|
I feel like a lot of big box stores are going to go under because they're awful at keeping things in stock. If I'm going to a physical store, I want either expertise that only an expert can provide in-person and/or a hands-on experience with the product (only one of which is possible to get from a big box store), or I'm loving impatient and I want whatever it is NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW! If you say "I can order that in" you can go gently caress yourself, because I specifically came to the store because I wanted something today, rather than two days from now if I order from Amazon. I'd say there's also a division between "local big box stores" and giant multinational chains. We have a computer/tech store around here called Memory Express. I think it's probably up to 5-10 locations now, and it fits the definition of Big Box Store pretty well, but the employees are a little less dumb than Best Buy, and the product selection is a little bit wider, the service is way better, and it's just a nicer experience to shop in all around. Frankly, I think specialized stores are the way to go, in terms of physical shops. I want to know that the staff is knowledgable about their (possibly small) range of products, and the thing I need will be in stock. I will pay a premium for this and be happy to do it.
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2016 04:32
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:00 |
|
|
BarbarianElephant posted:"Now instead of giving your list to the grocer and chilling while he got your goods for you from the shelves behind him, you have to trail round this huge cavernous store with a wheeled trolley picking things up yourself, then having them scanned one by one at the door. Sounds like a nightmare!" It is. Grocery shopping loving sucks, and the stores are designed to make things hard to find so you have to spend longer in the store looking around, increasing the odds of impulse buys.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 5, 2016 18:35
|
|
|
Cicero posted:You literally just described delivery, did you not notice that? You don't even have to be obscenely wealthy to take advantage of it, y'know! A lot of delivery services here are either quite expensive, have a terrible/incomplete selection of products, or rely on you being at home at an arbitrary time to accept the delivery.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2016 19:01
|
|
|
The provincial liquor stores in Alberta used to work like that before the liquor retail was privatized, I'm told. Honestly, I wouldn't mind going back to a system like that. In general, I already have a pretty good idea what I want when I go in, and it's not a product that benefits in any way from being handled or seen, so wandering through a poorly-organized store looking for the thing I want is just an awful waste of time.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2016 20:17
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:But if they organize the store badly and make you search for things you might find something else to buy. And yet Amazon still does that, in a sense, by showing you items that were frequently bought with, or by the same people as, the item you're already planning on buying. And they e-mail me all the time suggesting things I might also like to buy (and indeed I do buy them sometimes). I don't object to stores wanting to sell me extra things, I object to them doing that by actively designing the shopping experience to be as long and frustrating as possible. My guess is that Amazon's product suggestions have a much higher take rate than just forcing people to wander by things they might want in a vain search to locate the thing they actually want. For example, my supermarket decided that, on the over-aisle signs, they would simply not list cooking oil, a basic staple everyone needs to locate and buy regularly, so you have to wander up and down the aisles looking for it. Likewise, canned vegetables can be in any one of five different locations. Normal canned vegetables are in one place, canned tomato products are somewhere else, and you might find the canned beans you're looking for in any one of three other different locations (and also in the normal canned veggies section) depending on whether they suspect you might be cooking Caribbean cuisine, Indian cuisine, or Mexican cuisine. The dried beans may also be located according to a similar yet distinct logic, but god knows you wouldn't want to put them right next to the canned beans in any of the above cases! God I loving hate shopping for groceries... EDIT: And then, even when it's -25 with wind chill outside, they keep the store at a toasty 23 degree, so if you're wearing suitable clothing to actually reach the store without freezing, you have roughly a 70% chance of showing up to the checkout drenched in sweat and/or dying of heatstroke once you've finished wandering all around hell's half acre looking for the things on your shopping list. And you get the knowledge that you're paying extra so they can keep the store so warm, and at the very same time, keep their chilled items cold. Wonderful! PT6A fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Dec 10, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2016 21:24
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:Brick and mortar stores are also generally run on skeleton crews these days. Finding somebody to ask about where something is can take an unreasonable amount of time. A search bar on a website knows where everything is. Ah, the first hurdle to clear is "does the employee even have the faintest loving idea what you're talking about?" which you really only have about a 30% chance of passing. Then it has to be something which they carry and is in stock... that's maybe a 40% chance if you haven't already been able to find it yourself, and then the employee has to know where it is... let's say another 30% chance. So, yeah, the odds are not good.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2016 21:34
|
|
|
It solved the problem of "I loving hate walking around stores looking for poo poo," and before express shipping was a thing, it was arguably the most elegant way of dealing with that problem, but now it's always going to be something of a relic. Even now, I prefer to make an order online or by phone, have it gathered together, and go pick it up in person, if I'm going to go to a local store (or if I have to, for things like booze which are illegal to ship and I don't want to deal with scheduling a delivery).
