RE: https://mastodon.social/@orci/116009155879650410
Living her best life.
(I've gawked inside a Target once, on a long-ago visit to the Excited Snakes of America, and yeah, this is the ONLY way to shop there.)
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@cstross Targets' earnings are down, perhaps they could add this as a promotional feature?
Please read my pitch deck and front me $250M for my new AI-crash-proof startup idea?
MAKING SHOPPING FUN AGAIN: A supermarket that's also a dodgem cars arena with wine and sushi bars (credit card required for running tab before admission)
@cstross Are you sure this thing does not exist in Japan? Feels very close to quantum internet pornography…
@cstross I wonder what wine pairs well with both sushi and cinnamon rolls…
@stevendbrewer Inari sushi I can see working okay-ish with cinnamon rolls? (It's got that sweet thing going.) Also mochi. But the wine is a head-scratcher. I'm guessing it's MD 20/20; if this had happened in Scotland it'd be Buckfast Tonic Wine (but there's no Target here and Scotmid just doesn't have the same bottomless-pit-of-despair vibe).
@cstross Back in the day, it would have been Boone's Farm. But I don't know what the current thing is. https://vinepair.com/articles/boones-farm-wine-history/
@stevendbrewer Ah, so that's what American X-ers drink instead of scrumpy!
@cstross @stevendbrewer Very close, at least in use! But even the worse scrumpy is made with more love than Boone's Farm.
Boone's Farm is basically Kool-aid mixed with a small amount of pure ethanol. Absolutely no love in it at all.
@mdm @stevendbrewer Whereas scrumpy is made with love and also scrumpy isn't ready to drink until the rat who drowned in the vat has fully dissolved.
@cstross And, just for reference, Target (pronounced "targé") is where Walmart shoppers go when they want to feel upscale. If you really want to experience the true depths of despair, go to Ocean State Job Lot, which is stocked with stuff that didn't sell anywhere else. Or was returned. https://www.oceanstatejoblot.com/
@stevendbrewer Hey, this is the UK! We have Tesco here. (WalMart tried to break into the supermarket biz, bought ASDA—the third-ranked chain—and made a big noise. A few years later they ran weeping to the anti-trust people. Then they gave up, sold most of their stake in ASDA, and got out. Retailing in the UK is hardcore!)
I know that Walmart still have ASDA's George brand of clothes because the fuckers registered the .george TLD and don't let anyone register on it.
@cstross @stevendbrewer Reminds me of Target’s entry to Canada a decade ago where they bought over 100 locations from a failing retailer, renovated them all, and launched without having inventory or pricing under control.
Strange how US retailers keep forgetting that things are different in other countries.
Within 2 years, they were gone.
@david @stevendbrewer The crazy bit is that ASDA *was* competitive, as a major supermarket chain: WalMart couldn't improve on them, and meanwhile Tesco just did Tesco (cue background sound effects of a Roman legion marching past in lockstep)
@cstross @david @stevendbrewer Do you remember Tesco's attempt to enter the US market? "Fresh & Easy" - except it turned out to be neither of those things.
@jbenjamint @cstross @david @stevendbrewer yet Aldi Sud seems to have managed to be highly successful in Europe, the UK and the US.
More random stuff in the middle aisles, that's what's needed! Go in for a family shop, leave with a lathe and a wetsuit.
@jbenjamint @cstross @david @stevendbrewer @tautology
Every time Lidl/Aldi stock another item I could previously source only in Tesco, an angel gets its wings.
I now go into Tesco maybe once a month..
@faduda @jbenjamint @david @stevendbrewer @tautology I haven't been into a Tesco for at least a year. They've gone downhill a long way over the past 20 years since they finished gobbling up every high street in the UK.
@jbenjamint @cstross @david @stevendbrewer Walmart attempted the same in Germany, lasting 10 years from the mid Nineties and burning through a few $bn.
Retail in Europe is really hard.
@jbenjamint @cstross @david @stevendbrewer @jsl
1/ Yeah, that was amusing.
