That is something I had to think about when I first started having groceries delivered. As much of a privacy advocate as I am, I had to come to terms with the fact that the price of my convenience would be someone knowing what I'm ordering. But really, that doesn't concern me too much. It's just food. You can't get books from a library without them knowing your reading history. Or movies from the movie store. We have significant tracking on items we buy and consume and I'm not personally concerned with my groceries being in a database somewhere.
I'd prefer it NOT be, but it's really a philosophical point and as long as you have the OPTION of buying groceries in a way that isn't tracked (don't order them) then it seems reasonable.
I also agree that convenience could be our downfall, but it's not going to be the people saving 100 hours per year by having groceries delivered. It's going to be the idiots getting a Walmart Visa credit card on-the-spot so they can get a free 20oz pepsi.
See, even you who do shop in a store admit that it's mostly a chore. You do it out of concern for quality, presumably and find a lot of the same gripes as I do (the fact that there is a "please reserve this spot for parents with small chilren" parking spots is enough of a reason to repulse me from ANYWHERE). I have had fantastic experiences with the quality of my food. After all, the store cares to keep me as a customer, so they're not going to waste their time picking through the food to send me the shit (and they don't).
If I did have to shop, I'd be like my grandfather. Trips to the store with him were AWESOME as a kid. In. Through the store. Cart full. Filled only with things we planned to buy in the first place. And out. BAM. No dawdling like most people you see in the store. A picture of efficiency. Get in, get out, get done, go do something more entertaining or worthwhile.
But so many of the luddites responding in this thread cite reasons entirely unrelated to "I'm scared they'll deliver me inedible food!". They cite a bunch of things that I am kind of surprised to hear guys say. It sounds that, to them, shopping for food (and clothes?) is a grand sensory social experience. I mean, really you guys.. some of you sound like you're prattling on about some glorious wine tasting. It's just food! It's shit you shove in your gut so you don't keel over and die. So you can go do OTHER stuff.
But again, in 2008 - you shouldn't have to decide to go shopping for groceries out of concern for the quality of your food. The process should be so universal and refined and high quality that ordering them is common place and quality is entirely assured and regular (it has been to me, but perhaps not others?). This whole discussion sort of reminds me of pumping gas. Where I come from, you don't have to pump your own gas. In fact, you can NOT pump your own gas. That's fine. It's more efficient and enjoyable if someone else does it for me. But I'm sure there are people here who would prattle on about how it's such a wonderful social experience. The scent of the gas. The concern that the gas will only be good if THEY pump it and not if the employee does it for you. But it's the same fucking gas.
See, you're a different kind of person than me, though. There are people who enjoy touching and feeling the food or clothes or shoes or whatever else they're buying. They love the "thrill" of the shopping hunt. The crowds. The music. The lights. The aisles full of stuff. The spontaneous purchases. The "oh my god, I'm starving so I'm going to be some crap" impulse buys. That's not my kind of thing. I have other shit I want to do with my time and there could not be anything I would find more boring in the world . ..except sitting in church, maybe... than shopping. For just about anything. As I said before - things I actually dig and care about I'm more than happy to shop for in person (you know, home theater stuff... car.. etc).
Myself - and most men I know, frankly - are the exact opposite. Shopping for anything is a chore. We don't wander aisles. We don't make surprise purchases. If we have to go to a store, we know what we want and what part of the store it's in and we already have a mental-map planned out of our plan-of-attack before we even enter the store. If we could, we'd bring a stopwatch to see how quick we can be in and out.
Sure, that doesn't account for every guy - but many. Probably most. And really, I know what food smells like. I don't need to smell it in person to buy it.
If you have the time and it's a priority, fine. For me it's a huge chore and a time sink. And being that it's 2008, I can't believe that the "best" we can do is walk into a giant food-mart and walk aisle to aisle to aisle like a bunch of cattle being herded from one part of the farm to the other, through a bunch of gates.
As for herbs.. well.. those I grow myself. That's the one thing that is hard to get any other way. Even in person at the store.
I've been having the store delivery my groceries for most of a decade and I've always received fresh everything. The fruit and veggies are always more than acceptable and I've only ever been disappointed by one item and when I complained about it, they refunded the price AND returned later in the day to bring me a replacement. Even though I didn't ask them to. I don't see what I could possibly find fault with.
Grocery delivery is for people who want to spend their time doing anything other than menial chores. I don't go grocery shopping to be social just like I don't clean the toilet or do the dishes to be social. I do them because they're chores that have to be done. Just think - instead of spending an hour shopping for groceries, you could spend 30 seconds doing it. Then spend the other 59m30s doing shit that's... you know... fun. Or productive. Or social.