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2016 16:17
|
|
|
Doctor Butts posted:I get it, but that's really bothersome to me. Because if it's not available in stores, in stock, at the store I want to go to, I will go to shop in person, and discover that the product in question is not available, so I've just wasted a whole bunch of time walking or driving to the store in question, and I'm no closer to buying the thing I need.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2016 16:24
|
|
|
duz posted:You can take your coat off and put it in the cart. It's ok, I promise no one will laugh at you. I don't use a cart because they are a pain in the rear end and I have no reason to buy that much at once. They just poo poo up the aisles and get in everyone's way, and shopping takes five times longer because you can't squeeze around the slow-moving zombies that populate every grocery store. I don't know where these people get so much free time, because they've obviously got a gently caress sight more than I have if they can meander so slowly through the store. Edit: Speed arguments aside, using a basket also ensures that it's physically possible and not too difficult for me to actually bring my groceries back to my apartment, which is of course a necessary part of the shopping experience. PT6A fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Dec 16, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2016 15:15
|
|
|
Why? Then I have another object taking up space in my apartment, which I have to bring to the store every time I go, all so I can use an unwieldy cart that I don't even need, only to solve a problem that wouldn't exist if they just lowered the thermostat in the store by 5 degrees or so (which would also save a lot of energy, because they wouldn't have to heat as much, and it would be easier to keep the chilled/frozen sections cold). My point is that grocery stores are awful and I hate them. In fact, shopping in general is terrible -- the only good part of it is that, at the end of the hellish process, you have likely (but not certainly) obtained the products you want or need.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2016 16:40
|
|
|
fishmech posted:I don't think there's anywhere you could live in Ohio where getting to any supermarkets or similar size stores would require a 3 hour round trip by car, at least without massive weather problems or traffic on the route to and from. You can totally end up in that situation in a lot of places out west. And even that's not particularly rural compared to rural Alaska or northern Canada, where you can actually need a plane or a seasonal road for access to any reasonably-sized town. One of my friends is posted in a place where The Pas is the nearest "urban centre", and that's either an air taxi flight or an eight-hour ride on a freight train away. And even that's probably not the most isolated place in Canada, not by far.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2016 05:47
|
|
|
karlor posted:I used to tease my younger brother that our parents bought him as a blue light special (I was an rear end in a top hat kid). That K-Mart has been a car dealership for well over a decade and the building sat vacant for several years before that. Good job on copying Calvin's dad.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 12, 2017 20:19
|
|
|
withak posted:I am eagerly awaiting a response from the president-elect on twitter. If anyone has a right to be pissed, it's Canadians since Gildan is a Canadian company -- we could have factories here! On the other hand, no one in Canada wants to make cheap-rear end clothes, so Central America is probably a good call.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2017 00:21
|
|
|
Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Is retail as a concept really threatened or are we just undergoing a generational shift in which stores succeed? Because I look at that list and all those stores sold shoddy, ugly garbage that people can't really be expected to want to buy anymore. They're mostly mall stores, and malls were a bad idea that's rightly fading away. Wet Seal, BCBG, and Bebe all sell teen girl clothing at an awkward price point where middle-class kids can't really afford to buy it without parental help, but it's not nice or stylish enough to attract wealthy shoppers. Forever 21 and Brandy Melville are much cheaper and trendier, and the staple clothing people used to buy at Sears and Macy's people now just by at Walmart and Target, where again it's much cheaper. Is Zara and its associated brands a big thing in the US? They're absolutely loving gigantic in Europe and elsewhere, and the whole business model kicks the poo poo out of all the "mall stores" I used to go to. The quality/price ratio seems decent, too. I bought a pair of 25€ jeans there a few years ago when I was travelling and one of the pairs of jeans I brought on my trip got all hosed up, and they've lasted longer than jeans I bought for twice the price. They also rotate through stock and designs at a furious rate so there's always a reason to go in and check things out.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 12, 2017 23:57
|
|
|
KiteAuraan posted:See, that's another issue in retail called fast fashion and there is a whole mess of environmental and workers' rights issues wrapped up in that, both in manufacturing and in the disposal of the unsold items. There are still issues but one of the reasons I like Zara over some others in that space is that they manufacture a significant portion of their stuff either in the EU, or in nearby countries (Turkey and Morocco come to mind) where they can ensure proper employment standards are met (theoretically) instead of making poo poo in Bangladesh or Southeast Asia. It's not perfect but it's a gently caress sight better than a lot of other manufacturers.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2017 04:32
|
|
|
So, I was shopping for a TV today and I want it ASAP because I'm a useless, impatient manchild. How many places do you think had the TV I wanted (or a similar model at a similar price) in stock, anywhere in the city/province, and indicated so on their website? 0. loving none. If I'm going to order something and wait, of course I'm going with Amazon. I probably would've paid another $200-300 to have my TV by Friday, but nope! Is there something I'm missing? How can you compete with online stores when you steadfastly refuse to stock things?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2017 05:23
|
|
|
Paradoxish posted:If you were looking for a particular model then I'm not sure that this is really all that surprising. The last time I bought a TV at a brick and mortar store was over a decade ago, and even then I had to wait something like five days to go back and pick it up because I wanted a specific model and I didn't want the floor model. I was willing to compromise on brand and model so long as I got a 60" LED of some description for around the same price, and it was a brand I'd heard of before. No one had anything close in stock.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 24, 2017 00:25
|
|
|
Horseshoe theory posted:So Payless ShoeSource filed for Chapter 11 today. Who's next on the retail bankruptcy pool? Good, gently caress them. I guess they figured even low prices don't make up for the absolute worst merchandise. How do you even gently caress up socks, you assholes? To say nothing of their loving lovely shoes, of course...
