Colm O'Regan: The miracle of the supply chain - it's Beijing talking to Bweeng

“Supply chains?” It was once an inquiry in broken English to see if the shop had something to fix your bicycle. Now everyone’s talking about it. Now everyone has their favourite anecdote about something that they can’t get ‘because of the whole supply chain thing’. 

The story you bring out at the in-between bit of a wedding. You are standing in Ballyslaughter Castle, once the scene of a massacre, with a glass of prosecco in one hand and a scone and the ceremony booklet in the other. Around you, people are saying, ‘Weren’t they fierce lucky with the weather?’.

Through the 19th-century sash windows, you can see Fanta-hyped children gambolling on the lawn. But you don’t care. You are deep in conversation with the groom’s aunt-in-law about supply chain. 

She is telling you that The Shop told her ‘they can’t get them in because they’re stuck in the Suez Canal seemingly’ and you reply with a beaut about how the USB-charged electronic whisk went belly up and when you went to get a new one, the girl in PC World just threw up her hands and said ‘Chip Shortage’.

While all of these conversations are going on, now is the time to shine if you actually work in the supply chain. 

You can stand proud and, with authority, hold a room in the palm of your hand as you tell them what you know about lumber and manganese and the shortage of building sand. (Patiently explain to them that, no the Sahara’s sand is no good for building because it’s too rough and hasn’t been eroded by water). 

You can proudly announce that you are in logistics. You can tell people “I’m what’s between YOU and chaos.” “I’m the thin pink-docket line.”

There was a time when you struggled to explain what you do. You left it out of small talk, perhaps you just said you were in business. Or something to do with computers.

Now you can put supply chain centre stage. You will be irresistible. Business news has become Small Talk News. The LinkedIn profile has become Tinder profile.

I mean, I still don’t understand what it is you do. But I know it’s important. Because, to quote Marlo in the Wire: ‘The price of the brick going up’.

We had it too good for so long. Clicking on a deal for three euro and getting a piece of plastic on Ali Express. 

Did we even stop to consider the miracle of what we were doing? Pressing ‘Confirm’, having the Internet talk to our bank, get the go-ahead, tell the supplier in Chengdu we were legit, get some sort of reassurance from them they were legit, get the thing out of a warehouse the size of a parish, ship it here in a small padded envelope with the mysteries of its origin encoded on it in Mandarin but your little houseen proudly on the label. 

Seamless. Globalisation. Beijing talking to Bweeng.

It would have taken Marco Polo three voyages and a decade to earn the trust of the Great Khan in order for him to get a replacement child-safety lock for a cutlery drawer. Or a book light that didn’t work.

Now the seams are showing. It’s not the end of civilisations. Barbary pirates haven’t seized your beard-trimmer blades in the Sea of Azov. But perhaps we have seen just what a roiling, complex, just-in-time system lies beneath our convenient purchases.

Will it have an effect? Will we buy less stuff or buy it nearer so we don’t need the Suez canal unblocked. The habit’s hard to kick. But whatever you’re looking for, maybe don’t take for granted that it’ll arrive on time. Although I checked my local bicycle shop. And they do supply chains.