I'm amazed at how many luddites are on slashdot. Seriously, why is everyone so convinced that wandering around your local Safeway is some sort of grand social experience?! Maybe your Safeway is in some gorgeous-people mecca, but all I recall seeing when I was growing up is fat chicks in sweat pants and their brood of misbehaving criminals in training. Frankly, if I *had* to, I would let them deliver me giant boxes of monkey shit and eat that than spend weekly sessions trapped in a grocery store with that crowd.
I don't think you understand how shopping for groceries on the internet works.
See, you place your order online. Let's say . . . at Safeway.com. You know, the same Safeway you might drive to and shop in person. Then you click a button that has your shopping list on it and you say "yeah, this is the shit I want". Then you say what time you want it and what day. Then you make sure you are home during that time. Then a Safeway employee drives a refrigerated Safeway delivery truck to your door with Safeway groceries from the Safeway store and brings them into your kitchen for you. The same groceries I'd get if I went into the store. And if I want something special or have special requirements for an item, I just write it on the shopping list and they take care of it. Only.. you know.. it takes me 30 seconds to order my groceries. In fact, I was out of town last week and in a hotel and thought "shit, I don't have any food when we get home". So what did I do? Ordered them online from the hotel room at midnight and had them the day we returned home. Literally about 30 seconds to order. Maybe another 30 seconds to confirm my credit card info.
Thanks, I'd rather meet girls at clubs, concerts, shows, etc . . . than bump into some chick at a grocery store and try to strike up a conversation with her while she's carrying a basket full of tampons and ice cream.
Seriously, that's fine if you want to go shopping for groceries to find girls or as a poor substitute for real social interaction. But... again... I'd rather save all the shopping time and let someone else do it for me... and spend that time I saved engaging people in more appealing social situations. That don't involve bulk pistachios and cans of tomato paste.
I'm a guy. What do I give a shit about "atmosphere" when buying a pair of shoes? I know what size I wear and what shoes I like. I can get them ordered overnight (free shipping) to my door. If for some reason they do NOT fit. Or even if I just don't care for them, I stick them back in the box and mail them back. For free. I'll take zappos over a real shoe store any day. Plus, far more variety.
And sit around waiting for deliveries? Wouldn't that defeat the entire fucking purpose of ordering groceries in the first place? We're trying to AVOID spending time doing menial outdated tasks. No, you order groceries. You select a time that you want them delivered. Then they get delivered. Is it really that hard for me to say "I will make sure I'm home from 6pm to 8pm Sunday night for delivery"? Uh. No. I think I can make that kind of commitment. Especially if I'm saving the time of actually.. you know.. going to a store.
Nope. I almost never leave my house to buy anything. Perhaps you enjoy wasting your time going out to perform menial tasks. I would prefer to spend those same hours doing things I *want* to do. It's kind of sad if the only thing YOU leave your house for is to buy crap. Me? I'd rather use those saved hours having a drink with friends at the pub. Biking around town. Going to a convention or two. Hanging out. Enjoying a nice dinner. Seeing a show. Stuff that's FUN to do. Not shopping for shoes (you can buy shoes chaper on Zappos.com, get them over night and even return them for any reason you want), not shopping for groceries. Not spending an afternoon wandering mindlessly around a store for food or tools or something that I could pick up online in a spare moment during lunch.
I understand that some people DO enjoy spending a lot of time shopping. I can't understand why, but fine for them. I can't imagine that MOST people enjoy wasting their time doing those things, though.
Congratulations on being entirely daft and missing the point entirely. Which is better, spending a couple hours every week putting together a shopping list, driving to the store, shopping, dealing with all the annoying bullshit involved (parking, people, their kids, aisles, carts) and then bringing it back? Or saving at least an hour or two per week for the reasonable price of a $10 delivery fee and investing those couple saved hours into my work or hobbies or going out to do something INTERESTING?
As any perl hacker will tell you - yes it's evolved to be lazy. More importantly, it's MORE evolved to spend your precious time doing things you ENJOY or that benefit you rather than menial tasks.
What's not cost effective about it? I could spend the time and trouble going to Safeway or Albertsons or Kingsoopers and buying groceries or I could save all that time and effort and pay Safeway or Albertsons or Kingsoopers to bring the SAME groceries TO ME. The same groceries I'd by myself. From the same store I'd buy them from myself. Except their employees are bagging and delivering them FOR me. Overpaying $30 to $50 per week?! Really?! Sorry, but I only pay $10 for delivery and my time and effort are CERTAINLY worth that every couple weeks.
It's 2008 and people are still going to the store? Do people have so much disposable time and so little else they could do with many extra hours a month that they still go shopping in an actual store? Do they look forward so much to driving around, dealing with parking, shopping carts, lines, people, their bratty kids, aisles, noise and lugging things around?
