817 Slow Piano walk.

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You guys tell interesting stories. I should let you write the blogs. XD

So, at the store today, still no Green Lantern Stuff and no movie Captain America stuff, in spite of the fact that they were doing a season dump. Also, and I never thought I’d say this, I kind of miss having Batman toys on the shelves. Even if they were shitty it seems weird not having any around. Of course there are several toy lines that haven’t appeared out here that would solve that problem, but that another matter I guess.

Wal mart doesn’t carry the DC animated stuff out here. Target does, but there isn’t one for miles and miles. I think Young Justice had some toys, but I’m not sure. I like the robin from that show. Hopefully he’d be in a scale similar to my favorite Batman toy. The one I have from before is shitty. DC needs to do some toys in scale with the Marvel ones so kids can do crossovers. Piggyback on that wintrain.

I kind of wish they had some Iron Man: Armored Adventures toys. I like that show. They need to be in the small scale though, so tony can fight Darth Vader, who clearly has a machluan ring. I’m not even going to try and look up the correct spelling on that.

20 Comments

Odds are you’re on the wrong side of the moral implications if you’re swinging a sledgehammer.

I keep hearing people talk about toys and everything and it’s hard to relate. I can’t really give good advice for trying to find toys, most of my attempts to find stuff have been related to miniatures or books.

Chances are you’re on the oppressive side of the analysis if you’re too concerned about morals.

Oh, my freaking God… We have to get you some GL and Cap toys… I mean… why should my store shelves be overflowing with that badness when yours are barren? I will make some monies this weekend and if there are any leftovers after I’m done blowing it on useless trash (and bills… pfffttt….) I will find you some damn toys. Message me.
By the way, the Robin figure from that Young Justice line has no neck. He looks kind of ridiculous. I was sad because I like that show. His base is neat, though.

Yeah, that’s just plain over-analyzing. I mean, there’s a difference between just following orders in a warcrime and just following orders to destroy the shelving units (which depending on the style, materials, hell, even paint, or what have you could be for any of hundreds of reasons). Currently I work in food service and it gets annoying to explain that we have to throw away buffet items after they’ve been out for an hour (buffet items includes anything made before a customer orders it. For pick up orders not picked up in an hour the same rule applies, although technically it’s not a buffet item). Next comes the complaint that it’s the company wasting money (which it is), followed by my explanation that the company would love to keep things there longer to increase profit margins, but national health code forbids it.

I do have to admit that I love raining on people’s anti-company rants with that one. Especially after they find out it’s true. Almost as much fun as not selling cigarettes to people without proper I.D.

The idea of the statement is that unjust rules can, and perhaps should, be ignored. As someone in charge, blindly following orders certainly makes you wonder just what your job is.

Also, the federal rule is 2-hours, which is why you swap it at 1 hour (because you have some late-time, and if you were to wait all the way until the 2h limit you’d be in violation), and the issue isn’t that you’re protecting people, it’s that, for example, you don’t chuck the food to a homeless guy (potential “loss of sale”… yeah right), or let the guys behind the counter eat it on break or whatever. Then there’s the case-by-case argument of how safe it’s actually not after an hour or two… usually not very (though it does depend on the food in question).

I worked at a Pizza Hut for a year, and one of the things we were allowed to do was to make breadsticks and eat them instead of throwing them out at night (the left-over dough has to be tossed, and the only thing the store was actually worried about was consumption. It’s worth noting we were a franchise, not a corporate store). Improved morale, left the workers to not have to spend money on as much food, made working ’til close more attractive, and all it costs them is that they aren’t selling us those breadsticks (we’re the only people who could’ve bought them after close).

