Minor things that bother you

[ZLoth]

I learned a long time ago that the store Black Friday deals are usually matched by Amazon. Plus, they really spread the sales around during the month of November so that Black Friday doesn't have the same meaning. Besides, do you really want to deal with some of those folks who are savage when trying to get those doorbusters. Nothankyou, I rather stay home than get malled.

[JayhawkCO]

Never understood people going to New England or New York for Columbus Day and complaining about the crowds.  Well, yeah.  Been crowded here since before the Revolution.  Duh.

Similarly, complaining about crowds in stores in December. What the hell do you expect?

I didn't even know what Black Friday was until I was 17.  I randomly walked into a Meijer's to get a Mountain Dew and was taken aback by how busy it was.  I asked an employee why it was so busy and they explained it to me.

Fair enough in the case of Black Friday, not everyone knew back then (and even now). But in December, leading up to a celebration of capitalism disguised as the birth of a bearded dude?

What day is Black Friday in Canada, since today is Canadian Thanksgiving?

Same as in the US, because Black Friday is not tied to a holiday.

I mean, it is. When stores were closed on Thanksgiving and the next day everyone had the day off, that was the impetus for Black Friday.

[Rothman]

Black Friday has been around for a very long time.  Been a big shopping day since I've been alive.

Of course, my grandfather owned a store and the increased sales on that Friday used to just be the day retail businesses would go "into the black" for the year (i.e., thinking of how much money they needed to make to make a profit looking at the year in totality), hence its name.

[Max Rockatansky]

I've found myself wondering how much net profit these big box stores really actually make on Black Friday?  The door buster items are generally now sold a decent clip below cost.  It takes a fair amount of high margin items (like clothing) to offset the discounts and payroll increases seen on that day. 

It would be interesting to maybe look into the profit trends for the last two decades and see how they have changed.  Locally I have the ability to do that, but that is way too small of a sample to get truly tangible data from.

My thought is based on the lowering sales volumes seen through retail on Black Friday.  A decade ago here we were doing 600k easily, but we haven't topped 400k since 2019. 

[webny99]

I spent a weekday morning in downtown Portland in April 2022 and it just felt completely asleep.

Try early October (or really anytime from Memorial Day until then). It is definitely a different world during summer/fall tourism season - think North Shore on steroids.

[GaryV]

the birth of a bearded dude

The baby had a beard? Sign him up for the sideshow at the circus.

Seriously, my wife asked an AI app for a realistic picture of baby Jesus in a manger. It came back with a beard.

[Rothman]

I spent a weekday morning in downtown Portland in April 2022 and it just felt completely asleep.

Try early October (or really anytime from Memorial Day until then). It is definitely a different world during summer/fall tourism season - think North Shore on steroids.

Meh.  Hyperbole.

Comparing downtown Portland to the North Shore of Lake Superior?  Pfft, North Shore is worse, hands down.  Other areas of Maine are more comparable during tourist season, though.

[webny99]

I spent a weekday morning in downtown Portland in April 2022 and it just felt completely asleep.

Try early October (or really anytime from Memorial Day until then). It is definitely a different world during summer/fall tourism season - think North Shore on steroids.

Meh.  Hyperbole.

Comparing downtown Portland to the North Shore of Lake Superior?  Pfft, North Shore is worse, hands down.  Other areas of Maine are more comparable during tourist season, though.

I guess Duluth would be the direct comparison, and a decent one at that. Both serve as gateways to their respective coastal regions, and Duluth is similarly booming during tourist season (or at least has seemed so during my visits).

[Rothman]

I spent a weekday morning in downtown Portland in April 2022 and it just felt completely asleep.

Try early October (or really anytime from Memorial Day until then). It is definitely a different world during summer/fall tourism season - think North Shore on steroids.

Meh.  Hyperbole.

Comparing downtown Portland to the North Shore of Lake Superior?  Pfft, North Shore is worse, hands down.  Other areas of Maine are more comparable during tourist season, though.

I guess Duluth would be the direct comparison, and a decent one at that. Both serve as gateways to their respective coastal regions, and Duluth is similarly booming during tourist season (or at least has seemed so during my visits).

The thing is that Maine has a gazillion tourist communities and tourist-trap attractions, while MN does not (thankfully).  Duluth booms since alternatives are limited along the North Shore and in the Arrowhead Region -- another factor in the crowding in MN.  Portland's just a city in a state that has a whole lot of places for tourists to go and therefore it handles the number of people (the idiots?) that choose to go there over coastal towns, Acadia, or the interior, or any other number of places in Maine.  The coastal towns to the south of Portland are the ones that really get thwacked.