It's 2008 and the big innovation is a shopping car that spams you while it directs you around a bunch of aisles essentially the same way we did in 1945, but with more targeted marking and shelving placement than ever? Really? That's the best we can do?
Maybe it's a generational thing, but I have not shopped in a grocery store in almost my entire adult life. The last time I went into a grocery store was 1999. I get my groceries delivered to me with the click of a button. I decide what time I want my groceries, they come to my door and carry them into my kitchen. I spend almost zero time involved in groceries. While this is probably only available in big cities like the bay area, Portland, Denver and others, this is something that should be both available *and* used everywhere by almost every one. You don't still go out and butcher or milk your own cow. You don't go out and pick your own oranges. So why wheel a cart around like some sort of trained monkey in a store full of fluorescent lights and elevator music and snotty whining kids grabbing things off the shelves and throwing tantrums in the middle of the aisle?
Hell, I haven't bought shoes in person or tools or entertainment in person in years, either. Except for rare instances involving things like my car that can't be otherwise addressed, I have reduced actual physical shopping to something I no longer "have" to do. For years, the only shopping I've had to do is that which I *choose* to do. Things that make it a luxury. Places and things that I can enjoy going to and shopping for (such as home entertainment stuff). I farm the crap shopping off to the wonderful services that Albertsons, Safeway, Kingsoopers and others now offer (and before that, Webvan, etc).
So that there's a new little attachment to a shopping car that more efficiently delivers shit to your eyeballs while supposedly easing up your shopping situation -- IN 2008 -- is the least impressive thing I've heard this year.
Not necessarily. People who take orders at McDonald's drive through can't do the job from home, yet their jobs are being outsourced to call centers. Perhaps it varies from business to business and I do have my own frequent fears of being outsourced, but being in the office wouldn't change that. I don't think many jobs are safe from being outsourced (either overseas or domestically), so . . .
I think the important point to draw from this whole discussion is that not every person possesses the same talents and note very person reaches their peak productivity or self-satisfaction in the same environment. Some people prefer a very hard separation between home and work and prefer the additional perception of social experiences in an office environment while others feel they personally benefit more from the freedom, flexibility, moderate autonomy and solitude of telecommuting.
As long as one group doesn't try to force the other out of their situation, I don't see that there should be a problem. Someone's morale or jealousy over someone *else's* work environment or situation is not a reasonable justification from iron-fisting everyone into the same pattern. Whether or not they are productive (and perhaps happy) is.
I will tell you right now that telecommuting is a big part of why I love my job. I have turned down other positions in the company and offers from other companies over the year that started off with a lot more money than I make now, but I appreciate the people I work with (even remotely) and the option to telecommute more than an extra $10k-$20k. That's a premium loyalty all while saving the same company on expenses (they don't pay for my bandwidth, phone, office space, etc).
Well, as a telecommuter, I can say that work is the best part of my week and day and I enjoy spending my free time working and I consider non-work related activities to be a nuisance. I've never taken a vacation and usually have to be forced to take any time off at all. I don't care much about people, though I get along with them and like my coworkers (and have made what I would consider to be friends that I've worked with over the many years). But the fact is that I enjoy integrating my life and my work as much as possible and telecommuting makes it that much more possible.
Of course, the thing is that making work that important in my life is MY choice and MY option. Other people don't have to do that. And if there are people who prefer the physical separation of the two, then so be it.
I'd like to see the parents asking their twelve year old girl what her email address is so they can lock down her myspace account and see where they went wrong when their child responds with "sweetltlhottie69@hotmail".
And exactly how many rapes and molestations occur because of MySpace? How about we place the same restrictions on schools and churches, where you are certainly more likely to end up being molested.
Also, since when did we place the responsibility on the WEBSITE to prevent an IP address from reaching it? And what about DHCP? What about the next person that gets your IP in a few months? Why can't you filter out access on your own rather than placing the burden of your absurd paranoia on websites that have nothing to do with your ridiculous "my baby gonna get raped" fantasies?
And no, I didn't RTFA. Look at my UID. I'm old school and that's how I roll.
This sort of study is the same reason we end up calling everyone an "engineer". The guy who picks up your garbage is a sanitation engineer and the pizza boy is a food services transportation engineer and the mailman is a printed communications engineer. I'm sure the low-paid secretary or office admin would like to be in the position of everyone else in the office who makes more money and has a more prestigious title, just like those people would like to be telecommuting.
Also, a lot of people I know COULD telecommute but do not want to. That's their prerogative. Nothing wrong with that. But your personal choice shouldn't be inflicted on everyone else who is as or more productive and are able to work remotely. As someone who witnessed a two-hour long nerf-war in the office last time I dropped in, I am completely thankful I work from home where my largest distraction is the hum of the air conditioner and the case of coke zero in the dorm fridge next to my desk.
