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The fishy death of Red Lobster

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Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#361

Post by genocidicbunny »

RestlessMind wrote: post #355
wvenable wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We live in a time where almost everything is getting worse. Products are getting smaller, service is getting worse, businesses are closing, quality is going down. I don't think I've ever experienced such an obvious decline in commercial society in my entire life. Is it the financialization of everything? Is that we reached peak growth and profit increases are only possibly through extreme optimization? Is it financia…

In case it helps you, I find the following products / services have improved their quality and offering in the past decade: TVs: I get a much nicer TV now for the same amount what I paid for a crappier one in 2012 Smartphones: very powerful and do a lot of things better (eg. camera, connectivity) Entertainment: Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Prime, ... you can pick 1-2 of those, binge all you want and then rotate. Costs Travel…

Sorry, I don't think that helps at all. If anything, it comes across with a "You should skip the avocado toast" energy.

The vast majority of these things are not all that important to most people, not like prices of groceries, household goods, clothing, energy, childcare costs, transport costs..etc.

I don't care that cars have nicer features now, if buying a new car is most of my annual wages pre-tax. I don't care that I can fly to more interesting destinations from SF when I can't afford to go to urgent care without having to switch to rice and beans for a week. I do on the other hand care when my grocery bills double unless I spent multiple hours a week collecting coupons and driving around to find sales. I care when I have to wake up in the morning shivering because I can't afford to keep the heat at even close to a comfortable temperature.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#362

Post by amanaplanacanal »

mikrl wrote: post #291
emptysongglass wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man I FEEL this deeply. I was just wondering if it's just me feeling like everything is on a highway to terrible. - Prices in my city, just this year, have felt like they've jumped 10 or 15 percent. - I've been working in tech for a decade now and for the first time a new company simply refused to negotiate salary. - I feel financially worse off than 5 years ago making a third of what I make now. - Housing prices…

> Gen Z is looking like the most garbage generation of the last two centuries Have you ever met a millennial? t. 1992 cusper

Boomer checking in. I totally blame my generation. We spent our whole lives sucking the long term value out of everything we could, for our short term gain. Leaving your generations with massive debt and nothing to show for it. You’re welcome.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#364

Post by Integrape »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #336
wvenable wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing less moral to me than the idea of people only doing good because they fear punishment.

We do evil for selfish reasons. God’s Word says the Father draws us to Him, faith itself is a gift He enables, and those who repent receive eternal life and close fellowship with God Himself. Then, His presence in our lives in many ways from changing character to answered prayers. Committing to rebellion in this life gains us nothing in the long term in comparison. A sovereign ruler who is just necessarily has to enf…

Sir, this is a Red Lobster comment thread.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#365

Post by mensetmanusman »

wvenable wrote: post #182
asdfman123 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasingly I think the financialization of everything makes us less capable of understanding the world. "Red Lobster failed because of X corporate restructuring," "Red Lobster succeeded due to Y ad campaign." People go to restaurants for reasons completely unrelated to things like that. Those things are important, but just constitute the small slice of reality that can easily be measured. I saw a Twitter thread arg…

We live in a time where almost everything is getting worse. Products are getting smaller, service is getting worse, businesses are closing, quality is going down. I don't think I've ever experienced such an obvious decline in commercial society in my entire life. Is it the financialization of everything? Is that we reached peak growth and profit increases are only possibly through extreme optimization? Is it financia…

It’s what inverting the age pyramid feels like as the average age of society keeps increasing and risk mitigation becomes the meaning of life, espoused in phrases like ‘stay safe!’

We are slowly in the midst of going through a black plague of sorts when it comes to the % change in population that is occurring, except we will be left with an elderly population instead of a dynamic healthy and young population.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#366

Post by vundercind »

Zenzero wrote: post #321
vundercind wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are frozen bags of heat-in-a-pan Italian dishes in the grocery store that cost half what Olive Garden does (so, the slightly-fancy frozen meals—there are even cheaper ones) and also taste quite a bit better (though still not great). They used to at least be better than high-side-of-mid-tier frozen grocery store meals. Not anymore. Their continued existence confuses me.

