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Doctor Butts posted:Yes. Our family never ordered there because there were so many other places where you could get what you were looking for right away. Of all the big ticket stores that have been talked about in the thread, I feel like home depot and lowes are the ones that will probably be the most stable in the Amazon age if only because of contractor/construction business that runs through it. Their niche is one that really does benefit having a local physical presence rather than just ordering it and having a robot on the internet ship it to you two days later, especially if you're on a time sensitive project. Someone upthread had mentioned the disaster of Sears and I figured I'd touch on it some as someone who was a retail grunt there back in the immediate aftermath of the Kmart-Sears merger years between 2003-2006. First off, for anyone wondering how bad Sears got, here's a good primer: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-eddie-lamperts-warring-divisions-model-adds-to-the-troubles Choice pick: quote:The bloodiest battles took place in the marketing meetings, where different units sent their CMOs to fight for space in the weekly circular. These sessions would often degenerate into screaming matches. Marketing chiefs would argue to the point of exhaustion. The result, former executives say, was a “Frankenstein” circular with incoherent product combinations (think screwdrivers being advertised next to lingerie). My position in the store was an Orwellian title known as a Merchandise and Customer Assistance Associate for Hardlines (hardware, home & Garden, Appliances, and electronics). The MCA's job at least in my store was basically the middle man between the sales team, the stock and warehouse team, the marketing team, loss prevention, and the managers. I was effectively cross trained everywhere except the direct managerial duties, though if you asked my boss he would gleefully tell me that my job was "does what I tell him to do". It was an interesting position at the time because I was far enough removed from any specific department that I could see just how crazy dysfunctional everything was even before Eddie Lampert went full Ayn Rand on the company. Sales was the easy example to point at. The sales team was tempered even back then to be as mercilessly cutthroat as possible. If they were on the sales floor they made sub minimum wage baseline but they pulled commission. The commissions were weighted toward the bigger ticket items so they would make pretty good returns in electronics and appliances, but home and garden/hardware sales people had streaky returns depending on the day/shift. Something like a $3000 riding lawn mower/plasma television/refrigerator could bring them $100-200 depending on if they sold the maintenance agreement or extended warranty (side note, these were hilarious scams even back then: actually trying to call in service for these was like pulling teeth and they would look for any way to invalidate your claim), but selling a hammer or individual socket would bring them *maybe* 2 cents. Because Sales teams were divided into the Hardware/Lawn and garden group, the Electronics group, and the Appliances group, this led to situations where the hardware guys just stopped giving a gently caress about the small hand tools and the piddly commissions and just hung around L&G/sports pushing mowers and treadmills at best or at worst sneaking into appliances or electronics when someone wasn't looking to ring up a customer buying a television. This led to confrontations on several occasions that almost came to blows when people would call each other out. Because the hardware sales guys had so thoroughly abandoned the small tools isles for lack of commission and because we didn't have personal radios like they have in modern best buys and the like, the Loss Prevention team had special innocuous intercom codes, usually with made up names (Roger Moore pleas call ####) they rang if they needed me to go hang out in an isle because they though someone was going to try and snatch lithium batteries or small and easily concealable tools like socket wrench bits and bobs and make a run for it. The reasoning was as was mentioned upthread with Wal-Mart: Employee presence is a bigger detractor of shoplifting than anything. Naturally, this would lead to regular customers coming to me wanting to check out (because no official sales people were ever in sight). If I even thought about ringing someone up though, I'd have the derelict sales guys jumping down my throat because I wasn't commissioned even though they couldn't be bothered to walk their areas. The management during all of this was gleefully complacent, their official stance was 'look after customers in your department if you want to protect your commission' which only ever made the problem worse. Meanwhile this whole attitude was blatantly obvious to the customers, who seen this employee bickering and pushiness for what it was and actively bitched about it to anyone in the management chain who would listen to them, ultimately to no avail. Sears was basically doomed to fail before it went full Ayn Rand.
