|
It's almost as if business owners have an incentive to push their employees' wages down as much as possible... it surely must be due to regulations or socialism and surely not an inevitable consequence of a sadistic and unstable economic system that incentives sociopathic behaviour.Pembroke Fuse posted:David Mitchell agrees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9PSg0sQyfs Quite lIterally the inspiration for my little rant.
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 22:30
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 04:39 |
|
|
Xarn posted:Wait, in USA the cashiers dont have chairs? What is wrong with you people? It's not just that a cashier is standing all day; All the old people who shouldn't be working at all are working as cashiers since the recession so add that to your image of hell manifest.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 03:03
|
|
|
Xarn posted:Wait, in USA the cashiers dont have chairs? What is wrong with you people? When I did retail/grocery you were on your feet 8, 9 , 10 hours a day and the motto was literally “if you have time to lean you had time to clean” You learned real quick to use your meager wage to invest in really good shoe insoles as when I did retail I had to wear dress shoes. At least with grocery I could wear sneakers.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 03:16
|
|
|
greazeball posted:25-50% more expensive is competitive for you? Not to pick on Sydin too much, but look at how much in this post is focused on "quality" and "organic." Whole Foods' entire business model is based around using higher prices to convince people that what they sell is better, even though there's strong evidence to suggest that there are probably few (if any) benefits to things that are labeled organic. I'd also point to how much outrage there was over a few studies showing that organic food probably doesn't have health benefits. If you're deep into that kool-aid, it doesn't surprise me that slightly higher prices would seem competitive because you're only comparing to similarly overpriced items and not to actually equivalent items.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 03:20
|
|
|
Paradoxish posted:Not to pick on Sydin too much, but look at how much in this post is focused on "quality" and "organic." Whole Foods' entire business model is based around using higher prices to convince people that what they sell is better, even though there's strong evidence to suggest that there are probably few (if any) benefits to things that are labeled organic. I'd also point to how much outrage there was over a few studies showing that organic food probably doesn't have health benefits. It's a language treadmill, people want the good vegetables, everyone knows what they mean by the good vegetables but bad stores keep stealing away every single term. Like, people wanna eat a red good tomato, not one of those gross white mealy ones you get on a mcdonalds hamburger. If you say "I want to buy a good tomato" walmart will say "ours are good", if you say "no like from a farm stand, can I buy that?" there will be studies showing that if you take mcdonalds tomatoes and put them in farm stands it changes nothing chemically and big stores will run conveyor belts through farm stands to satisfy that they are "from farm stands", if you said "no I want the good red kind" they'd breed the bad tomatoes to have redder RGB but still taste like ketchup water. Like ten years ago organic was the label you had to look for to get the good tomato, it never meant anything specific but was the label on the good tomatoes, then it got stolen like every other label to meaningless, so now everyone says "local" and we are now in the process of the lame thing of the walmarts and mcdonalds doing studies showing that the number of miles from your house a tomato is have no chemical effect on the molecular structure and in a few years there will be some other meaningless label that is the current secret code for "I want a good tomato" that will also eventually be applied to gross tomatoes and be replaced with an even newer new label that just means "good tomato"
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 03:30
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:It's a language treadmill, people want the good vegetables, everyone knows what they mean by the good vegetables but bad stores keep stealing away every single term. Like, people wanna eat a red good tomato, not one of those gross white mealy ones you get on a mcdonalds hamburger. The code word for a good tomato is August, and if it's not August, the code word is canned.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 03:57
|
|
|
I'd just like to be able to pick out a tomato with a good flavour. The last few years, every one that I get doesn't have much going for it. I don't have that problem with onions or peppers or much else, with one exception: I can't pick out or prepare a good fresh mango to save my life.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 04:01
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:"good tomato" The only solution is to grow your own.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 04:08
|
|
|
Giant Metal Robot posted:The code word for a good tomato is August, and if it's not August, the code word is canned. And if “August tomato” became a thing consumers were seaking out would get as gamed by low quality sellers as much as any of the ten other proxy words that mean “the good tomatoes” has been. And the same studies would go out muddying the waters that that property was not the property that mattered.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 04:09
|
|
|
I'm a cashier at a major retail store in the U.S. If I don't smile and greet every single person with the most fake cheerful attitude I can muster, and if I dare not treat them like goddamn royalty the entire time, inevitably someone will go off on me like I drop kicked their puppy. I get people going to my supervisor about the most benign things, complaining and pointing at me, and the managers most always side with the customer, because "I wasn't engaging enough."
