BUSINESS (And the Art of Not Selling Things)

I love, love, love, a certain discount clothing store. I don’t want to mention any names, so let’s just call them Burlington. You might also call them Ross, Marshalls and a few others that will also remain nameless. And while we’re at it let’s throw in some of the $1.25 stores because yes, the dollar store is now the $1.25 store.

They all (other than the dollar stores) seem to have a similar business plan and strategy. All of them do a pretty hefty amount of very costly advertising. All of them occupy “big box” type structures in malls or freestanding buildings that have excellent visibility and I can assure you do not come cheap.

And as I said, I LOVE Burlington. I can usually find amazing men’s sneakers for like $20 that are at least as good as ones costing 10x as much. They have menswear and colognes and even luggage and housewares. All at, as they would be the first to tell you, unbeatable prices. There is just one small problem.

They refuse to take my money. If I walk into their store I will find at least one thing I WANT every time I visit. As far as I know I have never found anything in their store that I genuinely NEED. Stay with me here because there is a reason those two words are bold. They represent a very important distinction.

There is ALWAYS a line to pay in these stores. Sometimes those lines are incredibly long and snake throughout the store. Other times the lines are shorter. But even when the line looks short that doesn’t mean they will be fast. More than once I have been fooled by a line that was only 4 or 5 customers deep, just to still be standing there like a shmuck 40 minutes later, trying desperately to give these people my money. It almost seems as if when the lines aren’t long they send every cashier home, leaving one or two registers open that inevitably have some type of problems that keep the same customer standing at them for what feels like an eternity.

Given all of this, I would say my actual success rate at purchasing anything runs at about 20-30%. Many times I will walk in, see the line, and walk out. Who knows how much money I might have given them if they had allowed me to. And I know its not just me. I’m obnoxious. We know this. You don’t want my money? Fuck you! I’ll keep my money, you can keep those shoes that I WANT, but don’t really NEED. I know that it isn’t just me because while standing in their lines I see the shelves littered with items from all over the store. All of them were left there, just as I do, when the potential money-giver gives up and just drops the items anywhere. “Okay! We surrender. We are so sorry for trying to give you our money!” People would be likely to endure waiting a lot longer for something they really need. But stores like that don’t really sell needs. They sell wants. Needs are bought at a regular department store or Walmart, or Amazon.

I have given way more thought to this phenomenon than a less crazy person would. Why in the world would any business be so steadfast in their desire to NOT take my money? My best guess is that a full third of their sales walk out the door. And that’s not even counting the people who just don’t come at all because they just get tired of shopping and not being able to pay, either because they can’t wait a half hour or more, or just won’t.

The whole thing just seems incredibly self-defeating and ridiculous. It’s insane. As a business you have already done the really hard parts. You have advertised and now people have heard of you. You built your store where people can easily find them. You have filled the store with thousands of items people want. And then there is the holy grail of retail and service industries: customers have actually crossed your threshold and entered your business. Trust me, that is no easy task. To this point everything has been executed brilliantly.

And then they get to what should be the easiest part and somehow fuck it up. There are people desperately trying to give you money and you steadfastly refuse to accept it. And now you get to pay some poor schlep to scoop up all the crap left on the path to the checkout area and bring them back to the department they came from.

Honest question and please feel free to answer. Ready? What the fuck? I mean what the fucken fuck? These are giant multi-million-dollar businesses with highly paid and presumably smart people running them. Some of these stores are part of publicly traded companies with shareholders that might be interested to know why they refuse to accept money.

Which brings us to the bigger picture. These companies have a CEO, a CFO which would be a Chief Financial Officer, and board members. It’s a safe bet that at least some of these people have a very specific type of academic title. Ready? There is a guarantee that at least one and maybe all of the companies decision makers hold an MBA degree. That is a master’s degree in business administration.

Ok, this is a little tricky to get into but ultimately ends up being something of a philosophical question. People being educated in the field of “business” as opposed to a specific business is a relatively recent phenomenon. It wasn’t until the mid-1950s that general “business administration” was even considered a specific course of study. The concept steadily gained traction throughout the rest of the century and led to an era known as “The Rise of the MBA’s” which started in the mid-1990s and shows no signs of slowing down.