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2017 05:16
|
|
|
Craptacular! posted:American Apparel is dead because fashion is difficult and because Dov Charney is an rear end. On top of that, they were an ethics brand being squeezed from both sides: people like me never bought their clothes because I can only afford clothes being made by people in sweatshops living even worse than I do, so I'll go to Old Navy or H&M. The people with money, for whatever reason, chose Zara. Zara is well cheaper than American Apparel ever was, and frankly their clothes are about the same quality in terms of workmanship, but they look and feel better to wear. I loved American Apparel t-shirts for a basic t-shirt, but a lot of their other poo poo was super fuckin' weird looking, whereas Zara I can always find something I like that I'm pretty sure will look fashionable on me without a whole bunch of thought on my part. Frankly, it's basically the only place I buy clothes any more because they have a good selection of stuff for cheap enough -- I first went in when I needed a 20€ pair of jeans when I was travelling in Spain and ruined my other pair, and lo and behold, it's a pretty drat good store (advertising in the Iberia inflight magazine paid off for them!). The fact that they make their stuff in places slightly less awful than Bangladesh is good too, of course.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 9, 2017 00:27
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:How on earth do stores stay in business only carrying up to a 12? Because you don't want your brand to be associated with anything but thin, attractive people, so you just make it impossible for anyone else to wear, of course! fishmech posted:Not really as impressive as it sounds when you remember that the great collapse in coal mine employment happened much farther back, and retail employment is absolutely huge. That point is less about making the retail losses seem huge, and more about properly trivializing the coal mining job losses, which have become some sort of irritating cultural touchstone.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 11, 2017 02:45
|
|
|
Amazon seems to do a really good job of remembering that you need customers to make money. Everything they do revolves around selling more stuff to more people, usually by making it extremely easy and fast to buy things. Prime was a game-changer, because suddenly it became so quick to buy pretty much whatever you want and have it shipped anywhere. Want to buy a gift for someone that lives across the country? Select a gift-wrap option, have it sent right to their door in 2 days, and you're done. Are you drunk as gently caress and think of something you want to buy? Thanks to the app, you can be sitting at the bar and your drunken impulse purchase will arrive in 2 business days without having to enter a credit card number or anything like that! Oh, hey, I can upgrade to one-day shipping for free on an order over $25? Guess I'll add on another book or whatever to get it over that threshold. The Marketplace system also works a treat. Now that everyone shops on Amazon for everything, you can attract additional sellers to handle specialized products. You keep a cut, and they're grateful for the increased business. They have no need to worry about a market being too small to generate demand for a specific product, because your market is now any Amazon customer you're willing to ship to.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2017 23:21
|
|
|
Pharohman777 posted:Can anyone tell more horror stories of ancient franken-tech in retail? Sounds fascinating. It's all ancient as gently caress. I did some work with restaurant POS systems, and the poo poo there was just... whew... Everything gets such inertia behind it that no one can ever tear it all down and do things the way they're supposed to be done. Even the fancy tablet-based systems are still backed, in a lot of cases, by receipt printers that are shipped by default with serial ports. And god forbid you try to tell a restaurant person that the thing they've been using for the past ten years, hacked together and running on Windows ME, isn't the best option! Oh, and the security holes. On the system that was finally decided upon, it was trivial to recover the admin code if you had access to the server -- which was, of course, neither physically- nor properly password-secured. Not that it mattered, because the admin code was regularly shared between employees as necessary. I guess that's not really ancient franken-tech, though. I can only imagine how bad it gets when you have an entrenched piece of custom software doing things, as large chains must.
