The Decline and Fall of Trader Joe's

I will always remember it as starting with the Jackson Browne fiasco, but the truth is, there were signs of trouble before that. The leaky milk cartons, the containers that break or spill when you open them, the generally substandard packaging of everything. Package design and manufacturing problems that do not appear in equivalent products found in any other store.

Even at the beginning, there would be long periods where common items would be out of stock for weeks or even months. No peanut butter. No rice. Why?

Just as infuriating, products that had become household favorites would be suddenly discontinued without notice or explanation. I have already forgotten most of them but I don't forget the feeling. Recently, our preferred bread vanished from the shelves, and my wife's favorite cereals have not been available two out of the last three weeks.

I still remember the surge of excitement I felt when I first found out that I was to be liberated from Safeway's corporate hegemony in my neighborhood. Trader Joe's was where the cool kids (and hot girls) shopped. I had been so envious of neighborhoods that had one. And now one was coming to me!

Ah, youth. Well, I wasn't actually young. Let's try again. Ah, naiveté! There, that's better.

Oh, we had some good years. In fact, I think I didn't set foot in Safeway for two or three years, maybe more. And when I did occasionally return, it was because I wanted a particular name-brand hot sauce or some tupperware.

Nowadays, I am back at Safeway at least once a week. Trader Joe's does not have even one acceptable kind of bread. How long before it becomes too much trouble to shop at two stores? Is there anything left at Trader Joe's that I really need from them?

Fold your Fearless Flyers, friends. FFS.

Monetize My Assets

The San Francisco Bay Area has a reputation for being home to some of the hottest tech companies in the world. You may have heard of Google, Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Dropbox or Zynga. For each of these, there are probably half a dozen or more others trying to break into those stratospheric heights of stock valuation and prestige (and name recognition).

Still, you may have heard about friction between these companies and their geographic homes. The woman whose Google glass was snatched from her face by people who didn't want to be captured on video while out carousing. The protesters who don't want Google buses co-opting scarce parking, bus zones and traffic lanes. The people who object to Twitter getting tax exemptions in return for deigning to have their offices in San Francisco. And there are quite a lot of people who don't like the fact that Facebook exists primarily to mine their personal information and sell it to advertisers. I won't even provide a link for that one, you can... google it.

And you've possibly heard about the demographics, that these startups are predominantly young, male and white or Asian. If you study these companies' web sites or corporate profiles, or even their own statements, you will find things like "Among us, we have eight kids and 15 tattoos. We are the proud parents to six cats and 19 dogs" and "We’ve downloaded well over 1800 apps and have thousands of photos on our cameras (mostly of the aforementioned kids and dogs)." The degree of conformity, insularity and narcissism rivals that of any old boy network you'd care to name, but now instead of a Skull and Bones tattoo, it's some cultural-tourism artifact. If you've ever seen a twenty-something white guy with a Polynesian tattoo, you know what I'm talking about.

It's easy to say, and it's often said, that if you have a problem with any of this, you are:

1. Standing in the way of progress
2. Playing a victim card because you can't get a good job
3. Irrelevant because you're not part of this exciting time in tech

I think there is another problem, though, that isn't being talked about much. It's that Web 2.0 is as much of a bubble as Web 1.0 was. 

Web 1.0 companies were woefully short of sound business planning, but at least they provided useful services. Pets.com delivered pet food. Various grocery companies delivered groceries. Kozmo.com reputedly delivered anything. The whole party collapsed because they couldn't make money doing it, but people recognized what was being offered, and they wanted it, and they used it to the point where the companies couldn't afford to keep going with all those free deliveries.

Web 2.0 companies deliver social media, which of course I love, I am using it to publish this article. There are also a lot of companies that provide B2B and SaaS services, which might be a bit harder for the lay person to understand. And if you are looking for a job in this market, you may be mystified trying to understand exactly what these companies actually do.

There is marketing, of course. Cloud-based, SEO, B2B and SaaS as mentioned, enterprise software. No doubt all these things mean something to other business people. My wife, who has a degree in Media and Communications Science, tells me that many companies' marketing initiatives have to do with improving their visibility in Google searches. But I use Google search all the time, and I've never heard of many of these companies. What are they selling, and to whom?

Unless you believe in the Illuminati, the New World Order and a shadow economy in which "they" buy and sell us to each other (sounds likely now that I mention it), it's hard to understand exactly what is underpinning all this high tech productivity.

Then there is the work culture itself. In looking at the employee reviews for one fast-growing company, one finds tidbits like:

Compensation is lower than other companies, but that is part of the start-up culture.

Low compensation and a lot of hours

The only con about [redacted] is low compensation. It can be frustrating working long hours and knowing that you are not being rewarded for it in a monetary form.

- Lifestyle??? - this is your lifestyle. ;)

My favorite review, though, was the one that provided this list of "pros":

- Increased our free kitchen food from just coffee to tons of Costco goodies including string cheese, cereal, yogurt, spicy cheetos, kit kats and more
- Added bike share program, bar, massage chair, new foosball table, yoga class, professional training opportunities
- Increased the number of women in our company
- Work with people from diverse backgrounds and ethnicity
- Throw pretty awesome celebrations including Halloween parties with a bouncy castle/slide and 200 person party on a cruise around the bay

And here is the only "con" this reviewer listed:

Long hours are sometimes required, but it's no different than pulling all-nighters to get papers done in college so not a huge complaint.

