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Seems like a more libertarian way of doing things would be to allow individual store managers free reign. So if a store in Colorado wants to dump the soda aisle because it doesn't make much profit and replace it with a vast selection of skis for the local slope, then he gets to do it. If it doesn't work out, he's fired. Case in point: The K-Mart in Manhattan has a garden department. Anyone in Manhattan rich enough to have a garden has a gardening service to deal with that. I assume that they just receive a standard shipment for a store their size and have to put it out on sale, because that's policy.
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Dec 8, 2016 18:33
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Sears brought in a hedge fund idiot for CEO that only thinks about short-term shareholder returns, so he spent all of their money on share buybacks instead of improving stores, now the stores are dilapidated and nobody shops there any more, so now he's selling off Sears' brands and liquidating stores for more quick money. Of all the big box store deaths coming up, Sears is probably going to be the one that was most avoidable. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 20:55
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Cease to Hope posted:yeah nah they take a fixed fee plus a %. Walmarts are often worse than payday loan outlets when it comes to cashing paychecks. That's just false. They charge a low fixed fee, no percentage. Taking a percentage of the check is exactly why regular check cashing places are so evil, and not taking a percentage is exactly why I mentioned that service in my post.
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Dec 8, 2016 22:16
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fishmech posted:At a lot of their locations they waive the fee or heavily reduce it... but only if you're also about to pay for your monthly groceries etc with it at that Wal-Mart. It's basically holding their business and paycheck hostage. Same sort of deal at a lot of supermarket chains. What the hell are you talking about? Also, the fee is $3-6.
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Dec 8, 2016 22:19
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:What the hell are you talking about? Also, the fee is $3-6. I'm talking about what it was like at the Wal-Mart I worked for as a summer job abut 8 years ago. That's what we did, no fees or charges but you had to be cashing the check as part of making a purchase. And one of the other ones nearby only reduced the cost to a token amount, for the same thing.
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Dec 8, 2016 22:23
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How would that even work, specifically? Every Walmart I've seen has check cashing at a side counter away from the cash registers? How do you cash a check as part of your purchase? How is $3 not a token fee?
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Dec 8, 2016 22:32
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Lifehack: You can use a store like that as an atm with no fee, just get a friendly/bored tell to ring you up an item ask for cashback and have them return it.
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Dec 8, 2016 22:51
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:How would that even work, specifically? Every Walmart I've seen has check cashing at a side counter away from the cash registers? How do you cash a check as part of your purchase? How is $3 not a token fee? The store I was at, we accepted them as if they were regular personal checks written to the store, had the customer sign some form thing and write something special on the back, and placed them in the drawer like normal. There were restrictions like they had to be either a local bank or one of the big national banks (so like some random bank from Missouri wouldn't be ok, some bank from like two states away you didn't recognize - ask the manager, Bank of America was ok, the bank that was right next door was 100% ok). You also had to be buying more than a certain amount but I can't remember the cutoff - it was like at least $10 of stuff I think? If your check didn't meet the requirements or you didn't want to spend that much, then you went over and did a normal check cashing process at the same service desk that you had to go to to buy cigarettes. No idea what we charged for that, I never worked service desk and never cared to ask. Also what do you mean "how is $3 not a token fee"? People would come in with paychecks for like $40 or $50 or personal checks to them for even lower values. $3 would make a pretty big dent. The other store would charge like a quarter per check-cash so long as it met the requirements that you were buying "enough" stuff from them with it. Not sure why they settled on that.
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Dec 8, 2016 23:09
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BarbarianElephant posted:Seems like a more libertarian way of doing things would be to allow individual store managers free reign. So if a store in Colorado wants to dump the soda aisle because it doesn't make much profit and replace it with a vast selection of skis for the local slope, then he gets to do it. If it doesn't work out, he's fired. Seems to me that even dumber than having a garden department is having a K-Mart in Manhattan in the first place 
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Dec 9, 2016 00:03
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Badger of Basra posted:Seems to me that even dumber than having a garden department is having a K-Mart in Manhattan in the first place It's in Penn Station and it's three floors (I work near it).
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Dec 9, 2016 00:07
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Badger of Basra posted:Seems to me that even dumber than having a garden department is having a K-Mart in Manhattan in the first place There used to be two different ones in Manhattan: http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/01/nyregion/kmart-changes-its-tune-to-manhattan.html It was supposed to be a start to a thing where they'd open specialized K-Marts in city centers all over the country. It didn't go too well.