As someone who has been telecommuting for about a decade, let me give my thoughts:
Yes, if you don't get to telecommute, you may feel bad. I'm sorry. I feel bad when other people get huge pay raises that I don't get or when they get various forms of family leave for their own personal choices that I don't have or when the big-whigs get to fly around in the corporate jet and I have to spend two hours each way in commute. Life isn't fair and isn't always even.
I put in a lot of time working, simply because I have everything at my fingers here that I would have in the office, except I can put in extra hours any time of day or night that I want. I don't have to spend two or four hours commuting, either. I don't spend long periods of time chatting around the water cooler, either.
There are people who work hard and are productive and those who are not. Whether it's in an office or in a home office is not relevant.
Where I work, it wouldn't much matter wherever I conducted my business. Even if I work in the office, I am 1500 miles away from people on my team on the west coast and 1500 miles away from my boss and other people on my team who are on the east coast. Also, some of my team are in India. My colleagues and other people in the company that I deal with on a daily basis are spread throughout the world. West coast. Midwest. East coast. India. China. South America. Australia. Throughout the UK. Singapore.
The benefits to me are that I do not have to commute or sit in an uncomfortable office all day. The benefits to my company are that I can afford and am willing to put in far more time than I ever would before. For instance, I just put in a full week and today is one of my days off. I spent almost the entire day working. I won't be paid for it. I won't get anything out of it. I simply felt that we had a lot of things to get done and I could be of some benefit to my colleagues by helping out with the work load. I would not have bothered to shower, dress, go across the city to get to the office and spend all day in a noisy busy environment with people poking their heads over my cubicle walls. I think a lot of people would be more likely to adopt the "outside of 9-5 is MY time" philosophy and duck out the front door the moment the clock strikes 5pm than they would be if they could telecommute.
Again, that isn't most people. I'm just saying that is how some would react. In my experience - at least at my company - we have very dedicated people in every area regardless of how or where they work.
I also offer the company the added benefit that I am less upset when they don't had out pay raises for various reasons. After all, telecommuting does compensate for such things to a degree (though not infinitely, of course). And more than anything, I offer my company not only more work hours of my own accord, but faster response. When we are short-handed or otherwise have emergencies, they have the option of trying to get someone by phone or pager and ask them to get themselves together and come into the office. That could take a couple hours. Aside form the time they put in once they're there, it could involve three or four hours round trip. Or they could ping me and I can be working within a minute. From home.
I know that not all companies are globally distributed like mine, so they may have different experiences. I've simply found that we are spread about that whether I'm at a desk in the office or at a desk at home is irrelevant to the experience. After all, I've seen my boss in person twice in eight years. But I talk to him almost every day, thanks to email, phone and company-wide IM. And when one of our colleagues had a sad death in the family, the condolences were just as real and meaningful by those of us across the country as those sitting next to him and we were all eager to help cover him while he was gone for weeks to deal with the loss and everyone was equally concerned about him when he returned. Being across a desk from him or across two timezones from him was irrelevant.
I'll be happy to buy the new machine they plan on putting out, because I do not use rental stores and I do not care to use netflix's mail service and Comcast's "on-demand" crap is unbelievably weak and limited (for example, I just watched every horror-ish movie on the entire system in one weekend). But as soon as I can plug a little box into my home theater and instantly watch anything I want, I'm there. Although probably not for 6,000 movies. One of the big things holding me back from the kindle is that 90,000 books is not many. They don't even have all Douglas Adams or Heinlein books and are missing a LOT of Asimov. Likewise, with only about six percent of their collection online, I won't have much interest in the netflix online system right away.
Not to mention, since it'll probably suck the movies down over your broadband connection, I'm not looking forward to Comcast calling me to threaten to ban me for a year because I watched fifty netflix films during the month and used too much bandwidth.
Having everyone pulling power from a properly built infrastructure so that it can handle said demand is ideal. I don't know how long California has been having this problem, but it has been at least ten years and if you can't at least begin to increase your services in a decade, then you don't deserve to be in business.
It's not like the energy isn't available. They just don't have the power grid to handle it. Rather than Orwell-ing me, how about improving your damn services?
I would seriously like to see them prove it is cheaper in hardware and labor to provide and install these units in some ten million households, not to mention malls, offices, restaurants and other businesses.
Not to mention, the whole intrusive government aspect of it, which is no small thing for people to rightfully take issue with.
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That is something I had to think about when I first started having groceries delivered. As much of a privacy advocate as I am, I had to come to terms with the fact that the price of my convenience would be someone knowing what I'm ordering. But really, that doesn't concern me too much. It's just food. You can't get books from a library without them knowing your reading history. Or movies from the movie store. We have significant tracking on items we buy and consume and I'm not personally concerned with my groceries being in a database somewhere.