So essentially you are expected to work long hours for low compensation and be happy because you get string cheese, cereal, cheetos and candy and get to play in a bouncy castle. Is this a career, or is it a sweatshop with the rewards of a preschool?

This model seems as unsustainable to me as Web 1.0. To put it more bluntly, I think the emperor has no clothes. There is no there there. The bubble will burst. The only question is, when?

Not Moving On

I was going to write about some other things, but my previous post about the loss of the SST seems to have spawned.

You see, I got an email from an online shoe store advertising these shoes:

I got these pictures from blog.sivasdescalso.com

These are Nike Air Max Lunar90 SP Moon Landing, a limited edition (of course) release commemorating the 45th anniversary of One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.

And that, of course, made me think of Game Theory's Nine Lives to Rigel Five. Warning; if you don't like Paisley Underground kind of pop, don't bother watching this, it will probably just make you mad.

Side by side slide by space and time
Yeah the Neil Armstrong telecasts of Nineteen Sixty-Nine
Proportion distortion I saw in those shoes
And I learned a kind of ego that I doubt I'll ever lose

Says the first verse. (Full lyrics here)

Well, I always liked that song and I knew the late, great Scott Miller and I shared certain disappointments. I didn't realize how well they'd been documented, though, until today when I read this:

"Nine Lives to Rigel Five," according to AllMusic's Stewart Mason, "obliquely concerns one of Scott Miller's favorite topics, the disconnect between childhood wonder and adult reality."^[5] In the original Star Trek episodes of the 1960s, the star Rigel and its numbered planets had been mentioned numerous times. Mason wrote, "Anyone who was a kid during the '50s and '60s space race had been told by no less an authority than Scientific American that by 1984, we'd all be living on the moon and driving personal spaceships, and the fact that we're not is, on some level, still something of a disappointment."^[5]

You can read the context here.

Now, I promised this would not be a political blog - well, not overtly - but I am disappointed that, rather than projecting ourselves into space, we, meaning humanity, are more directly involved in shooting down airliners full of vacationers and researchers and blowing up families who happen to be living over tunnels. In other words, the trend is not up, but down, down, down.

I've read that Americans lost interest in space because of other, more immediate and pressing geopolitical concerns at the time (an elephant walks into a room. "Hello! My name is Vietnam" "Later, Vietnam, we are still talking about the SST and the moon and stuff. elephant leaves)

Looks like we're still more about war. But I would like to post this link to an article about a possible new supersonic jet. It's still a ways off and might, like jetpacks and weekend trips to Mars, never arrive. But it's my farewell offering to Scott Miller. RIP, buddy.

How I Know Civilization Is Declining

Disclaimer: This blog will contain a lot of complaining. If you do not like to read complaints, consider complaints, contemplate complaints or otherwise object to carping, crabbing, kvetching, or castigating, please leave now. Your comments will not be published. If you are @CarliLloyd, welcome. Please contribute at will.

On to business. No, wait, first...

Some Background: I grew up with the Cold War and the Space Race. I was taught from childhood to look forward to jetpacks, weekend trips to the Moon and Mars, and eventual space travel to other solar systems and galaxies. That is, of course, if the Russians didn't beat us into space and subsequently annihilate us with nuclear weapons. It was touch and go for a while there, but we made it through. Sort of.

Now. How do I know civilization is declining? Simple.

There is no more SST.

Developed in the 1960s, tested in the early 70s and entering commercial service in 1976, the Concorde SST provided supersonic commercial service. "Among other destinations, Concorde flew regular transatlantic flights from London Heathrow and Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport to New York JFK, Washington Dulles and Barbados; it flew these routes in less than half the time of other airliners" (wikipedia).

Despite numerous technological challenges, environmental concerns and public opposition, the Concorde was operated profitably for 27 years and was not retired until 2003 "due to a general downturn in the aviation industry after the type's only crash in 2000, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, and a decision by Airbus, the successor firm of Aérospatiale and BAC, to discontinue maintenance support." (same source)

So. No jetpacks, no weekend excursions to Mars, and now even the pipe dream of going shopping in Paris for the day is no more.

Skipping ahead. Today my wife and I decided to take a walk, during which we had a modest shopping intent. We wanted facial moisturizer. We wanted rechargeable batteries. And we wanted ice cream. Simple enough. No space travel, no supersonic transatlantic travel, not even a need for a jetpack, we were happy to have a nice walk on a nice day. But do you think in a metropolitan area you can count on being able to buy facial moisturizer, rechargeable batteries, or ice cream? You might be disappointed.

The store where we wanted to buy moisturizer was out of the product we wanted. They were interested in upselling us a more expensive product. These were in-store brands; there was no distributor or middle-man involved. Their own products. This was not the first time this had happened there, either. Bait and switch?

The drugstore where we wanted to buy batteries keeps the batteries behind the counter. You can't see them. To ask for them or about them, you have to wait in line. A long line. No thanks. We left.

The store where we buy ice cream, which was out of ice cream last time we checked, had gotten more, but only two flavors, and not the ones we buy. It's ice cream, people. Not rocket science. Not supersonic transport.

We tried another drugstore but they didn't have rechargeable AA batteries, only AAA.

We finally found the batteries at Radio Shack, though getting any of the surly employees to check us out was a little tricky. And we finally found the ice cream at Safeway. All's well that ends with a bowl of ice cream.

photo from theurbanoutreach.org