Companies Circling The Drain: What about Chapter Elevenses?

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

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

There was a story in '06 about Snapper lawnmowers stopping sales to Walmart because they couldn't do so without compromising quality:

http://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart

...and years later, new management started selling rebadged lawnmowers from another, shittier company (MTD?) as Snappers at Walmart

So in this case, Snapper has different production lines, because it is literally different companies making their products.

edit: the article also mentions this anecdote:

quote:

The Wal-Mart vice president responded with strategy and argument. Snapper is the sort of high-quality nameplate, like Levi Strauss, that Wal-Mart hopes can ultimately make it more Target-like. He suggested that Snapper find a lower-cost contract manufacturer. He suggested producing a separate, lesser-quality line with the Snapper nameplate just for Wal-Mart. Just like Levi did.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2016 03:12

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 06:48

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

Buying stuff on amazon can be cool, unless you are buying certain types of mass-market consumer goods where the manufacturer can cut lots of corners--USB phone chargers, for instance. The top 40 results for such things are inevitably chinese knockoffs of other chinese knockoffs with no UL certification or CE mark, and are going to break within the month.

walmart sucks because everything they sell is like this

# ¿ Aug 28, 2016 04:03

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

Tayne and Interceptor are both from lovely flyover country, so why are they enemies?

# ¿ Aug 28, 2016 04:18

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

InterceptorV8 posted:

OK dumbass, let's take an XBOX ONE. Do you loving think WALMART gets a special brand of WALMART ONLY XBOX ONES that are made to WALMART ONLY standard with cheaper parts so they break faster and are easier to make? Do you really loving believe Microsoft would allow that? And Do you loving think BestBuy would like to get a order of WALMART ONLY xboxes so they get ripped off and then rip off their customers?

I am NOT talking about "exclusives"

Uhhh, the comparable scenario there is certain console bundle SKUs only being sold at a certain retailer (such as walmart).

The thing being discussed is stuff like DVD players, where Walmart might get a unique model with a different SKU and less features, in order to meet the Walmart price point. This kind of product all comes from overseas, so unless you drive "ocean trucks" (technical term) you don't know poo poo about it you loving moron

# ¿ Aug 28, 2016 05:48

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

InterceptorV8 posted:

You are stupid, I brought that up a long loving time ago. These loving idiots don't understand that and think that everything matches and there is no way to tell them apart. R->C->P.

Literally no one thinks this except you.

InterceptorV8 posted:

Also I deal/dealt with "ocean trucks" So unless you want to be stuffed in a can full poo poo headed to loving Tokyo on the Ever Chivary you'll stop being stupid too.

Please take less pills. Or more. I am not a doctor.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2016 05:58

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

Neurion posted:

BOY I SURE DO LOVE THIS SLAPFIGHT

Here's a bunch of poo poo that's going down the drain: rando stores that open up in the cursed lots in the mall. Nothing has stayed more than 3 months in several of these lots, and half the stores on my side are gone.

How many are Vapist Depots?

# ¿ Aug 28, 2016 06:03

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

Fat Shat Sings posted:

Reading something is not understanding it. I'm sure all those hicks in that plant in alabama were perfectly able to read the words of the manual. That doesn't mean they know what they are doing or have the ability to reason on a technical enough level to resolve problems / modify operations or understand simple ideas like cause / effect.

Don't be so sure. Illiteracy is still a thing.

http://blog.al.com/businessnews/2009/11/alabama_illiteracy_has_an_econ.html

quote:

Alabama illiteracy has an economic fallout

A Birmingham News analysis of the 2008-09 Alabama High School Graduation Exam, reported Sunday, Nov. 22, 2009, shows that 130 public high schools either failed reading or were classified as "borderline" failing, based on 11th-graders' performance on the Alabama High School Graduation Exam. The analysis involved 367 high schools, all of the state's public high schools that are not specialized in some way.

Three groups are especially hurt when schools fail to teach students to read well: The students, who are unprepared for meaningful work; the companies that can't find the employees they need; and the overall community, which loses a chance to increase prosperity.

Ga., where employer Yamaha went to educators in the late 1990s and said it would have to build a planned automated facility elsewhere, because Cowetta County didn't have the work force the company needed.
"They said, 'We're not so interested in tax breaks; we're interested in a skilled work force,' " said Mark Whitlock, CEO of the Central Educational Center in Newnan.

But the county school system and businesses fought back by creating the CEC, a charter school that allows students to take free two-year college courses in addition to their high school classes. CEC has become a model for its ability to graduate students who have the skills needed for a 21st century work force.

"Our young people are facing a new economy that is very difficult and very complex," said Whitlock, formerly with Bank of America. "It's only going to get more complex and difficult. We have to add skills at a more rapid rate."

