Cyber-attack leaves many Massachusetts grocery stores with empty shelves
Posted by Lethargic-Legumes@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 40 comments
Posted by Lethargic-Legumes@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 40 comments
Lethargic-Legumes@reddit (OP)
I'm really surprised this isn't bigger news. One of the top 3 grocery chains in Massachusetts has been targeted and the store I shop at every week has absolutely no produce or meat. It wasn't even this barren in the early days of the pandemic. I overheard some employees telling another customer that there was nothing at their warehouse. While there are still other stores to shop at and it only seems to be affecting meat and produce at the moment, it's still a worrying sign that the things we take for granted every day can be taken away by a few keystrokes from anywhere in the world.
4BigData@reddit
Most people have bigger issues than whether your own grocery shopping got disrupted
squeezemachine@reddit
Agree, maybe they do not want it known that the attack is by the Ministry of the Future.
khoawala@reddit
That's because no one here shop at these chains. We all go to Market Basket so nobody here even notice.
DinosaurForTheWin@reddit
They work for poverty wages, in mass none has ever cared about them, you think they're going to now?
Mercuryshottoo@reddit
Over a week? Did the cyber attack take out the phones and trucks?
Literally call the distributor and say yo this is [giant grocery store], I need a truckload of vegetables and fruits And they say should we just invoice you, and you say yeah that'll be great.. And then the truck comes the next day. That is how society functioned forever.
AlwaysPissedOff59@reddit
JIT distribution changed the world you wrote about. The distributor won't have any time-sensitive product like produce and meat (which is what OP said is mostly lacking) just sitting on shelves/in a coolers waiting for someone to buy it. Product comes in in the morning and is out at the latest by the next morning. Everything is already allocated and scheduled before it even arrives.
Mercuryshottoo@reddit
I run a lot of events, including festival food booths. I pick up the phone and call my fruit and vegetable distributor, and they deliver the items, and then invoice me. Surely the store manager can figure out some stopgaps after an entire week. It might not be the idealized and perfected order they would normally have, but the article is saying there is "no produce," and they most certainly could have trucked everything in some potatoes, apples, etc. by now.
NeatWatercress4192@reddit
This is not a festival event! Do you really think the logistics of a festival event are the same as the logistics of a massive food supply network? This is a typical, "I know more than you while not knowing shit", know-it-all Reddit moment. Stop it.
I had to study supply chains in university and they are COMPLEX. It's not as easy as picking up the phone and demanding a delivery with an invoice or whatever miniature, point A to point B supply network you use for your shitty events and festivals.
Mercuryshottoo@reddit
No of course they're not the same, but they could have done *something* related to getting food in the stores if they put the effort in. They could, in my example, set up a festival-style 'stall' situation in their stores. The article is saying no produce for a week, and I'm saying it's absurd to just throw up their hands and say 'welp our hands are tied' when we're talking about perhaps one of the most essential businesses - getting food to people. If they were serious about resolving it, there would be *some* produce in the stores right now.
RedStrugatsky@reddit
I think you're operating off the assumption that the businesses' purpose is to provide food for people, when it's actually to make money for the executives and the shareholders. That's a big issue with our society: all of this shit is motivated by making as much profit as possible at the expense of us, the common people.
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
Exactly. Service and delivery are just expensive impediments to these thieving sociopaths.
RedStrugatsky@reddit
Yep, anyone who has worked at a corporate chain grocery store has seen their manager toss perfectly good food into the trash and no one is allowed to touch it. So fucking wasteful
AlwaysPissedOff59@reddit
If they're still out of produce, it could be contractual (exclusive contracts with suppliers), it could be timing (autumn being more difficult to source produce in Massachusetts due to need to truck it from, especially, California, and for citrus, Florida). or a combination of both. There's definitely higher demand for CA produce in the Northeast in November than during the summer. It could also be budgetary if the stores are on a calendar fiscal year (no funds available) or even internal IT ("don't worry, we'll be back up in no time!" and "no time" takes longer than expected). I'm sure that if the stores are out for more than a couple of days store management has done everything they can to rectify the situation.
Mercuryshottoo@reddit
Your reply feels like a list of excuses combined with a lack of problem-solving skills.
Hard to source produce in autumn in mass - no, the producers are counting on their food being distributed in MA as quickly as possible, the food has already been produced and harvested, and is likely spoiling in crates at the distributor.
Exclusive contracts with suppliers - Uh, call those specific suppliers
Budgetary - the budget was already set - Again, 'invoice us' - like their regular supplier is gonna be like um, Hannaford who?
Internal IT - after a week you've got to see the situation for what it is, not what IT hopes it could be
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
You assume the store mangers have that authority. They don't. Neither does the regional manger.
