Category: Business

Ensnared

Marketing / Advertising

As someone who’s been involved in marketing and advertising for pretty much most of his adult life, I am generally immune to clever-pants packaging and advertising.

But I saw this set of erasers at the Sooper-Seekrit Mailbox Place the other day, and just had to buy them even though I have no need of any such thing anymore:

I actually chuckled when reading them — and if I knew Britney Spears’s home address, I’d send her the “oops” one.

Making you buy something you don’t really need just because the message is irresistible:   fundamentally, the sign of excellent marketing.

Clueless

Marketing / Advertising, Morons & Idiots, Travels

Also in my Inbox, this time from American Airlines:

Bearing in mind that I live in north Texas and have pretty much all the heat I can handle (and more), which garden spots can AA be pimping?

#1:

It’s also known for its crime and tourist ripoffs.  Also, isn’t hurricane season just around the corner?  Pass.  Next:

#2:


Ah yes… NYfC in the summer heat.  Always a pleasure, in a place whose crime and ripoffs make T&C look like a bunch of complete amateurs — and that was before all the recent silliness.  As they say there, fuggeddabahdit.  Next:

#3:

In Texas terms, going to Florida in summer is described as “out of the frying pan and onto the gas ring.”  Thanks, but if I want heat and humidity, I can just step out onto my patio.  And finally:

#4:

Yeah, thanks.  If I want Mex street food, we’ve got a couple taco trucks that can be found the apartment parking lot every Friday and Saturday.  And… Aztec ruins, in Mexico City?  I thought the conquistadores  kinda leveled them.  But I could be wrong, as I may be wrong about Mex City’s crime rate.

Great promotion, American.  You utter dicks.

Mighty Falling

Management, Retailing

Back when I were a young (!) data analyst and retail specialist at The Great Big Research Company, one of my minor clients was Walgreens Drug Stores.  (I say “minor” only because I was reporting only on the grocery section of the stores, and not the Rx or even the over-the-counter (OTC) drug or general merchandise products.)

Anyway, I became very friendly with one of the execs, and in one of our conversations she let slip that at that point in time, Walgreens had never — not ever in the history of the company — failed to make a quarterly dividend payment to shareholders.  I checked on that, and she was correct.  So a couple of years later, once I’d left Nielsen and was managing my own 401k account, I purchased a bunch of Walgreens shares and watched the dividend payments roll in, reinvesting them back into the business for several years.

Then one day I was driving to the local mall, and something stuck in my brain on the way there.  I couldn’t figure it out because that’s the nature of such things;  but on the way home I figured out what it was.

On the short five-mile trip between the mall and home, I had passed six Walgreens outlets.  And all my old retailer instincts came to the fore:  Walgreens was, in the industry parlance, over-stored.  Granted, this was in Greater Chicago (Chicagoland), where Walgreens’ head office was located, but still…

A short time later I sold all my WAG shares (at a very handsome profit).

Of course, all that was back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, but I note this recent development (as shared by Reader Mike L.) with interest:

Walgreens is set to close a substantial number of its roughly 8,600 locations across the United States as the company looks to reset the struggling pharmaceutical chain’s business.

CEO Tim Wentworth said on a call with analysts Thursday that “changes are imminent” for the roughly 25% of stores that aren’t profitable and Walgreens’ strategic review will “include the closure of a significant portion of these underperforming stores.”

“We are at a point where the current pharmacy model is not sustainable and the challenges in our operating environment require we approach the market differently,” he said.

Okay, fine,  This can and does happen to many a business.  But there’s a wrinkle:

Wentworth said the closures would focus on locations that aren’t profitable, too close to each other or stores struggling with theft.

The first two phenomena are common, while the third… well, let’s just say that unless I miss my guess (but I doubt that I do) a whole bunch of inner-city Walgreens outlets are going to be boarded up because of undocumented product movement.  And those areas are going to become not only “food” deserts, but “medication” deserts as well.  (The other kind of “medications” are firmly established there, of course.)

And by the way, Wentworth is a seriously smart cookie — unlike so many other corporate CEOs of recent vintage — so if he can’t get the existing show to work, it’s a safe bet that nobody in the industry can.

Old Times There Are Quite Forgotten

Business

“How are we going to keep the boys on the farm, after they’ve seen Paris?”

That was the plaintive question after WWI when a great many of the doughboys came home having done just that.  Actually, the really big shift came not after WWI, but after WWII as the U.S. had changed from an agricultural society to an industrial one, and the G.I. Bill almost guaranteed that the boys wouldn’t go back to the farm, but on to college (back when that was a worthwhile step) and into the great commercial-industrial complex.