I'd prefer it NOT be, but it's really a philosophical point and as long as you have the OPTION of buying groceries in a way that isn't tracked (don't order them) then it seems reasonable.
I also agree that convenience could be our downfall, but it's not going to be the people saving 100 hours per year by having groceries delivered. It's going to be the idiots getting a Walmart Visa credit card on-the-spot so they can get a free 20oz pepsi.
See, even you who do shop in a store admit that it's mostly a chore. You do it out of concern for quality, presumably and find a lot of the same gripes as I do (the fact that there is a "please reserve this spot for parents with small chilren" parking spots is enough of a reason to repulse me from ANYWHERE). I have had fantastic experiences with the quality of my food. After all, the store cares to keep me as a customer, so they're not going to waste their time picking through the food to send me the shit (and they don't).
If I did have to shop, I'd be like my grandfather. Trips to the store with him were AWESOME as a kid. In. Through the store. Cart full. Filled only with things we planned to buy in the first place. And out. BAM. No dawdling like most people you see in the store. A picture of efficiency. Get in, get out, get done, go do something more entertaining or worthwhile.
But so many of the luddites responding in this thread cite reasons entirely unrelated to "I'm scared they'll deliver me inedible food!". They cite a bunch of things that I am kind of surprised to hear guys say. It sounds that, to them, shopping for food (and clothes?) is a grand sensory social experience. I mean, really you guys.. some of you sound like you're prattling on about some glorious wine tasting. It's just food! It's shit you shove in your gut so you don't keel over and die. So you can go do OTHER stuff.
But again, in 2008 - you shouldn't have to decide to go shopping for groceries out of concern for the quality of your food. The process should be so universal and refined and high quality that ordering them is common place and quality is entirely assured and regular (it has been to me, but perhaps not others?). This whole discussion sort of reminds me of pumping gas. Where I come from, you don't have to pump your own gas. In fact, you can NOT pump your own gas. That's fine. It's more efficient and enjoyable if someone else does it for me. But I'm sure there are people here who would prattle on about how it's such a wonderful social experience. The scent of the gas. The concern that the gas will only be good if THEY pump it and not if the employee does it for you. But it's the same fucking gas.
See, you're a different kind of person than me, though. There are people who enjoy touching and feeling the food or clothes or shoes or whatever else they're buying. They love the "thrill" of the shopping hunt. The crowds. The music. The lights. The aisles full of stuff. The spontaneous purchases. The "oh my god, I'm starving so I'm going to be some crap" impulse buys. That's not my kind of thing. I have other shit I want to do with my time and there could not be anything I would find more boring in the world . . .except sitting in church, maybe... than shopping. For just about anything. As I said before - things I actually dig and care about I'm more than happy to shop for in person (you know, home theater stuff... car.. etc).
Myself - and most men I know, frankly - are the exact opposite. Shopping for anything is a chore. We don't wander aisles. We don't make surprise purchases. If we have to go to a store, we know what we want and what part of the store it's in and we already have a mental-map planned out of our plan-of-attack before we even enter the store. If we could, we'd bring a stopwatch to see how quick we can be in and out.
Sure, that doesn't account for every guy - but many. Probably most. And really, I know what food smells like. I don't need to smell it in person to buy it.
If you have the time and it's a priority, fine. For me it's a huge chore and a time sink. And being that it's 2008, I can't believe that the "best" we can do is walk into a giant food-mart and walk aisle to aisle to aisle like a bunch of cattle being herded from one part of the farm to the other, through a bunch of gates.
As for herbs.. well.. those I grow myself. That's the one thing that is hard to get any other way. Even in person at the store.
I've been having the store delivery my groceries for most of a decade and I've always received fresh everything. The fruit and veggies are always more than acceptable and I've only ever been disappointed by one item and when I complained about it, they refunded the price AND returned later in the day to bring me a replacement. Even though I didn't ask them to. I don't see what I could possibly find fault with.
Grocery delivery is for people who want to spend their time doing anything other than menial chores. I don't go grocery shopping to be social just like I don't clean the toilet or do the dishes to be social. I do them because they're chores that have to be done. Just think - instead of spending an hour shopping for groceries, you could spend 30 seconds doing it. Then spend the other 59m30s doing shit that's... you know... fun. Or productive. Or social.
I'm amazed at how many luddites are on slashdot. Seriously, why is everyone so convinced that wandering around your local Safeway is some sort of grand social experience?! Maybe your Safeway is in some gorgeous-people mecca, but all I recall seeing when I was growing up is fat chicks in sweat pants and their brood of misbehaving criminals in training. Frankly, if I *had* to, I would let them deliver me giant boxes of monkey shit and eat that than spend weekly sessions trapped in a grocery store with that crowd.