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Dec 9, 2016 00:42
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fishmech posted:I'm talking about what it was like at the Wal-Mart I worked for as a summer job abut 8 years ago. That's what we did, no fees or charges but you had to be cashing the check as part of making a purchase. And one of the other ones nearby only reduced the cost to a token amount, for the same thing. You are an idiot. Apart from that, you are cofusing writing a check to the store for over the amount and receiving cash back with offering check cashing between 3rd parties and the consumer.
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Dec 9, 2016 01:42
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Liquid Communism posted:You are an idiot. Uh no, dude. We were cashing people's paychecks and certain personal checks, written from other people to them. Mostly the paychecks though.
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Dec 9, 2016 01:47
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Walmart doesn't cash personal checks.
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Dec 9, 2016 03:48
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Walmart doesn't cash personal checks. We did, at Wal-Mart.
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Dec 9, 2016 03:50
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Is it that hard to figure out your walmarts were different? Come on guys it's okay.
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Dec 9, 2016 05:07
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Is it that hard to figure out your walmarts were different? Come on guys it's okay. The first time I cooked meth in a public restroom was in a Walmart. Good times.
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Dec 9, 2016 05:08
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Walmart will always be special to me. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...m=.b6f08fa837f9 While this thread is for big box stores in general, I only ever see stories like this about Walmart. While we've known for a while that Walmart effectively relies on taxpayers to subsidize their under-payed employees through food stamps, they've started applying that strategy to security. As in, not paying for adequate security and letting the local cops take care of it.
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Dec 9, 2016 16:42
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Horseshoe theory posted:It's in Penn Station and it's three floors (I work near it). Gosh, there must be more than one, I was talking about the one at Astor Place, which is also three floors. The real estate locked up in that place must be incomparable in value. Three enormous floors in one of the most expensive areas of the country, and it's devoted to a store that generally has about 20 people in it. It even has a private entrance to the subway.
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Dec 9, 2016 16:48
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BarbarianElephant posted:Gosh, there must be more than one, I was talking about the one at Astor Place, which is also three floors. Thats the problem with real estate, it's such a good investment now it doesn't matter how efficiently it's used.
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Dec 9, 2016 17:05
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karlor posted:https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...m=.b6f08fa837f9 What security ought walmart provide? Should every business provide its own security? Local police have an incentive to investigate crimes in their jurisdiction because often the same people will commit crimes in multiple places - walmart could never find that. If walmart is actually paying to divert police to guard their stores in lieu of their other duties, that's super sketchy, but I don't think they need to go above and beyond - if the local walmart is the main place where crime is occurring, the local police should be there.
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Dec 9, 2016 17:07
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I'm not sure this characterization is fair - isn't there another lens where it's walmart subsidizing the government's care of those? Surely without walmart the government would only have to (or at least ought to) pay more to care for those employees. Sure, we can ask walmart to take on more of the burden, since they certainly benefit, but it seems more like walmart subsidizing food stamps in exchange for work than the other way around. It's the government subsidizing the company because the way companies work (supposedly) is that they find a way to make the labour of an individual profitable while paying that individual well enough for them to be able to provide their labour. If they require government assistance they aren't being paid well enough to provide their labour, and if the company cannot afford to increase their wages then the company is not viable. It's being propped up by the state.
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Dec 9, 2016 17:10
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Dmitri-9 posted:Thats the problem with real estate, it's such a good investment now it doesn't matter how efficiently it's used. Real estate developers will be full of joy when it gets sold off cheap in the inevitable bankruptcy.
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Dec 9, 2016 17:11
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How long until Walmart starts cutting stores in rural communities? I lived in places that practically depended on them so it's going to be interesting to see what happens after.
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Dec 9, 2016 17:18
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BarbarianElephant posted:Real estate developers will be full of joy when it gets sold off cheap in the inevitable bankruptcy. They probably have a 99 year lease and Eddie knows that the only value is in the real estate his stores are sitting on and has been plundering it with convoluted financial schemes. It's probably technically on someone else's balance sheet already.