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2017 02:39
|
|
|
anonumos posted:Yes. How many times I could have sold a $3000 gaming laptop but aww shucks we didn't have the right RAM to upgrade it or the other addons that made rich kids drool. "I can order the RAM and call you to set up a time to install i...oh, you want it now...welp, thanks for coming." One of the most aggravating things is when I hear "oh, we don't have those in stock, they're really popular so they sell out!" If it's not a limited-production product, there's just no excuse for that -- it's a sign that you should order more of them and less of the poo poo that doesn't sell.
|
|
#
¿
May 26, 2017 22:38
|
|
|
They should make one that ships you a random book on a specified wish list, that way it would be promoting literacy and reading instead of obesity.
|
|
#
¿
May 30, 2017 06:39
|
|
|
Uncle Jam posted:If you're super concerned about refreezing then I'd probably stop eating sushi from any restaurant in the US except for 3 or 4 specific places. Most people don't realize this, but when I was looking up the safety of using frozen shrimp for ceviche, I indeed discovered that it's actually safer to eat seafood that's been flash-frozen. I believe the EU even requires it is restaurants for fish (and possibly meat?) that's going to be eaten uncooked.
|
|
#
¿
May 31, 2017 22:48
|
|
|
If you don't have a car or driving license at all, I'll admit bulky things are a pain in the rear end. But if you have a car, you can just swing by the supermarket and get those bulky/heavy things in large quantities as you're doing something else, and still walk/bike easily to and from the grocery store for daily things. You're not using that much extra fuel if you stop off at the grocery store on your way home from doing something else.
|
|
#
¿
May 31, 2017 23:25
|
|
|
It's not a loss, but it's certainly a failure to realize potential gains. EDIT: However, arguably renting your building for less would decrease the value of that building on paper, creating an unrealized loss. PT6A fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Jun 4, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2017 00:58
|
|
|
Yeah, if you have three buildings in a small area (for example) and they're 15% vacant, you're not going to drop the rent to get a lower vacancy rate because then all your other tenants will realize they can pay you less money, so even with higher occupancy rates you're making less money. EDIT: Now what is complete bullshit is when those building owners whine about their low occupancy rates, having not lowered the rent even a bit -- which is definitely what's going on in my city. That's when they can gently caress right off. PT6A fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Jun 4, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2017 04:08
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:I only willingly go into a mall maybe once a year and I find them super depressing. But I also do almost no online shopping. I guess I just don't buy things?? I buy groceries because I need to eat, I buy clothes but those last years. I have the furniture and kitchen equipment I need, that can last decades. How is the shop that sells greeting cards and calendars so busy all the time? Why are there 2 busy shops that sell nothing but phone cases? You buy a calendar once a year, you buy a phone case every 3-4 years as you get a new phone. How are the malls so crowded? How are people shopping so often? Where are they putting all the stuff they're constantly buying? Do people just go multiple times a week to browse but not buy things? I feel like I have retail-autism because none of it computes. Yes, some people do actually enjoy the act of buying things they don't actually need, or even the experience of just browsing. I don't understand it either, but it's absurdly popular. Mind you, I routinely look up things I will probably never, ever buy on the Internet all the time (planes, cars, whatever), and I enjoy that, so I suppose it's the same impulse. Some people just like to do that with clothes and knicknacks instead of awesome things that I like 
|
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2017 21:41
|
|
|
Lay off Tiny Brontosaurus. She gets poo poo on way more than she deserves, and is usually actually a pretty funny poster. I really liked the post she was probated for. Yeah, sometimes she seems a bit over the top, but she's right at least twice as often as she's wrong -- and I know I've been one of her "targets" for lack of a better word, and yeah I've deserved it. Stop being such a bunch of babies, jesus christ.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2017 02:02
|
|
|
Brainiac Five posted:All of these accusations say so much about the person making them. Yeah, I've seen that accusation before and it occurs to me that: if it were true, surely there would be some evidence the proponents of this theory would like to put forward in support of it. I've yet to see any, so I take it with a very large grain of salt.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2017 04:45
|
|
|
WrenP-Complete posted:I recently encountered a mall with a chain grocery store. I'm in the DC area, have lived all over, and am not sure I remember seeng this before. Is this prevalent? Fwiw, I mean like a Safeway or giant, not like trader joes or whole foods. And an indoor mall, not the shopping center kind. I've seen it in a few places, for sure. The only one I can think of locally is sort of a hybrid mall -- most/all of the larger shops have exterior entrances as well as being accessible from the interior of the mall, but I've also seen traditional indoor malls with supermarkets in them in other cities. I've also seen grocery stores on the ground level of residential buildings, which I think is a great way to go.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2017 05:31