This changed when we asked about it, brought up the fact that we’d never buy breadsticks from our store because the store next to us had better breadsticks and pizza for cheaper (didn’t deliver, it’s a steak place), and they changed the rules, because they saw the reasoning. Corporations rarely have a scope small enough to deal with any store-level, or even region-level problems/differences, except maybe marketing (Spam in Hawaii, green chili in NM, etc.), much to the chagrin of store level employees and managers in corps. everywhere. I’m not saying it doesn’t have it’s massive upsides (I can go anywhere in the country, and almost anywhere in the world, and order a McDouble the same as if I’d ordered it here, which means that I don’t have to worry about my allergies, for example.), but it’s an extremely broad sweep.

It’s also a stifling of creativity, in that, for example, I could make my gf’s work much easier (she’s a manager at a retail store) via my robotics studies, and improve both the bottom line and her workload, but the company isn’t interested in innovations of that sort on a mass-level, and isn’t willing to ‘risk’ trying something new in a single store to see how it does. It’s unnerving that people would rather follow what is than improve upon it, and therein lies part of the argument that Ed is making. The concept of destroying things unsold is that if you can pull it out of the dumpster, why would you buy it? People would, ‘clearly’, just wait until it’s thrown away and get it there, even though in places that do do such things, there’s almost no evidence that it changes anything, and certainly not enough to warrant the fact that they’d be helping people less fortunate. It’s just like the bullshit the record companies has been spouting about piracy for years, and which the stats don’t back (See: Results of Radiohead’s “pay what you want” campaign, or any of the many places that release copy-left movies).

Sometimes that is the idea of the statement. More often, though, it is a statement thrown out there for its easy insertion into an argument without having to back it up, in essence placing the burden of proof on the other party.

Beyond federal regulations, there are state regulations as well. Just the same, the last time I lost inspection points for it (no fine for me. Yet.) it was for over one hour. Admittedly, state health inspectors, but the section of the code they cited was listed as federal.

Yeah, pretty much agree with the third paragraph here in its entirety. Including the personal story. Place I work at has great breadsticks, but I never buy them because I’m unwilling to pay a dollar a stick (literally). Otherwise I had a very similar experience.

And no, that is what you perceive to be part of Ed’s argument. Keeping in mind here that you list two themes in said paragraph, I am specifically inditing the first, there. It is also in no way a stifling of creativity any more than any other job where you are expected to do your job on the clock rather than whatever you feel like. Yes, somewhat limiting; no, not stifling. If I understand what you meant there, though (given the anecdote) I still can’t really agree wholly, but that is in large part due to not knowing what line of work your gf is in, the impact and/or nature of robotic assistance, and other things that really shouldn’t be delved into here. The possibility exists that you are 100% right, although personally I doubt it. For robotics specifically, it isn’t always the corporations that try to limit them. Ask anyone in an automotive union what they think of a new robot to make their job easier. I’m sure some would love the idea, but a lot of people still remember losing jobs to machines.

As to the loss prevention by way of loss sales thing… Again, sometimes. Trash rules are funny. Had to destroy things in NYC because they wouldn’t pick large objects up (and otherwise they took up space in your store). Where I am currently they won’t pick up a trash bag that isn’t inside the bin. Not much fun on these three day weekends where we don’t get pickup for three days and spend the next four getting all the stuff in the bin. Doesn’t mean that’s the case, but that also doesn’t mean that it isn’t. See also Flabajaba’s post.

All that aside, there are plenty of arguments against large scale corporate behaviors that I agree with. Many of them are even popular. I also, however, like to know the other side of the argument, especially when it’s even partly correct. That being said, I lie your argument here. One of these days I’m going to have to get several e-mails from here and start arguing with a lot of you in fake private.

Kinda with Mike on this one. Why care about something, break it, BREAK IT INTO PIECES!
There is a small gland in the brain of the average human male, and it requires the destruction of an object in visual range of the male. Some woman have this too!

The word is Makluan.

I don’t know anything about it, but I searched “Iron Man: Armored Adventures ring” and that’s what popped up.

Almost all modern organizations are modeled after the two truly successful organizations of the old days — the Roman Army and the Catholic Church. Does that pretty much say it?

mindless violent destruction, is always, ALWAYS FUN!!!
I suggest Making your purchases online, Big Bad Toy Store is always a safe bet.

