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Comment by eludwig | Hacker News Reader

>>Two cashiers working out of 8 or so possible registers

And the worst part about this is that each cashier seems determined to relentlessly pester me with annoying questions at the register! Did I want to join this loyalty program? Did I realize that I could save $5 by signing up for so and so. Do I want to get on the B&N mailing list? Really aggressive questioning.

Oh my God. I realize that the cashiers have been ordered to do this (I assume) but knock it off already! This is so consumer unfriendly. I just want to pay and go. I'm sure that this also delays checkout times significantly over the course of a day.

This is one of the main reasons I use Amazon when possible. Retail checkout in the US has become a one-way grilling. You end up leaving the store feeling like a murder suspect.

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Not only are they ordered to do it but corporate puts requirements on the store as to how many joins they are expected to get each day, and cashiers have their own individual quotas and they get chewed out if they don’t meet them by managers who get chewed out for not meeting them. The fact that this behavior reduces sales throughput, employee productivity, and customer satisfaction are not worked into the analysis that comes up with these programs or their growth targets. Upper management comes up with a target and they push their stores to meet it, because their CMO went to a conference where he was wined and dined by the company that sells the software to run the loyalty card system and believes their stats about how it saved company X and now that they’ve spent the money the ROI has to meet internal targets or risk embarrassing the CMO.

Sounds like a company that would keep such an executive on board deserves to fail.

Blaming the executive here makes sense. But saying the "company deserves to fail" ignores the livelihoods of everyone below that person in the hierarchy, who gets fired because mgmt has different incentives than the workers.

Not to mention the fact that so many companies right now have new leadership that didn't build the company and are stuck, like B&N's here, not in a mode to improve the company but a mode to make sure there's as much meat for picking as possible when it eventually goes down in flames.

It seems like the "Old Business" world is just a nest of snakes eating each other until there's just one left to die of starvation.

Then how would the feedback loop be completed to provide information about which strategies are good and bad?

That's assuming that someone recognizes which strategy was responsible for failure. Blaming the competitors, or the employees, is probably much more comforting and easier for upper management.

Perhaps if those lower in the hierarchy and society as a whole are constantly burned by businesses failing due to incompetent leadership, they might start to expect or demand something different. Socialism? Anarchy? Some kind of socially conscious capitalism? I don't know what form it will take, but it might be something different than what we have now.

Isn't "conscious capitalism" what's being sold to us since the 70's, through the "new spirit of capitalism" ?

Anyways props to ur comment hah

The failure of brick and mortar book stores is a net negative to society. Deserves to fail, maybe, but it'll suck when they do.

Unlike the Internet, when a break-and-mortar fails it's not easy for a competitor to break into the space and scoop up their market share. In theory in an efficient market, players that deserve to fail will be replaced and the market as a whole will remain and become stronger. In meatspace, where many things have friction, players that deserve to fail will bring the market down. I also wish it weren't the case, but it's not a market many players are actively trying to enter right now.

> Unlike the Internet, when a break-and-mortar fails it's not easy for a competitor to break into the space and scoop up their market share.

Also, in this space, there's a competitor that's on it's way to a monopoly. if B&N goes belly-up, I'm not even sure where I could buy books besides Amazon.

My situation might be different because I live in a major US city, but I can think of a handful of independent bookstores near where I live. If they didn't have what I was looking for they could probably order it for me.

Try powells.com, an independent but pretty comprehensive bookstore in Portland.

So many good memories as a kid of going to the local B&N with my parents. Unlike our library, it had coffee and social energy and tables set up for browsing and was open past 5pm.

It shared a cursed strip mall with a Blockbuster, a LAN gaming center, and a music shop that was finally torn down last year.

If you're lucky you just get chewed out. My wife used to work retail and in one store, you had to push credit cards, often to people who really should not have another one. If you failed to meet your quota you get a warning the first time and then fired the second time.

Setting goals for one person based on what another person chooses to do seems like a phenomenally stupid idea.

Welcome to sales and retail! Watch Glengarry Glen Ross.

