Minor things that bother you

[mgk920]

Remember that 'inflation' is only an increase in the money supply, 'printing' money to cover national government expenses that are not covered by normal taxation, essentially it is a flat rate 'tax' on all cash-based assets equal to the percentage by which the money supply was increased by the 'printing' of the new money.  Simple fluctuations in the market prices of anything is NOT 'inflation'. Such changes  can be the result of 'inflation', but it is NOT 'inflation'.

Mike

[SEWIGuy]

Remember that 'inflation' is only an increase in the money supply, 'printing' money to cover national government expenses that are not covered by normal taxation, essentially it is a flat rate 'tax' on all cash-based assets equal to the percentage by which the money supply was increased by the 'printing' of the new money.  Simple fluctuations in the market prices of anything is NOT 'inflation'. Such changes  can be the result of 'inflation', but it is NOT 'inflation'.

Mike

That's...wrong. Inflation is literally the measure of the growth in the price of a variety of goods and services. And it can be caused by all sorts of things.

[mgk920]

Remember that 'inflation' is only an increase in the money supply, 'printing' money to cover national government expenses that are not covered by normal taxation, essentially it is a flat rate 'tax' on all cash-based assets equal to the percentage by which the money supply was increased by the 'printing' of the new money.  Simple fluctuations in the market prices of anything is NOT 'inflation'. Such changes  can be the result of 'inflation', but it is NOT 'inflation'.

Mike

That's...wrong. Inflation is literally the measure of the growth in the price of a variety of goods and services. And it can be caused by all sorts of things.

That might be a 'measure' of inflation but it is NOT the 'cause' of inflation.

Mike

[Rothman]

Remember that 'inflation' is only an increase in the money supply, 'printing' money to cover national government expenses that are not covered by normal taxation, essentially it is a flat rate 'tax' on all cash-based assets equal to the percentage by which the money supply was increased by the 'printing' of the new money.  Simple fluctuations in the market prices of anything is NOT 'inflation'. Such changes  can be the result of 'inflation', but it is NOT 'inflation'.

Mike

That's...wrong. Inflation is literally the measure of the growth in the price of a variety of goods and services. And it can be caused by all sorts of things.

That might be a 'measure' of inflation but it is NOT the 'cause' of inflation.

Mike

Yeah, and your assertion of the cause is still wrong.  Many factors influence inflation.

[LilianaUwU]

Reminder that companies can just... lower their prices, but they don't because they're too greedy.

[Scott5114]

Going "cashless" also reduces theft risk.

Which it does by making theft a certainty, rather than a risk, to the tune of 3% of each transaction being stolen by the card processor.

[SEWIGuy]

Reminder that companies can just... lower their prices, but they don't because they're too greedy.

Their goal is to maximize profit. No one claims otherwise.

[ZLoth]

Going "cashless" also reduces theft risk.

Which it does by making theft a certainty, rather than a risk, to the tune of 3% of each transaction being stolen by the card processor.

That's a cost of doing business and is passed along in the price that is charged. It may also cheaper to eat the transaction fee rather than hire an armored truck to pick up the cash... especially if you are restaurant who is open late.

[Scott5114]

Going "cashless" also reduces theft risk.

Which it does by making theft a certainty, rather than a risk, to the tune of 3% of each transaction being stolen by the card processor.

That's a cost of doing business and is passed along in the price that is charged. It may also cheaper to eat the transaction fee rather than hire an armored truck to pick up the cash... especially if you are restaurant who is open late.

At the restaurant I worked at, we just left the night deposit in the safe overnight and then had one of the day managers drive it to the bank at 3pm, the same time they took the day deposit. An armored truck never came into the picture. (And no, nobody ever got robbed, because why would you rob someone in a Burger King uniform driving a beat up Chevy Cavalier?)

[thenetwork]

There is a restaurant in my area that I would love to patronize, but they have a unique payment policy.

Credit/Debit cards are accepted, and cash is accepted -- ONLY for the EXACT total of the order!

Okay, I can get a general idea of what the *initial* coast of my order will be by adding up each item's price on the menu...But how am I to know in advance what the state tax, county tax, food tax/and or any other fees tacked on by the restaurant are before the final cost?  It's not like a toll bridge where a $5 toll is exactly $5 cash.

And if they are gladly taking (exact) cash, have at least one cash register filled with a minimal amount of cash, and have had prior cash purchases made by other customers before me, then why the hell can't they give me change, so long as I'm not using a $100 bill for a $3.62 soft drink?  At the end of the day, they still have to physically count all of their cash in order to balance for the day.  Or is it they cannot find any employees who have passed basic math classes in school?