CEC quickly led to a 45 percent decrease in the dropout rate. Students there are graded not only on content, but on work ethic, such as punctuality and effort.

The CEC has the highest attendance rate in the county, Whitlock said. "One thing we found is you can raise the bar, and students live up to that . . . and the relevance of their studies motivates them."

Yamaha ended up staying in the county, making recreational vehicles, and is now its largest employer.

Ed Gardner, vice president for economic development for the Birmingham Business Alliance, used the CEC as a model to help create the "iCademy" in St. Clair County, where high school students also take college courses from Jefferson State Community College.

The iCademy planned two technical curriculums -- nursing and manufacturing, which included welding, pneumatics and pro�grammable logic control for computers that run manufacturing machines.

Plans hit a problem last spring.

"We had 25 to 30 students who were interested in manufacturing," Gardner remembers. "Not one of them passed the reading that was required of them."

Educators were able to adjust requirements and enroll about a dozen of the students.

Those students highlight Alabama's failure to teach literacy in high school.

"They're falling through the cracks," said Julie Beck�ham, director of the Literacy Council in Birmingham. "If you don't have an education, you don't have a job. What are you going to do? You're on the streets and you're in jail. It affects the community; it hits your pocket because your tax dollars are going to these people."

Those who do go to college often need remedial help in reading, said Karen Royster, director of development reading and learning assistance for Jefferson State.

She said half to three-quarters of the community college's students need to take a developmental read�ing course to get them read�ing at a 12th-grade level.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2016 22:49

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

etalian posted:

This is the most honest opinion on NJ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCjA3oGuPIk

"oh i gotta pay a toll!!!" welcome to the northeast bitch, get an ez pass

# ¿ Sep 14, 2016 01:25

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

Yeah, this has been in the works for a long time. For some reason, though, the "I only block ads because of annoying pop-ups and malware!" crowd has been pretty silent on this (surely they are not lying!)

# ¿ Sep 14, 2016 02:01

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

13Pandora13 posted:

I think most of the US is "right to work" these days, which is code for "right to shitcan you for no reason at any time so you don't qualify for unemployment." So don't worry about getting sued. Do worry about you getting fired, then him too if you disobey your lovely overlord boss.

No it isn't, shitbrains.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2017 07:28

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

GrandpaPants posted:

I was thinking about this the other day, but when did TED Talks lose their influence? I remember being downright inspired by some of them, but now they're either a punchline or, at best, sorta forgotten. Was it when they expanded it with the whole TedX thing? Was it when it was saturated by Silicon Valley snake oil? When did they lose their cultural influence?

TEDx is incredibly good because of Vortex Math

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhBymLCRIU8

# ¿ May 8, 2017 17:06

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

Grumbletron 4000 posted:

Only reason I stopped going there was because I found some weird heart looking organ in my food one day. Biting into a tough, chewy chunk of meat with tubular poo poo coming out of it will put you off of a place to be sure.

Probably just a kidney---they sometimes don't get removed during prep of chicken thighs

# ¿ Aug 3, 2017 06:36

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

evobatman posted:

The Gamestop where I live have a couple of bins of used games, and 95% of the store is Hot Topic and Thinkgeek stuff. You could remove all the video games and consoles from the store, and you wouldn't notice a difference.

what?

# ¿ Aug 29, 2017 15:39

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

JnnyThndrs posted:

Yeah, because(afaik, I'm not huge fast food consumer) McD's is the only chain that uses a real egg rather than lovely 'scrambled egg' powdered mix that everybody else uses.

Who uses powdered eggs? I thought a lot of chains used liquid eggs. Look up burger king's eggs (for example)

LIQUID EGG - PASTEURIZED MIXTURE: Whole Eggs, Water, Contains 2% Or Less Of The Following: Salt, Xanthan Gum, Citric Acid, Annatto (Color), Butter
Flavor (Sunflower Oil, Natural Flavors, Medium Chain Triglycerides.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2017 01:51

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

Catboy Autonomist posted:

They've actually been trying to pivot away from being an image-hosting site to being an "image-sharing site" - which means technically their TOU now say you can't directly hotlink images, and there have even been a few cases of them taking down poo poo just because of this or blacklisting certain websites entirely due to their use of it despite the fact it was literally created for this purpose

https://www.rpnation.com/threads/imgur-bans-direct-hotlinking.184720/
https://community.nodebb.org/topic/12234/we-ve-got-banned-from-imgur-breaking-their-tos/7

You're wrong, and your links even say so. Imgur was blacklisting sites for using them in place of a CDN to deliver stuff like banner images and forum avatars.