Why I say that it is something of a philosophical issue is this: the idea of a person being trained in “business” suggests that the basic skills of running businesses is transferable among any kind of business. It’s like saying the basic principles of operating a diner are comparable to those of running the Ford Motor Company. And as silly as I just made that sound, there probably really is some truth to that. Money is money. Business is business. Shrimp cocktail is comparable to carburetors. And yes, the basic principles of business are comparable in a lot of ways across many fields.

But here is where we start to run into problems. Over the last thirty years more and more power has been put in the hands of MBA’s and less and less to the people that understand the specialties and uniqueness of each industry. The decisions about day-to-day operations have become further and further distant from the operation itself. First in the physical sense, in that the CEO of Burlington cannot possibly be in more than one store at a time and more than likely has never set foot in the store where they repeatedly refuse to take my money. And in the philosophical sense in that the MBA running a chain of seafood restaurants probably doesn’t know the exact temperature that shrimp cocktail should be served at.

So an MBA running a chain of discount clothing stores is almost certainly not someone who worked his way up from stocker, to cashier, to assistant store manager to manager etc. It is far more likely that he (and yes, still almost always a he) is a graduate of an MBA program somewhere and doesn’t know jack shit about retail beyond the numbers. But he knows the numbers very well.

And the numbers say the store is doing just fine. He has a store manager and an assistant manager and a boatload of near minimum wage employees. He’s running a ton of metrics about labor costs relative to sales and everything is just peachy. And the sad part is, it’s true. These stores are everywhere and growing and it doesn’t mean a damn thing that Dave or anyone else has stopped shopping here because the experience has turned into shit. The numbers are just fine.

And the same is true practically everywhere I look. Las Vegas has been taken over by corporate MBA’s and by all accounts they are doing just fine. It’s just no fun to go there anymore. You get nickeled and dimed for everything. Food is either $100 a plate celebrity chefs or fast-food slop. You have to pay to park at casinos for the privilege of giving them money. Room rates now have resort fees that alone are more than the room rate itself was just a few years ago. Casino hosts have been replaced by automated kiosks for all but the highest of rollers. In every way I can think of, the “experience” of Las Vegas has degraded. But yet it appears to be thriving. So what the fuck do I know?

Movie theatres now show at least thirty minutes of commercials starting at the time that the movie is scheduled to start. Last time I checked popcorn costs more than cocaine and has a similar taste. Movies themselves are repetitive and similar and so grotesquely expensive to make that no one dare take any risk. Again, the experience itself has degraded. Yet theatres have somehow bounced back from the pandemic and are doing pretty well. So again, what the fuck do I know?

Theme parks are now so insanely crowded all the time that most of your day is spent waiting in one line or another. They have come with elaborate schemes for you to spend time and money to try to figure out a way around some of the crowds. All of this as prices for everything have gone through the roof. I see children whose memory of these places will be only of being in line and cranky, with parents who are considerably poorer and equally cranky. Yet these parks are making more money then ever. So what the fuck do I know?

Well there are two things that I fucken know. One is that I know it is the MBA’s that are behind all of this “success” at the expense of the experience. Because they are all in the same business. They are not in the clothing store business or theme park business or movie business. They are in the money business. And they sure are great at making more of it . . . for now.

Because the second thing that I know, even without a degree, is that sooner or later there will be a price to be paid for all this “success”. The next generation won’t be so fast to blow their vacation budget to go wait in line at Disney or pay to park in Vegas. They won’t give two shits about saving $10 bucks on a pair of sneakers at Burlington. They will buy them online in five seconds instead of waiting 45 minutes in line. And they sure as shit won’t spend a penny to watch your commercials in a movie theatre and eat stale $20 popcorn.

Everything an MBA is taught is to pursue short term profit for short term gain. And every business is the money business. It doesn’t matter if you are selling sneakers, shrimp cocktail, or The Pirates of The Caribbean.

And that works just fine. Until it doesn’t.