reallivedinosaur posted:

Mad Catz have always made poo poo products designed to be the cheap option for moms when junior had a tantrum and smashed his controller in a tantrum and needs a replacement.

canyoneer posted:

Groupon turning down a $6B buyout from google is the funniest thing, because Google realized "there is nothing Groupon is currently doing that we could not also do (and probably at least as well)"

I know a guy who worked at Circuit City during their downfall. Used to be that all the sales guys there made commission, and some of them made pretty good money (like $80-90k in the early 2000's, a lot of money for a retail job). All the hot seller guys were real product experts, and knew more about it than just reading the box.

Some genius decided that they should try to beat Best Buy at their own game, and switch to an hourly wage without commission. No worries, we'll convert everyone from their commission pay to a comparable hourly rate! But, hey, you top sales guys making $20/hr, we're just gonna lay you off because we want labor to cost more like $7/hr.

red19fire posted:

Gonna get so jacked.

I thought they were only closing 100 out of 400+ stores nationwide? The closest SA near me actually has a help wanted sign up. I wonder if it'll be like Blockbuster where the profitable stores can limp along without corporate support.

Command Ant posted:

Speaking of Blockbuster, this article about why they died came up in another thread.

Professor Shark posted:

Tap is where it's at. Smack your card against the reader, done.

Why is the US so slow to adopt technology? We've had Tap for like 4 years

TapTheForwardAssist posted:

A gun blogger I follow had a story about how he worked for a convenience store chain in the 1980s where store policy was you got a week paid vacation if there was a holdup and you did everything by the books and got the robber out of there before anyone got hurt.

In one year he ended up getting robbed six times on the late shift in a bad area, and said it was all he could do not to high-five each robber since his first thought was "awesome, paid week of hunting and fishing!!!"

Then he realized that maybe getting a gun or shiv stuck in his face every other month might eventually catch up to him so he quit.

ThirdPartyView posted:

Still not sure how f.y.e. (Trans World Entertainment) is still in business.

Krispy Kareem posted:

I've read that those membership fees are most of Costco's profit.

I'm sure they aren't selling stuff below cost, but the margins on merchandise are pretty low. It's the $55/year membership fees that keep investors happy. Plus the CEO is pretty stubborn about prices. The Costco hotdog + drink has been the same price since Reagan was President.

PassTheRemote posted:

I've heard they don't have any issues with employee theft. I wonder if the two are related?

Raku posted:

Just want to chime in real quick and say that Chik-fil-A will work you harder than any other restaurant for the same wages or less. At least at the other places I worked (and I worked like half a dozen fast food joints) they had a relaxed environment where nobody really cared. Chik-Fil-A works you to the bone your entire shift and also keeps you like 2 hours later than any other restaurant cleaning.

PallasAthene posted:

It might just be in the malls near me, but at the medium sized non-anchor stores closed down, stuff that had previously been relegated to booths in the aisle (as-seen-on-tv, quadcopter and hoverboard stores, custom t-shirt shops with Scarface or stoned versions of cartoon characters--Stonedbob Smokesweed anyone?) stepped up to fill the empty shops. Some of them seem to do okay, but usually it's like a nail salon, a katana and knife store, then a henna tattoo shop in one wing of the mall with like eight empty stores around them.

Rutibex posted:

wrong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq2bpvyEetY

Jack Trades posted:

Something Awful LLC

Has anyone made that joke yet?

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

Bonzo posted:

Speaking of Canada, Sears reports a 91.6 million 2nd quarter loss

http://globalnews.ca/news/2924833/sears-canada-posts-91-6m-loss-in-q2-sales-down-16/

A Fancy Bloke posted:

I live in upstate NY and there's a Kmart here that's been open about 20 years. It started as a super center with a restauarant. Then they killed the restaurant. 5 years ago a Walmart opened a quarter mile down the road and Kmart killed their groceries. So for the last 5 years it's been a giant store with half of its operating space barred off with tape where the groceries used to be. I was in there a few years ago during peak Christmas shopping hours and I'd say there were no more than 8 shoppers in the whole store.

What I'm getting at is there must be some other rhyme or reason to Kmart's plans because this store must be hemorrhaging money every month by the truckload and yet it's STILL not on that loving closure list.

Darth123123 posted:

Same here. Well was. The closed it and within a year the mall owners bulldozed it even though it was attached to the mall. No one wanted to rent old Sears space.