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On Consumerism: Zeroing out — In quest of D-3

By Arthur Vidro
By Arthur Vidro

If a shopkeeper notices all the inventory of a given item has sold, the natural impulse would be to order more. The technical term is: restock.

To a shopkeeper, the task is simple. Pick up a telephone and order more.

But in the world of chain stores, as little as possible is left to the discretion of the store manager.

So nowadays, an item is out of stock only when the store’s computers say it is out of stock.

Until then, the item is in stock. According to the computerized inventory system, it’s right there on the shelves. Even if it isn’t.

Though not a vitamin maven, I take some supplements. Such as vitamin D-3. I prefer tablets containing 1,000 international units of the vitamin. I don’t care for caplets or capsules. And I refuse to buy “softgels” because they are priced far higher than traditional tablets, they get gooey and stick together, and the gelatin melts in hot weather.

At the local Walmart, only gummy versions were available. Not for me. I want pills, not candy.

At the local CVS, only soft gelatin capsules were available. Not for me.

At Rite Aid, there was a space on the shelf for the product I wanted. But the space was empty.

No problem, I thought. Just wait and the store will restock the item.

So I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

After several weeks of fruitless waiting, I asked an employee for help. She studied the empty space on the shelf right above the store label for the product. She told me replacement bottles would be on the next delivery, and she told me the delivery date.

After the next delivery, I returned. Still an empty space where the product should be.

I inquired yet again. The clerk was surprised the item had not been restocked. She summoned a supervisor, who solved the problem without even visiting the shelf.

“Did you zero it out?” she asked the clerk.

The answer was no.

Even if a shelf is empty, the automated restocking system doesn’t always know this. So an employee has to go to the bar-coded store label beneath the shelf and perform some wizardry on a hand-held device. That wizardry is called, by the workers, “zeroing out” the item, or telling the computer system the quantity of items on that shelf is zero.

Only then will the automated restocking system know enough to replenish the supply.

So if a package of pills is discarded — perhaps it was damaged, or perhaps its expiration date had passed — or if it failed to ring up properly when purchased at the register, or if it was even shoplifted, the darned automated system isn’t gonna know.

The system mistakenly believes the unsold items are still there.

It needs to be told the magic words, “zero out.”

By the way, if the item is on the shelf, or if a browsing customer handles and then replaces the item onto the wrong shelf, the “zeroing out” process still works, even though the shelves do contain the product.

In other words, the system is blind. It knows only what its programmed code tells it.

A week later, I returned and bought the desired version of the vitamin.

If you look in vain for an item on the shelf, and there is always a gap where the item should be, no need to wait. Ask the store to zero it out.

Otherwise the gap will remain forever.

Income-tax refund

Somewhere in the nation are warehouses filled with millions of unopened tax returns filed for 2019.

Our return was mailed to the IRS in March, right before shutdowns spread across the land. Since then, IRS workers either stayed home or else were reassigned to work on generating the ballyhooed “stimulus checks.”

Only in July have they begun opening the old mail and processing the backlog of tax returns.

Our refund arrived this past week. Though smaller than a stimulus check, it was greatly welcomed. Best of all, it included $22.53 in interest. That rate of return is tons better than any bank will offer.

So if you’re still waiting for your paper tax return to be processed, be patient. It is happening.

And the longer it takes, the more interest will be added.

If you have consumerism questions, send them to Arthur Vidro in the care of this newspaper, which publishes his column every weekend.

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