Companies Circling The Drain: What about Chapter Elevenses?

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Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

pangstrom posted:

I still accidentally call Home Depots and Lowes Builder's Square sometimes, since that was my summer job in high school and some of college. A Home Depot opened up across the street and in the morning their manager had these little rallies where he would whip the staff into chanting things like "we're going to put you out of business". It was creepy, obviously, but also impressive to get minimum wage people to even pretend to care enough to chant CORPORATE WAR stuff, always wondered how that worked. Also, eventually they did in fact put us out of business, or at least Builders Square as a whole went bankrupt.

Our local Home Depot is a total shambles (in this sense, https://www.theonion.com/t-j-maxx-recreates-in-store-shopping-experience-with-n-1819580303) and horribly run and luckily I have good locals options for hardware and for building materials and for appliances. I know other Home Depots are much better, though.

I had a good friend who worked at Home Depot and she called the employee devotion to the place cultish and offputting.

The employees at my local store do not, seem to have the same attitude, it's very much the Beavis and Butthead episode where Mr. Anderson gets lost in Home Labyrinth. Which is honestly fine with me.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2018 18:12

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 18:43

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

I hated the craft store for a long time, I have no idea why but I think I flipped as a teen and started to develop irony.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2018 22:47

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Detective No. 27 posted:

You figure that mall owners would lower their rent to encourage some new shops in their mall since some rent is better than no rent but .

This is totally true, but a few malls have actually gone ahead and finally lowered the rent and it's actually made these places pretty cool, lots of local businesses and small chains mixed in with the big chains that thrive in the mall.

Okay, half those local businesses are vape places but hey it's got the young people back in.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2018 07:39

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

there wolf posted:

I feel like Home Depot has the worst self checkouts of them all. Slow, terrible barcode readers, and always breaking down. Maybe it's just my local store, but drat do they suck.

They are awful, but I appreciate that they have so many darn ways to pay.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2018 21:47

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Jasper Tin Neck posted:

Apparently all those dead stores are finding use as instruments for dodging taxes.

PS: "Dark store theory" sounds way more metal than it has any right to.

This is interesting, because there is some truth behind the corporations' claims of the land being much less valuable once they're done with it. But I mean, duh, they're the reason that it's like that.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2018 10:40

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Henker posted:

Here in California, some grocer named Haggen tried to expand into the state a couple years back by buying up like 150 different other grocery stores and rebranding them. It ended up being a huge disaster and they had to close all of them within the year. Supposedly they were given bad pricing data from the company they bought the stores from (Albertsons) and massively overpriced everything.

Yeah, after the Safeway/Albertson's merger, they were told they had to sell (not close) X numbers of stores, so they sold poorly performing stores to Haggens and set them up hard to fail.

We have actually had several Frys (Kroger) store closures here in Tucson but it's almost all in areas where Walmart threw a store down either across the street of within a block or two. Kind of sucks because those Walmart stores are actually expensive compared to Frys.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2018 01:10

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Queen Combat posted:

Albertsons still exists tho. Or do you mean before it merged with Safeway?

Funny, both Albertsons and WinCo started/are headquartered in Boise. I grew up in the north so was surprised as heck when I saw both of them after moving to AZ, thinking everything about my home state was an embarrassment

Albertson's is the dominant entity in that merger unfortunately. Making Safeway get rid of self checkout and 24 hour stores just doesn't make sense for the community but it's The Albertson's Way!!!!!

# ¿ Nov 20, 2018 06:49

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

In a Ferrari or Jaguar switchin' four lanes with the top down screamin' out money ain't a thang.
Bubble hard in in a Giant Scythe 900 mph, with the window cracked, holler back, money ain't a thang

# ¿ Nov 28, 2018 22:37

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Which is especially troublesome from a company that in the not-too-distant past just labeled simply being non-straight-cis as "adult content."