[Scott5114]

Of course, my grandfather owned a store and the increased sales on that Friday used to just be the day retail businesses would go "into the black" for the year (i.e., thinking of how much money they needed to make to make a profit looking at the year in totality), hence its name.

I've never worked with the numbers for a retail store, but something tells me if you're only getting into the black for the year in the fourth quarter, there's probably something you could be doing better.

[vdeane]

an announcement came on saying the mall was closed asking everyone to leave.  It was only 6:45.  What the hell?  Is Portland unofficially on Atlantic time or something?

I don't know about the last part, but there is a noticeable trend of things closing earlier the further east you go within a time zone and staying open later the further west you go. This is especially noticeable in New England and Maine in particular, which has very early sunrises and sunsets relative to the rest of the Eastern time zone. Partly because of that, it's more of an "early bird" place in general and businesses tend to adjust to compensate for that.

I certainly noticed that there was a lot more traffic than there would be here in the morning, too.

That could also be attributable to Columbus Day weekend being pretty much a full blown holiday weekend in New England (and to a lesser extent, upstate NY) due to leaf peeping. Today's travel/traffic patterns in New England mirrored those in Canada, where today is the last major holiday of the season.

But at 9 AM on a Sunday?  In NY, people are asleep then, even on three day weekends.

Never understood people going to New England or New York for Columbus Day and complaining about the crowds.  Well, yeah.  Been crowded here since before the Revolution.  Duh.

Yeah, I didn't know it was a full-blown holiday weekend on par with the summer holidays there.  But still, on Saturday?  Around here, the big travel days are the Thursday and Friday before a holiday weekend, not the Saturday starting it, even for Columbus Day.  THAT was a surprise (along with the sheer magnitude; Google's estimate was way wrong).  Likewise, Sunday being in the middle doesn't seem to have done much to depress traffic, but Thankfully, Google correctly factored in the congestion and travel time was as expected.

I guess it goes to show that the Thruway and Northway travel patterns out of Albany are not at all representative of what holiday weekend traffic is like everywhere.  I expected the White Mountains to be "the Adirondacks, but in New Hampshire".  In terms of traffic impact, that isn't even remotely true (although scenery-wise, US 302 did make for a supersized NY 73).  Also different is that everyone piles into the High Peaks area of the Adirondacks, while people are a bit more spread out in New England (although Franconia Notch did seem to have a disproportionate amount, that's also likely the fact that there's only one road through there).

[formulanone]

Of course, my grandfather owned a store and the increased sales on that Friday used to just be the day retail businesses would go "into the black" for the year (i.e., thinking of how much money they needed to make to make a profit looking at the year in totality), hence its name.

I've never worked with the numbers for a retail store, but something tells me if you're only getting into the black for the year in the fourth quarter, there's probably something you could be doing better.

Unless you're only selling Christmas-themed items, I guess.

[Max Rockatansky]

Of course, my grandfather owned a store and the increased sales on that Friday used to just be the day retail businesses would go "into the black" for the year (i.e., thinking of how much money they needed to make to make a profit looking at the year in totality), hence its name.

I've never worked with the numbers for a retail store, but something tells me if you're only getting into the black for the year in the fourth quarter, there's probably something you could be doing better.

That is how a lot of big store retail operators run their year though.  Usually it is the portend of a lot of sloppy operator practices. 

[PNWRoadgeek]

When people overuse internet slang (bruh, lol, etc.) in real life. It's sort of helpful online because you can shorten a long paragraph with those kind of abbreviations. It doesn't really help in real life where you can just spit things out of your mouth.

Also, internet flaming, this is self-explanatory, we've all dealt with one incident with this involved.

[Rothman]

Of course, my grandfather owned a store and the increased sales on that Friday used to just be the day retail businesses would go "into the black" for the year (i.e., thinking of how much money they needed to make to make a profit looking at the year in totality), hence its name.

I've never worked with the numbers for a retail store, but something tells me if you're only getting into the black for the year in the fourth quarter, there's probably something you could be doing better.

That is how a lot of big store retail operators run their year though.  Usually it is the portend of a lot of sloppy operator practices. 

25% profit is pretty decent...

[jeffandnicole]

Never understood people going to New England or New York for Columbus Day and complaining about the crowds.  Well, yeah.  Been crowded here since before the Revolution.  Duh.

Similarly, complaining about crowds in stores in December. What the hell do you expect?

I didn't even know what Black Friday was until I was 17.  I randomly walked into a Meijer's to get a Mountain Dew and was taken aback by how busy it was.  I asked an employee why it was so busy and they explained it to me.

