This article caught my eye today...$6 billion industry ? Go P&G stock !!!
One of the reasons Buffett likes Gillette (now a part of P&G) is because every day a billion guys need to shave something. And now P&G is taking the same approach to toilet paper.
people bought out stores"
Remember that craziness?
*snort* Every time the longshoremen start muttering about a strike, and every time the hurricane gets within 48 hours, the 50-pound rice bags and pallets of toilet paper start flying out of the stores. It's amazing how much toilet paper can be hidden on an island.
My first submarine used to regularly patrol 90 days without restocking. The crew kinda expects that there'll be adequate toilet paper aboard but no one really wants to have to store a half-dozen pallets of the rolls in their stowage lockers. (Yet everyone was willing to store the cans of cookies. Go figure.) The Weapons Officer, who for some reason owned toilet paper, would have a difficult time finding a place for it.
Then one day, as the crane dropped the usual loadout of toilet paper pallets on the pier, he had a flash of inspiration. He mentioned to another officer in front of a crowd that he felt lucky they'd been able to get this much toilet paper since it would only last for 70 days and there wasn't any more in the supply system. They agreed that sure was a problem and wandered off, leaving the pallets unguarded on the pier while the rumor spread.
Of course by the next morning the pallets were empty. I think every crewmember had at least one personal roll tucked away in their seabag. We got underway and the Weps had a smile on his face for weeks. Around day 50, once his lockers were empty, he explained his deception and offered toilet-paper amnesty if they'd return it to his locker.
The next morning when he got off watch, he headed to his stateroom and pulled back his rack curtain to climb in for some hard-earned sleep. That's when he discovered that the crew had stuffed at least half of the remaining rolls into his rack-- six feet long, two feet high, 28" deep-- and duct-taped them together so that they wouldn't fall out.
For months after that patrol, every new crewmember looking for toilet paper was told to go ask the Weps...