# ¿ Dec 3, 2018 23:37

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Blackjack Pizza, Colorado/Wyoming/Montana?/Tucson??/Florida???? chain has finally had a few locations close. How has it been surviving this long? When ordering from Dominos or Pizza Hut was $30 bucks for a large minimum, and mom and pops (at least locally) weren't taking credit cards for delivery, ~$22 Blackjack Pizza was something I'd get even though they were really bad. But now that the chains are under 15 bucks and they haven't lowered their prices or made their pizza better, and every small place takes cards, I just don't know how they've kept it up this long.

I guess the margins on pizza are THAT good.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2018 02:32

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Basticle posted:

what the gently caress universe are you living in that a large pizza was $30

I'm including tax, toppings ($2 each for a while), delivery fee and tip. It might be closer to ~28 than 30.

Queen Combat posted:

A large cheese pizza from Pizza hut cost $1.50 in 1958, which is $11.50 in today's dollars. That's about on par with the current price of anywhere between $8-12 depending on area and deals.

this forum post states:

An XL (16" pizza) at $3.24 in 1968 is the same as $23.21 today, and $7.99 from 1981 for the same XL cheese is the same as $21.87. Which is just about the same as straight menu price for the same things today. Of course there are always "coupons" and such, but it was the same back then, too. Discount prices merely had less visibility due to how easy they are to use and apply with online ordering in modern times.

That is true, I guess I'm not factoring in that it's the discounts that are bringing the prices generally down in current times, whereas if you called up Pizza Hut in the early aughties and asked for a pizza they wouldn't give you any specials that you didn't know to ask for, and the advertised specials weren't always something that one would want, or would be more focused on feeding a larger group of people.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2018 04:39

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

There has been a decent migration of Tumblr people to the fediverse (Mastodon/Pleroma/GNU Social/Etc). It's obviously not a perfect replacement but there is some cultural compatibility for those who have found their way to non-"free speech zone"/non-techbro instances.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2018 19:07

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Barudak posted:

I wanna know what in Oath is worth $200 million because the only thing theyve got I know brings in any amount of money is ad-tech

Apparently AOL still has a healthy dial up business.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2018 20:08

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Randaconda posted:

Are you serious?

Unfortunately yes

What's interesting to me is that they've pretty much held steady in that 2.1 million number for at least a while. I guess if you still need dial up, you still need dial up and nothing's changed to stop that; discontinuing analog cell phone service certainly didn't help since it's very difficult for digital to cover as many places as analog did (at least not without spending a lot of money)

Unsurprisingly the dial up experience is pretty bad.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2018 20:22

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

There are places in America that nobody has wired for any high speed internet at all. This is part of why the telecoms don't want internet to be a utility like phones are. The gigantic and often monopolistic ma bell very much didn't want to wire everybody up for phones as some places were not or barely profitable. Some reallyv remote places actually lost money. It took the government stepping in and saying "gently caress you, everybody gets phones" for that to change. Now phones are a utility and there are arguments the internet should be too.

If you have access to a phone you can get dial-up. Basically everybody in America can get a land line so it still works.

That makes a lot of sense, knew those people were cut off from "high speed" internet when analog callular went away (if you can call analog internet high speed)., even some of the most remote places I drive usually have telephone poles.

And yeah, Internet should be a utility.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2018 21:58

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Sir Lemming posted:

Hotmail sticks around because Microsoft absorbed it without making people change their address. Actually didn't Apple kind of do the same thing with AOL? I vaguely remember logging into iTunes with my AIM name or something...

You can make any email address your Apple-ID and sign into Apple stuff with it, but, yeah at some point if you had a valid AOL account you didn't need to turn it to an Apple-ID at all.

RIP my free songs from that summer where Pepsi gave out a bunch of itunes songs.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2018 17:15

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

ChickenOfTomorrow posted:

I still have and listen to a bunch of songs I got by tipping the diet pepsi bottles just so in order to pick out one with a code.

Mine are burnt to a CD because that used to be the only easy way to get things out of iTunes and the credit card I was afraid of accidentally buying a lot of music.