Imgur is trying to pivot away from just being an imagehost (which is why they removed the ability to automatically generate forum links for resized versions of your images, for example). But they don't say "don't hotlink images"--they just don't want you to use imgur to host stuff that you're too cheap to host yourself, instead of "sharing content"

Slanderer has a new favorite as of 08:06 on Dec 4, 2018

# ¿ Dec 4, 2018 08:03

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

MisterOblivious posted:

My apartment has that. It's pretty swell. It's basically an "Amazon Locker" that any delivery company can shove your poo poo in. You get a text and email when something is delivered.

They type in a code.

https://www.parcelpending.com

You know what's even better than a PO box with parcel lockers at the post office? Having your mail delivered to your block.

These things are the purest indication of places where no one should ever live--lovely developments build alongside highways with zero infrastructure, no sidewalks and no community

# ¿ Jan 21, 2019 03:09

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

walrusman posted:

What I want to know is, how did GameStop stock peak earlier this year? Hasn't the writing been on the wall for five years or more?

It's been steadily falling, but rose slightly from Q3 '18 to Q4--that was the only peak.They sold their mobile division for $700m last november, and that offset their massive Q4 losses. They were obviously going to have massive losses in Q1 '19 without another mobile business to offload, so idk why it rose a bit. Maybe some people assumed gamestop keeping selling off it's assets for a bit until it goes under.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2019 23:30

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

Krispy Wafer posted:

IBM had that problem. Both my mom and aunt retired from there so I grew up surrounded by all things IBM. But from 2000 I only met one IBMer who was still with the company. Everyone else took a package and left. Some of them needed to go, but enough were valuable that having a former co-worker come back as a highly paid contractor became a running joke.

IBM still has a lot of employees (350k to be exact), but most are overseas. They hollowed out their domestic operations.

IBM actually has the exact opposite problem. For years they've been illegally targeting older employees for layoffs so they can replace them with younger (cheaper) ones. They've been trying to disguise this illegal action by coercing those employees into taking voluntary retirement packages (with a lot of legal baggage attached) and simply lying to federal regulators by misclassifying layoffs as voluntary retirements (it's not voluntary if the options are "resign or be fired") to try to avoid penalties for age discrimination.

Here's the big story about it from last year, and there have been some updates since:

https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-american-workers/

EDIT:

quote:

Among ProPublica�s findings, IBM:

Denied older workers information the law says they need in order to decide whether they�ve been victims of age bias, and required them to sign away the right to go to court or join with others to seek redress.

Targeted people for layoffs and firings with techniques that tilted against older workers, even when the company rated them high performers. In some instances, the money saved from the departures went toward hiring young replacements.

Converted job cuts into retirements and took steps to boost resignations and firings. The moves reduced the number of employees counted as layoffs, where high numbers can trigger public disclosure requirements.

Encouraged employees targeted for layoff to apply for other IBM positions, while quietly advising managers not to hire them and requiring many of the workers to train their replacements.

Told some older employees being laid off that their skills were out of date, but then brought them back as contract workers, often for the same work at lower pay and fewer benefits.

Slanderer has a new favorite as of 20:11 on Jun 13, 2019

# ¿ Jun 13, 2019 20:04

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

TheHomerTax posted:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy

They were making plenty of profit, just not as much as selling cars to everyone would. And this being the hellhole that is America�

Maybe actually read that wikipedia article because it doesn't say what you think it does lol

# ¿ Oct 9, 2019 18:23

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

This got me interested, but this is all I could find:

quote:

I live in central California, and my older brother drove as a delivery driver for a company that delivered VHS rentals to a lockbox on your porch. This was in the late 80's or early 90's. Neither of us can remember what it was called and I can't find anything online. I used to have a few of the plastic lock boxes they used to install on the customer's porch, but that was 20 years ago.

quote:

Never heard of that service. Heard that in Wales a van would drive around small towns and you climbed in the back and picked out your movie. The van came back around a few days later and you returned the tape.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2019 22:31

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 06:48

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

Antigravitas posted:

RE: Cloning transports: In the Culture series they solve the problem of transmission delays over vast distances by transmitting a copy of you instead, Dixie Flatline style. That way one can have a real time conversation with someone even when it would take hours or days for a signal round trip. After the conversation the copy is just deleted.

What tickles me is that over the course of the series, several people bring up how this raises several philosophical questions�and everyone else (including the copies) just goes "Yeah, I'm sure it does, nerd" in response.

In the Revelation Space series there's one instance of a character transmitting a (allegedly) non-sentient simulation of themselves ahead of their ship for negotiations, and the implication was that under normal simulations they could reintegrate the memories and experiences of the simulation at a later point. It was a cool idea.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2020 18:19

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