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 04:43
|
|
|
I’m fine with an Independence Day style alien invasion because of this sort of thing.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 05:36
|
|
|
We were told not to be on our phones on the sales floor today. We use our phones to communicate since we're a 10 man team and we have two walkies. We explained this to our store manager but he said that customers were complaining we were using our phones instead of working... Anyways the punchline is America.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 05:50
|
|
|
SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Anyways the punchline is America. Many countries are different, but it's also not just America. It's wage slavery and desperate attempts to ring pennies out of a dying economic system, but it's not just America.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 05:59
|
|
|
There's not really a bad tomato conspiracy though, tomatoes have a lot going against them being sold in their prime at just about any grocery store. I've shopped everywhere from whole foods to the local spanish marts, and a lot of good tasting produce comes down to season more than anything. Anyways, canned is usually spectacular when it come to tomatoes, and that just comes down to the fact that it can be picked ripe and instantly canned. So for cooking things canned is the way to go. For burgers? Grow your own, really. It's going to come down to finding the freshest, and you'll find the quality to vary even at the same expensive store from week to week. That's just how vegetables are. The fact that pretty doesn't always mean tasty also doesn't really help. It's like melons, you can slap em and eyeball them all you want, but you won't know how good they are till you cut em open and eat them.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 06:05
|
|
|
Farm share at a CSA. Best goddamn produce you'll ever eat. And you'll have to find a way to eat it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 06:44
|
|
|
Killer-of-Lawyers posted:There's not really a bad tomato conspiracy though There really is though. Businesses exist to make money and vegitables can be grown to have features that benefit the retailer over the customer. make them grow faster by having less dense(flavored) flesh, make them ship easier by making them tougher and more fibrous, etc. Those are the most profitable thing to sell so stores like walmart want to sell that and things like mcdonalds is going to pick that. Consumers don't want that, they want the good tasting ones with good texture. People are willing to pay extra for that, but there is an ongoing shell game where it's hard for a consumer to know if they are buying a good one, so a retailer wants to continuously prank them of selling them the cheap kind with a high price to double profit. Consumers keep finding more and more obscure labels on what they need to buy to get the good ones and that label repeatedly falls to being diluted by companies co-opting it. Like the guy above saying "farm share", that is the right answer, the second that is known to be the right answer it will get used in marketing and we will hit the same cycle of it losing it's meaning as that is again a label that isn't technically the thing that is what makes the tomato/strawberry/peach/whatever good.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 12:45
|
|
|
Oocc have you tried eating in season produce
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 13:04
|
|
|
are you seriously arguing that companies make more profit by selling product which you assert in your own argument is unpopular and tastes bad
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 13:05
|
|
|
The entire game of late stage capitalism is to phase out remotely quality product at anything but the highest price point and sell everyone nothing but cheap garbage imitations of what they like.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 13:06
|
|
|
Ghost Leviathan posted:The entire game of late stage capitalism is to phase out remotely quality product at anything but the highest price point and sell everyone nothing but cheap garbage imitations of what they like. Yes yes I'm sure you believe both that and that there's anything "late stage" about capitalism. But it's got nothing to do with most food.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 13:12
|
|
|
luxury handset posted:are you seriously arguing that companies make more profit by selling product which you assert in your own argument is unpopular and tastes bad A large part of capitalism is selling you bad things, thinly disguised as good things. See also, subprime mortgages.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 13:13
|
|
|
Pembroke Fuse posted:A large part of capitalism is selling you bad things, thinly disguised as good things. See also, subprime mortgages. yes, but this is not a response to the question i asked even if you're a complete shill you should see problems with the idea "we make more money by selling a product nobody likes" "god, this place is slammed. it's no wonder people stopped coming here"
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 13:14
|
|
|
luxury handset posted:are you seriously arguing that companies make more profit by selling product which you assert in your own argument is unpopular and tastes bad It's more that "taste" might not be the thing companies are optimizing for, but yield, good looks (very important to American grocery stores) and storage life. Lambert fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Apr 12, 2019 |
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 13:18
|
|
|
luxury handset posted:are you seriously arguing that companies make more profit by selling product which you assert in your own argument is unpopular and tastes bad And to make that product facially indistinguishable at point of purchase. That parts important. luxury handset posted:"god, this place is slammed. it's no wonder people stopped coming here" That's next quarter's problem
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 13:23
|
|
|
Nevvy Z posted:That's next quarter's problem Also, I'm going to need to come in early to prepare the store and spend a little more time after your shift cleaning up. Pay you for the time, what did I just say about cutting your hours?
