During Tesla's Q4 earnings call, CEO Elon Musk shared his experience at Walmart when people rushed to the store to buy toilet paper.
According to the tech billionaire, what he witnessed there was comparable to the ongoing semiconductor shortage around the world.
How Elon Musk Arrived With Toilet and Chip Comparison
Elon Musk with his son
On Wednesday, Jan. 26, Elon told the investors how the commotion at Walmart took place amid the toilet paper fiasco. The tech boss witnessed that people were panicking while buying toilet paper.
From that experience, he compared the global chip shortage to this pandemic-related problem.
Since the health crisis started, the toilet paper shortage has taken place. Now, it returned after some retailers said that they experienced difficulties filling orders for this toiletry.
"I think there's some degree of the toilet paper problem as well where there was a toilet paper shortage during COVID. Obviously, it wasn't really certainly a tremendous enhanced need for ass-wiping. It's just people panicked and got every paper product you could possibly wipe your ass with basically," Elon said in a report by Business Insider.
The SpaceX CEO decided to go to the market by himself to prove that the toilet paper problem was legit.
At first, Elon was not sure if that was a real thing or not, that's why he took his kids to Walmart and H-E-B in Texas for verification. Based on his investigation, it turned out that the food supplies were all over the place, but not the toilet paper.
Related Article: Elon Musk Claims Other Manufacturers Hoard Chips and Blames Them for SoC Shortage
'Odd Choice' of Item to Panic About
After seeing the problem through his own yes, Musk still wondered why people panicked for such an item. He called it an "odd choice" of product to panic about in the store.
The Tesla founder also joked that if the world ends soon amid the pandemic, the humans will think that the toiler paper will be the least of their problems.
Speaking of the pandemic, Musk initially opposed the developing stage of the crisis in its early cycle. Around 2020, he posted that the coronavirus panic was "dumb" to think.
In April, in the same year during Tesla's earnings report, he called stay-at-home orders a "fascist" move because they "forcibly" imprisoned the people inside their houses. Musk believed that this bypassed the constitutional rights of the involved.
Despite his previous comments about the pandemic, the entrepreneur said that he and his kids were all vaccinated against the virus. However, he was still against the mask mandates across the country.
Recent Reports About Elon Musk
In another report, Musk said that the future for the AI robot could be bigger than Tesla in the future, per Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, scientists said that his Neuralink brain implant was alarming in terms of ethical standards.
Elsewhere, Tech Times reported that Musk's EV company managed to earn $2.3 billion during Q4 2021. He later called 2021 a breakthrough year for Tesla.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Joseph Henry