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Dec 9, 2016 17:20
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Dead Cosmonaut posted:How long until Walmart starts cutting stores in rural communities? I lived in places that practically depended on them so it's going to be interesting to see what happens after. That's already been slowly happening. You need at least a certain amount of local business to keep a store open, and the rural areas are continuing to shrink. Here's one of their closing rounds from earlier this year: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2016/01/15/list-of-walmart-stores-closing/78852898/ The "Walmart Express" branding they mention in the article were smaller stores that were intended to be able to function in low population rural areas, as well as being able to function in cities with space at a premium. Some of them were just regular Wal-Marts, especially older ones, that didn't get expanded as many other did. It's unusual amount for them to close all at once, more typical to only close a few in a month.
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Dec 9, 2016 17:30
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OwlFancier posted:It's the government subsidizing the company because the way companies work (supposedly) is that they find a way to make the labour of an individual profitable while paying that individual well enough for them to be able to provide their labour.
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Dec 9, 2016 17:34
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:What does that mean though? "Paid well enough to provide their labor" is murky - who decided that? If walmart didn't pay, say, 70% of their living expenses, doesn't the bill get passed on to the taxpayer? You can argue that it is unethical to incentivize people to trade labor at such a low rate, and it's better for the government to pay so they don't have to work those hours, but that's an argument with a very different character than the one you're making. Every dollar that walmart pays out is a dollar that the government can use for something else - in a vacuum, isn't that good? In theory, if the government withdrew their subsidy then *~market forces~* would necessitate wal-mart pulling their weight or sinking and a better competitor stepping in. In practice you'd probably just lose some jobs as the company would just stop using human labour for as many things as they do because it would no longer be as cheap. At best, government wage subsidy is propping up exploitation because the state doesn't have the fortitude to tackle the problem of dwindling employment at the source, at worst it's direct funneling of taxpayer money into the private sector. In neither case is it really a good option. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Dec 9, 2016 |
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Dec 9, 2016 17:40
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I'm not sure this characterization is fair - isn't there another lens where it's walmart subsidizing the government's care of its employees? Surely without walmart the government would only have to (or at least ought to) pay more to care for them. Sure, we can ask walmart to take on more of the burden, since they certainly benefit, but it seems more like walmart subsidizing food stamps in exchange for work than the other way around. Uh, no.Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:What security ought walmart provide? Should every business provide its own security? Local police have an incentive to investigate crimes in their jurisdiction because often the same people will commit crimes in multiple places - walmart could never find that. If walmart is actually paying to divert police to guard their stores in lieu of their other duties, that's super sketchy, but I don't think they need to go above and beyond - if the local walmart is the main place where crime is occurring, the local police should be there. Read the article I posted. Having greeters at the doors was a major deterrent to shoplifters. Those employees (if they even still work for Walmart) have been moved to other parts of the store. The cops will always have to deal with the violent crimes that happen there but now they also have to deal with all the shoplifting. Walmart should put the greeters back in order to reduce shoplifting.
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Dec 9, 2016 17:47
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OwlFancier posted:In theory, if the government withdrew their subsidy then *~market forces~* would necessitate wal-mart pulling their weight or sinking and a better competitor stepping in. In practice you'd probably just lose some jobs as the company would just stop using human labour for as many things as they do because it would no longer be as cheap. quote:At best, government wage subsidy is propping up exploitation because the state doesn't have the fortitude to tackle the problem of dwindling employment at the source, at worst it's direct funneling of taxpayer money into the private sector. In neither case is it really a good option. I don't see how it's funneling government money into the private sector - it's more like the government selling excess labor into the private sector. They get a discount on the support they have to provide. Walmart gets employees. Your argument seems predicated on the fact that Walmart would be forced to pay more if the government didn't subsidize them and I just don't see it. If anything the government removing support would let them pay less, as walking and living off of welfare/food stamps is no longer an option.
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Dec 9, 2016 18:43
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I'm skeptical here - people working at Walmart are price takers. I think that, without government "subsidy", they'd keep working at Walmart and just suffer more. If it's their only lifeline left, what choice do they have? I don't think the government removing its subsidy and letting people starve is on the table - to me the main choices right now are the government pays X, or Walmart pays Y and the government pays X-Y. If the state removes its support then the result is either walmart pays a living wage, or people are no longer alive to work at walmart, or possibly people are rioting because their friends and family are literally starving to death and the state is failing to prevent it. In neither case is walmart going to be able to provide its service properly without the state subsidy.
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Dec 9, 2016 19:26
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I'm skeptical here - people working at Walmart are price takers. I think that, without government "subsidy", they'd keep working at Walmart and just suffer more. If it's their only lifeline left, what choice do they have? I don't think the government removing its subsidy and letting people starve is on the table - to me the main choices right now are the government pays X, or Walmart pays Y and the government pays X-Y. We are about to find out as I'm sure nearly every social program that costs any taxes(all of them) is about to get thrown into Paul Ryan's Gulch.