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 13:46
|
|
|
luxury handset posted:yes, but this is not a response to the question i asked There are really two non-mutually-exclusive answers to this question: - Given that there is a strong subjective and psychological component to "what people like", demand is created at least in part by marketing and other forms of manipulation. This explains the wild popularity of organic foods that are basically the same, in every meaningful respect, to their non-organic counterpart. - Monopolies or oligopolies aren't required to compete and therefore can offer you roughly the same product (but packaged very differently to seem different on the surface), leaving you with little meaningful choice. So a products' "popularity" is reflective of the absence of meaningful choice (or even meaningful choice at a price point most people can afford) rather than any kind of "true" demand. This becomes even more chronic in industries with high barriers of entry or natural resource monopolies... where entry is impossible either because it would cost an inordinate amount of money and time (say, founding a new telecom to offer cheaper internet) or would require you to own something that's completely finite and claimed (like the farms in your area that are already owned by a single entity or multiple non-competing entities). Pembroke Fuse fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Apr 12, 2019 |
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 14:03
|
|
|
Pembroke Fuse posted:There are really two non-mutually-exclusive answers to this question: You forgot the third one: - Consumers are loving morons who can't articulate what they want and have the attention span of a goldfish. Making a low quality but shinier product can be a perfectly viable way to generate sales, as long as people only realise it's crap after the fact and forget why exactly it was crap before buying the next.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 14:11
|
|
I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
|
suck my woke dick posted:You forgot the third one: This is a somewhat less nice way of restating my first point. But yes, customers have very short institutional memories of the last time a specific company has screwed them over. Which is why EA is still in business.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 14:29
|
|
|
The biggest issue is that demand is articulated through preferences for and between existing products on the market. If better items simply don't exist (because of oligopoly or other types of manipulation), and the items you want aren't highly elastic (i.e. can be substituted for something else - if you want tomatoes for a pasta sauce, you're not going to substitute them with turnips), you can't actually articulate a "potential" demand for a better item by purchasing an item that doesn't exist. That's why the potential demand for a better and cheaper health care system can never be realized through market forces. Its completely inelastic, almost totally inaccessible to competition and dominated by a number of oligopolies that are better served by collusion rather than competition. This is pretty much economics 102... and most economists understand these factors to a greater or lesser extent.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 14:34
|
|
|
tOMATO CHAT: Okay listen guys, tomatoes specifically lose all their flavor when refrigerated, so the refrigerated transportation of tomatoes is the real culprit in this conspiracy BUT do a little research on the price of bell peppers in the USA and you'll find that something is seriously suspicious.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 14:34
|
|
|
i am harry posted:tOMATO CHAT: Well, you learn something every day. Assuming this isn't irony or whatever. "humor"
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 15:56
|
|
|
SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Oocc have you tried eating in season produce I grew up on a farm! It's why I have strong tomato opinions! there is kinds of vegetables people like and there is kinds that retailers like and there is not perfect overlap between the two so there is a lot of retail effort to convince or trick the consumers to want or accidently think they want the bad convenient kind. If someone can invent a tomato that grows in 15 minutes and will stay on a shelf for 10 years without rotting but tastes like a warm plastic bag of water that is going to be the kind on every walmart shelf and every subway sandwich, and they are going to run marketing to make you think you want that kind, and that marketing will rely heavily on whatever the current hip words are to describe the kind of stuff you actually wanted. If you make "in season" the catch all word everyone demands mcdonalds is going to run ads on their juicy all beef burger with in season* tomatoes. with whatever gaming of the system they come up with to be technically true but the same tasteless bad tomato they currently use.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 18:24
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:I grew up on a farm! It's why I have strong tomato opinions! there is kinds of vegetables people like and there is kinds that retailers like and there is not perfect overlap between the two so there is a lot of retail effort to convince or trick the consumers to want or accidently think they want the bad convenient kind. When was the last time you've seen a tomato commercial? They're not marketing long shelf life tomatos to get people to buy them, they're just stocking them because a long shelf life is important when you have really long supply chains. You grew up on a farm, you know that vine ripe tomatos do not last long at all.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 18:35
|
|
|
Killer-of-Lawyers posted:When was the last time you've seen a tomato commercial? They're not marketing long shelf life tomatos to get people to buy them, they're just stocking them because a long shelf life is important when you have really long supply chains. Yes? That is the point? You want to eat the good tomatoes, they want to sell you the cheap tomatoes. You want to spend more on to buy a good tomato, they double want you to spend more then eat one of those cheap tomatoes.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2019 19:17
|
|
|
Solaris 2.0 posted:When I did retail/grocery you were on your feet 8, 9 , 10 hours a day and the motto was literally “if you have time to lean you had time to clean” I had a boss that was really into that line, so I kept a mental list of small poo poo I could do when there wasn't anything else to do. Then I got yelled at for wasting time on those things because "there must be something more important you could be doing."
