The Point of No Return

My son and I are scheduled to go clothes shopping. When I was a kid, such a plan usually resulted in my mom and me browsing the husky section of the local department store. For my son and me, the shopping excursion will likely take place online. Because of that, some of the stuff won’t fit or won’t be what he was expecting. In our house that means the item goes on a shelf somewhere to be ignored in perpetuity and the box gets tossed into the garage where, we hope, at some point, it will decompose. For most people, this scenario means returning the item. “All of that unwanted stuff piles up. Some of it will be diverted into a global shadow industry of bulk resellers, some of it will be stripped for valuable parts, and some of it will go directly into an incinerator or a landfill.” Amanda Mull in The Atlantic: The Nasty Logistics of Returning Your Too-Small Pants. (It’s almost as depressing as the nasty logistics of trying to squeeze into them…)

+ “One-hour errands are now multi-hour odysseys. Next-day deliveries are becoming day-after-next deliveries. That car part you need? It’ll take an extra week, sorry. The book you were looking for? Come back in November. The baby crib you bought? Make it December. Eyeing a new home-improvement job that requires several construction workers? Haha, pray for 2022.” Derek Thompson in The Atlantic: America Is Running Out of Everything.

+ “Foreman calculates 1,800 Tonka trucks fit on each 40-foot container. So at $20,000 per container, that’s costing him $11 each. That’s up from an average of $1.75 each in a typical year.” Toymakers race to get products on shelves amid supply clogs. (Because of shipping container price hikes, expect smaller toys to be the most available this holiday season.)