this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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I remember getting to play Nintendo 64 at our McDonalds. You could play things like smash, and usually could get in a full match before it did its mandatory reboot things.
Grocery stores would often have childcare areas up until the 90s I think.
So many of those little casual extras/“customer service” has gone out the window. It’s about stripping out everything that doesn’t immediately gain you profit.
Like, back in the day - retail worker was supposed to know their shit. It was a full time job. You could go to Dillard’s and some older guy could give you advice on what to match with what. You could go to a Radio Shack and say you were having trouble with a project, and there’d be a good chance that you’d end up getting some help.
But businesses would rather pay someone $9/hour for a part time job that’ll fuck with their hours every week. Why have someone who’s paid a living wage who can help sell you a really nice coat for a few hundred bucks, when you can pay some shit for some teenager to hawk polyester shit that wouldn’t even be worth paying a commission on?
It goes into this rejection of aesthetics - that all of these retail businesses are things which exist to funnel money. Aesthetics has cost - and might not even be agreeable to everyone! Why risk it when you could have Brutalist McDonalds.
Your Radio Shack example is legit. I had an uncle who worked at Radio Shack as some sort of, idk, tech or something? I was a kid and it was in the 80's, all I knew was that he worked there and made good money doing it.
Then one day he gets recruited by a multinational tech corporation and moves to Berlin to work in a lab. He could've taken my aunt with him, but she cheated on him as soon as he left for the 2 probationary weeks he spent in Germany before the company in question committed to hiring him.
He eventually became a millionaire with dual citizenship and my aunt married some abusive dipshit who immediately went broke. Now she works in a pickle factory. Ain't life interesting?
Just chasing pickle again and again
Well fuckin said and spot on!
Also thanks for reminding me how great Radio Shack used to be. It used to be a place to get actual electronics components. And the people there knew their shit. And there was enough intelligent folks around to keep a place like that in business! God I miss those days..
another for the list of things with downvotes for no apparent reason
Urgh this sucks so much how capitalism is just making everything more « efficient » aka maximizing profits.