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2019 04:02
|
|
|
I was stuck with a literal minimum wage job once some years ago... I mean literal bottom of the barrel without even the sad addition of 25 or 50 cents an hour like every other wage slavery mill that pads it just a tiny bit so that corporate can say "We don't pay minimum wage, see!"; there were people working there two years who were still on minimum wage; I am not exaggerating in the slightest. I wanted to mention that first - back to the anecdote. The job was horrible and could literally not pay any less, but I liked my store manager (not his fault things were so bad) although I lied to him on multiple occasions so that I could actually go out and socialise and forget my horrible life for a while. I think, though, that he knew that and let it slide. The first assistant manager was a frat boy douche but not that bad, but the second was a smug prick because of whom I became a much more creative person as I would spend every day imagining ways to kill him. He used to constantly berate me for getting in the fridge too often for water because it's not enough to humiliate me, he needed to dehydrate me as well. He also would bitch at me if I was off doing something and a customer came up, but if I lingered for a moment by the till when there was no-one queueing he would chastise me for that. He also once plainly criticised me for doing nothing all day when I was in hour 10 of a 10-hour day spent stacking boxes full of bottles filled with liquid. I've never done this for anyone, but if I ever see him again I am literally going to punch him in the face. I would consider opting for the genitals, but I'm quite certain that he has none.
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2019 06:03
|
|
|
I've managed people in your position, and yeah, your manager knew what was up. He was just willing to let it slide because gently caress it, they aren't paying him enough to care either.
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2019 07:03
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:It's a language treadmill, people want the good vegetables, everyone knows what they mean by the good vegetables but bad stores keep stealing away every single term. Like, people wanna eat a red good tomato, not one of those gross white mealy ones you get on a mcdonalds hamburger. Organic labeling was always meaningless, even 10 years ago. Hell, even in the 90s there was organic labeling and it was functionally meaningless but allowed people to convince themselves that they were getting at least superior-tasting produce, even if a blind taste test revealed no difference at all. The organic movement itself even has roots going all the way back to at least the 1940s, and it was always rooted in the use of magical thinking to make spurious claims. Organic produce has always been a pseudoscientific con job
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2019 07:27
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:Yes? That is the point? You want to eat the good tomatoes, they want to sell you the cheap tomatoes. You want to spend more on to buy a good tomato, they double want you to spend more then eat one of those cheap tomatoes. I'm having trouble following the claim here; grocery stores want to maximize profit margins, so they'll buy whatever gives them the highest profit and it doesn't really matter whether that's a delicious tomato that turns to mush 1 day after it's taken from the shelf or a tomato that tastes like piss but doesn't go bad for a month, because people are going to buy whatever happens to work for them. You're suggesting that marketing plays a huge role but I don't think that I've ever seen tomato-based marketing, so really all we could be talking about is shelf placement, right? But I've also never really seen tomatoes given significantly better shelf placement than other tomatoes; they all tend to be on the same stand, and if anything tomatoes on the vine tend to be closest to the entry of the produce section but also tend to be better. So while I'm sure "they" would prefer that you spend the same amount on produce that's cheaper to produce, it doesn't seem like that's actually happening anywhere? If the cheap tomatoes cost the same as the good tomatoes, why wouldn't you just buy the good tomatoes? If you're unable to tell the difference until biting into it (somehow? maybe you're blind and have no sense of touch?), are you unable to remember that for your next visit?
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2019 07:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 04:39 |
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:And if “August tomato” became a thing consumers were seaking out would get as gamed by low quality sellers as much as any of the ten other proxy words that mean “the good tomatoes” has been. And the same studies would go out muddying the waters that that property was not the property that mattered. Fear not good Owl, the geneticists have come to save the day https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2017/1/26/14398882/tomato-genetics-flavor-science-study
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2019 11:15
|
|
