Category: Business

Wah Wah Wah

Business

And in our last look at the economy for today, we have this news:

Private payrolls grew by 275,000 last month, the biggest increase since July, when they expanded by 284,000.
Services-providing jobs increased by 223,000 in April, led by a gain of 59,000 jobs in professional and business services.

The Democratic Socialist Party’s response to this fantastic news has been predictable:

…and:

Why?

Because socialists have a problem recruiting happy people with jobs to The Cause;  they can only practice their politics of envy with a willing base of unemployed, surly proles to support them.  And well-to-do liberals who are protected from the results of socialism by their wealth.

In the meantime, America’s getting on with it:

“The job market is holding firm, as businesses work hard to fill open positions,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

Self-Propelled Cargo

Business

The title, by the way, is how airlines (all of ’em) see passengers, and it shows.

Now, I know that technically, speaking, that happens to be true:  we are  just walking baggage — but that doesn’t mean that we want to be treated  that way.  About 80% or more of my business consists of taking sleepy executives to the airport in the pre-dawn hours, and let me tell you:  not one of them has anything  good to say about how the airlines treat them — and most of these people are Gold / Platinum / whatever the top rank is called.  So if these  people hate the airlines, how do you think we Economy-class passengers feel?

And it seems as though United Airlines — or their CEO, at least — understands this, and has talked about it at length.

Munoz acknowledged having to stay competitive with peers and match many of their offers, but he admitted passengers have had enough of paying the price.
He claimed: ‘Somebody asked me what advice would you give other travelers? I said empathy.
‘I think discourse between human beings is lacking, I have always lived by the concept that sharing is caring, and share with us.

Yeah, I’ll wait to see how this pans out.  Fine words uttered from on high are all very well, but let’s see how this translates to the flight attendants / ticketing agents / flight cancellation policy etc.

Many years ago, I worked for the Leo Burnett ad agency, who (at the time) had been United Airlines’s agency for decades — possibly even the only ad agency UA has ever had.  To say that it was a close working relationship would be a gross understatement, and in fact it was Burnett who had coined the genius “Fly The Friendly Skies” payoff line for United.

Then United decided that they wanted to change the thrust of their advertising, to be more businesslike, and even change the payoff line.  Leo Burnett disagreed with the change in marketing direction.  How much did they disagree?  They terminated a decades-long relationship — in essence, firing the client — because they thought it was the wrong direction to take.

Anyone know what United’s new agency replaced the Friendly Skies  line with?  Me neither.  And when United threw that unfortunate passenger off their plane a while ago, breaking his nose in the process, I can honestly say that while I was shocked at the action, I wasn’t surprised.  When they changed their marketing, I made a decision never to fly United again — and other than one (unavoidable) business flight in 2003, I’ve kept my promise.  (And just FYI, that flight was the worst trans-Atlantic flight I’ve ever experienced — Connie was actually sobbing with relief when we came in to land.)

I don’t think that United is going to change (despite their CEO’s unctuous words), and their skies will be just as unfriendly as all the other airlines’.  Why?

His comments came as United Airlines announced that its first-quarter profit doubled to $292 million as it carried more passengers and limited costs.
…
In a message to employees, CEO Oscar Munoz said the latest results vindicated a strategy of adding more flights, investing in customer service and managing costs.

United added more flights because the Trump-fueled economic growth has meant more people are flying;  not  adding more flights would have caused market share to drop.

As for their “investing in customer service”, watch Munoz’s little video towards the end of the article.  My bullshit detector went off like an alarm clock.  Yours should, too.  “Eliminating pre-assigned seating”?  The airlines have already done that, with sneaky little algorithms in the online ticketing process which deliberately splits seating assignments when booked together in the same transaction, and charging for the privilege of changing the seats.  Bastards.  I’m not fooled:  “managing costs” means “charging for stuff that used to be free”, or else “not replacing worn-out seats even when passengers are experiencing extreme discomfort”.  Feel free to add your own “cost management” examples.

As it happens, I may be flying the New Friendly Skies later in the year, and if so, I’ll let you all know how it comes out.  If I do, it will probably involve a stop in O’Hare (I know, I know:  I used to do 50-60 flights a year out of ORD).  If that isn’t a test, nothing is.

Anyway, you can color me cynical.  Right now, I hate all  airlines, without exception, and it’s going to take more than fucking “empathy” to change my attitude.

So Much For Dick

Business, The Gun Thing

Here’s one piece of news that will gladden the hearts of all gunnies:

Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. said Tuesday it will stop selling firearms at 125 of its stores, further pulling back from the business after the retailer decided last year to tighten its policies around gun sales.
Dick’s has struggled with declining sales since its CEO Ed Stack made a public decision to stop selling guns to buyers under 21 and take assault-style weapons out of all stores after a fatal school shooting in Parkland, Fla. Dick’s is also working to stem sluggish sales as more shoppers buy sporting goods online.
This year Dick’s will remove guns and some hunting gear from 125 locations, after testing the concept in 10 stores last year, Mr. Stack said on a conference call Tuesday. Dick’s had 729 of its namesake locations as of Feb. 2. The space will be used to sell higher-margin, faster-selling categories such as licensed sports gear and outdoor recreation equipment, Mr. Stack said.