Fair enough in the case of Black Friday, not everyone knew back then (and even now). But in December, leading up to a celebration of capitalism disguised as the birth of a bearded dude?

I could see kids not knowing or caring. But Black Friday has long been a thing. Newspapers on Thanksgiving would be thicker than a Sunday paper due to all the ads. More recently (prepandemic) Black Friday store opening times became earlier and earlier, then opening on Thanksgiving which became a whole fight in itself.

The "modern era" of Black Friday can probably be attributed to the Cabbage Patch Kid doll craze in 1983.

[jeffandnicole]

Of course, my grandfather owned a store and the increased sales on that Friday used to just be the day retail businesses would go "into the black" for the year (i.e., thinking of how much money they needed to make to make a profit looking at the year in totality), hence its name.

I've never worked with the numbers for a retail store, but something tells me if you're only getting into the black for the year in the fourth quarter, there's probably something you could be doing better.

It's probably been a long exaggerated theory, but for many retailers it is an important time of the year for sales.  Dividing the year into quarters, one could assume sales would be close to 25% each quarter.  Using one random site, https://www.statista.com/chart/11979/holiday-season-retail-sales/ , many industries make above 25% of their sales during the last quarter of the calendar year.  Looking at those industries, there could be a few that have a higher quarter of sales, but the list is reasonable. 

It's also noted that some industries do worse during the Christmas holiday shopping season.  You ain't gonna find many people shopping for cars and sticking bows on them in the driveway in December, for one example.

[Max Rockatansky]

Of course, my grandfather owned a store and the increased sales on that Friday used to just be the day retail businesses would go "into the black" for the year (i.e., thinking of how much money they needed to make to make a profit looking at the year in totality), hence its name.

I've never worked with the numbers for a retail store, but something tells me if you're only getting into the black for the year in the fourth quarter, there's probably something you could be doing better.

That is how a lot of big store retail operators run their year though.  Usually it is the portend of a lot of sloppy operator practices. 

25% profit is pretty decent...

Most aren't getting anywhere near that, especially in Big Box.  I've worked in a $150,000,000 store that managed only $250,000 in net profit. The $60,000,000 Sears store I was part of bled money and was wildly unprofitable.

[LilianaUwU]

The "modern era" of Black Friday can probably be attributed to the Cabbage Patch Kid doll craze in 1983.

1983? Grandpa, it's time for bed.

[jeffandnicole]

The "modern era" of Black Friday can probably be attributed to the Cabbage Patch Kid doll craze in 1983.

1983? Grandpa, it's time for bed.

Heh, you kids nowadays...

[Max Rockatansky]

The "modern era" of Black Friday can probably be attributed to the Cabbage Patch Kid doll craze in 1983.

1983? Grandpa, it's time for bed.

Kids and parents going apeshit over a Cabbage Patch doll is pretty damn quaint by modern standards.

[LilianaUwU]

The "modern era" of Black Friday can probably be attributed to the Cabbage Patch Kid doll craze in 1983.

1983? Grandpa, it's time for bed.

Kids and parents going apeshit over a Cabbage Patch doll is pretty damn quaint by modern standards.

Kids back then went apeshit over actual toys... now, all they go crazy over is iPods and iPads and iPhones... and iPaid!

[PNWRoadgeek]

The "modern era" of Black Friday can probably be attributed to the Cabbage Patch Kid doll craze in 1983.

1983? Grandpa, it's time for bed.

Kids and parents going apeshit over a Cabbage Patch doll is pretty damn quaint by modern standards.

Kids back then went apeshit over actual toys... now, all they go crazy over is iPods and iPads and iPhones... and iPaid!

I know, those darn Generation Alpha haters are right. They need to stop looking at their crusty old iPads and get outside, who cares about YouTube? Who cares about social media? All I know is vitamin D and forum sites!

[Max Rockatansky]

The "modern era" of Black Friday can probably be attributed to the Cabbage Patch Kid doll craze in 1983.

1983? Grandpa, it's time for bed.

Kids and parents going apeshit over a Cabbage Patch doll is pretty damn quaint by modern standards.

Kids back then went apeshit over actual toys... now, all they go crazy over is iPods and iPads and iPhones... and iPaid!

By 1988-1990 there would stuff like the the Ghostbusters Firehouse and Technodrome play sets.  Those things made shit like Cabbage Patch seem fucking primitive.

[kkt]

The "modern era" of Black Friday can probably be attributed to the Cabbage Patch Kid doll craze in 1983.

1983? Grandpa, it's time for bed.

You know what?  You're absolutely right.  Goodnight, kiddo.