Posted on 10/18/2015 6:56:45 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Edited on 10/18/2015 8:36:26 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
You wrote it more elegantly than I did, but I agree that many of US companies are going through this. Wal-Mart has been doing this for years and even my wife, who used to go there every week (usually more than once a week), now goes there less and less.
I may stop in Wal-Mart 3 times a year. Saving one dollar is not worth 30 or more minutes of my time. They CAN and COULD have afford to pay for the extra help and probably would have made more money, but they willingly choose a different path. Their cheapness is now starting to cost them and it will be much more expensive for them to reverse the trend now that the damage is done.
McDonalds is another example of crating their standards to make a buck. Almost any other chain with their troubles would have gone bankrupt by now. They are coasting downward of the past reputation.
McDonalds needs to do three things to reverse the trend.
1. Eatable food - Sad that they can’t figure this one out.
2. Service - It sucks and gets worse every year
3. Kill off hald the bloated menu and go back to selling what you are. You are a burger joint-not a health food store.
Now I make a local shopping circuit about once a week, with Wal-Mart often not included. When I do go, I notice that the local Wal-Mart is looking a little like it used to, with some of the old products and brands back on the shelves. The arc of ill-considered changes that do poorly and are then reversed in large part seems like a theme of the Obama era.
You are all too correct about McDonalds. As US companies get large, regular earnings growth seems to become ever more important and to come at the expense of reliable quality product and service, long-term growth, and sound corporate strategy. I can easily see MacDonalds going belly up if they do not get their product and service equation right.
Don’t forget that communications will be among the first to go down. Ham Operators will be in high demand. Hubby is one of the older Hams who learned Morse code as part of his training. I don’t even know if it is taught any more.
People can learn to weave if need be, or dry skins for clothing or shoe usage. Hunting skills will be necessary too. So many things we modern people take for granted.
Both hubby and his youngest daughter are IT professionals. And he is a car junkie.
Freepmail sent your way. Have fun. Become the neighborhood fashion mogul. Keep people warm after the end of the world as we know it. :-)
Ham radio is fascinating. Been studying with several others for the tests (”tests” plural, because we’re far from repeaters here). We’ll also have fun with kits (also electronics nerds here).
Fred Meyer and other Kroger owned stores us a technology called QueVision. Basically it records people coming in and out of the store and estimates when they will hit the checkstand. The managers use this information to send more people to the checkouts when they expect a surge.
They also have technology that auto scans your items using lasers as it goes down the belt. I demoed it in one of the Kroger stores near the Cincinnati airport (which is in Kentucky). It is not quite ready for prime time. Works fine for most food products. Not so much for things like clothing.
With clothing, you get what you pay for up to a certain level. Ridiculous $10,000 shirts are ridiculous. But I did a fun experiment with my son’s school red cotton polo shirts. I bought one of the uniform kind, the cheap ones you get at cheap department stores made to be low cost for people buying uniforms. I bought a few Lands End shirts. And a few from Ralph Lauren. With the pony.
He wore the heck out of these shirts from September to June. Well, most of them, anyway. By February, the cheap uniform shirt was light pink with fraying hem, and it had shrunk to where he could no longer wear it. Trash. In June, the Lands End shirts were light red, a nice even fade, and they had shrunk a bit and lost some of their shape. But they did serviceably well all year and they weren’t costly. No frays or rips. I was not surprised that the Ralph Lauren polos made it, but the bright red color had not even faded a little. They had their shape and had not noticeably shrunk at all! I honestly thought I was “paying for the pony” logo but it turns out they truly were better made and used better dyes and better cotton. They lasted the next year as well until he outgrew them.
It is better to buy used from quality yard and estate sales or ebay, from good companies, and save money that way than to buy the cheap clothing from big box stores.
Oh, we live rural, this year the cicadas destroyed nearly every thing planted. The only thing that survived was the blackberries. Moles got what the cicadas didn’t. 200 strawberry plants. Hubby went to mow yesterday and found a half dozen new mole runs in the front yard. Neighbors on both sides of us had the same issue, and across the street. Appeared out of no where. Weather pattern was also abnormal for us. To cool, not enough rain, since we live in West TN that is not normal, high humidity, little rain and high temps are the norm.
We have 2 small dogs so poison is out of the question.
Salvation Army has great deals on used clothing. It is about the only place seniors can find clothing that does not look like a Street Walker was wearing it.
Thank you for that link, it does look like a great way to shop.
Some are not longer available, or prices went up. But thank God for what competition enables. Now about ISP’s...
My local one was out of ammo for about a year - shelves bare. Now they have plenty of anything but 22.
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