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Dec 13, 2016 19:51
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Mister Macys posted:Getting off break, so I don't have time to read through the thread yet, but I heard on House of Cards of all places that Walmart is de facto subsidized by the government because they pay workers so little/give them so few hours they qualify for assistance. Yes, Walmart (and McDonalds for that matter) dedicate HR resources to help it's employees get government assistance because they knowingly don't pay enough or give enough hours to break people out of the poverty level and use government programs to fill the gap. Walmart then specifically and helpfully also encourages their employees to buy groceries from Walmart, hence directly benefiting from their employee's SNAP assistance. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-11-13/how-mcdonald-s-and-wal-mart-became-welfare-queens
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Dec 15, 2016 23:05
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asdf32 posted:No he has not and will not make money from sears. It's a question of how much he ends up loosing. If he loses, it's not going to be that much. Part of what he's done so far is that he sold the buildings of 235 Sears stores to himself, via a investment trust that he created two years ago. What 'personal money' he's investing in Sears he's extracting right out again as rent the stores are now paying to Seritage. In advance of bankrupcy he's selling off Sears' house brands and I pretty much expect that before the end of the year anything that's even remotely profitable will be spun off into it's own LLCs or companies leaving the dessicated husk of the Sears brand to wither with literally nothing left to its name. Those buildings he conveniently sold to himself or the band names he sold off while they were worth something won't have to be bargain basement auctioned off in the process and he's free to turn around, cut the buildings up into strip malls, and rent them out to the next comers. He's setting up Sears to fail because there's more money in it for him to ensure that the company fails RIGHT NOW than it is for him to continue to let the company hemorrhage money for the next 5-10 years while the upper management continues to churn and bumble in his Libertarian Dream World.
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Jan 10, 2017 17:19
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OhFunny posted:
Jesus last Christmas must of been more savage for physical stores than I originally thought.
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Mar 22, 2017 14:46
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:So landlord greed is more to blame than actual sales collapse? Color me shocked. For what it's worth, I know a lady in my city of 40,000 people in rural Kansas that use to own a sunglass kiosk in the local (now slowly shuttering/decaying) mall about 5-10 years ago. At that time the people who owned the mall was a company out of Chicago that used the rent they collected from the mall to fund their skydiving and charter plane business in Chicago and they gave precisely 0 fucks about typical landlord stuff in the mall like patching leaky roofs and making sure the plumbing wasn't constantly backing up into customer bathrooms. The lady told me that for her little sunglass kiosk (not even a storefront mind, just a little 10 square foot stand in the middle of the main thoroughfare) the mall wanted to charge her like $2000 a month plus 20% of all her sales done. She eventually took over a section of her brother's bicycle shop on main street where she pays like 1/3rd the rent and 0% of the sales done. The mall really didn't start getting better until the Chicago guys wound up selling the mall to a management company that actually gave a poo poo about 2-3 years ago, but now that the reputation and physical damage has been done all but one of the anchor stores have fled and a full half of the inside of the mall is empty storefronts.
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Apr 6, 2017 16:49
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Glass of Milk posted:We'll do what we have to to ensure nobody goes to a Chili's ever again. I'd eat at Chili's every day of the week if it kept me out of an Applebees. Their latest menu revision a few years back sucks and they took all the good stuff off the menu.
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Apr 28, 2017 20:49
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:It's a lot more complicated for women. I'm glad it works for your SO, but it's not universal or even common for that solution to cover everything a woman needs to dress herself. Do you think women don't do this because they just weren't smart enough to think of it? Why are you assuming women can easily find clothing that fits them within tailoring range and suits their needs on vintage store racks either? And three outfits? There are five days in a workweek and a lot of women work places where it would be unprofessional to cycle even a full week's worth of outfits over and over. My ex girlfriend has this issue pretty much constantly because she's 4ft 9 inches and while she's not really heavy/large, she's not wisp thin either and she has a G cup bra. According to her, finding good looking outfits for her is a complete nightmare and things like dresses are pretty much out of the question. Teen clothing and women's small tends to be too tight across the chest while also being baggy around her midsection, and anything bigger tends to fit like a trash bag or is completely unflattering. She has 3 pairs of work slacks that she rotates through and she has maybe 9 tops total that she's not embarassed to wear in public between both work and recreation.
