Living her best life.
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@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!)
@cstross
Walmart did try and bring some US style practises to the UK but mostly on the management side - I heard stories of having to sing a corporate song in morning meetings, which didn't sit well in Leeds. Their lasting legacy might be the amount of Halloween crap they introduced.
@stevendbrewer -
@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.
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@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
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@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.
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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.
@JdeBP @david @cstross @stevendbrewer I am reminded of when UPS started up in Germany and used brown uniforms.
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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.
@JdeBP @david @cstross @stevendbrewer Paywalled.
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@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.
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@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 @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.
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@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.
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@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/
Then we have the liquidator warehouses that set up in big, dis-used industrial buildings around here. We called one of them the "Rat Palace" in recognition of the species present that solidly outnumbered the human staff.
It was the absolute tail end of the retail food chain and one of the most depressing experiences you can ask for. To think that every single item piled up in the multiple hectares of factory floor space was somebody's retail design idea, seen
through to production and marketed.If you needed tiles for the bathroom, however ...
Ocean State Job Lot looks infinitely fancier: it has a web site and probably even tracks its inventory.
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@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 @cstross as a former resident of the Former US, I will say that I was at least *willing* to go into Target, because it was far more civilized, people controlled their children, and the employees generally did not seem in existential despair.
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@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.
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@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_".
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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.
@stevendbrewer @cstross @JdeBP @david Oh, I remember it well. In Germany for “Whistleblower”, read “Denunziant”.
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@feorag @JdeBP @david @cstross @stevendbrewer Bypass: https://archive.is/TeuPs (but the article is not very interesting)
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Then we have the liquidator warehouses that set up in big, dis-used industrial buildings around here. We called one of them the "Rat Palace" in recognition of the species present that solidly outnumbered the human staff.
It was the absolute tail end of the retail food chain and one of the most depressing experiences you can ask for. To think that every single item piled up in the multiple hectares of factory floor space was somebody's retail design idea, seen
through to production and marketed.If you needed tiles for the bathroom, however ...
Ocean State Job Lot looks infinitely fancier: it has a web site and probably even tracks its inventory.
@TallSimon @stevendbrewer @cstross My contribution to the vibe: Harbor Freight Tools. I describe it as a cross between Trader Joe's and Spirit Halloween. It's got a lot of in-house tool brands and has an "upscale but value" fanaticism similar to Trader Joe's.
But the locations themselves always look like they took an old K-Mart carcass which had been sitting there for years, added dividers to make it about 1/4 the area, installed third-hand shelving, hung a HARBOR FREIGHT sign and called it a day. (I'm oddly specific here because there's a location in Reno which did literally that.)
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@TallSimon @stevendbrewer @cstross My contribution to the vibe: Harbor Freight Tools. I describe it as a cross between Trader Joe's and Spirit Halloween. It's got a lot of in-house tool brands and has an "upscale but value" fanaticism similar to Trader Joe's.
But the locations themselves always look like they took an old K-Mart carcass which had been sitting there for years, added dividers to make it about 1/4 the area, installed third-hand shelving, hung a HARBOR FREIGHT sign and called it a day. (I'm oddly specific here because there's a location in Reno which did literally that.)
@ryan @TallSimon @stevendbrewer Reminder that NONE of the businesses you named exist in Europe (including the UK). I visited a Trader Joe's and a Spirit Halloween while visiting the USA, but neither of the others. Your metaphors need localization!
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@ryan @TallSimon @stevendbrewer Reminder that NONE of the businesses you named exist in Europe (including the UK). I visited a Trader Joe's and a Spirit Halloween while visiting the USA, but neither of the others. Your metaphors need localization!
@cstross @TallSimon @stevendbrewer Interesting! While I knew both Trader Joe's and Spirit Halloween were US only, I assumed their defining attributes were world-known, if only for the memes which have escaped the containment of US culture.
Trader Joe's: Smaller scaled grocery store (compared to US supermarkets), almost all white label store brands, "hipster value" fanbase. Owned by one of the Aldi's (can't remember which), actually.
Spirit Halloween: Pop-up seasonal retailer, tends to rent abandoned retail space, does the absolute minimum to make the space usable, and sells costumes and stuff for a month or so before re-abandoning it.
Oh, and K-Mart: Department store chain, mostly went out of business decades ago.
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@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.