I don't think you understand how shopping for groceries on the internet works.
See, you place your order online. Let's say . . . at Safeway.com. You know, the same Safeway you might drive to and shop in person. Then you click a button that has your shopping list on it and you say "yeah, this is the shit I want". Then you say what time you want it and what day. Then you make sure you are home during that time. Then a Safeway employee drives a refrigerated Safeway delivery truck to your door with Safeway groceries from the Safeway store and brings them into your kitchen for you. The same groceries I'd get if I went into the store. And if I want something special or have special requirements for an item, I just write it on the shopping list and they take care of it. Only.. you know.. it takes me 30 seconds to order my groceries. In fact, I was out of town last week and in a hotel and thought "shit, I don't have any food when we get home". So what did I do? Ordered them online from the hotel room at midnight and had them the day we returned home. Literally about 30 seconds to order. Maybe another 30 seconds to confirm my credit card info.
Thanks, I'd rather meet girls at clubs, concerts, shows, etc . . . than bump into some chick at a grocery store and try to strike up a conversation with her while she's carrying a basket full of tampons and ice cream.
Seriously, that's fine if you want to go shopping for groceries to find girls or as a poor substitute for real social interaction. But... again... I'd rather save all the shopping time and let someone else do it for me... and spend that time I saved engaging people in more appealing social situations. That don't involve bulk pistachios and cans of tomato paste.
I'm a guy. What do I give a shit about "atmosphere" when buying a pair of shoes? I know what size I wear and what shoes I like. I can get them ordered overnight (free shipping) to my door. If for some reason they do NOT fit. Or even if I just don't care for them, I stick them back in the box and mail them back. For free. I'll take zappos over a real shoe store any day. Plus, far more variety.
And sit around waiting for deliveries? Wouldn't that defeat the entire fucking purpose of ordering groceries in the first place? We're trying to AVOID spending time doing menial outdated tasks. No, you order groceries. You select a time that you want them delivered. Then they get delivered. Is it really that hard for me to say "I will make sure I'm home from 6pm to 8pm Sunday night for delivery"? Uh. No. I think I can make that kind of commitment. Especially if I'm saving the time of actually.. you know.. going to a store.
Nope. I almost never leave my house to buy anything. Perhaps you enjoy wasting your time going out to perform menial tasks. I would prefer to spend those same hours doing things I *want* to do. It's kind of sad if the only thing YOU leave your house for is to buy crap. Me? I'd rather use those saved hours having a drink with friends at the pub. Biking around town. Going to a convention or two. Hanging out. Enjoying a nice dinner. Seeing a show. Stuff that's FUN to do. Not shopping for shoes (you can buy shoes chaper on Zappos.com, get them over night and even return them for any reason you want), not shopping for groceries. Not spending an afternoon wandering mindlessly around a store for food or tools or something that I could pick up online in a spare moment during lunch.
I understand that some people DO enjoy spending a lot of time shopping. I can't understand why, but fine for them. I can't imagine that MOST people enjoy wasting their time doing those things, though.
Congratulations on being entirely daft and missing the point entirely. Which is better, spending a couple hours every week putting together a shopping list, driving to the store, shopping, dealing with all the annoying bullshit involved (parking, people, their kids, aisles, carts) and then bringing it back? Or saving at least an hour or two per week for the reasonable price of a $10 delivery fee and investing those couple saved hours into my work or hobbies or going out to do something INTERESTING?
As any perl hacker will tell you - yes it's evolved to be lazy. More importantly, it's MORE evolved to spend your precious time doing things you ENJOY or that benefit you rather than menial tasks.
What's not cost effective about it? I could spend the time and trouble going to Safeway or Albertsons or Kingsoopers and buying groceries or I could save all that time and effort and pay Safeway or Albertsons or Kingsoopers to bring the SAME groceries TO ME. The same groceries I'd by myself. From the same store I'd buy them from myself. Except their employees are bagging and delivering them FOR me. Overpaying $30 to $50 per week?! Really?! Sorry, but I only pay $10 for delivery and my time and effort are CERTAINLY worth that every couple weeks.
It's 2008 and people are still going to the store? Do people have so much disposable time and so little else they could do with many extra hours a month that they still go shopping in an actual store? Do they look forward so much to driving around, dealing with parking, shopping carts, lines, people, their bratty kids, aisles, noise and lugging things around?
It's 2008 and the big innovation is a shopping car that spams you while it directs you around a bunch of aisles essentially the same way we did in 1945, but with more targeted marking and shelving placement than ever? Really? That's the best we can do?