I guess I could just rip them back, if I could find it and the disc hasn�t degraded.

Krispy Wafer posted:

I won an iPod Mini with those Pepsi codes.

If you tilted the bottle just so, you could read whether it had a code or not.

Ha, I never figured that out. I bought so much Pepsi that summer.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2018 07:12

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Toys R Us left living only in Japan is cool and I hope that is what happens.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2019 08:52

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Don Gato posted:

Didn't something like this happen to 7-11?

Potentially, depending on how successful it is when they bring the chain back to the US. But yeah basically some mismanagement drove a previously successful 7-11 business off a cliff and the Japanese wing scooped it up in bankruptcy and now runs the whole thing.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2019 08:18

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

They're really big in Arizona, the convenience store in general is thriving. I think they tend to target places that don't really have the Bodega-style store culture, which means instead of the bodega on every block, there's a Circle K/7-11/QT/Quik Mart (locally-owned dying Tucson chain) instead.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2019 19:09

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Detective No. 27 posted:

I can think of maybe three 7/11s in Phoenix. QT is the big one these days. They're popping up everywhere. I'd say it's our equivalent of Wawa. (If Wawa is anything like I've imagined.)

The magic of QT is they never seem to choose a bad location. Which might be why you know where they are and not the 7-11s even though there are roughly similar numbers. It took a lot longer for QT to break into the rest of Arizona and 7-11 is way more entrenched on the edges of Phoenix and in the Tucson area, mostly franchise locations rather than corporate locations.

And of course Circle K is just loving everywhere.

gently caress I know way too much about convenience stores.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2019 20:55

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Cowslips Warren posted:

Gymboree is gone now.

I always wondered how so many kids clothing places stayed open. I mean, kids outgrow clothes so fast that eventually you get hand me downs or shop Goodwill.

I spent years of my life thinking Gymboree was youth-oriented gymnastic's training.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2019 00:33

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

I would probably move away from Amazon if some other shipping company put lockers in front of 7-11 or something, that is what turned Amazon from something I buy a few things on a year to most of what I buy.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2019 17:29

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Balliver Shagnasty posted:

Doesn't Whole Foods have this thing now where you can have your Amazon packages sent there instead of being dropped off on your front doorstep? I know Newegg can send your poo poo to a FedEx store or Walgreens for pickup if you're skittish about home delivery.

They do, it's pretty much the exact same thing, the only reason I use the convenience store lockers is they are 24/7 and the parking is more convenient. I didn't know about the newegg thing, that is useful. UPS is doing deliveries to their store locations too but a lot of merchants still don't support it.

Some people were talking about P.O. boxes earlier but my local post office just has small mailboxes; they will keep larger packages sent to it, it involves waiting in line during work hours to pick stuff up which is not great.

Honestly though I don't even know what a medium quality store is anymore. Like obviously anything you buy at Walmart was made at bottom dollar but not everything bottom dollar is that bad these days.

Rick has a new favorite as of 07:01 on Jan 21, 2019

# ¿ Jan 21, 2019 06:52

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

The USPS and Amazon partnership was not perfect but yeah, the new Amazon shipping service is pretty bad. So far I've seen them in handicap spaces, double parking and blocking parking spaces at my apartment for no reason when closer-to-entrance street parking is a few feet away, and packages in some of the worst places possible.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2019 19:02

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

It's too early to know for sure if it's a trend or if things snap back but some studies suggest since streaming services fractured piracy has increased, whereas it had been on a steady downward move prior to that.