And the commercial-industrial complex meant that for most men, the jobs were “white-collar” and therefore required a uniform of a suit and tie, worn each day into an office of some sort.

Now I’ve ranted about the clothing thing ad nauseam, and I’m not going to add yet another one.

But I remember talking to Mr. Free Market (whose company had had a dress code which pleased me greatly) and in those Covid Times of Working From Home, he made the comment:

“After all this is over, there is just no way any of these kids are going to wear a tie to the office ever again.”

He was right, as he usually is, but in fact that was not the really wrenching societal change which ensued.  In fact, the truly pivotal moment came about as a paraphrase of the first sentence of this post:

“How are we going to get them back into the office, once they’ve worked from home?”

Simple answer:  mostly, we’re not.  Here’s an example:

Big tech companies are still trying to rally workers back into physical offices, and many workers are still not having it. Based on a recent report, computer-maker Dell has stumbled even more than most.

Dell announced a new return-to-office initiative earlier this year. In the new plan, workers had to classify themselves as remote or hybrid.

Those who classified themselves as hybrid are subject to a tracking system that ensures they are in a physical office 39 days a quarter, which works out to close to three days per work week.

Alternatively, by classifying themselves as remote, workers agree they can no longer be promoted or hired into new roles within the company. 

Okay, let’s leave aside the utter bastardy of Dell’s coercive diktat — as an aside, why is it that the notionally laissez-faire tech companies often prove themselves to be worse than any of the Gilded Age’s robber barons? — and see what the employees’ response was:

Business Insider claims it has seen internal Dell tracking data that reveals nearly 50 percent of the workforce opted to accept the consequences of staying remote, undermining Dell’s plan to restore its in-office culture.

The publication spoke with a dozen Dell employees to hear their stories as to why they chose to stay remote, and a variety of reasons came up. Some said they enjoyed more free time and less strain on their finances after going remote, and nothing could convince them to give that up now. Others said their local offices had closed since the pandemic or that they weren’t interested in promotions.

“Take your promotion and stick it up your ass” — not quite the expected response, eh?

Looks as though that toothpaste has left the tube.  So companies are going to be saddled with these giant, expensive glass-and-steel vanity edifices, full of empty space and echoing corridors.

And I for one, having worked in such environs for many decades, have very little sympathy.

Net Loss

Corporate Fuckery, Technology

The plan could not have been simpler.  I had just signed an extension to my AT&T wi-fi/Internet plan, at a really good rate (with the most advantageous bandwidth / channel compatibility / cost compromise*), so I just wanted to continue the plan at my new address.

“Switch the exact same plan from #2109 Old Town to #714 New Town,” was my description of my situation.
“No problem at all,” saith AT&T, “because the previous tenant at #714 was an AT&T customer, and we show all the necessary equipment is already in place.”
“So I need to cancel my existing account at #2109 for June 12, and schedule an installation appointment for my new service on June 13?”
“Precisely.  And you won’t need an installation appointment because the basic framework is already in place;  we’ll just send you your new equipment — it will arrive on June 12 — and all you’ll have to do is plug it in, turn it on, and your new service will begin at 2:00pm on June 13.”

How excellent, thinks I — but you may recall my words prior to the move:  “From long and bitter experience, I expect that despite all my careful planning, AT&T is somehow going to cock things up so I might be Internet-free for the next couple of days.”

Which they duly did. On June 11 I received a package from AT&T which contained only a power supply and two connecting cables.  No router, but “Aha!” thinks I, “I’ll just be able to use my existing router;  how convenient.”

So Thursday morning June 13 was spent moving the remaining furniture from #2109 to #714, which cost only a tad more than $500 because New Wife and I had already  moved almost everything across during the two prior weeks, leaving only the stuff we couldn’t physically move ourselves.  All was done long before midday, whereupon I set about plugging in the router and so on, to get wifi.  I even delayed it a couple of hours until the promised 2:00pm activation time.

Except that when I eventually found the connection box, it was in the bedroom closet (hidden behind the door), and the box bore absolutely no relation to any of the equipment AT&T said was necessary to plug anything into.

