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Sorry to continue the derail, but as someone who works in construction all I ever see nowadays is kobalt/harbor freight hand tools. They make perfectly fine quality tools, and the prices are great. Plus the warranty doesn't matter anyway as you are ten times as likely to just lose,or have a tool stolen than break it. Few times I've broken a tool I just laugh and drop the like 3 bucks for a new one.
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Jan 7, 2017 23:59
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axeil posted:This is interesting to read, thanks for sharing. I remember BB was always on the Corporate Death List a few years back, but I'm guessing closing redundant stores and re-focusing to have their employees actually know what kind of TV/phone works for you has improved things. I wish they'd carry computer parts again like they used to back in the 90s though. I've had parts crap out on me on my machine and it'd be nice if I could just drive down to Best Buy and pick up a good power supply/motherboard/etc. I know being pro capitalism is pretty politically incorrect here in D&D, but I've recently read two really decent books that go over how certain businesses are really succeeding in the marketplace by re-focusing their company purpose to care more about customers and employees and not focus solely on increasing shareholder stock prices at the expense of everything else. Firms of Endearment Conscious Capitalism Both are really good reads if you think there might be some redeeming merits of capitalism and aren't purely 'full communism now'
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Apr 25, 2017 16:17
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axeil posted:Haha, you're talking to me, the guy who was screamed at in the Democrats thread for suggesting that running on "full communism now" is actually really dumb/bad and that competition can be a good motivator. I was definitely not implying you were full communism if that's how I came across. Mainly wanted to post those links after the most recent discussion, and your post was just the most convenient to quote. I run a small business in an industry that is certainly lacking in conscious capitalism, but I find the concepts applicable and have already seen some small return on investment by changing how we approach projects compared to our competitors.
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Apr 25, 2017 20:51
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The box issue really does seem like a mess. My wife is home full time raising our new son, and as such has found amazon to be the great deliverer of all things without having to bundle up baby to go get stuff every day. So over the last 8 months amazon has been shipping us craploads of food/baby gear/housewares, and I've been dutifully flattening all the boxes and storing them in the garage till I could get a van to take them to the recycle place. This weekend I finally made the trip, I ended up with almost 100 lbs of carboard, filling up a 5' cubic space all flattened out. There has got to be a better way to get things to people without all that waste. (Even if recycled)
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May 31, 2017 03:22
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Heliogabalos posted:
wtf? No it is definitely theft, and you are a shithead!
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Jun 19, 2017 20:30
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Heliogabalos posted:can I just claim I made a mistake even if the chronically underpaid staff discovered I inputted the incorrect code for excessively overpriced produce? yes Do you enjoy torturing small woodland creatures too?
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Jun 19, 2017 20:42
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Its a bit of a derail, but where I live the death or office space dwarfs retail. There are so many office parks near me at below 50% occupancy, going to then feels like walking through a cemetery. I still see occasional small retail being built, but no one has built a dedicated office building in my area forever.
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Jun 25, 2017 14:47
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I never heard that story but the shopper's card definitely works on me. My grocery store gives me progressively bigger discounts for things I buy regularly, and since I eat exactly the same food six days out of seven I'm way into the loss leader zone for almost everything. But I never even think of shopping at another store for regular groceries. Does that discount apply to fresh produce? Cause drat, I'd be all over that.
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Jul 10, 2017 17:46
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Baronjutter posted:I hate it when the gluten free stuff is lumped in with other garbage because I don't want to be associated with that. Just put the non-dairy yogurt in the diary section, put the gluten free bread in the bread area. I hate the little sort of pseudoscience ghetto places make which makes me feel ashamed to buy the product for legitimate reasons. I don't give a poo poo if it's organic or how many GMO's are inside of it I care if it will make my guts explode. My wife is celiac so we've been through the same for 7 years. We much prefer the items to be mixed with the normal food. I'm already walking through the aisles, don't make me have to backtrack once we've noticed your lovely gluten free section doesn't actually have any staples and is instead piles of lovely cookies. It's not hard to find out which foods are safe to eat if you actually eat this poo poo every day.
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Jul 11, 2017 21:29
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Only part that interests me is the expanded sandwich stuff. Work construction in the Northeast, and Dunkin is already pretty high on the priority list for break time for lots of people. More food options and less donuts is a welcome change. Just hope the prices don't jump to high to cover that specialty coffee atmosphere though.
