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The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

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Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#191

Post by stagger87 »

loorinm wrote: post #183

Reading that Storytime guy’s tweet, I really wondered: Has this guy never taken a look at his situation and noticed something off? He works in a relaxing huge retail store reading books to kids for free, and makes above min wage and keeps his job for the next 20 years and supports 5 kids??? That’s insane, and completely abnormal. No one else with that same type of job has that kind of life. It reminds me of someone I…

There are a lot of retail employees who support families. He probably didn't make that much money. Retail is anything but relaxing.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#192

Post by ascorbic »

tytytytytytytyt wrote: post #166
mrbrowning wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that’s the point of the article, isn’t it? The long-time employees that were laid off were almost certainly there out of love of their wares, and the parent business could have put the work into making value out of that distinguishing fact. But beyond that, they had institutional knowledge, both of how the business works and what their customers want. I know it’s hard to imagine that retail work could involve a…

> and the parent business could have put the work into making value out of that distinguishing fact The fact that you can easily make vague pontifications about what else they might have done doesn't mean that any of those things are actually viable for the business. > I know it’s hard to imagine that retail work could involve any amount of skill or knowledge, but this is no doubt a loss of value. But probably not en…

It seems to have worked to Waterstone's in the UK, which was similarly on the point of death, and recently managed to return to profit with that sort of strategy. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/03/balancing-the-...

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#193

Post by loorinm »

maxander wrote: post #188
loorinm wrote: post #183

Reading that Storytime guy’s tweet, I really wondered: Has this guy never taken a look at his situation and noticed something off? He works in a relaxing huge retail store reading books to kids for free, and makes above min wage and keeps his job for the next 20 years and supports 5 kids??? That’s insane, and completely abnormal. No one else with that same type of job has that kind of life. It reminds me of someone I…

Have you ever worked retail? There was presumably much much more to that guys job than reading books to kids.

Yup, I have. It’s usually hard, stressful, customers are assholes, work is part time and unpredictable hours, and pay is horrible.

Have you?

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#194

Post by smallnamespace »

visarga wrote: post #149
ivraatiems wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sucks, but I'm not sure there's a better option. Maybe the best we can do is try and structure a society where getting laid off from a decent job isn't so damaging and scary on a personal level. Maybe we need to acknowledge that we're moving towards having a society where "everyone has a job that earns them their living" is untenable, because there will be less work for humans to do than humans to do it, and we…

> Maybe we need to acknowledge that we're moving towards having a society where "everyone has a job that earns them their living" is untenable No, we need a society that guarantees everyone a job, a job that will generate the income necessary for survival. We shouldn't give up agency and become simple wards of the state, waiting hand stretched ahead for the UBI to fall from the crumblings at the tech billionaires tab…

> guarantees everyone a job

What if the economy evolves in such a way that most people are unproductive?

What if the cost of creating a job (creating a jobs bureaucracy, administering it by assigning jobs to people, making sure they show up to work, etc.) is actually higher than the economic value that those jobs generate?

In that case, 'jobs for all' would just be a subsidy, or UBI, with many more steps, no?

I agree that giving people a share of the means of production makes sense. We should experiment with granting a share of equity to all citizens and sitting an equity floor.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#195

Post by plorkyeran »

throwaway9980 wrote: post #74
thesmallestcat wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's destructive, and Amazon can get away with being a crap book store now. I've ordered many thousands of dollars worth of computing books from them over the years. In the past six months, and especially the past couple months, "new" books come with massive creases, scuffs, and dents. Or a bad print with hard-to-read text. A copy you'd never buy in person, or B&N would knock something off the price because of the da…

“Even sweeter, those vendors don't sit on my order for a week for funsies like Amazon does if you resist their PRIME offering.” What’s the deal with this? I turned off prime a couple of years ago and it certainly feels like they’re intentionally slow processing orders. For books, I only buy used and try to pick nearby sellers. Often the media mail shipment will show up in 2-3 days. Pretty great.

