Still a pretty dumb approach by the NASA guys. Didn’t it occur to them to ask a woman - any woman - before coming up with the initial estimate? Like “hey Sally, how many tampons do you normally need during your period? OK we’ll triple that for a safety margin.” There. Done.
They did ask her. Sure, they could have asked how many instead, but it probably came in a 100 count well within any significant mass margins, so they just asked if 100 would be enough.
Procurement for business/government/military (including and especially NASA), is very different than what you would see on a shelf at your local drug store.
The drug store can’t buy a single box of tampons. They have to get an entire case of boxes of tampons. If each box is say, 20 tampons, and there’s more than 5 of those per case, then they’re buying at least 100 tampons so they can get a single box of them.
There’s a lot of alternatives they could have looked into, like neighboring government institutions which may already stock them, asking them to supply a smaller quantity than they would have needed to order, or ordering outside of their typical channels and sending the intern down the road to buy a box from the nearest pharmacy… Those things wouldn’t really get accounted for in their budgeting though… So they would prefer to order through their normal distribution.
It’s a funny comment to make to Ride, “is 100 enough?” And I’m sure everyone had a good chuckle.
Regardless they probably didn’t see another good option for ordering other than to just buy a case of them and figure out the rest later.
Don’t agencies have some kind of de minimis threshold for just running out to the store and buying basic stuff? I thought that’s why the DOGE freeze of government credit cards a few months ago was causing labs to cancel experiments and employees paying out of pocket to feed horses and working dogs.
So the military does have a strict procurement process for rocket fuel, but they generally refuel their civilian vehicles (vans and such) with a government credit card at normal gas stations.
They definitely come in 100 counts. This part isn’t speculation. I have no Idea what NASA procurement looks like though, and I don’t have anyone to ask.
Still a pretty dumb approach by the NASA guys. Didn’t it occur to them to ask a woman - any woman - before coming up with the initial estimate? Like “hey Sally, how many tampons do you normally need during your period? OK we’ll triple that for a safety margin.” There. Done.
They did ask her. Sure, they could have asked how many instead, but it probably came in a 100 count well within any significant mass margins, so they just asked if 100 would be enough.
A 100-count box seems like an absurdly large unit size. Are you doing the very thing that the anecdote is intended to highlight?
Procurement for business/government/military (including and especially NASA), is very different than what you would see on a shelf at your local drug store.
The drug store can’t buy a single box of tampons. They have to get an entire case of boxes of tampons. If each box is say, 20 tampons, and there’s more than 5 of those per case, then they’re buying at least 100 tampons so they can get a single box of them.
There’s a lot of alternatives they could have looked into, like neighboring government institutions which may already stock them, asking them to supply a smaller quantity than they would have needed to order, or ordering outside of their typical channels and sending the intern down the road to buy a box from the nearest pharmacy… Those things wouldn’t really get accounted for in their budgeting though… So they would prefer to order through their normal distribution.
It’s a funny comment to make to Ride, “is 100 enough?” And I’m sure everyone had a good chuckle.
Regardless they probably didn’t see another good option for ordering other than to just buy a case of them and figure out the rest later.
Don’t agencies have some kind of de minimis threshold for just running out to the store and buying basic stuff? I thought that’s why the DOGE freeze of government credit cards a few months ago was causing labs to cancel experiments and employees paying out of pocket to feed horses and working dogs.
So the military does have a strict procurement process for rocket fuel, but they generally refuel their civilian vehicles (vans and such) with a government credit card at normal gas stations.
At least that’s how I understand it.
They definitely come in 100 counts. This part isn’t speculation. I have no Idea what NASA procurement looks like though, and I don’t have anyone to ask.
It’s either super complicated and expensive tampons with certification or some employee being send to the nearest supermarket