L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

It could depend on the store.

Over here in The Netherlands, most supermarkets have, to various degrees, implemented measures to protect workers (plexiglass, timed restocking, etc.) and measures to encourage social distancing (reminders and lines on the floors, a maximum number of customers via a set number of carts and having an employee wipe down the carts and handing them out manually at the entrance, old-people-hour in the morning, etc.).

The psychology behind this is fascinating. It's not just the measures that help, but the fact that simply being handed a cart after passing through the turnstile puts me (and I suspect everyone else) in 'awareness' mode. I've noticed that I myself generally pay more attention to not hover around employees, and take a detour via a quiet aisle whenever I can.

This stands in contrast to all the non-supermarket stores I occasionally visit. aisles are narrower, they don't have a designated entrance-employee, and at best there's some A4 glued somewhere asking me to pay by card if I can. Not only is it more difficult to practice 'social distancing', I don't notice a similar change in 'mindset' and have caught myself more than once leaning over an employee or passing close by other shoppers. And interestingly, both myself and said shopper seemed to notice this less (in the supermarket I've noticed many more older customers wait intentionally for me to pass at an appropriate distance).

And that's not even considering weird situations like our local HEMA (a very popular convenience store) implementing a bunch of measures, but then if you want to go and pay for your stuff you have to pick up an unclean scanner gun for the self-checkout, essentially undoing any measures they implemented. Out of curiosity I stuck around to see if these 'guns' are cleaned. They're not.

I guess my point is that stores are trying to implement sensible measures but so far it's mostly been supermarkets that seem to do a decent job (even if there's quite a bit of variation between stores from even the same company). I imagine it's much easier for these chain-stores to both get expert advice /and/ implement measures nation-wide. For those who have serious concerns it's a good reason to avoid 'mom and pop' stores though.

This is relatively true, but it is also completely missing the point. Iperrationalism is not a substitute for ethics. In particular I see no reason why a headcount should be an obviously correct solution to the trolley problem.

Wow, so it turns out that most of the products that were advertised were not so necessary after all?

This must be a misunderstanding. Let me rephrase my question:

Why did the LA Times revenue get "nearly eliminated" while I don't see a change at all?

The ads I see on my website seem to advertise all kinds of random stuff, so it is not like I am targeting a specific niche.

Maybe some other HN users with websites that feature ads can chime in and tell their experience?

That links me to a blank page with this text:

    While most of our pages are available in a
    version of latimes.com created for European
    Union users, some are currently unavailable.
    We are engaged on the issue and committed to
    identifying technical compliance solutions
    to this problem. Thanks for your interest in
    the Los Angeles Times.