"Hey, let's enter one of the biggest retail shark tanks on the planet without doing any market research! I am sure nothing can go wrong with this plan!
Also, let's make the employees sing corporate songs like we do in the USA. I'm sure the Germans will love that!"
@jbenjamint @cstross @david @stevendbrewer @jsl
2/ Also, telling employees to constantly smile at German customers is a bad idea. Because the reaction of the average German will be:
"Who is this creepy weirdo, and what do they want from me?"
@juergen_hubert im an american and I feel exactly the same about faked corporate enthusiam
@jbenjamint @cstross @david @stevendbrewer @jsl @bweller
Yeah, but in a weird quirk of American service culture, a lot of American shopper expect service people to be _servile_. "The customer is always right!", and all that.
@juergen_hubert Funny thing about that, the complete saying goes something like "The customer is always right _in matters of taste_".
@juergen_hubert @jbenjamint @david @stevendbrewer @jsl @bweller There was a chunk of that in UK retail culture when I worked in shops in the 80s, but it manifested itself differently.
@cstross @stevendbrewer Walmart took over Woolco here a few decades ago and are still going strong, and have moved into groceries as well. They’re still here, with an awful shopping experience. I generally avoid.
Then there was the Hudson’s Bay Company, founded in 1670, which went out of business last year after a run with by American owners who were more interested in real estate games. Killing the oldest company on the continent is an achievement of some kind, I guess.
Pales in comparison to how spectacularly #Walmart failed in #Germany.
The U.S.A. management managed to fall afoul of regulations that were meant to prevent the Stasi from happening again.
They instituted policies of forced smiling at customers, group cheer sessions, and employees required to report any employees who dated other employees.
Reporting on people's personal lives to the authorities is a bit of a no-no in modern Germany.
https://www.ft.com/content/4d85393c-ddd6-11d9-a42f-00000e2511c8
@JdeBP @david @cstross @stevendbrewer US companies seem to have a hard time with Europe in general.
@benji_w @JdeBP @david @stevendbrewer Large retailers embody a huge amount of hard-won knowledge into the local supply chains and retail culture they emerged from. And they can expand into new areas—but if the zone of expansion is too alien in expectations to the parent company, I suspect the execs at the top will instinctively reject better-informed local knowledge that contradicts what they "know" about best retail practices. (They mistook their local conditions for global ones.)
@JdeBP @david @cstross @stevendbrewer I am reminded of when UPS started up in Germany and used brown uniforms.
@romabysen @JdeBP @david @cstross @stevendbrewer
American corporations aren't interested in profit.
They're interested in a globe stuffed with their value system, along with rapacious American-style capitalism.
It's why the Heritage Foundation is funding dismantling the EU, to destroy any system that thwarts their plans.
1. No privacy. At all. "Bedrooms & Bathrooms" surveillance from cradle to grave.
2. No fossil fuel phase out.
3. Unfettered pollution
4. Employees & tenants are serfs
1/
@Npars01 @JdeBP @david @cstross @stevendbrewer uh, ok. and this relates to my anecdote about UPS brown shirts how?
@romabysen @JdeBP @david @cstross @stevendbrewer
The brown shirts of yore also had billionaires backing them.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/not-quite-hitler-but-much-like-henry-ford
The fascists of yesterday had the same kind of Moneyed interests funding them then as they do now.
Germans get blamed but US & UK economic policies post-WW1 goosed the bigotry with "beggar-thy-neighbor" financial policies and policies of social immiseration.
Hitlerism had American friends.
1/
2/
The consequences of oligarchic rule are catastrophic.
Smoot-Hawley triggered a spate of empire building in Japan, Italy, & Germany, leading to WW2. China, Korea, Indonesia, Philippines endured mass massacres & famine.
After WW2, Germany was split in two
Poland, Finland, etc were subsumed by the Iron Curtain because the rich didn't care
Russia erased one ethnic group unhindered while The Hermitage was looted by US billionaires
All because the wealthy didn't want to pay workers or taxes
@cstross Whirl-marting is also okay in my book.
@cstross I love 'the Excited Snakes of America'
That's a keeper.