Yeah… good luck with those Nike T-shirts, Ed.

[pause to allow mocking laughter to subside]

In the article, there’s even better news about their stock price.  Cliff [sic]  Notes:

Can’t wait for Dick’s to go out of business altogether.  Feelgood, pandering fuckers.

Killing Off Your Favorites

Business

This story got me thinking:

Ed Sheeran has got his neighbours choking on their chorizos – with plans to turn a much-loved Spanish restaurant into a music bar.
The star bought the Galicia tapas bar in London’s swish Portobello Road for £1.5million last year.
The 28-year-old, who lives nearby, reportedly wants to transform it into a live music venue with a ‘members’ club vibe’. But residents who described Galicia as ‘one of the last authentic Spanish restaurants in London’ spoke of their dismay yesterday at finding out its new owner is one of the world’s biggest pop stars.

There are all sorts of issues to be addressed here.

I think we’ve all asked the question, “What happened to that cool place where we used to go..?” (the typical answer being, of course, that if you’d gone there more often, the place wouldn’t have disappeared).  I have no idea whether the Galicia fell into this category, but I suspect it might have.  After all, Spanish food is pretty much an exotic cuisine in London, and people will not go there all that often (much as, say, Murkins don’t often visit Greek restaurants Over Here unless they’re of Greek origin or if they, like myself, love Greek food).  Clearly, the owners of the Galicia either wanted to sell the place for personal reasons or had to sell it because they weren’t making money off the place.

The second issue is that of course, if you buy a piece of property, you’re quite within your rights to change it (subject to the usual restraints, of course), and pop star Sheeran wants to create a private drinking club for himself and, probably, his buddies — which makes nonsense of this wail from a local:

‘If it turns into a members’ club where they charge £3,000-4,000 a month to join, nobody from around here will go.’

Hate to break it to you, you idiot, but you’re probably not welcome there anyway.  Sheeran doesn’t need the money from the subs:  it’s a means to keep the local riff-raff out, much as the restaurant in L.A. that used to sell $100 burgers and was frequented mostly by celebrities who welcomed the privacy those prices afforded them.

No, I can’t say I have too much sympathy for the complainers here.  If Galicia was indeed “one of the last authentic Spanish restaurants in London”, it doesn’t say much for the popularity of Spanish food there, does it?  (You only have to go to southern Spain, where Brits go to avoid the crappy London weather, to see the truth of this.  Almost all the restaurants and bars offer “Full English Breakfast!”, “Fish & Chips!” and “English Bitter Ale!” — Spanish food clearly doesn’t satisfy the visitors.)

The only thing that mystifies me about all this is how the reedy-voiced Sheeran managed to amass an £80-million fortune.

Vulnerable

Business, Music, Two-Minute Hate

One of the many wise things my brother-in-law (Uncle Mike) said to me was this:

“The ideas people always end up getting fucked by the money people.”

The occasion of his utterance was many years ago, when the vulture venture capitalists were giving me the runaround with funding — in essence, they thought my business plan was great, as long as I changed the product, its marketing and its target market — and when I refused to change anything, they promised to release the funds… after six months’ further study.  Result (as Longtime Readers may remember):  a third of a million dollars’ savings lost, staff laid off, followed by ruin and bankruptcy.

The same is true not just of venture capital gnomes, though.  It is a fact of life in the music business, where creative people are happy just to get an opportunity to create music, make albums and perform at concerts for their fans;  while in the background the loathsome accountants and managers collect the money, demand more and more “product” from the artists, and try to justify their greed and rapacity by pleading that they “invest” in the artists and are therefore entitled to a return on their investment.

I recently watched the biopic of the late Amy Winehouse, the British jazz singer and ultimate Train Smash Woman, on Netflix.  I would urge everyone to watch it — if you can stomach it all the way through — to see exactly what I’m talking about in the previous paragraph.  All Amy had was boundless talent;  all she lacked  was maturity, commonsense, guidance, protection and security, and nobody ever helped her by giving her any of it.  Instead, her life was one long catalog of exploitation, enabling and vampire-like sucking of everything she had, with the predictable outcome. And she didn’t deserve any of it.  To say Amy was vulnerable would be guilty of gross understatement, and her world treated her like a sadist would kick a newborn puppy, just because the squeals sounded good.

Here’s my comment on the tragedy of Amy Winehouse:

Every single person involved in this vulnerable young woman’s sad life:  her “friends”, her producers, her record company’s executives, her “bodyguards”, the press reporters and paparazzi who hounded her every move, her husband, and most especially her father — every single one of them deserves to be  put into the stocks and beaten with heavy chains.  For hours.

Are We There Yet?

Business, Politics

From Stephen Green:

Now we have this bit of non-thinking from studious non-thinker Alexandria Occasional-Cortex.
• NYC was going to give Amazon a three-billion dollar tax break; i.e., not collect that much in taxes from Amazon’s new NYC HQ2.
• Now that Amazon has cancelled HQ2, AOC believes that NYC can spend that money they never collected, from a business which isn’t coming to NYC, on NYC’s favorite progressive causes.

As BidnessMan said:  

And please note the date on his post… so much more stupid has flowed since then.