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Dec 9, 2016 21:44
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Is it that hard to figure out your walmarts were different? Come on guys it's okay. I find it funny that Walmart has done for this thread what it has done for many other American towns: sucked up everything. I mean, this thread doesn't have to be all about Walmart. We can talk about Bed, Bath and Beyond as well!
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Dec 10, 2016 02:50
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Liquid Communism posted:You are an idiot. No, this is a thing that happens. At WalMart. It was the only non-bank place you could cash a payroll check in my home town.
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Dec 10, 2016 02:57
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Can we talk about other large chains as well? I'd like to ask about HMV - specifically, what the gently caress. HMV's were in every Canadian mall I'd ever been in, including the mall I moved next to in 2010. They sold your typical HMV stuff - mostly music, movies, posters, DVD and a bit of IP merch. In 2011 or '12 the location closed as the mall underwent renovation. It popped up as a temporary, half-sized store for 3 months around Christmas of '13, then disappeared again. They were selling about twice as much IP merch this time, but still mostly music/movies. Two months ago HMV re-appears. The approach they've taken is this - take Spencers, Hot Topic and EB and cram it all into one store. Also a couple of racks of CDs, I guess. You have your wall of FunKo figures, your poster section covering music, movies, anime and memes; you have a selection of actual new releases on vinyl, record players, and framed art prints of all the major Marvel characters. There's hoodies, sleeping bags, collectable busts, charms and every other kind of thing you could slap an IP on. For lack of a better word, the selection was schizophrenic. It's like the CEO googled "what do nerds buy" and stocked the whole chain with the top 200 results. Honestly I really enjoy reading these threads about businesses failing to adapt while their new CEO tries "this one trick" that's going to save the company, for real! I'd like to know if there's some bizarre story behind this sudden change, and if it's working at all. (it worked a little bit I did buy my first cd in a decade for my old rear end vehicle after looking around)
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Dec 10, 2016 07:09
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I think that the line between store and warehouse is going to get erased and that's how they are going to survive.
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Dec 10, 2016 08:18
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I'm skeptical here - people working at Walmart are price takers. I think that, without government "subsidy", they'd keep working at Walmart and just suffer more. If it's their only lifeline left, what choice do they have? I don't think the government removing its subsidy and letting people starve is on the table - to me the main choices right now are the government pays X, or Walmart pays Y and the government pays X-Y. Walmart would absolutely be forced to pay more without the government subsidies because their workforce would literally die off otherwise. This isn't the government selling 'excess labor' because the government flatly does not own these people's labor in the first place. This is entirely a large, multi-national corporation knowingly choosing to pay its staff less than a living wage in order to improve its own bottom line while the state picks up the tab for keeping the workers from starving.
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Dec 10, 2016 09:14
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Caedus posted:Can we talk about other large chains as well? I'd like to ask about HMV - specifically, what the gently caress. CEOs don't do wacky poo poo to actually help their businesses, they do it to generate good buzz so the stock goes up and everybody is happy. Then they go off and CEO somewhere else. If sales at this chain went up because of this strategy, well, that's not a bad thing, but what was most important was creating a narrative that something was really being done.
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Dec 10, 2016 11:38
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BarbarianElephant posted:Gosh, there must be more than one, I was talking about the one at Astor Place, which is also three floors. Forgot about the Astor place one, since I usually look at the other side when I pass by. And it doesn't looks like Seritage Growth Properties (the REIT that holds the most valuable Sears properties) has the Astor Place location, so they must have a ridiculous lease (same with Penn, probably).
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Dec 10, 2016 13:02
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BrandorKP posted:I think that the line between store and warehouse is going to get erased and that's how they are going to survive. Does anyone remember service merchandise? I guess it existed in some form till the early 2000s but does anyone remember it in the old days? Like they had a showroom instead of a store and you filled out order forms for things in the store and then brought it to a guy at the front of the store and then depending what you bought it'd either come out of the back warehouse of the store on a big conveyor belt or else they'd tell you to come back in a week and it'd be there then. It feels like that sort of idea but with less filling out forms would work pretty well. Small area with display areas, large warehouse in the back, shipping options.
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Dec 10, 2016 18:07
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