So I called AT&T Customer WiFi service, after going through the usual phone-tree “press 1 for this and press 6 for that” which I bypassed simply by screaming “OPERATOR!” whenever thus prompted.  Eventually I got though to a very nice young man named Kevin — a real Kevin from the Midwest and not some fake “Kevin” from Kolkata or Manila, which was nice.  He looked up my situation and insisted that I should have no problem just plugging everything in.  So I took photos of the existing box, and texted them to him.

For the first time, a crack started to show.

“Are you sure that’s the only box you have there?”
“Yup.  If you want, I can do a brief tour of the entire apartment, and take pics of every single power outlet or tech point.”
“No no, that won’t be necessary.  What router did we send you?”
“There wasn’t a router, any router,” and I showed him pics of not only the contents but also the package which had contained the cables.
“Oh, ummm it looks as though we’ll have to schedule an installation appointment for you.”
“For this afternoon?” I inquired casually.
“Ummm no, we have no available slots today,” but before I could begin the Bad Language, he added hastily, “but I can send you a technician tomorrow morning, between 8am and 12pm.”

Okay, I agreed to that, but warning him (remember, “This call may be monitored for training and quality control purposes” ) that if the techie didn’t show up, my next call would be to another provider, like Spectrum.

So Friday morning June 14 dawned, and precisely at 8:30am I got this call:

“Hi, this is the AT&T technician.  I’m at your apartment complex, but I can’t find your apartment.”
“No problem;  just drive around and I’ll wait outside to signal you in.”
“Okay, I’m outside Building 21” which was when I started to get a queasy feeling, because the new complex doesn’t have that many blocks.  Then he added, “Shouldn’t #2109 be in that building?”
AT&T had sent the techie to my OLD address, not to the NEW one.
So I pointed that out to him, we shared a merry laugh, and I told him just to drive the 20-odd minutes to the new place, and all would be well.
“Let me call you back to confirm…”  and the next call I got was:  “I can’t do your installation, because it’s in a different area and we can’t cross over.”

Which is when the Bad Language started to flow.

“Look,” I said eventually, “I understand that this isn’t your fault — someone at Scheduling fucked up, not you — but it is my fucking problem, that problem being that I don’t have the wifi service I’m paying for.  So tell me what comes next.”

Of course, I had to call some 800 number to get a new installation appointment, and by screaming (again) “OPERATOR!” as necessary, I got through to a Hispanic-sounding chap who was as helpful as could be, except that he was unable to simply cancel the wrong installation callout and substitute it with a new one, and could only create a new ticket with (of course) a much later installation time.

Which was when the Bad Language really started to flow.  I refused to get off the line, and told him to get me a replacement techie, and if that techie arrived anytime after midday that day, I would be calling Spectrum and to hell with AT&T, their contract and their whole fucking inefficient operation.

One hour later, the techie arrived.  She was a short, tough-looking lesbian named Christie with heavy boots, multiple tattoos and piercings, and she took charge of the whole situation.

Turns out that I was absolutely not at fault;  everything AT&T had said about the installation was wrong, she’d need to install a whole new system in the closet (including a shelf to hold the router and controller), there were also some technical issues which would take a little extra time, but she’d take care of everything and I wasn’t to worry.  I could sit down, have a cup of coffee and put the explosives away.

And for the first time in this whole encounter with AT&T, she was exactly right.  Not only did she do all that stuff, she worked some magic whereby I could use my old router (same wifi address and password even), which also meant I didn’t have to send it back to AT&T.

And speaking of AT&T, they always send over a “customer service” guy towards the end of any service call, whose nominal job is to make sure everything has gone okay, but who “reviews” your account and tries to get you to change your phone provider / purchase a more comprehensive set of AT&T products.

This guy (David) took one look at what had happened (after I’d explained it all — minus the bad language, but with a great deal of clarity — and told him I had absolutely no intention of ending my 20-year+ relationship with T-Mobile).

He recommended that I downgrade my service package to one closer to my needs (see below) which would taraaa! save us $30 a month.

Which, I don’t have to tell you, means free milk and bread per month (at Bidenprices) for New Wife and myself.  It all helps.

So AT&T earned some redemption from me, at least.  But I still hate them.

*I use very little bandwidth, relatively speaking, and watch only a few channels on TV — EPL football and F1 Grand Prix, major golf tournaments and occasionally an oldie on Turner Classic Movies, plus the usual dreck on Amazon Prime, Netflix and sometimes a series on one of the other channels like Discovery+.  As I have no interest in being “current”, I’m happy to wait until the New Hot Show gets old and withered, and can be had for free on one of the above, failing which I let it go without giving a damn.

I am a man of very simple needs, technologically speaking