Not even the directors, and CxO level parasites will never stoop to such work.
As for the shear logistics complexity, you really have no clue. Every single aspect is fragmented, compartmentalized and siloed.
Not to mention the organizational structure of any corporation makes it impossible to react to emergencies and actively punishes innovation.
AlwaysPissedOff59@reddit
Never worked in logistics, have you?
Longjumping-Path3811@reddit
Depends on if these managers are real managers or just people pushers.
A real business owner would handle it but these are corps with no business people anywhere at all.
Parking-Astronomer-9@reddit
My friend does supply chain management for a food distributor. This is literally his whole job. He has told me before grocery stores are a day and a half away of being screwed 24/7.
AlwaysPissedOff59@reddit
Until five years ago, I worked for a logistics software company. Most people have no idea how fragile our supply chains really are.
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
I've worked with many global corps and keep trying to tell people this and how climate change is really going to screw us far, far worse than they think.
They have NO clue. From the CxOs down to the suckers, er, customers. No clue at all.
Taqueria_Style@reddit
Good old just in time to be to late inventory. Better hope it don't rain. Anywhere. Ever.
lavapig_love@reddit
I don't want to pile on, but now that most phone systems are digital cell towers, yes, a cyber attack can take out the phones.
FoundandSearching@reddit
Remember what Israel did in Lebanon with pagers.
yousorename@reddit
Sadly this is not how it works. The distributors don’t have enough people or bandwidth to process things like that anymore. The system only works because of the systems that they have in place to manage all of it. One store here and there calling to talk to a buyer is possible but that’s about it. There isn’t a viable “pick up the phone and call them” option at this scale
Source- I’ve worked in the grocery industry for 20 years and spent the last 5 working directly with distributors
Kitosaki@reddit
This is some idiocracy level shit. “The computer did that mass layoff thing and now we have no brawndo!”
Valeriejoyow@reddit
My hubby works for a food distributor for a number of grocery chains and they were hacked a few weeks ago. I wonder who would want to do that.
Taqueria_Style@reddit
Tralalalaloopdeeeewhyaregrocerypricesstillsohighitsclearlynotmyimmigrationamdeconomicpolicieeees
CaptinACAB@reddit
It’s so frustrating when the store is out of something constantly and you try to talk to the manager who does ordering and they tell you it just all managed by an algorithm.
Valeriejoyow@reddit
Part of what my hubby does is forecasting. For instance if there is a sale they order extra of that item. There is actually a person following trends behind the ordering. This hack has made their job very hard.
g00fyg00ber741@reddit
A lot of times it is, or even if I submit a manual order for something there’s no guarantee they will send it, or when they’ll send it. And some things don’t even have that option.
digdog303@reddit
yep 2nding goober's comment. i am involved with ordering at one of the ahold delhaize chains. we'll order extra ahead of a big sale and receive it a month late, or never, or extra of items we didn't want.
nearly every time i'm checking on a hole a customer shows me, we ordered and didn't get it.
things aren't "just in time" any more
OKMedic93@reddit
delhaize has bad luck
OGSyedIsEverywhere@reddit
The two chains hit by the attack, Stop and Shop and Hannaford, have their own employee subreddits that have some interesting comments about their grievances. Apparently, the outage is also hitting payroll.
/r/stopandshop
/r/hannaford
FoundandSearching@reddit
I have a Hannaford in my village, but I am in NYS. There are one or two Stop & Shops in a town over.
Thank you for the links.
Meowweredoomed@reddit
It takes a human to err, but it takes a computer to really fuck shit up.
SpongederpSquarefap@reddit
There's a saying in my industry
To err is human
To fuck up en masse is DevOps
s0ngsforthedeaf@reddit
Impressive. Let's see Paul Allen's cyberattack.
StatementBot@reddit
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Lethargic-Legumes:
Submission Statement: A cyber attack has left many grocery stores in Massachusetts with empty shelves and limited supplies for over a week with no resolution in site. Some grocery managers have told customers that the cybersecurity issue had impacted truck shipments and the stores were not receiving scheduled deliveries. In addition to empty shelves, the in-store pharmacies have also been impacted by the ceased deliveries. While no organization or cyber-criminal group has claimed responsibility yet, it is a sign of our vulnerable infrastructure and the fragile nature of our supply chain.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1gvhikl/cyberattack_leaves_many_massachusetts_grocery/ly1vfvq/
Lethargic-Legumes@reddit (OP)
Submission Statement: A cyber attack has left many grocery stores in Massachusetts with empty shelves and limited supplies for over a week with no resolution in site. While no organization or cyber-criminal group has claimed responsibility yet, it is a sign of our vulnerable infrastructure and the fragile nature of our supply chain.