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At times like these, you can never have too much milk
By adamg on Tue, 01/11/2011 - 11:25pm
Graham watched in amazement as a guy wheeled up to the register at the Packard's Corner Shaw's tonight with 18 gallons of milk, 8 each of whole and 2%, one each of skim and 1%. Plus, of course, toilet paper. He adds:
The whole mess got loaded into a Zipcar and hauled away to presumably frantic destinations unknown. Me? i bought some hot sauce, beer, and cat food. Some people ...
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Comments
Maybe a fraternity house full of students?
After the Blizzard of '78, milk deliveries to my MIT coop house were suspended, and milk was hard to find in local stores.
A friend and I were dispatched with a toboggan to search for milk to buy. We ended up all the way at DeLuca's Market on Charles Street, where we bought about as much milk as you see in this photo, then dragged it back home to Bay State Road on the sled. 25 undergraduates drink a LOT of milk.
Yep
In fact, that just looks like one of the normal biweekly shopping runs that I used to make when my house job was to do the market run. There was one semester where we would go through nearly sixty gallons of milk a week for 30 people. We had a lot of big freshmen boys that year who were still growing.
Not a stock up run - a normal run. Delivery was much more expensive than having a house member go to the store.
I don't think college kids drink that much milk these days.
.
You think wrong then.
I visit my old MIT living group several times a year and can confirm that they still get pretty much the same food deliveries as we did back in the day, including a couple dozen gallons or so of milk every week.
Just seems wierd.
If you are going to have that much milk, why not have one of those automatic milk dispensers. Seems like a lot of fridge space.
Laziness?
Because someone would have to clean it and they wouldn't.
They probably do
However, if you live in an independent living group, where students run their own houses, chances are that a missed delivery will be a problem in a snow storm. In that case, you get enough supplies to fill the fridge until the delivery shows up. The MIT ILGs can have anywhere from 20 to 70 people living in them - that isn't a lot of milk for that many young adults.
Where I lived, the delivery places jacked the delivery fees so high that it made more sense to have a house member with a car run to the store twice a week as their regular house job, as well as a house member to do a weekly Haymarket run for fresh veggies, meat, and fish. The automatic milk dispensers simply were not economical if the supply place wanted to surcharge "small orders" about $75 per delivery. I did this for four semesters. Aside from the semester that featured an unusual number of still growing adolescents, I would still pick up 15-18 gallons of milk twice per week for 30 people.
"automatic milk dispenser" .. a cow?
Are you referring to a dairy cow in the dorm, or a really big version of one of those things that dispenses creamer into a coffee cup at the gas station?
A cow
No one of these things you would see in a dining hall:
You would have to be pretty organized and have some pretty good rules about being neat and clean if you wanted to do this sort of thing at most college dorms or houses.
Other Issues
1. you are stuck with whatever the delivery place wants to charge for the specialized containers
2. you need more than one if you have more than one grade of milk going at a time
3. you need a lot of people to make it economical
4. you need frequent deliveries or a way to store stock
5. each one of these is a refrigerator, with its own electricity demands
Dining halls make these things an efficient way to dispense milk. Small indy living groups have to do their own math on the excess costs. I called around and got quotes to try to eliminate that dairy run and couldn't make it work. Even for a large frat, the possibility that a biweekly or weekly delivery might not arrive would result in sending someone to the store in a zip car to stock up.
Oh I get that
Still though, two trips a week for 25 gallons of milk just doesn't seem right. And you mentioned meat and fish? You must have had some neat clean people to live with.
Cooperative, not Roomate Situation
Yes, even a group of 17-22 year olds can run and manage a house with appropriate structure and officers to take responsibility. Parents were typically pretty amazed at how clean the place was.
There were house jobs called "fridge" and "stove", where people spent 3-4 hours a week cleaning them to a spec sheet. Same for the bathrooms, common spaces, etc. We also had people to clean the pots and pans, and three others cleaning the kitchen two nights a week each. The house manager oversaw the cleaning jobs, the Steward ordered food, and oversaw the supply and kitchen work and maintained/enforced food storage systems. There were consequences for jobs not done - fines applied to house bill, expulsion for complete cop outs.
I'm kind of picky about my food and stuff
I hated that in college. Loved the dining hall though.
Could he be delivering to an
Could he be delivering to an old folks home??
I had th sme thought as the other posters
This could very well be someone buying for institutional use: a group home of some sort (frat, nursing home, halfway house), a cafeteria, a restaurant.
OTOH it could just be someone who is panicky. People seem to do that. Remember during the Aquapocalypse? People were buying cases and cases of bottled water. Well how much water straight from the tap do people really drink in a day or two? For most of us its not enough to justify cases of water. Similar thing here. Most households don't drink 18 gallons of milk over the course of the day or two that travel might be difficult
Aquapocalypse
If you recall, during Aquapocalypse, we were supposed to brush our teeth and wash our dishes with bottled water as well as drink it. I can assure you that a good-sized household (ours is 5), goes through a lot of water every day for these activities. We had a couple of gallons left over, which is not much. As for the dude in the picture with the milk, 8 gallons will last about a week and a half with 3 teenagers.
