That's not what did them in. I worked for Borders during the period when they suddenly started growing, through when things started falling apart. I was also very much aware of the internal conversations regarding the growth of the Internet and what to do about potential competition between a (then small) Amazon.
Without getting into a long, rambling story, the fall of Borders largely happened because the chain was sold to KMart and more or less merged with Waldenbooks. The management team that had made Borders a success left and a number of Waldenbooks executives more or less took control, with their mall-bookstore mentality. Everything that had made Borders successful went away, and they went from being far superior to B&N to being a poor carbon copy of them.
An Internet plan was in development really early in the game, back when Amazon had just started. Borders even did early sales via Gopher pages, even. When the Waldenbooks people were moved into Borders management, they scuttled the plan entirely. Year later they (ironically) ended up doing online sales via Amazon. If they had simply followed through on their initial plan, they would have been the first to do Internet book sales in a large way.
Instead, they canceled the Internet plan, dropped the number of titles in each store to B&N levels (half or less of what most stores had before that), started rebranding mall bookstores as Borders Express, and lost everything that made them special. That drove customers away in droves. They had required book knowledge tests for new employees in the past, and were able to keep knowledgeable employees long-term while paying barely above minimum wage, partly by being very pleasant employers, and partly by offering a lot of little perks that the employees enjoyed. They cut out all the little perks and drove away the long-term employees, leaving people who didn't know a lot about their products, which drove away much of the rest of their customer base. They kept expanding the number of stores despite all the monetary losses, and the whole thing eventually just crumbled away beneath them.
In the end, it was a textbook case of what happens when the original founding family of a successful store chain decides to cash out.
So the blackmailer is assuming that people who don't know how to protect their online identities are going to know how to buy and transfer a bitcoin???
I quit buying books at B&N when they got rid of the horror section. If I have to hunt for the genre I enjoy most, I'll stick to Amazon's search engine.
I would look at small businesses, school districts, city government offices, etc. They won't pay as much, but city government IT jobs can be stable and long-term.
eHarmony only works well for people who are Christian and very, very vanilla (sexually). Any slight deviation from the 1950s version of the perfect spouse, and they reject you.
Things tend to shift in favor of men at a certain point, though. The ratio of single men to women goes more in the man's favor. Couple this with younger women being willing to date older men, and you can reach the point where you can fairly easily date women who appear to be young (to you).
Whenever I hear women complain about men dating younger women, I ask them if they ever dated an older man. If they did, they have no right to complain.
As a librarian, I have been amazed at the durability of VHS tapes. We have tapes that are 20 years old and have circulated hundreds of times, but show no sign of breaking or wearing down. The shelf-life of a DVD or Blu-Ray in our library is closer to 2 years.
We recently got rid of our adult VHS collection because it wasn't circulating anymore. The children's VHS collection continues to circulate well, though, including the titles that we also have on DVD. Many families have retained their old VHS players because the tapes are less likely to be ruined by small children, and can be purchased for next to nothing.
I always document my code. It's really not that hard to do, particularly if you do some of it while you are still coding.
Back in the mid-90s I worked for a company that forbade it's developers from documenting code. You could actually get in trouble if you did it. Their thinking was tha it was a "waste of time" and didn't add anything of value. I strongly disagreed, of course, but they wouldn't budge. It was very frustrating.
(from the article):
"They view the world in terms of "us against them" and see others in an organization as pests or threats to their IT universe"
I have seen this attitude over and over again, both from IT managers and regular IT staff. More of them need to learn to think of non-IT employees as customers. Patience, basic customer service, kindness, and an ability to teach are important traits to have when working in an IT department. NEVER make the end-user feel stupid.
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That's not what did them in. I worked for Borders during the period when they suddenly started growing, through when things started falling apart. I was also very much aware of the internal conversations regarding the growth of the Internet and what to do about potential competition between a (then small) Amazon. Without getting into a long, rambling story, the fall of Borders largely happened because the chain was sold to KMart and more or less merged with Waldenbooks. The management team that had made Borders a success left and a number of Waldenbooks executives more or less took control, with their mall-bookstore mentality. Everything that had made Borders successful went away, and they went from being far superior to B&N to being a poor carbon copy of them. An Internet plan was in development really early in the game, back when Amazon had just started. Borders even did early sales via Gopher pages, even. When the Waldenbooks people were moved into Borders management, they scuttled the plan entirely. Year later they (ironically) ended up doing online sales via Amazon. If they had simply followed through on their initial plan, they would have been the first to do Internet book sales in a large way. Instead, they canceled the Internet plan, dropped the number of titles in each store to B&N levels (half or less of what most stores had before that), started rebranding mall bookstores as Borders Express, and lost everything that made them special. That drove customers away in droves. They had required book knowledge tests for new employees in the past, and were able to keep knowledgeable employees long-term while paying barely above minimum wage, partly by being very pleasant employers, and partly by offering a lot of little perks that the employees enjoyed. They cut out all the little perks and drove away the long-term employees, leaving people who didn't know a lot about their products, which drove away much of the rest of their customer base. They kept expanding the number of stores despite all the monetary losses, and the whole thing eventually just crumbled away beneath them. In the end, it was a textbook case of what happens when the original founding family of a successful store chain decides to cash out.
So the blackmailer is assuming that people who don't know how to protect their online identities are going to know how to buy and transfer a bitcoin???
I quit buying books at B&N when they got rid of the horror section. If I have to hunt for the genre I enjoy most, I'll stick to Amazon's search engine.
I would look at small businesses, school districts, city government offices, etc. They won't pay as much, but city government IT jobs can be stable and long-term.
I refused to shop there right from the beginning, long ago. I don't shop at stores that have "restocking fees."
eHarmony only works well for people who are Christian and very, very vanilla (sexually). Any slight deviation from the 1950s version of the perfect spouse, and they reject you.
Things tend to shift in favor of men at a certain point, though. The ratio of single men to women goes more in the man's favor. Couple this with younger women being willing to date older men, and you can reach the point where you can fairly easily date women who appear to be young (to you). Whenever I hear women complain about men dating younger women, I ask them if they ever dated an older man. If they did, they have no right to complain.
As a librarian, I have been amazed at the durability of VHS tapes. We have tapes that are 20 years old and have circulated hundreds of times, but show no sign of breaking or wearing down. The shelf-life of a DVD or Blu-Ray in our library is closer to 2 years. We recently got rid of our adult VHS collection because it wasn't circulating anymore. The children's VHS collection continues to circulate well, though, including the titles that we also have on DVD. Many families have retained their old VHS players because the tapes are less likely to be ruined by small children, and can be purchased for next to nothing.
I always document my code. It's really not that hard to do, particularly if you do some of it while you are still coding. Back in the mid-90s I worked for a company that forbade it's developers from documenting code. You could actually get in trouble if you did it. Their thinking was tha it was a "waste of time" and didn't add anything of value. I strongly disagreed, of course, but they wouldn't budge. It was very frustrating.
That's what made me stop going to theaters. I don't even watch commercials at home - I record every show I want to watch, just so I can zip past them.
Where do you live? I have never seen movie tickets at $25 each.
(from the article): "They view the world in terms of "us against them" and see others in an organization as pests or threats to their IT universe" I have seen this attitude over and over again, both from IT managers and regular IT staff. More of them need to learn to think of non-IT employees as customers. Patience, basic customer service, kindness, and an ability to teach are important traits to have when working in an IT department. NEVER make the end-user feel stupid.