Companies are pulling out all stops to get stuff from overseas. But almost everywhere they turn, they're confronted with delays.

Why it matters: The holdups have amounted to emptier shelves and pricier items, complicating the nation's economic recovery.

The big picture: The chaos is rippling out to other ports — the critical entry points for goods — and rails. It means there's little give in the global shipping system that's been walloped by the pandemic.

• The number of ships (stocked with clothing, shoes and more) lined up waiting to dock at Los Angeles and Long Beach — the country's busiest ports — has eased, shipping consultant Daniel Hackett wrote in an email.
• But "the lines are growing elsewhere (Oakland and Vancouver, for example)."

Case in point: Hasbro is sending goods to more ports to "expedite the delivery of our products," CFO Deb Thomas said Monday during a call with Wall Street analysts. The company still expects delays.

• Worth noting: Hasbro expects ocean freight costs to quadruple from last year. (Yes, toy-buyers will shoulder that cost.)

Meantime, railroad giants Union Pacific and BNSF this month temporarily paused pickups from West Coast ports to catch up on their own backlog — an inflection point for congestion.

Where it stands: Delayed ships last month had to wait an average of five days out at sea before unloading cargo at the Port of Los Angeles last month, a port spokesperson tells Axios.

• That's down from a bigger share of ships that waited eight days in March. Before the pandemic, ships rarely had to wait at all.

Employees will hold a walkout tomorrow in protest of widespread harassment allegations across video game maker Activision Blizzard, Axios' Megan Farokhmanesh reports.

Flashback: California filed a lawsuit last week over the "World of Warcraft" maker's allegedly sexist culture.

How it's playing out: Shares of Activision Blizzard dropped 7% today (alongside a slide in the broad stock market).

Go deeper.

The first batch of quarterly results from America's biggest tech companies is out. Here's what you need to know, via Axios' Hope King ...

Apple: Amid a continuing chip shortage and for what’s typically the slowest quarter for the company even pre-pandemic, Apple still managed to bring in $8.1 billion more in sales than estimated.

Alphabet: The company blew past sales expectations by close to $5.7 billion thanks in part to YouTube ads revenue, which nearly doubled. 

Microsoft: Cloud services, including Azure, continued to drive results — growing 30% from last year.

The bottom line: So far, Big Tech has more than trumped Wall Street’s expectations for blowout results.

• Facebook releases results tomorrow, and Amazon comes on Thursday.

☕Starbucks same-store sales jumped 10% from this time in 2019, with nearly two-thirds of its drink sales coming from cold beverages. (CNBC)

📦 UPS said it's seeing a continued surge in e-commerce orders, even as the economy starts to reopen. The stock closed down 7%. (Marketwatch)

📚Walmart says it will fully cover college tuition and textbook fees for employees attending certain schools. (Axios)

Higher seafood costs are pushing some restaurants to yank fish off the menu completely, Axios' Erin Doherty writes.

• Seafood prices rose about 11% in the 12 months through early July from the previous period, per Bloomberg.

What they're saying: Atlanta chef Josue Pena pulled scallops, Alaskan halibut and blue crab from his restaurant's offerings.

• "[T]he price we had to charge to be profitable was almost insulting," Pena told Bloomberg.

"[Martin] Shkreli has been held accountable and paid the price for lying and stealing from investors to enrich himself.  With today’s sale of this one-of-a-kind album, his payment of the forfeiture is now complete."