Demise of Brick and Mortar Stores

Are Brick and Mortar (B&M) stores partly to blame for their loss of customers to Internet-based stores?  I think so.

While it’s true that B&Ms have higher costs due to maintaining a physical presence and inventory, they also have an advantage in that customers get instant access to purchases.  Also, in the case of one-of-kind product such as produce, buyers get to examine and inspect the merchandise before buying.

I shop both online and at B&Ms.  Here’s why I shop online:

1. It’s easier to find what I need. For example:
1. Unscented antiperspirant is nearly impossible to find at stores near me. B&Ms have replaced unscented product with things called “Phoenix,” “Apollo” and “Gold.” What the heck does Gold smell like and how would it keep me dry? Maybe it’s unscented, like real gold, but I doubt it. Sure I could open each one and smell it. But the number of choices is overwhelming, and I don’t have time for it anyway!
2. My shoe size is almost impossible to find, and I hate shopping for shoes. I’ve been reluctant to buy shoes online because I’ve always wanted to try shoes on before buying. But I bought my latest pair online, and it was so much easier. Plus, they were so marked down in price (probably because they were such an unpopular size) that I was ecstatic.
3. B&Ms waste a lot of shelf space on different brands and flavors of peanut butter. Nowadays you can buy peanut butter that's smooth, crunchy, mixed with jelly, mixed with honey. You have Skippy, Jiff, Teddy Bear, Smuckers and the store brand. Yet how many varieties are there of plain almond butter, not mixed with sugar or palm oil or whatever? Just one – and that was only after the store brought in a machine to make it in-house.
4. I love our local Barnes and Noble, but I buy more stuff at BN.com than in their local B&M. We buy our kitchen calendar from BN.com. It’s so special. It has a magnetic strip to hang on the refrigerator, and is 12” wide with large rectangles for the days of the month. Finding it in the B&M is hit or miss, so we avoid the frustration entirely and get it online.
2. Online items get dropped off in my driveway. I don't need to lift a product into a shopping cart, push it to a cashier, bring it out to the parking lot and then load it into the car. It should be noted that the B&Ms that I shop at have helpful people who will load stuff into customers' cars. Some even offer to do this even without being asked.
3. Repeat delivery and free delivery are so amazingly convenient that I rely on this for cat litter and pet food. These items also fall under item 2, as well.

B&Ms should excel at knowing the needs of the community.  Our local hardware store does this really well.  They know things like the right kind of paint for the climate we're in, the types of wood siding that was popular when the original homes were built, the parts needed to fix light fixtures and values.  I don't bother to look online for hardware-like items unless the guys tell me to.  B&Ms can learn a lot from the hardware store business model.

#NaBloPoMo2019

Reinvent the Brake Light

Maybe it's a guy thing, but the first thing I thought about when I read today's NaBloPoMo^* writing prompt was "cars."

Of course I know that cars have been invented already.  But they were invented so long ago when technology was in its infancy that they need to be re-invented.

Take brake lights.  They are essentially two red lights on the back of a car that are activated by a switch that, in turn, is activated by a pedal that the driver depresses with a foot.  We're supposed to infer from the brake light that a car is slowing down, stopping, or already stopped.  But they provide no reliable information about the car's speed or state of acceleration.  Consider these two examples:

A car can be at a complete stop while the brake lights are dark if the driver removes his or her foot from the pedal after stopping.

A car can be moving while the brake lights are on if the driver rests his or her other foot on the brake pedal.

This is how brake lights really should work:

• When the car is moving forward and accelerating, the color of the brake light shall be green.  The lights shall blink faster when the car is moving faster.  The rate of blinking vs the car's speed shall be the same for all cars.
• When the car is moving forward and decelerating, the color of the brake light shall be red.  The lights shall blink faster when the car is braking harder.  The rate of blinking vs how quickly the car slows down shall be the same for all cars.
• When the car is completely stopped the brake light shall be off.
• Brake lights shall be uniform in size and position among all car makes and models.
• Brake lights shall also be installed on the front of all cars to help motorists and pedestrians determine whether an on-coming car is speeding up or slowing down.

It's not really expertise that's needed to make this happen.  It's political clout.

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^*"Pretending you have the expertise to make the product a reality, what do you wish you could invent?"

What Selfies Really Say About Us

The front-facing camera in smartphones and tablets have made it incredibly easy for people to take selfies.  However, the resulting image is inaccurate.  It is reversed, as if viewed in a mirror.  When you send the image to others, you're essentially saying, "Look at how I perceive myself," not "Here's how I really look."

If the images from a typical digital camera were to come out the same way as those from a front-facing smart phone camera, everyone would complain.  Lettering would be reversed.  Folks would appear to be saluting with their left hands.  A photo of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" would have G-d on the left.

The designers and engineers of these devices could have corrected this distortion simply by mirroring the image before creating the file.  Why didn't they?

When Technology Does Too Much

Sometimes, technology does too much.  When that happens, we are inconvenienced.

I had a telephone with a really neat feature.  If you got a busy signal when you dialed a number, it would hang up and then re-dial the number for you automatically.  But that stopped working when the phone company rolled out new technology that would give you a call back when the busy line became available.  The phone company's feature reduced the number of repetitions the busy signal would produce, making it impossible for the phone to detect it.  Now the busy signal beeps just twice, and it's followed by a matronly voice that says, "That number is busy.  If you'd like us to call you when the number becomes available, please press 1 now."  Of course there's a charge every time you use this feature; my phone provided the same type of feature for free.  No matter -- the phone was fried just over a year ago along with the DSL modem.

My coworker likes to use a Keurig machine to make coffee, but he doesn't like all the waste inherent in using those pre-filled, foil-sealed, plastic K-Cups.  So he uses a filter cup, like the My K-Cup.  Unfortunately the Keurig machine at work is designed to tip the used K-Cup into a reservoir bin after each brewing cycle, saving the next person from the "drudgery" of having to remove the used cup from the machine.  But if you're using a filter cup, you'll want to retrieve your filter cup, which means partially disassembling the machine to get at the bin.  And in the process of tipping the cup into the bin, the machine spills undrained liquid and messy grounds all over the bin.  Worse than all that, the additional components that perform the tipping are costly, use more electricity, and require repair.

The Keurig machine itself is an example of too much technology.  It's not too hard to fill a drip coffee maker with fresh cold water, place a coffee filter into the machine, add grounds, and then start the machine.  And after reading this online critique of the Keurig system, it would seem to be healthier to use the drip coffee maker, too.