Logic is Illogical...

[JayhawkCO]

Going "cashless" also reduces theft risk.

Which it does by making theft a certainty, rather than a risk, to the tune of 3% of each transaction being stolen by the card processor.

That's a cost of doing business and is passed along in the price that is charged. It may also cheaper to eat the transaction fee rather than hire an armored truck to pick up the cash... especially if you are restaurant who is open late.

At the restaurant I worked at, we just left the night deposit in the safe overnight and then had one of the day managers drive it to the bank at 3pm, the same time they took the day deposit. An armored truck never came into the picture. (And no, nobody ever got robbed, because why would you rob someone in a Burger King uniform driving a beat up Chevy Cavalier?)

When I was the GM at McCormick and Schmick's (chain restaurant), we had Brinks come out twice a week. But, we paid out all tips every night, so, if I remember correctly, we kept $20k in the safe at a time.

When I was GM at the smaller chef owned restaurants that I managed here in Denver, I'd run them over to the bank once or twice a week, but I was generally only depositing a couple of grand maybe at the most and getting $300 worth of change since we paid the FOH staff their tips on paychecks.

[snowc]

Today's online shopping resulted in three unavailable but available items having to be shopped by me today.
Guess one of them? Guess

So, fries are now required to bought in the store. Gotta drive a couple of miles to go to the store JUST for fries?!

[JayhawkCO]

Today's online shopping resulted in three unavailable but available items having to be shopped by me today.
Guess one of them? Guess

So, fries are now required to bought in the store. Gotta drive a couple of miles to go to the store JUST for fries?!

Imagine the sacrifices we all made before the internet.

[vdeane]

I guess I can add "people who think inflation is a period of high prices" as a minor thing that bothers me (well, maybe major given what that all means... but that's too political for this forum).  It's not.  Inflation is the rate of change in prices.  To put it in terms of math most people think they'll never use, d/dx prices = inflation.  Prices going back down would be deflation, which economists try to avoid at all costs, as the last significant deflationary even was called The Great Depression.

There is a restaurant in my area that I would love to patronize, but they have a unique payment policy.

Credit/Debit cards are accepted, and cash is accepted -- ONLY for the EXACT total of the order!

Okay, I can get a general idea of what the *initial* coast of my order will be by adding up each item's price on the menu...But how am I to know in advance what the state tax, county tax, food tax/and or any other fees tacked on by the restaurant are before the final cost?  It's not like a toll bridge where a $5 toll is exactly $5 cash.

And if they are gladly taking (exact) cash, have at least one cash register filled with a minimal amount of cash, and have had prior cash purchases made by other customers before me, then why the hell can't they give me change, so long as I'm not using a $100 bill for a $3.62 soft drink?  At the end of the day, they still have to physically count all of their cash in order to balance for the day.  Or is it they cannot find any employees who have passed basic math classes in school?

Logic is Illogical...

I think you partially answered your own question.  It sounds like they're willing to accept cash, but not to provide the cash on hand needed to reliably make change.  And if they can't do that reliably, it's easier to just say "exact change only" than it is to argue with people saying "well, you let me get change last time" or "you let him get change".

[ZLoth]

Associated with "inflation" is "shinkflation" where the price of the product is the same, the packaging appears to be the same on first glance, but the actual product you get is decreased (10 ounces instead of 12 ounces, or there are 34 bottles now in a bulk purchase where previously there was 36).

[Scott5114]

Today's online shopping resulted in three unavailable but available items having to be shopped by me today.

This sort of thing is why I gave up on online grocery shopping after a couple of attempts. As much as I hate hauling my ass to WinCo every Wednesday, it's the only way to make sure that we get everything, and it offers me the opportunity to make substitutions on the fly.

Although sometimes I still forget to get certain items. Like the butter that I forgot yesterday. Whoops.

One annoying grocery item is a shopping cart in poor condition. It seems like a lot of WinCo's carts pull to one side or the other. And I always seem to get one of those carts on the week that I've got a 5-gallon water jug in the cart, so I get a nice forearm workout trying to keep the cart from running over passing children.

[LilianaUwU]

One annoying grocery item is a shopping cart in poor condition. It seems like a lot of WinCo's carts pull to one side or the other. And I always seem to get one of those carts on the week that I've got a 5-gallon water jug in the cart, so I get a nice forearm workout trying to keep the cart from running over passing children.

