Politics

[Alistair]

So who's shrinking the tent? The bad-tempered candidate who says something stupid or the "adult" pearl-clutchers who are saying "well I never, I'm taking MY ball and staying home!"

The candidate. 100% the candidate.

I work with the marketing function of our business from time to time.

They're pretty good at what they do, but every now and again, they launch a campaign or a product that simply doesn't land with consumers. It happens.

Now, they can tell me "Well, it was a great campaign, people were just too oblivious to get it", or "The campaign was good, but people were too distracted by something else" or even "The campaign message was right, but people were dumb and misinterpreted the situation".

They might be right with those observations, but it doesn't bring back that lost market share, and that's on them. Frankly, I respect the employees in that function who own their screw up, learn from it, and then try and fix their mistakes far more than the ones who make excuses...

Politics is exactly the same. It is, after all, just marketing with the candidate as the 'product'. You tell stories that resonate with your market, you present the product in the best possible light, hopefully that grows your market share. If you don't manage that, you fail.

 

[Tanks]

So you're definitely in the "pearl-clutcher" camp. So noted.
Surprised everyone, I'm sure.

Yep, myself and 81 million others.

This election is becoming the same as the 2020 election. People voting against Trump rather than for the other candidate. Any other GOP candidate, it would have been a slam dunk.

As I have stated before my hope for this election is a GOP Senate. POTUS I am ambivalent.

 

[Zambezi]

I see self check outs brought up frequently in discussions. And supposed loss of jobs.
Obviously I can't speak of the entire country but I've worked in grocery stores most of my life. 37 years.
If it wasn't for the self check outs you'd have even emptier shelves. Nobody lost thier job. They just got a different job. We're usually 20 employees short at all times. Every store in at least western Colorado is the same.
I've worked 6+ days a week for 25 years due to lack of employees. Nobody wants to work.
We do start even baggers at $20 an hour btw.
I'm just the produce dpt manager and make a petty good living. My department is usually 40 to 100 hours per week understaffed depending on the season.
Everyone demands we get paid better wages and hire more non existent employees then turn around and complain about prices going up.
Anyway, just my thoughts on that. If anyone wants a job here you'll get hired immediately.

i don't know where you work so can only speak to the shops here in Australia. The cashiers are now "assisting" shoppers at the auto checkouts. There are always 2-3 staff helping out and even one special individual standing at the entrance to the auto checkouts pointing to the next available terminal (like we are all too daft to see that it has just become available!

So no, I don't buy your argument. They have maybe 2 humans operating checkouts and another 3-4 "manning" the auto ones. They are not helping to stock shelves etc.