Oh, they did make Armored Adventures toys, but they were all mostly statues in terms of articulation. That, and they didn’t sell very well, so they collected dust in TRUs and that’s pretty much where they are now (still a few left). If they made a normal 3 3/4 toyline for that show, I’d be totally into it! I’m so glad they brought that show back; I was afraid it was canceled like everything else that ends up being good (like Spectacular Spider-Man…).

Anyway, Young Justice does hace a toyline; they’re pretty much like the Justice League figures and they’re stuck in those plain standing poses with hip and shoulder joints. Boring as hell, but what do I know? They’re popular. They do also have another scale in DC Universe size, and so far that only has Robin and…some green lady with a bow; I didn’t pay attention. Those have the same articulation as DC Universe figures…which is kinda strange. Either you get little mostly-statues, or tons of articulation. Where’s the middle ground figures? Like you said, I would be nice to get some good figures out of Mattel in the 3 3/4 scale.

And finally, like Manekochan said: if you need GL and Captain America toys, just ask! There is certainly no dearth of them around here, I can tell you.

Having worked at both the store and corporate level of retail, I can relate to what Ed and Mike are saying. On the store level, it’s a waste and a half destroying good fixtures that can be used again, space permitting (a giant display used for a specific new movie release may be useful in a years time for a sequel, but would take up too much space to be practical saving, for example).

On the corporate level, as a poster said yesterday, they are scared shitless of people taking the fixtures, using them, getting hurt, and suing the company and the manufacturing company. It doesn’t matter that they essentially stole the fixtures (it doesn’t matter that they were being thrown away, they were still in the possession of the company by being in a dumpster that they own/lease/contract) and with our courts and sue happy culture (the new American dream, sue someone and get rich) there is a very real chance they could lose the suit.

Sometimes fixtures have to be discarded because of insurance reasons. For example, the insurance company will only insure damage to inventory/employees in the case of a fixture failing and the resulting damaging of said inventory/employee was derived from the fixture failing, as long as the fixture didn’t fail due to old age (in retail, generally 2 – 5 years, depending on what the fixture is). And yes, I wrote that more complicated than it had to be because that is how the insurance company writes it, to all ow themselves as many loopholes as possible to avoid paying claims, saving them money.

Finally, sometimes fixtures have to be destroyed to make room for new fixtures, because the parent company has contracts with their fixture manufacturers to buy X amount of fixtures per year. So, to make room for the new fixtures that they had to buy under contract, they have to destroy the old ones to make room.

It sounds insane, but so is retail.

“It sounds insane, but so is retail.”

In the short run everything you say makes sense.

Companies can’t accept liability, so they need insurance. The insurance companies will try not to accept liability either, so the company has to do whatever they can to fit the exact conditions of the insurance.

It’s easier to negotiate a contract for a fixed number of new fixtures than arrange to replace what’s needed with a JIT contract. Etc.

But in the long run it is insanely expensive. That was fine while the customer base kept getting more disposable income to buy more stuff each year. But it doesn’t last.

When you buy over the internet the seller doesn’t need so much insurance for you. If the UPS man drops a package on your toe, it isn’t the seller’s fault. If you cut yourself opening the package you probably won’t win a lawsuit.

So expenses go down, at precisely the time customers need prices to go down.

Retail can expect to keep contracting for some time. It will survive on perishables and impulse buys etc. You might buy a case of tomato soup and pay for ground shipping. You won’t buy a slurpee that way. So 7/11 will go right on paying for liability insurance in case you get hurt in their store. But Borders is already gone, and Barnes and Noble probably won’t last all that long.

you know im right ther with you boss man neeithing relieaves stress of the da like hard manuel labor whether that be swing a pick axe or a sledge hammer it feels good to break ground and smash rocks

Being surround by geniuses must really suck for guys that just want to enjoy the simple things in life. Don’t worry Mike, I may be one of those guys that analyzes anyway But I am on your side nonetheless. Smash good.

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