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| -Land of the Free |
| Life after COVID... |
| 2020-12-19 |
| [American Consequences] Returning to a world where a global plague isn’t killing people by the million, sickening millions more, and endangering practically everyone will be a great improvement on dying or having a ventilator thrust down one’s throat. But what will this post-COVID world be like? Some of the most common predictions are that work-from-home setups will replace the Scranton, Pennsylvania, branch of Dunder Mifflin in the reboot of The Office... in-person retail shopping is dead as disco... cities will de-gentrify because millennials are fleeing from their confinement in yoga-mat-sized apartments stinking of kombacha to the spacious fresh air of suburbia... and the size and scope of government will grow faster than you can say "$900 billion coronavirus stimulus plan." The last prediction will certainly come true. Government loves an emergency. And in this current emergency, government discovered that it has all sorts of emergency powers that no one had ever thought of before. Government will be itching to exercise those powers again. Expect bars and restaurants to be closed and lockdowns to be ordered next time there’s an outbreak of toenail fungus. (Also, gatherings of more than 10 barefoot people will be banned.) Working from home turns out to be... work. A question that could have been shouted over the top of a cubicle divider and answered in 10 seconds turns into an e-mail thread as long as the works of Proust. Reply All. There’s no going "out" for lunch — which should be good for our waistline if we weren’t "in" all day raiding the refrigerator. One of these days, consumers are going to realize that Amazon is just a Sears and Roebuck catalogue that can’t be repurposed in the outhouse. The whole household is underfoot. The kitchen sink is the water cooler, but the kids don’t have any good gossip and flirting with the dog is pathetic. Furthermore, there’s no 9 to 5... Coworkers are scattered around time zones and across the International Date Line. When it’s time for an after-work drink in New York, it’s already tomorrow morning in Singapore. Plus, drinking alone is also pathetic. Which brings me to the one upside of working remotely — no one can smell your breath in a Zoom meeting, so I fill my entire coffee mug with scotch. |
| Posted by:M. Murcek |
| #12 The old catelog stores bear some of the fault, but it is hard to see how their catalog units could be competitive against Amazon when their customers had to pay sales tax of +/- 9% while Amazon did not, in an industry with about a 10% margin at best. I would like to see what politicians were invested in the internet business model that put them in a different tax environment than their competition. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2020-12-19 17:19 |
| #11 In one way it is sad to see the demise of two department store icons, Sears & J.C. Penney; but on the other hand, they deserve every bit of their respective demise. Penney's got way into too much debt. No excuse with Sears. Sounds like greedy morons who thought they could ride prior laurels and live off of the brand name. Not too bright in the computer age. |
| Posted by: Clem 2020-12-19 16:52 |
| #10 I still have a lot of old Craftsman tools. Wouldn't touch the new ones. Funny, though, when Sears started having their tools made in China was about the same time they started declining into bankruptcy. And just think, if they had put their catalogue online to actually compete with Amazon the way Walmart has, if Sears wasn't run by a bunch of greedy morons and maintained the quality of their products, they could still be in business today. As for commuting, do it once or twice a week if you must. Companies could rotate commuting days among their employees and save big bucks on office space. If they can't tell who's getting their work done and who isn't when employees work from home, how can they tell when they're all sitting in cubicles? They can't. The problem is that not just Sears but a whole lot of companies are run by greedy morons. Long before covid, I advocated telecommuting because slogging to work every day on jammed up freeways is for the birds. Too bad, honey, the kids and the dog don't appreciate how hot you look in those office clothes, you can't flirt with the guys in the office and you can't gossip with your friends at lunch time. Do your work and think how much money you're saving on gas, car insurance and maintenance. Smile. You're doing your part for gerbil worming. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2020-12-19 16:46 |
| #9 Left Sears when Craftsman tools left 'Murica |
| Posted by: Frank G 2020-12-19 16:20 |
| #8 WRT comment #1: Innit funny that the left religion of universal free exucation has morphed - devolved may be more correct - into universal ignorance as a platform for unionist iron rice bowls. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2020-12-19 15:21 |
| #7 Saw Craftsman tools at Lowe's...still does not compute. |
| Posted by: Clem 2020-12-19 15:01 |
| #6 Nah, Sears was doomed when the 'bread and butter' store gave up their approach to a 'brick and mortar' strategy in the 80s. Their management suits never grasp the coming impact of the PC and on line commerce. Structurally it should have been one of the more easier shifts from the analog catalogue to a digital one. They totally blew it. When they finally got the message, it was too late. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2020-12-19 14:51 |
| #5 One of these days, consumers are going to realize that Amazon is just a Sears and Roebuck catalogue that can’t be repurposed in the outhouse. Yep. And Amazon would probably not have survived to put Sears out of business if they had not had a 9% net price advantage (no sales tax) for a number of years. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2020-12-19 11:16 |
| #4 You have to wonder, if somebody were trying to crash the global system through a combination of forced poverty and debt what would they do differently. |
| Posted by: Cesare 2020-12-19 10:20 |
| #3 Thus will mean two tiers of management-level employees. Those who work from home and never meet execs F2F will be de facto on the organization's slow track as regards promotions power and pay. You can't build trust if you never meet in person |
| Posted by: Guillibaldo Ululing8059 2020-12-19 10:15 |
| #2 work-from-home setups will replace the Scranton, Pennsylvania, branch of Dunder Mifflin in the reboot of The Office... Trailing daughter #2 works for Toyota in Dallas, and has been informed they will continue working from home through at least next June. Mr. Daughter, who is an accountant in a family firm, will be working from home “permanently“. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2020-12-19 10:07 |
| #1 Another one: American unionized public schoolteachers will demand remote learning whenever they can gin up an excuse. It's even less work than their 9-month schedules require. And low-achieving American school kids will be even more ignorant, clueless, anxious and dysfunctional. OTOH that 10-12% of American families who push their kids to excel (including um, reading books) will continue to pull away from the rest. Btw this cohort is about 98% native-born white, Asian, or East European immigrant. Educationally speaking, their kids are literally 4-5 years ahead of their peers. So another certainty is that the US underclass will get larger and even more racially skewed, which of course will even more demands for reparations, more violent crime, more Darwin Awards given to more Floyd-Shahids and of course more Peaceful Protests. Happy days! |
| Posted by: Clem Omaith8573 2020-12-19 09:59 |