I'll stick to the moment and enjoy my time and meal.

That's the spirit! You can't control all these things,I know it can be really frustrating but the thing is you just have to do what is within your power,other things will definitely work out.

When the supplies do come these days. They may not all be useable. You see, the issues extend far beyond shipping

Very annoying, I can't relate totally but I have a small picture on my head how annoying it could be. Am glad you are still thankful and sometimes sharing this kind of information brings good tidings. Wish you all the best!

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Happy Thanksgiving for my gun and freedom loving friends :) and happy Hive pumping for the rest of the world :D

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Why spend trillions on wars when we could annoy the hell out of people for much less? But, that's topic for another day.

We spend trillions on wars so others may profit. One example is the Anthrax vaccine scare of sometime around 2001. I was stationed on a fast-attack submarine at the time. We were told that we could ask as many questions about it as we wanted, but we would get no answers. Also, if we refused to take it, we would receive an "other than honorable" discharge. Later, it was changed to just a general discharge.

I asked a couple of questions because I knew nothing about the vaccine. Of course, they had no answers. I spent the next three weeks working 16 hour shifts with 3 hours of cleanup after. I had no other questions for the remainder of my tour.

Anyway, I appreciate the article. It reminded me of a lot of questions raised in the Three Body Problem written by Liu Cixin. Have a great week.

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(Edited)

I think if we were to know the answers, we’d have a very different outlook and perhaps fuel our cynicism.

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