This sounds heartbreakingly true, especially the part about the CMO being sold a fantasy at a conference. I really like the way you've chained it together from the C-suite all the way down to the lowly cashier.

A couple of days ago I attempted to pay for snacks at a convenience store with cash. The clerk sheepishly directed me to answer a series of questions about discount cards via the pinpad! When I asked if this seemed like a good idea, she could only sigh and glance skyward.

Apparently the corporate morons have figured out how to pester the customer even against the better judgment of clerks. Fortunately I have a choice in which convenience store enjoys my custom.

B&N isn't the only one to do this but they are one of the most persistant. I visit the store once or twice a month and have been since Borders tanked. Every time I buy something, I get this spiel. Dozens of times now. Usually, I cut them off with a curt "no" when I sense they're ready to start the question. I sort of feel bad because it isn't the clerks fault but I'm really annoyed at just being asked over and over. I'm tempted to have a badge made up I can pin to my shirt that says "Thank you. No.".

>Oh my God. I realize that the cashiers have been ordered to do this (I assume) but knock it off already!

Why should they? If they don't they will get fired. Business goes up or down that cashier doesn't get paid more or less...they have no incentive to risk their job for a customer. These companies are so obsessed with squeezing a nickle out of 5% of their customers because they can _measure_ that. Its 'impossible' to measure losses like you with any granularity, so it doesn't matter. They 'can't' incentivize it.

If I'm incented to sell memberships, I'm going to sell the sh out of memberships. The pearl clutching in this thread is apparent, but remember, they have the data, we don't.

>> Retail checkout in the US has become a one-way grilling.

At one point Best Buy was trying to get you to sign up for MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTIONS at checkout. Who thought that was a good idea?

> Who thought that was a good idea?

A bunch of corporate people who never had to ask someone face to face about buying stupid shit after they've already decided what they want, and a bunch of corporate people who never actually shop at their own stores.

Have you ever heard of "rhetorical questions?"

No, what are they?

JCrew is relentless with this lately. They ask you if you’d like an “email receipt”, which is code for re-subscribing you to their daily barrage of emails. Then they hand you a paper receipt as you walk out.

I aggressively avoid buying books on Amazon, mostly for the reasons listed in the article, but between BAM and B&N, I will always go to a local bookstore instead. They don't grill me for PII at the register, for one.

Overall the whole experience is way better. Finding a book is a tiny bit harder (emphasis on tiny), but honestly, I'm not in a hurry when I'm in a bookstore, so I don't care.

They don't grill me for PII, and that is at least a part of why they have an easier time getting it. The local bookstore put out a sign up sheet collecting email addresses, with a little blurb at the top saying what it was for. Nobody ever mentioned it, but after a couple trips of looking at and reading it, I just threw it down on a whim. By contrast, the sense of being actively pressured for my contact info at major retailers just makes me dig my heels in on the subject.

I actually don't think finding a book is harder, either. If I know what I want, I just walk up to the counter and ask. If it's in stock, I go grab it. If it's not, they order it, tell me it'll arrive within a month, and I swing back buy to pick it up it about 2 days later. If I don't know what I want, the staff recommendation slips most independent bookstores put out are great, especially now that I've gone enough times to know which staff members share my reading tastes. And have led me to many, many more delightful books and authors I wouldn't have tried otherwise than Amazon's sad attempts at getting something useful out of collaborative filtering. ("You liked Pride and Prejudice? Well, how about... Sense and Sensibility!! Ta-daaaa, isn't AI amazing!?")

> but between BAM and B&N, I will always go to a local bookstore instead

What's BAM?

books a million I believe.

Books-a-Million, another large bookstore chain

I have this same experience with B&N as well, getting grilled on a milion questions is annoying.

Another thing is I like knowing what kind of readers have read similar books to me, and their opinions of said book. I prefer to just buy everything on my kindle, its easy and convenient. Not a big fan of hard copy textbooks much anymore

TBH, the problem is they put this stuff in the checkout dialogue. They could put it on posters etc, but they put it in the way of the purchasing utility (checkout) so you can't avoid it. and it gets in the way, slows you down.

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