Milk Run
When I see photos like this I wonder what would happen if there were a real natural disaster or some other kind of calamity. Television news' incessant drum beating about the impending blizzard, electronic billboards warning all to beware (both on the Expressway and at different locations in Downtown Boston) and just the general hysteria that seems to proceed every snow storm of anything more than a few inches. Really, what would happen? Look back to this summer and the near hysteria around the water troubles. Lines of people waiting to get bottled water. How about boiling some at home? That turned out to be somewhat less than the possible catastrophe that it wasn't. Get a grip people it's winter in the Northeast USA!
me too
I often think about the same thing. If people get this "worked up" over a snow storm, what would happen in the event of a true emergency?? I worry because I believe I already know the answer. Scenarios like this would either bring the best out in people or the very worst. Unfortunately, I think people's most primitive instincts would win over, as in every man for himself. I pray we never have to find out.
Panic
I grew up in Arizona. When people thought disaster was about to strike they collared up the pit bulls and buried their guns in the desert (because the government was about to confiscate them).
Stocking up on milk and eggs when it is going to be a pain to get to the store for a few days doesn't seem like hysteria to me. It seems reasonable.
And you might be wondering, what disaster caused the folks in AZ to freak out? The election of Clinton. And my god, it happened twice.
A few days though?
Except for 1978, when is the last time anyone has had to wait more than 25 hours to go out and get some food or drink?
Pain
I said "a pain" not "impossible."
I hear ya but
I always found it easy to go out that next day after a storm. Supermarkets and stores are usually dead.
Of course getting your car out of the snow can be a pain.
In which case
Take the T to the store or walk.
Do you have kids?
Because going to the store or taking the T is not fun when you have to drag kids along. I stand by my original point. A bunch of people going to the grocery store does not equal a hysterical mob. It is just a bunch of people thinking ahead.
The Ice Storm...
I never let these storms bother me (for stocking up) until the ice storm knocked out power for days. Of course, that meant the fridge was out, and milk doesn't do that well.
I think the panic comes from the inability to go get it if you need it. Plenty of times I have to run to the convenience store to get milk for cereal (or coffee) because I forgot I was out. It's that fear that I'll need/want it and not have it.
That said, I was out of milk, which is why I bought some Monday. It's going well with the cookies I just made.
Of course, that meant the
Why not just leave it outside, or bury it in snow? It'll freeze, but at least it'll keep.
stocking up
Agreed. The man in the photo with the milk and paper products merely seemed like he was stocking up and certainly didn't appear hysterical while casually pushing his shopping carriage down the aisle.
re: burying guns in the desert... that's a joke, right?
Arizona
Anon, I know it sounds like I am joking when I say people buried their guns in the desert. But I kid you not, I know people who actually did this. They were on the extreme fringe but people really did freak out about Clinton (and Hillary). And don't even get me started about Jesse Jackson's campaign.
Oh Arizona.
Maybe they drink a lot of coffee?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJXnI2O0buk
cafe
I bet he works at a cafe somewhere and they sent him out to stock up.
could be
When I used to work at a restaurant I was sometimes dispatched to the local grocery store to buy dozens of heads of lettuce, tomatoes and other salad ingredients (when the produce delivery was inadequate). Granted there was no weather issue those times, but I did get some funny looks, including a query by a teenaged cashier: "hey man, what kinda diet is that you're on"
Didn't see panic in Dorchester
I usually shop on Wednesday but I went yesterday to make it easier. Plenty of eggs, milk & bread available at that point in the afternoon.
I needed a couple of items to make a nice lentil, kale & chorizo stew last night. I figure that will be a lot more welcoming after cleaning this mess up than French toast.
The way I see it if you're really ready for a disaster you shouldn't need to go to the supermarket. I won't bother with listing stuff but suffice it to say that you should have everything in your house that would allow you to go camping at any point.
Lentils, when snowed in?
Lentils, when snowed in? Ewwww....!
Hit the Cambridgeport Trader
Hit the Cambridgeport Trader Joe's at 6-something last night. It was time to stock up this week (would have been tonight, but for the storm).
Many of our usual purchases were either in short supply or completely sold out (like lactose-free milk??). The place was busier than I've ever seen it, even right before a holiday; never had as much trouble before finding a space in the parking lot (my wife has limited mobility, so it needed to be near the entrance).
One reason people stock up before a storm is that the stores do run out of things; deliveries can be spotty during and after a storm.
I recall the April Fool's blizzard, when it took an hour to dig my way to the curb, then to slog several blocks IN Mass Ave (no sidewalks cleared) to the nearest CVS to improvise some provisions for us. Since then, I don't wait, but stock up ahead of time.