Maybe it's a generational thing, but I have not shopped in a grocery store in almost my entire adult life. The last time I went into a grocery store was 1999. I get my groceries delivered to me with the click of a button. I decide what time I want my groceries, they come to my door and carry them into my kitchen. I spend almost zero time involved in groceries. While this is probably only available in big cities like the bay area, Portland, Denver and others, this is something that should be both available *and* used everywhere by almost every one. You don't still go out and butcher or milk your own cow. You don't go out and pick your own oranges. So why wheel a cart around like some sort of trained monkey in a store full of fluorescent lights and elevator music and snotty whining kids grabbing things off the shelves and throwing tantrums in the middle of the aisle?
Hell, I haven't bought shoes in person or tools or entertainment in person in years, either. Except for rare instances involving things like my car that can't be otherwise addressed, I have reduced actual physical shopping to something I no longer "have" to do. For years, the only shopping I've had to do is that which I *choose* to do. Things that make it a luxury. Places and things that I can enjoy going to and shopping for (such as home entertainment stuff). I farm the crap shopping off to the wonderful services that Albertsons, Safeway, Kingsoopers and others now offer (and before that, Webvan, etc).
So that there's a new little attachment to a shopping car that more efficiently delivers shit to your eyeballs while supposedly easing up your shopping situation -- IN 2008 -- is the least impressive thing I've heard this year.
Not necessarily. People who take orders at McDonald's drive through can't do the job from home, yet their jobs are being outsourced to call centers. Perhaps it varies from business to business and I do have my own frequent fears of being outsourced, but being in the office wouldn't change that. I don't think many jobs are safe from being outsourced (either overseas or domestically), so . . .
I think the important point to draw from this whole discussion is that not every person possesses the same talents and note very person reaches their peak productivity or self-satisfaction in the same environment. Some people prefer a very hard separation between home and work and prefer the additional perception of social experiences in an office environment while others feel they personally benefit more from the freedom, flexibility, moderate autonomy and solitude of telecommuting.
As long as one group doesn't try to force the other out of their situation, I don't see that there should be a problem. Someone's morale or jealousy over someone *else's* work environment or situation is not a reasonable justification from iron-fisting everyone into the same pattern. Whether or not they are productive (and perhaps happy) is.
I will tell you right now that telecommuting is a big part of why I love my job. I have turned down other positions in the company and offers from other companies over the year that started off with a lot more money than I make now, but I appreciate the people I work with (even remotely) and the option to telecommute more than an extra $10k-$20k. That's a premium loyalty all while saving the same company on expenses (they don't pay for my bandwidth, phone, office space, etc).
Touché.
Perceptive. I am 30, have no children, want no children and tend to only have relationships with women who agree.
Erm. Agree not to want children, that is. Not agree to the relationship.
Uh. Well, they agree to the relationship, too, obviously.
Yeah, mod me +5 creepy.
Well, as a telecommuter, I can say that work is the best part of my week and day and I enjoy spending my free time working and I consider non-work related activities to be a nuisance. I've never taken a vacation and usually have to be forced to take any time off at all. I don't care much about people, though I get along with them and like my coworkers (and have made what I would consider to be friends that I've worked with over the many years). But the fact is that I enjoy integrating my life and my work as much as possible and telecommuting makes it that much more possible.
Of course, the thing is that making work that important in my life is MY choice and MY option. Other people don't have to do that. And if there are people who prefer the physical separation of the two, then so be it.
I'd like to see the parents asking their twelve year old girl what her email address is so they can lock down her myspace account and see where they went wrong when their child responds with "sweetltlhottie69@hotmail".
And exactly how many rapes and molestations occur because of MySpace? How about we place the same restrictions on schools and churches, where you are certainly more likely to end up being molested.
Also, since when did we place the responsibility on the WEBSITE to prevent an IP address from reaching it? And what about DHCP? What about the next person that gets your IP in a few months? Why can't you filter out access on your own rather than placing the burden of your absurd paranoia on websites that have nothing to do with your ridiculous "my baby gonna get raped" fantasies?
And no, I didn't RTFA. Look at my UID. I'm old school and that's how I roll.
Especially my perl scripts, which have even less documentation than a woman.
This sort of study is the same reason we end up calling everyone an "engineer". The guy who picks up your garbage is a sanitation engineer and the pizza boy is a food services transportation engineer and the mailman is a printed communications engineer. I'm sure the low-paid secretary or office admin would like to be in the position of everyone else in the office who makes more money and has a more prestigious title, just like those people would like to be telecommuting.