There definitely is a future where Netflix can't sustain itself, although I would not be surprised if Netflix and cable companies eventually partner (either offering Netflix (or perhaps offering Netflix discounts), or maybe even [premium?] Netflix Channel[s]) as cable companies seek to have more content people care about and Netflix gets a financial partner to back its shows and such.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2019 02:46

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

I remember the story of Gates not allowing his kids to own ipods with the "I've bought them the best Zunes" in the article, and in my head ( I think this is just in my head and not in reality) there's a picture of him smiling with his kids beside him obviously sad with Zunes in their hand.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2019 17:57

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

I'd love to dunk on ESPN, I do it all the time, it's an awful, biased network that has been ultimately terrible for sports the last ten years, but they still have sooooo much free streaming, including everything a general audience would be interested in and a lot more. ESPN+ is them basically picking up and steaming poo poo that only a tiny tiny amount of people care about, and before ESPN+ was being preyed upon by various startups trying to hold those people who wanted to watch that stuff for hostage at ever increasing costs to stream. ESPN putting all that stuff in once place at an affordable cost is actually welcome.

Well, other than the recent addition of UFC, but that's more about them than anything else.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2019 18:52

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

MarcusSA posted:

I�ve flown all over the world this past year and never had an issue with my larger Anker pack.

Also I always laugh at people running around the airport looking for a plug because their phone is gonna die and they can�t call their ride.

Always travel with a battery pack. Even the small ones will charge your phone a few times and they take like no space.

Yeah at least when I few with United it specifically said on their website that they were allowed. The messaging at the airport and from the flight staff is a bit confusing because they are trying to get out the battery packs out of the checked suitcases but aren't always very clear on that. But yeah, you're allowed to carry them on.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2019 17:42

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

I don't things have changed quite enough to not have the same backlash as last time. If anything the increased proliferation of data caps has made it worse (although have developers so poorly optimize their games that you end up having to download almost the full game anyway to install it)

But maybe companies decide to soldier forward anyway.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2019 19:58

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Payless for me is always "I loving need a pair of dress shoes, or at least shoes I can pass off as dress shoes NOW" and then discovering they weren't as cheap as I hoped they would be.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2019 20:40

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Croatoan posted:

I literally just ordered size 9EEEEEE from Orthofeet.com. Got 20% off with free shipping. I hope these are good. gently caress I just ordered shoes old people order. Then again, old people don't give a gently caress and want comfy shoes.

Dr. Scholls inserts changed my life.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2019 21:00

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

sweeperbravo posted:

So based on this thread response Payless should have just rebranded as "Wide Foot Shoe Paradise" and they prob would have been fine

Maybe, but for me Payless had so much stigma growing up that even as an adult I had shame being in there, which makes me surprised they lasted this long.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2019 23:00

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

It's my fault, I tried the amazon basic shirts this year instead of doing my normal JC Penny trip. I promise next time I buy work clothes to go back to pennys please stay open.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2019 22:02

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

MarcusSA posted:

Let me tell you about this little shop called Costco my friend.

This might be what has to happen. It's not a great value proposition for me for groceries as a single person but I guess maybe if I am getting other things too.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2019 00:07

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Who knew the LaCroix trend of late 2017 early 2018 would generate humor in 2019?

# ¿ Mar 10, 2019 03:24

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

bob dobbs is dead posted:

i don't know any startups that dont go through a case a person every two or three weeks

We were going through it like crazy at work for a while but we�ve been working on the same case lately since last year.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2019 05:01

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Sobe was in Panda Express long after it was gone everywhere else but they are all switching or have already switched to Coke so RIP.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2019 05:16

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

I've tried to train myself to like beer and it really hasn't worked, and I'm old. Closest I have gotten is I can tolerate a Blue Moon if I drink it very slowly.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2019 03:30

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 18:43

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Krispy Wafer posted:

It�s kind of weird. I can go into a Wendy�s or Arby�s and get in and out in under 5 minutes but holy poo poo trying to zip into a McDonald�s or Chick-Fil-A.

The quality difference between a McDonald�s and a Wendy�s isn�t that much one way or the other. So it�s odd that there�s such a disparity in foot traffic.

Chick-Fil-A makes sense though because that peanut oil almost makes up for everything else. Almost...

For McDonalds I'm guessing it's a staffing issue these days. They always seem understaffed now.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2019 03:20

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > Companies Circling The Drain: What about Chapter Elevenses?

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