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May 4, 2017 21:06
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My sister in law was fired from a nursing home job because as the working conditions got worse, she went around to the other employees and started gathering a collective list of complaints and grievances to submit to the higher ups. Nothing happened at first but about a week or two later she had mentioned the *possibility* of starting to job search in earshot of one of the managers and they fired her on the spot for insufficient loyalty to the company. When she told me about all that, I had to explain to her that all the underlings collecting complaints is like step 1 or 2 of a what managers are trained to look for when a labor union is forming and once the higher ups were on to her they were going to find literally any reason to fire her. She still doesn't believe her firing was a pre-emptive unionbusting tactic, strangely enough, nor does she believe what she did could of ever amounted to the employees getting together and demanding collective bargaining.
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Jun 8, 2017 14:31
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Noctone posted:Five Guys owns but In 'N Out is overrated garbage. Last time I ate at five guys I felt like I was going to die, which I guess is what happens when you have a burger that's worth like half+ of your day's caloric budget before you factor in the fries/drink. Usually if I want a fast food burger but don't hate myself enough for the low quality McDonalds/Burger King slop I'll usually find myself at a Freddy's Frozen Custard because their steakburgers are loving fantastic.
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Jul 10, 2017 21:59
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Motronic posted:And as you're finding out, most of them are about as useless as tits on a bull. Shockingly enough, I actually had good luck with my home warranty. About 3 weeks after I moved into my house my water heater blew up and I got a new 50 gallon tank for $75 installed instead of 800-1000+. Most of the time though yeah, it's of dubious value.
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Jul 19, 2017 01:31
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Xae posted:Median salary for 25-35 year old is 40k/yr. Which means half of them are making more than that. 40k isn't really a livable wage for a single person living in the greater Los Angeles / New York / San Francisco / Denver area, not when you factor in outrageous student loan debt that everyone had to take on because society hoisted a Bachelors degree as the minimum standard by which all young people are judged. Hell 40k is only barely livable in places that aren't super huge or outrageous like Kansas City or Chicago, and that's if you're willing to get an apartment in knife-crime alley.
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Aug 22, 2017 14:52
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Xae posted:CPI includes housing (rent) and education and hasn't had any big jumps lately. The average cost of tuition per year has tripled and almost quadrupled in some cases over the last 20 years. I'd call that a pretty big loving jump compared to what Gen X or Boomers paid for college. https://www.usnews.com/education/be...al-universities
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Aug 22, 2017 15:00
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:God, what an awful possibility to have to face. You should tell your state and local reps about your ultimatum. Yeah, they're probably all republican shitlords and won't listen, but be the change you want to see, etc. etc. There are really good resources in D&D and TGRS for contacting your reps if you need it. I think some awesome poster even made an app to help you bug your congresspeople. After the 2016 election, the Kansas State Legislature, while still overwhelmingly republican, did loose a fair number of seats to democrats and primaried a lot of the "no taxes ever" Ayn Rand Fundamentalist CHUD shitheads and as a whole tacked a lot more to the center. Large swaths of the Brownback tax plan has been overrode with veto-proof majority and the State is actually bringing in money again and the legislative focus for the next session is going to be un-loving schools now that the state can afford to do so. Source: I literally drink most Saturdays with this guy.
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Aug 24, 2017 15:54
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Is their in house shipping mostly a East/West coast thing? Last I knew everything I ordered from them comes UPS and ships fine, but then again I live in the rural nightmare zone of central Kansas, so...
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Jan 15, 2018 22:55
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Fork of Unknown Origins posted:Tellingly, there’s no real reason for “product that expired so we threw it away” and “stolen product” to be lumped into one category. Yet they keep doing that. Some things it is hard to separate, like employee theft versus shoplifting, but they keep their own inefficiencies tied up in the metric and I very rarely see hard numbers on how much is which thing. It's also lumped in with "this pallet of 30 items actually only had 24 off the truck" and "this rolled off the dolly and shattered so we had to throw it away" and "this was set up as a display model and can't be sold as new". Then the stores will point at shrink numbers and say "those dastardly thieves are at it again" despite theft being a minority of actual shrink in retail.
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Oct 20, 2023 22:04
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