I doubt they go out of their way to delay the order, simply because that isn't the most cost-efficient thing for them to do. I would assume that they just have a priority queue of orders to process, and sometimes that queue gets backed up and takes a few days to clear out the non-Prime/expedited orders.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#196

Post by PakG1 »

bittercynic wrote: post #132
yock wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, it's definitely sad when people lose their jobs, but that's kind of the devil's bargain we've made with capitalism. It's not so much a "bargain" as it is how we discover which jobs are useful. Capitalism is very efficient at exposing useless labor, and this is a good thing. Having a bunch of humans laboring at jobs no one needs or wants is wasteful.

This has an assumption built in: The more money you control, the more your your opinions ought to shape what work someone else does. Some people think the assumption is very true, some think it is very false.

That's what government services and the electoral process is supposed to be for. If you're one of those who believes that the electoral process is broken though (and I count myself a member), then I guess there aren't many options. Philanthropists maybe.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#197

Post by flyGuyOnTheSly »

loorinm wrote: post #183

Reading that Storytime guy’s tweet, I really wondered: Has this guy never taken a look at his situation and noticed something off? He works in a relaxing huge retail store reading books to kids for free, and makes above min wage and keeps his job for the next 20 years and supports 5 kids??? That’s insane, and completely abnormal. No one else with that same type of job has that kind of life. It reminds me of someone I…

Agreed, but that does not negate the overall point of the post.

Which is that Barnes & Noble is currently digging their own grave, and that this did not have to be so.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#198

Post by watwut »

blhack wrote: post #39
rayiner wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the rest of the year, the stores are empty. Which validated the company's decision: why have a bunch of full time employees, when what it really needs is part time and flexible employees to handle holiday surges (probably caused by waiting for Amazon shipping to not be an option).

Not the one near me (in Phoenix, near Arizona State University). It's a major anchor in a shopping center, and is busy every time I'm ever in there. The employees are also really helpful. This Christmas, I was trying to find some books as a christmas gift, and the staff made a bunch of suggestions based on books that they had actually personally read. Sidenote: finding appropriate books for 8-14 year old girls is rea…

Isn't majority of books for them? Anyway, try Asimov if she is closer to 14. 14 is when that stuff is still interesting.

Edit: why the fuck would someone downvote this?

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#199

Post by cowpig »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #110
toomuchtodo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because those tech companies were found to have been illegally colluding to suppress wages of their workers. It’s easier to hire cheap workers when your actions are keeping wages lower than they otherwise would’ve been. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...

This is a classic red herring, totally unrelated. If anything, that undermines the point I'm arguing against: why would these companies feel any need to collude to suppress wages if they could get better performance just by hiring cheaper workers? Also, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, etc. weren't part of this suit, so again, not relevant.

I think it's more like:

person who really wants the job but is kind of underqualified > person who is highly qualified, but doesn't really want the job (unless the money is right)

edit: I'll add that, for CEOs who should all look amazing on paper and know how to sell themselves, maybe willingness to do the job for less than market is a better signal than most

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#200

Post by loorinm »

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #197
loorinm wrote: post #183

Reading that Storytime guy’s tweet, I really wondered: Has this guy never taken a look at his situation and noticed something off? He works in a relaxing huge retail store reading books to kids for free, and makes above min wage and keeps his job for the next 20 years and supports 5 kids??? That’s insane, and completely abnormal. No one else with that same type of job has that kind of life. It reminds me of someone I…

Agreed, but that does not negate the overall point of the post. Which is that Barnes & Noble is currently digging their own grave, and that this did not have to be so.

Honestly I’m surprised they are still around.

Don’t get me wrong I love the stores, and it’s sad to lose nice things. I’m not happy about it.

But don’t blame the new CEO, blame the old CEO for doing nothing for a decade as the market transformed around them.

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