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The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

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Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#321

Post by freehunter »

b1daly wrote: post #233
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The folks who are worried about AI destroying jobs are aware of this cycle, but they think that it's different this time. Specifically, that technology has previously allowed workers to be more productive by shifting away from manual labor and towards cognitive work that requires the human mind. But AI is a unique threat because it can match (and then quickly absolutely dominate) humans for any kind of work that requ…

At a certain point, rather than trying to radically reengineer American society for a post job world, I think are far more palatable solutions (palatable to our crazy system as it stands). Shorter work week! Higher taxes, spent on social services. There is tremendous need for all kinds of social services in the US. Such occupations could fill a lot of jobs. Social workers, teachers, judges, police, EMTs, soldiers, pr…

>Limitations on amount of AI that can be utilized in a company.

And when cars were new, there were limitations on their speed and where they could go so they didn't threaten horses.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#322

Post by nkrisc »

skywhopper wrote: post #307
eludwig wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Two cashiers working out of 8 or so possible registers And the worst part about this is that each cashier seems determined to relentlessly pester me with annoying questions at the register! Did I want to join this loyalty program? Did I realize that I could save $5 by signing up for so and so. Do I want to get on the B&N mailing list? Really aggressive questioning. Oh my God. I realize that the cashiers have been o…

Not only are they ordered to do it but corporate puts requirements on the store as to how many joins they are expected to get each day, and cashiers have their own individual quotas and they get chewed out if they don’t meet them by managers who get chewed out for not meeting them. The fact that this behavior reduces sales throughput, employee productivity, and customer satisfaction are not worked into the analysis t…

Sounds like a company that would keep such an executive on board deserves to fail.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#323

Post by grogenaut »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #237
grogenaut wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you mean the one in bellevue near the new amazon building in bellevue across the lake from amazon hq1? I'm not sure that's the best store to example off of.

The long time one in downtown, not sure if there is an Amazon building downtown. They closed the attached (real) Starbucks and now it lacks a cafe, even though the Starbucks was always busy the store was still kind of empty.

Yeah that's the one I'm thinking of. There are 2 starbucks one block up the hill to the transit center too, so basically 3 on that square block. It was too far down the hill for me to go to when I worked there.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#325

Post by NoGravitas »

hueving wrote: post #171
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The folks who are worried about AI destroying jobs are aware of this cycle, but they think that it's different this time. Specifically, that technology has previously allowed workers to be more productive by shifting away from manual labor and towards cognitive work that requires the human mind. But AI is a unique threat because it can match (and then quickly absolutely dominate) humans for any kind of work that requ…

>But AI is a unique threat because it can match (and then quickly absolutely dominate) humans for any kind of work that requires cognitive power. Only at very specific tasks. As you point out later there is no evidence that AI general intelligence where it needs to be for this actually to be a threat to humans who can adapt to unexpected circumstances.

General AI that can totally replace humans in a job isn't really the problem. The real issue is specialized AI that lets one person do work that previously required five or ten, whether because it increases their productivity directly, or the human is working as an AI-minder, letting them do the routine stuff, supervising them for quality, and taking over when they hit unexpected circumstances.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#327

Post by freehunter »

LogicX wrote: post #230

Taking a thought from another thread... What if B&N merged with wework? Wework just bought meetup.com - now you have more locations for meetups. B&N often has pretty good locations, and covers areas of the country wework doesn't akready have prescence. There's already a coffee shop built into B&N If you implemented a cashierless checkout process, and had ship from location, you now can compete with Amazon, and the re…

Remote working spaces have amazing untapped potential IMO. Right now they're mostly concentrated in downtowns of major metro areas which might be nice for the heavily concentrated populations living there, but sucks for anyone in residential neighborhoods outside of the downtown core. Take Chicago for example: there are six WeWork locations within 200 miles of the city, and the furthest distance from one to the other is less than 2 miles. If you live in Schaumburg or Skokie or Aurora or Joliet, to get to your closest "office" you have to commute downtown just like everyone else, every morning and back home every evening. And in my metro area of 1.5m, there are no WeWork locations at all, the closest is over three hours away. There are some other co-working locations in my city's downtown, but I don't want to commute downtown every day.

I think there's potential for co-working spaces in residential or suburban areas, but it's a smaller market so it'd be pricey... unless you already own space in the suburbs. Like Barnes and Noble does. And they already have Starbucks available at most of them, and many of them are in areas with plenty of food choices around for lunch. Many of them are near plazas with nice places to walk and get some fresh air.

We're just getting started with co-working spaces, there's a lot of untapped potential in smaller markets yet.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#328

Post by Chris2048 »

eludwig wrote: post #260
phil21 wrote: post #6

I was out shopping 3-4 days before Christmas this year, and happened to be near a Barnes and Noble so figured I'd grab a copy of a magazine I've been wanting to read for a while. Grabbed the magazine, wandered the aisles a bit and picked up another book then went to check out. Basically I was their marketing department's dream - walk-in traffic coming to buy something cheap and specific who made an impulse retail buy…

>>Two cashiers working out of 8 or so possible registers And the worst part about this is that each cashier seems determined to relentlessly pester me with annoying questions at the register! Did I want to join this loyalty program? Did I realize that I could save $5 by signing up for so and so. Do I want to get on the B&N mailing list? Really aggressive questioning. Oh my God. I realize that the cashiers have been o…

TBH, the problem is they put this stuff in the checkout dialogue. They could put it on posters etc, but they put it in the way of the purchasing utility (checkout) so you can't avoid it. and it gets in the way, slows you down.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#329

Post by gwern »

EamonnMR wrote: post #151
gwern wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it so unrealistic? When I wanted a copy of _Beowulf_ in 2003 or so, what I did was I wandered into my local Borders and found it, and compared 5 or 6 different books; I ultimately settled on Heaney's translation which I liked the bits I read the most of, and then picked the volume with the most additional historical essays providing context. And _Beowulf_ is surely less read than Homer.

Heaney's traslation of Beowulf is a masterpiece in its own right.

Yeah, it was in hindsight definitely the right choice. No regrets there! I read that copy a good 4 or 5 times.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#330

Post by creep »

sseveran wrote: post #67
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #36

This is the flip-side of creative destruction. Amazon and ecommerce in general have given us a world where brick and mortar retail often just can't compete. 99% of these layoffs and restructurings, etc. are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The writer of this article seems to think that the executives are just trying to milk the company all the way down, but it's not even clear to me there's a better o…

I agree with the beginning, especially about the deck chairs as its an expression I often use. Let's be clear its people like me who killed Barnes and Noble not its executives. I have two or three sets of bookshelves downstairs in my office filled with books, many of which were bought at B&N. I spent hours sipping coffee in their cafe's. Then I bought my kindle. And I basically have not been back since. When I do buy…

In Canada we have Chpaters-Indigo instead of Barnes and Noble. They stock very expensive, but very attractive, home design crap (think pottery barn minus the furniture). They also sell scarves, mitts, slippers, fragrances, purses, chocolates, and children's toys. Basically a convenience store for these items, and they have a regular turn-around so they always sell new versions of all this stuff. It's working very well, and I don't know if Barnes and Noble does this too but Chapters-Indigo is actually expanding where I live. People still like going to the store for physical books-- it's something about the atmosphere-- but they definitely need a little push to stay, and another reason to be there.
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