I always wonder how the hell do shopping carts get beaten up so bad.

[formulanone]

One annoying grocery item is a shopping cart in poor condition. It seems like a lot of WinCo's carts pull to one side or the other. And I always seem to get one of those carts on the week that I've got a 5-gallon water jug in the cart, so I get a nice forearm workout trying to keep the cart from running over passing children.

I always wonder how the hell do shopping carts get beaten up so bad.

They slammed repeatedly into each other, run into curbs, overloaded on occasion, which bends the frame gently, or warps the flange holding bolts holding the caster. Sometimes the wheels' bearings are damaged from the internal races becoming dried out or had lost grease.

[Scott5114]

I imagine here heat damage results in warping as well. At this particular store, people seem to like to leave them all over the parking lot instead of putting them in the corrals, so I'm guessing they probably also take extra damage from that. (I'm not sure why the lot at this store is such a mess; it's the closest WinCo to Summerlin, so maybe it's people with an "I'm so rich I don't deserve to have to put my own cart away" mentality.)

Sometimes the wheels' bearings are damaged from the internal races

This just makes me imagine the clerks playing Supermarket Sweep in the carts when it's not busy.

[formulanone]

Sometimes the wheels' bearings are damaged from the internal races

This just makes me imagine the clerks playing Supermarket Sweep in the carts when it's not busy.

That depended on how cool the manager was that night and how adventurous the passengers felt.

Usually it was the opposite; put away the "go backs".

[SEWIGuy]

Today's online shopping resulted in three unavailable but available items having to be shopped by me today.

This sort of thing is why I gave up on online grocery shopping after a couple of attempts. As much as I hate hauling my ass to WinCo every Wednesday, it's the only way to make sure that we get everything, and it offers me the opportunity to make substitutions on the fly.

Although sometimes I still forget to get certain items. Like the butter that I forgot yesterday. Whoops.

One annoying grocery item is a shopping cart in poor condition. It seems like a lot of WinCo's carts pull to one side or the other. And I always seem to get one of those carts on the week that I've got a 5-gallon water jug in the cart, so I get a nice forearm workout trying to keep the cart from running over passing children.

I like grocery shopping so I really don't mind heading to the store. I stopped doing it online the second I felt I could go back to the stores after the pandemic.

[Max Rockatansky]

My wife still does online shopping at Walmart.  I can't recall a single instance where there hasn't been at least one item (usually several) in her order substituted.  Store on-hand inventory is never fully in sync with reality and the substitutions issue is systemic of it.

As much as I don't like shopping I feel as though that it is more time efficient just to go into the store myself.  The logistics of having to order on an app, park in a designated area and wait don't seem to be much of a time saver. 

[1995hoo]

I've never done online grocery shopping (as opposed to buying wine online) and I have no interest in doing so. I prefer to pick out the meat, fish, and produce myself as opposed to trusting someone else to do it for me. Typically I don't decide what sort of fish I want (beyond, perhaps, ruling out something my wife says she doesn't want) until I'm at the store and I see what looks good, and I will also select particular pieces from within the selection of a particular type of fish (e.g., "Could I please have the second one from the front on the side closer to your right?"). Online shopping forfeits any control over those sorts of things.


Regarding cart return, I've noted in the past that one reason I don't shop at either of the two grocery stores closest to home (Giant and Safeway) is that the parking lot has NO cart return corrals at all. The landlord refuses to allow them, claiming they're "unsightly" (though I'd suggest the carts people leave all over the place in random locations are far worse).

[JayhawkCO]

I do online shopping for our groceries because it saves about 30-45 minutes of my time, and my time is valuable.  I also despise using a cart in a grocery store because I tend to walk much faster than the public and I just feel like everyone is in my way. I haven't run into too much issue with what the pickers get for me a far as produce is concerned, and we don't eat much red meat, so I don't need particular steaks or something like that. They're perfectly able to pick out chicken thighs, ground turkey, etc. Seafood is the one thing I tend to go in for, but again, if I'm only getting one or two things, then I don't need a cart and can beeline around the store and be in and out in five minutes.

[Scott5114]

I also despise using a cart in a grocery store because I tend to walk much faster than the public and I just feel like everyone is in my way.

The nice thing about capitalism having destroyed my circadian rhythm is that means I can go to the store in the wee hours of the morning when the only people there are stockers. (They still sometimes get in the way, but they move less erratically than the General Public.)