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The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

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Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#351

Post by mjevans »

smallnamespace wrote: post #194
visarga wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Then make the job one that enriches lives. "Entertainment" comes to mind as today's best example (acting, sports trainers, players, etc).

However that comes to my mind because what I really think that the job should be is a more general category of 'problem solver' and right now society is really bad about making it easy for people to make good choices and have positive impacts.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#352

Post by greedo »

tzs wrote: post #253

It would probably help some if their website didn't GIVE YOU LINKS to places you can buy the book you are looking at for less. I was looking up a book I'm thinking of buying, and right below the customer reviews section on the page they have a Google ads block, and the first ad was for the book at thriftbooks.com. The ad touted it for cheap used there, but clicking it also shows they have it new, too, for $25 (B&N on…

I can't reproduce this on any browser...

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#353

Post by ghaff »

Finnucane wrote: post #338
ghaff wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it like how Kodak "never saw digital coming." Actually they had PhotoCD long before digital cameras were a widespread thing. You can recognize a shift to electrons and still not figure out a way to make a large chain B&M business work. Smaller scale, but one of the first larger bookstores around me to discount books on a consistent basis effectively helped drive a lot of the smaller bookstores that had been aro…

But, rather infamously, a Kodak engineer cobbled together a rudimentary digital camera out of parts lying about in the lab, c. 1975, showed it to management, and they were like, who would want that.

Oh, Kodak did plenty of things wrong. But the technology wasn't really there for a mass market digital camera for almost 25 years after that. And replacing a consumables business that was so big Kodak owned their own chemical company at one point was going to be difficult in any case. Fujifilm transitioned much better but they were much smaller and also had their own struggles.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#354

Post by greedo »

My wife has worked for B&N for 21 years. I met her there, and worked there for a bit over a year. I've followed this company since then, and the amount of sheer stupidity exhibited by upper management is astounding. Decisions from the regional and main corporate offices that were just amateurish. Money wasted, time wasted, people wasted. I'm amazed they've lasted this long.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#355

Post by lotsofpulp »

pboutros wrote: post #332
nkrisc wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Blaming the executive here makes sense. But saying the "company deserves to fail" ignores the livelihoods of everyone below that person in the hierarchy, who gets fired because mgmt has different incentives than the workers.

Then how would the feedback loop be completed to provide information about which strategies are good and bad?

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#356

Post by qerolt »

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.

Tamora Pierce Recommendations:

For the adventurous tomboy: "Alanna: The First Adventure" and "First Test" are the first books in two different series.

In general a good series: Sandry's Book (Circle of Magic Series)

Some of them do have romances/crushes (Alanna series more than the other two), but they're all focused on adventurous girls doing cool stuff, and the importance of hard work, friends, learning new things, etc. etc. I loved them as a kid (and now).

Source: was an 8-14 year old girl

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#357

Post by phxrsg »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #337
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…

>I put my selections back and walked out the door. Granted it was near peak shopping season - but that was inexcusable. Scaling retail is hard. Especially if you're against "be on call 24/7 for minimum wage without additional on call compensation". They could buy self-checkout terminals, though, but I imagine they don't want assets like that and would rather let the business fail. That's the writing on the wall (if n…

Scaling retail is hard to get perfect to the same precision of auto-scaling AWS, maybe, but scaling to an acceptable (measured in profit and customer satisfaction) level really isn't. Or rather, the solution is known.

Especially in December - during prime holiday shopping hours - you staff up. It's more profitable to have a little bit of employee slack time than to have customer satisfaction way down and customers walking out without buying things.

This is a bad take - the whole "oh retail will die without self-checkout terminals" overlooks the realities of retail, what consumers want when they choose to go into an actual brick and mortar store, and how businesses can succeed. And it does so in a way that perpetuates the implication that we have to treat employees like computers to be successful.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#358

Post by Frondo »

sp332 wrote: post #339
watwut wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Asimov is an incredibly broad writer. He has some stuff aimed at younger readers, but still managed to be uncomfortably sexist with the Norby novels. Robots of Dawn involves sex with robots. I'm not that familiar with the Foundation series but I've heard Foundation's Edge uses sex to drive the plot.

I couldn't finish Foundation, after making it nearly all the way through the book and finding the only woman in the story was someone's secretary. It just felt like very, very dated and boring writing. I don't feel like all his stuff has aged so poorly, either.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#359

Post by qerolt »

lostcolony wrote: post #277
thaumasiotes wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a girl. But I liked the Dealing with Dragons series from Patricia C. Wrede (humorous), The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword from Robin McKinley, and the Dragon's Blood series from Jane Yolen.

You can get the entire Enchanted Forest series (the name of the series that Dealing with Dragons is the first of; four books in total) for $20-30. As a male I enjoyed it, and one of my best female friends also remembers it fondly. I'd also throw in Sabriel, as a YA fantasy novel that I really liked, that had a female protagonist who kicked ass (rather than was there to support a male, or something else equally stereo…

I second the Sabriel series. I tend to think Garth Nix is a kind of Neil-Gaiman-starter author. Elements of gothic/horror stuff, but never really too scary for kids (or at least, not for me when I was that age, it tends to depend on the kid in question)
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