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Aug 7, 2017 19:34
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They also mentioned attempting other bonus experiments for Prime members whatever that means. There is a WFM not far from me, though honestly their quality/price isn't normally enough to snag my interest over my local independent grocer. But I do love me my prime membership so I'll probably check them out as they iterate.
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Aug 25, 2017 19:26
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CFox posted:Yea this is a real thing. Back when the recession hit and I lost my retail job I spent awhile doing light construction. Building barns, putting on new roofs, things like that. In retail you can have a very busy day and get a lot of work done but when you come in the next day nothing looks different. It's a weird feeling not seeing any evidence of your work except on a paycheck twice a month. On the job site though you come in each day and there's this big physical proof of what you accomplished the day before staring you in the face and there's a real sense of satisfaction when it all comes together. I can drive down the road and see something that I had a hand in building years ago, that's awesome. This truly is the best part of working in the trades. I try to treat my team as best an employer can, but honestly being a trade boss is actually kind of lucky because just performing the work brings about a ton of personal satisfaction. Even on balls hard work days the guys almost always wrap up the day in high spirits cause mad poo poo got done and we can look back and see it.
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Dec 1, 2017 15:47
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It would be nice if we could stop calling people that enjoy partaking in business work ventures as dull. Quite a few people here have posted that they would enjoy running some sort of small business venture if they could. They would because they genuinely enjoy working in that field/trade. UBI and universal health care are great things to work towards, but saying people are poisoned by protestant work ethic is no better then others calling you a lazy rear end for not wanting to work. (“You” being used here in the general sense)
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Dec 4, 2017 01:06
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Our large and now growing extended family has finally this year after many years of persuasion, decided to go from individual gifts to doing a small and inexpensive round robin gift exchange for the adults and a select number of gifts for all the children. I was so loving tired of getting 3 pairs of woolly socks, a new wallet and watch, some dumb gag gift, ect every year so, hopefully this year will be a bit more joyful only having to pick up two generic fun gifts for the round robin, and a gift each for my niece and nephew.
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Dec 4, 2017 18:16
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I hadn’t been in a mall in years, but now that it is winter and we have a 1 year old we go like once a week just to let him walk around and play in the play area since it is so cold outside. So basically the play area is only reason why we even bother to visit. We’ve even bought a thing or two while there.
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Dec 28, 2017 18:17
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As someone whose wife is actually celiac I can say we never go to restaurants that are cuisine specific like pizza or pasta shops even if they do have gluten free marked on like one or two items. We know that if prepping gluten free food isn’t an every day thing then its going to be a pita for the cooks and probably risky for my wife. We have like 4 restaurants that we visit regularly. One is a Pho shop that is 100% GF. The next is a Brazilian cheese bread place which is also 100% GF. Then we have a nice sushi joint and an last an american bistro that has like half a menu full of GF stuff, along with dedicated cooking area and machines for it. Being actually celiac is serious and seriously sucky, and we really appreciate the restaurants that go the mile to make their food accessible. OTOH we’d honestly prefer the restaurants that don’t want to go all the way just skip it as an option all together. All it does is feed the fakers sense of importance, and real celiacs don’t eat there to begin with.
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Dec 31, 2017 19:44
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Well yea, at home we have like six or so different gluten free pastas we make because I grew up on pasta and god himself couldn’t take it away from me. We have red lentil, chickpea, quinoa, as well as a couple more standard ones that all taste really good. I just don’t expect an Italian restaurant to have them in stock.
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Dec 31, 2017 20:16
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Horseshoe theory posted:A lot of publicly traded corporations are incorporated/organized in Delaware and so litigation against executives and the Board would therefore go through the Delaware Court of Chancery, which historically takes a very protective (to said executives and Board) view of the business judgment rule. In addition, in most publicly traded corporations, ownership isn't concentrated well enough often enough to seriously threaten voting out directors (and, ultimately, firing executives) or, alternatively, there are super voting shares owned by the founders/executives that prevent them from getting thrown out (amongst other things). This is true, but plenty of pressure can still be applied by activist investors, and other troublemakers that can really drag a decent company down quickly. You dont need a lawsuit to get a bevy of dumb Wall Street articles written about how x company is doomed to failure because it treats its employees like humans.
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Jan 13, 2018 15:06
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Yeah, I can agree that probably happens a lot too. It’s to bad that I’m pretty sure a Capitalism thread in D&D would be the biggest trash fire in history. There really is lots of fun stuff to unpack between big and small businesses and how some companies do manage to succeed without being total hellholes.
