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The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

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Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#381

Post by bunderbunder »

kalleboo wrote: post #283
barsonme wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the record, I do like that idea. I recently started working remote, and while I like my office it's nice to go to a coffee shop and get out of the house for a while. But, the WiFi usually sucks and it can be too noisy. A quiet place with decent WiFi and coffee would be superb. I don't know what books other professions need, but it'd be pretty neat to go and checkout TAOCP (or something) and do some work for a whi…

That sounds like the city library where I'm from. The view is also pretty nice: https://c1.staticflickr.com/6/5338/9521653521_94e44e88ef_b.j...

The downside of somewhere like a library is that you really can't take a phone call from there. I'd pay some money for an environment that's as pleasant as my library, but that also has phone booths.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#382

Post by ryandrake »

tjr wrote: post #378
ryandrake wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're lucky you just get chewed out. My wife used to work retail and in one store, you had to push credit cards, often to people who really should not have another one. If you failed to meet your quota you get a warning the first time and then fired the second time.

Setting goals for one person based on what another person chooses to do seems like a phenomenally stupid idea.

Welcome to sales and retail! Watch Glengarry Glen Ross.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#383

Post by always_good »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #333
nkrisc wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The failure of brick and mortar book stores is a net negative to society. Deserves to fail, maybe, but it'll suck when they do.

So many good memories as a kid of going to the local B&N with my parents. Unlike our library, it had coffee and social energy and tables set up for browsing and was open past 5pm.

It shared a cursed strip mall with a Blockbuster, a LAN gaming center, and a music shop that was finally torn down last year.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#384

Post by jadei »

Slansitartop wrote: post #376
sli wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I aggressively avoid buying books on Amazon, mostly for the reasons listed in the article, but between BAM and B&N, I will always go to a local bookstore instead. They don't grill me for PII at the register, for one. Overall the whole experience is way better. Finding a book is a tiny bit harder (emphasis on tiny ), but honestly, I'm not in a hurry when I'm in a bookstore, so I don't care.

> but between BAM and B&N, I will always go to a local bookstore instead What's BAM?

books a million I believe.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#385

Post by jandrese »

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…

IMHO, a large number of idle people is not good for society either. People need a purpose in life, and a great many people don't seem very good at making up their own. Otherwise there's a strong chance that they'll become depressed, and often start abusing drugs, and then it's just a big spiral downward.

As dumb as it is, that stupid job at least gives them a reason to get up in the morning, maybe even a bit of satisfaction from time to time.

These universal income ideas have the notion that your average joe will decide to learn an instrument, or maybe practice swimming, or maybe backpack across the country. In the real world they'll sit on the couch all day watching TV or playing video games and/or getting high. Universal income won't work until we figure out how to not turn the country into rural West Virginia with it.

Or as Picard put it: You see, one of the most important things in a person's life is to feel useful.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#386

Post by Kluny »

blhack wrote: post #177
Kluny wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patricia C Wrede, Mercedes Lackey, Tamora Pierce, Ursula K Le Guin, Judy Blume and Anne McCaffrey are some authors who have outstanding books for girls in that age range, in case you find yourself with the same problem again.

Thank you! Any specific stories you recommend? The problem I was having with the things I was looking at were that a lot of them seemed to be basically romance novels for kids.

Lots of good recommendations below, I'll add Pegasus in Flight and The Ship Who Sang as my favorite McCaffery novels. Mercedes Lackey you do actually have to be careful with, because some of her books are reeaaaally smutty. I remember them fondly from when I was 12, but you probably don't want to be the uncle who gives them to her, come to think of it.

Wrede's Dealing With Dragons series is incredible, the Circle of Magic series is a good read (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_Magic), same with the Alanna series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_of_the_Lioness).

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#387

Post by bunderbunder »

PostOnce wrote: post #251
joekrill wrote: post #235

> The people who lost their jobs had been actively assured this would NOT happen for the past several months. My last employer did this. Not so much the exact scenario, but they constantly assured us they were fully committed for the long-term to our satellite office that they opened. They went out of their way to reiterate this quite regularly and put a good of effort into it. Until one day they showed up and shut d…

they do it so employees don't quit beforehand, so that they can keep using them to make money until the last second, while not giving them any opportunity to find a new job so they don't miss rent the week after they're fired if it's not illegal it should be, and I'm sure there is some ground for a civil lawsuit in the fact they they assured them they would not lose their jobs, thereby costing them thousands in lost…

Also, I suspect, so they can have some control over who leaves.

When employees start leaving on their own, the first to leave are going to be the highly skilled but underpaid ones. They are attractive, relatively inexpensive to attract away, and have relatively little incentive to stay. They're also the ones the company most wants to hold on to, for similar reasons.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#388

Post by garethsprice »

Slansitartop wrote: post #376
sli wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I aggressively avoid buying books on Amazon, mostly for the reasons listed in the article, but between BAM and B&N, I will always go to a local bookstore instead. They don't grill me for PII at the register, for one. Overall the whole experience is way better. Finding a book is a tiny bit harder (emphasis on tiny ), but honestly, I'm not in a hurry when I'm in a bookstore, so I don't care.

> but between BAM and B&N, I will always go to a local bookstore instead What's BAM?

Books-a-Million, another large bookstore chain

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#389

Post by mitjak »

frogpelt wrote: post #380
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…

Imagine if stores had a way for you to pay for your physical stuff on your phone without waiting in a physical line. 1. Use their app to scan the bar code 2. Pay with a card 3. A self-service printer prints a receipt/confirmation of purchase. 4. Show it to an employee on your way out the door. Might be an inventory nightmare, but it could be done.

Or just set up self-serve stations. Literally every item has a barcode.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#390

Post by madengr »

mgkimsal wrote: post #309
Bucephalus355 wrote: post #2

Barnes and Noble did some dumb things as this article points out, but they are NOWHERE near what the CEO of Sears is doing. That is corporate malpractice, gross negligence, and perhaps high treason all rolled into one. Literally look up anything online for “Sears CEO is terrible” and you will get links from NY Times, WaPo, etc. Also with BN, I mean they were going up against one of the biggest most powerful companies…

The Sears situation is just sad. I'm not sure why shareholders are putting up with it, except... most probably have just accepted the narrative that sears is dead, and are OK with the sell off and ... yeah, treason isn't a bad word. But... selling off assets you control to another company you also control would seem like... oh.. what's the term? Conflict of interest? I don't understand in the slightest why this has b…

Sears was/is a total mess. Went there to buy something (before they closed the local store) and it took 10 minutes to checkout, with the clerk fumbling between the iPad, a CRT register, and credit card scanner. What a cluster F.
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