Bertolli?

Heh, yeah, pretty much. Been better than Olive Garden for a decade or more, and cheaper.

I guess people just like the breadsticks that much (it is, admittedly, a lot more work to replicate those at home than the dump-frozen-bag-in-a-frying-pan process for beating most of their main dishes at home)

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#367

Post by wddkcs »

Terr_ wrote: post #304
banannaise wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that executives will ask "what makes Stardew Valley successful?" and never make it to this answer: A developer who genuinely cares about the quality of the game, interacts positively with the community around it, and makes decisions that demonstrate his caring for the game and the community. Specifically, decisions that often leave revenue on the table, particularly in the short term but arguably in th…

I think there's an even more-overlooked factor that most people never get to: Good-old random chance in timing and markets and events. We humans are hardwired to hate that idea, we always want an understandable story with distinct causes and effects... So much so that we will often invent one, even for things we "know" are random, like: "Okay, now the next one will almost certainly be heads, because..."

It's a failure of our internal simulatory abilities. People are usually much more confident in their counterfactual beliefs than they have any right to be. Self reinforced internal narratives ("if only this had happened then this would have happened") seem necessary in order for us to maintain confidence in our predictive abilities. I wonder if we were truly aware of the surrounding cloud of possible alternative outcomes, if it'd be paralyzing for otherwise mundane activities. How many times do we escape death by the thinnest margins everyday, without ever being the wiser.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#368

Post by kstrauser »

bluGill wrote: post #128
kstrauser wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you'll still have to tip the same amount Nitpick: You'll have to tip the same amount as another restaurant with bad service. If it's awful enough, that works out to about a 20% discount on the meal.

People who don't know how to tip bad for bad service (most of us!) are why tipping is bad. When you get a bill you should have a discussion about service quality with everyone and then decide what to tip (if you are solo is can be just you but still think). If you don't do that then you failed to use your tipping power.

We see eye to eye on this. I'm not a stingy tipper and I don't look for reasons to save a buck. I'm also suuuuper understanding about problems that aren't the waitstaff's fault: if the restaurant is packed but there are only 2 waiters and they're running themselves ragged, I'll do right by them. I delivered pizza when I was a kid and I feel a kinship with people trying to get food to a table.

If it's a normal night and I see our waiter playing with their phone or chatting with the bartender while I unsuccessfully try to wave them down for a drink refill, I'll remember that when I'm paying the bill.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#369

Post by ryandrake »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #362
mikrl wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gen Z is looking like the most garbage generation of the last two centuries Have you ever met a millennial? t. 1992 cusper

Boomer checking in. I totally blame my generation. We spent our whole lives sucking the long term value out of everything we could, for our short term gain. Leaving your generations with massive debt and nothing to show for it. You’re welcome.

Yea, I hate generation wars, but it seems to be increasingly true that most of the economic value created in the last, say, 50 years, was currently either 1. captured by a few extremely wealthy individuals, or 2. locked up in the retirement accounts and real estate of people over 60 years old.

I feel like we (the younger generations) are all sitting here holding our breath in this stasis, waiting for that generation to die, and hoping those portfolios somehow get magically spread across the population. I don't know what mechanism is available to do that spread, but if it doesn't happen, where will all that locked up wealth go?

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#370

Post by WesleyJohnson »

gwbas1c wrote: post #261
WesleyJohnson wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LJS was always an extravagant treat when I was a kid as it was seemingly more expensive than McDonald's or Taco Bell, and further away from where we lived. When I started making my own money, it was one of my regular indulgences. As an adult, I rarely ever see them anymore. And when I do go (it's been years), I'm always left feeling sick to my stomach, and yet still hungry. The portions sizes have shrunk considerably…

Maybe your standards are refined now that you're older? My kids love crap food, and I sometimes have to sigh and go to places I'd rather not go because my kids think it's the best thing since sliced bread. Granted, my only experience with LJS are stories from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Coyne (2nd paragraph, "Early Life" section.)

That's certainly possible - and likely. I hadn't thought about it from that perspective.
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