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Jan 13, 2018 15:21
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ryonguy posted:lol if you think completely unsustainable business models for short term profit is a reasonable situation that needs to be perpetuated. Just because corporations forgot how to function due to an over-reliance on paper tricks to increase cash flow at the expense of actual revenue streams doesn't mean the fundamentals of a private enterprise have changed; financial gimmicks are not the end all and be all of private industry no matter what MBA douches say. This, plus at the high end some of the better schools are really pushing heavily into changing their curriculum. It will be horribly long process to fight back against years of inertia in business practice, but places like Harvard, Oxford, Columbia ect... have all been working with MNCs to start fixing the structural problems with the shareholder first and only mentality.
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Jan 15, 2018 16:28
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crazy cloud posted:Yeah you're right I'm sure capitalism will start "functioning" correctly any time now. The fact that it never has before and there is no proposed mechanism by which it will, that's probably irrelevant. Any day now, those noble-minded captains of industry, who totally exist, will right the ship, I'm sure.  There are multiple groups of businesses and schools that are each attempting to tackle these problems. Like I said in my last post, it is hardly an easy task, but work is being done to try to right this sinking ship. Triple bottom line, the conscious capitalism movement, the completing capitalism research program, ect are out there and are interesting topics for those with enough brain power to think critically beyond "full communism now" as the only answer.
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Jan 15, 2018 17:05
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BrandorKP posted:This is not untrue. No doubt. A complete rewriting of financial and business regulations is definitely in order. So many things need to change it is almost impossible to pick a starting point. But even a few people and businesses on the other side of the coin starting to realize what a colossal mess they've made will only make these changes easier.
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Jan 15, 2018 18:30
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MiddleOne posted:That's not what they do at all. Market leaders have very little potential for explosive growth so what they typically pick up is market followers which strengthens the position of the market leader in the long-term. Good post! So the question becomes how you can use antitrust to break them up? Like I could see forcing alphabet to break up search from YouTube from services. Same with amazon I guess forcing a split between physical products, digital, and AWS. Facebook though, no idea there.
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Jan 16, 2018 00:49
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Just as one argument that should appeal to libertarians: I just last night read this exact tidbit in Robert Reich's 'Saving Capitalism' book. His example was the $6 billion in Food Stamp costs that have gone only to workers in the fast food industry as a direct subsidy to their profit line as corporate welfare. Funnily enough I used the example this morning to an acquaintance who is normally pretty obstinate about this kind of stuff, and I think he actually absorbed it. If you(non-specific you) are not in the 'full communism now' camp I definitely recommend the book. It's really well written, and offers tons of compelling explanations as to what caused the shitstorm we are in.
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Jan 17, 2018 17:06
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I read a bit just the other day that specifically mentioned shelf sensors, but I also remember hearing about camera only a long ways back. Maybe that was one if the changes they made while delaying the open for so long.
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Jan 27, 2018 14:45
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BrandorKP posted:Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Team Up to Disrupt Health Care https://nyti.ms/2GuXbBp Teehee, the Dow is really enjoying this news this morning.
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Jan 30, 2018 16:57
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ToxicSlurpee posted:But yeah one of the things with the suburbs is that they're pretty hostile toward outsiders in multiple ways. Not just because of who tends to move there but also because the roads are typically not walkable and they're designed to direct traffic away. The people are the biggest one; they tend to want to create their own little bubble in the world where they can be 100% totally safe and keep everybody they don't like away. The level of paranoia in suburbia is insane and God help you if you ever have to deal with a home owner's association. Anything that might make the neighborhood look the slightest bit idyllic or drop land values by any value greater than zero is either explicitly verboten or will make your neighbors shun you. God I hate HOAs with such a passion. I just started doing service work on a new complex that has six large 18 unit condo building with interior entrance halls. Every individual unit is locked up like a drum, and there are no master keys for service work even though there are common systems. Everyone has private alarm systems just to make life even more complicated. Lastly the main common doors into the shell have keypad access, but now they suddenly are demanding that the special access codes we are given to enter the building get changed every 2 months. gently caress. All of this in what has to be the safest god drat area in the entire country.
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Mar 27, 2018 13:44
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eyebeem posted:It's one of the only use cases for empty big box locations that seems to be profitable. Heck yea, a couple trampoline parks have opened in my area lately and they have time set aside for under 5 years old so you can let your toddler go hog without worrying they will get run over by a teenager. poo poo, one of them does 90 minutes for $10 which for the area is pretty decent. Great for those 90 degree days that make the park a nonstarter.
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Sep 1, 2018 02:49
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