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:They rarely even have more than one or two pairs of any size like 12 or so. I'm a 6' tall guy with long legs, big feet, and a slender frame. It's so god damned hard for me to buy clothes. But they could totally order it in for you at the store! I've had to explain to people that, no, if I didn't want X right now and/or be able to actually see it or try it on, I could order it too! If you're just going to order the same thing I would, and then force me to drive to the store to pick it up, you are in fact worse than useless.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2017 23:05
|
|
|
Hey guys I found a cool trick for saving money, I just shove poo poo into my pockets and then walk out without paying it's totally cool because, like, they didn't even ask me to pay for it or anything, right?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2017 20:33
|
|
|
Blut posted:The "goon criminal" as you describe him is doing his part to fight the system and help poor people. What are you doing? How's he helping poor people by stealing food, unless he's turning around and giving it to the poor? If you steal food when you can afford to buy food, you're increasing the cost of food for everyone and hurting the poor. It's probably not a huge increase, but it's not altruistic or good either.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2017 23:11
|
|
|
The only thing I can't stand is when service staff get unreasonably defensive about something and act like jerks. A mistake is a mistake, we all make them, it's not reasonable to get really pissed off about it or to act like you're infallible. Luckily, this happens extremely rarely in practice -- I can only remember two occasions when I thought "this fucker is being a jerk and will not get a tip." One was a waiter trying to argue that a faulted bottle of wine was not faulted*, and the other was a taxi driver that took us for a bunch of out-of-towners and took an unreasonably long and stupid route to get to our destination. * This was the one that pissed me off the most, because it's just A Thing That Happens. It's not the restaurant's fault, it's not the waiter's fault, it's not the winemaker's fault in general. The distributor, and later the producer, will eat it as a cost of doing business, and it's not like there's any point to lying about it, because we haven't actually drank the wine and we're not looking for a free bottle (just a replacement, non-faulted bottle, which will be paid for). So why bother challenging a customer on it? That's literally the whole point of pouring out a little bit of wine from the bottle for someone to taste before pouring for the whole table.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2017 00:11
|
|
|
If they stop you while you're trying to steal something just tell them you're travelling and you refuse to create joinder with them, it works every time.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2017 00:47
|
|
|
Man, you're just not getting it. I don't give a gently caress if you steal a little bit or not, to be perfectly honest. Just don't pretend it's not theft, and don't pretend it's some kind of altruistic way of sticking it to the man. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2017 01:45
|
|
|
Submarine Sandpaper posted:You're defending a dude ringing up non organic food while taking organic stock. There is literally no response but to increase price as an owner to meet revenue. Also, there's no loving point. Buying organic is essentially useless, and you could easily just buy the non-organic stuff for the price you're already paying. I will pay extra for higher-welfare meat and eggs, though. But if you just ring it through as a lower-priced SKU, that's actively harmful because it decreases the money that the producer makes for making higher-welfare choices.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2017 03:14
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:00 |
|
|
Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Yeah, you think about this stuff really differently than most people. For one it's bizarre to think of a buzzing phone as being capable of interrupting anything. People who aren't in a situation where it's appropriate to be on their phones usually have it tucked away in a pocket or bag. It's fine. And AIM-type chatting basically existed for the blink of an eye - modern teens have probably never even used it. Having basic communication features fully integrated into a device you always have with you is nice. People barely use email outside of work anymore. It's just not needed. And it doesn't hurt that spam texts are way, way less common than spam email. A lot of the less technically-inclined people I know basically treat their email inboxes like they're infested and avoid them as much as possible. Speaking of etiquette surrounding new technology, one thing I've noticed wearing an Apple Watch is you have to be really careful about how/when you glance at it. It will inaudibly "tap" your wrist, and you'll instinctively rotate your wrist to make the display come on and see what happened, so it seems exaggerated in terms of a motion, but it's not meant to be a "gently caress, this is taking too long..." gesture that people without a smartwatch might think it is. Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I don't think anyone was prepared for rock to effectively cease to exist as a mainstream genre. It makes the Bill & Ted movies really quaint. That's an interesting point. I'd never noticed it, but, yeah, it's mainly dead. The only new rock music I really notice is niche stuff, often international stuff too. Part of the problem is the listeners, though. We'd rather listen to Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Santana or Queen again rather than some band trying to break new ground in the genre today, and without innovation, there's only stagnation and death.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2017 02:17
|
|