Also, a lot of people I know COULD telecommute but do not want to. That's their prerogative. Nothing wrong with that. But your personal choice shouldn't be inflicted on everyone else who is as or more productive and are able to work remotely. As someone who witnessed a two-hour long nerf-war in the office last time I dropped in, I am completely thankful I work from home where my largest distraction is the hum of the air conditioner and the case of coke zero in the dorm fridge next to my desk.
As someone who has been telecommuting for about a decade, let me give my thoughts:
Yes, if you don't get to telecommute, you may feel bad. I'm sorry. I feel bad when other people get huge pay raises that I don't get or when they get various forms of family leave for their own personal choices that I don't have or when the big-whigs get to fly around in the corporate jet and I have to spend two hours each way in commute. Life isn't fair and isn't always even.
I put in a lot of time working, simply because I have everything at my fingers here that I would have in the office, except I can put in extra hours any time of day or night that I want. I don't have to spend two or four hours commuting, either. I don't spend long periods of time chatting around the water cooler, either.
There are people who work hard and are productive and those who are not. Whether it's in an office or in a home office is not relevant.
Where I work, it wouldn't much matter wherever I conducted my business. Even if I work in the office, I am 1500 miles away from people on my team on the west coast and 1500 miles away from my boss and other people on my team who are on the east coast. Also, some of my team are in India. My colleagues and other people in the company that I deal with on a daily basis are spread throughout the world. West coast. Midwest. East coast. India. China. South America. Australia. Throughout the UK. Singapore.
The benefits to me are that I do not have to commute or sit in an uncomfortable office all day. The benefits to my company are that I can afford and am willing to put in far more time than I ever would before. For instance, I just put in a full week and today is one of my days off. I spent almost the entire day working. I won't be paid for it. I won't get anything out of it. I simply felt that we had a lot of things to get done and I could be of some benefit to my colleagues by helping out with the work load. I would not have bothered to shower, dress, go across the city to get to the office and spend all day in a noisy busy environment with people poking their heads over my cubicle walls. I think a lot of people would be more likely to adopt the "outside of 9-5 is MY time" philosophy and duck out the front door the moment the clock strikes 5pm than they would be if they could telecommute.
Again, that isn't most people. I'm just saying that is how some would react. In my experience - at least at my company - we have very dedicated people in every area regardless of how or where they work.
I also offer the company the added benefit that I am less upset when they don't had out pay raises for various reasons. After all, telecommuting does compensate for such things to a degree (though not infinitely, of course). And more than anything, I offer my company not only more work hours of my own accord, but faster response. When we are short-handed or otherwise have emergencies, they have the option of trying to get someone by phone or pager and ask them to get themselves together and come into the office. That could take a couple hours. Aside form the time they put in once they're there, it could involve three or four hours round trip. Or they could ping me and I can be working within a minute. From home.
I know that not all companies are globally distributed like mine, so they may have different experiences. I've simply found that we are spread about that whether I'm at a desk in the office or at a desk at home is irrelevant to the experience. After all, I've seen my boss in person twice in eight years. But I talk to him almost every day, thanks to email, phone and company-wide IM. And when one of our colleagues had a sad death in the family, the condolences were just as real and meaningful by those of us across the country as those sitting next to him and we were all eager to help cover him while he was gone for weeks to deal with the loss and everyone was equally concerned about him when he returned. Being across a desk from him or across two timezones from him was irrelevant.
I'll be happy to buy the new machine they plan on putting out, because I do not use rental stores and I do not care to use netflix's mail service and Comcast's "on-demand" crap is unbelievably weak and limited (for example, I just watched every horror-ish movie on the entire system in one weekend). But as soon as I can plug a little box into my home theater and instantly watch anything I want, I'm there. Although probably not for 6,000 movies. One of the big things holding me back from the kindle is that 90,000 books is not many. They don't even have all Douglas Adams or Heinlein books and are missing a LOT of Asimov. Likewise, with only about six percent of their collection online, I won't have much interest in the netflix online system right away.
Not to mention, since it'll probably suck the movies down over your broadband connection, I'm not looking forward to Comcast calling me to threaten to ban me for a year because I watched fifty netflix films during the month and used too much bandwidth.
Both are stupid ideas.
Having everyone pulling power from a properly built infrastructure so that it can handle said demand is ideal. I don't know how long California has been having this problem, but it has been at least ten years and if you can't at least begin to increase your services in a decade, then you don't deserve to be in business.
It's not like the energy isn't available. They just don't have the power grid to handle it. Rather than Orwell-ing me, how about improving your damn services?
I would seriously like to see them prove it is cheaper in hardware and labor to provide and install these units in some ten million households, not to mention malls, offices, restaurants and other businesses.
Not to mention, the whole intrusive government aspect of it, which is no small thing for people to rightfully take issue with.
I"m an avid bird watcher and collect large amounts of video observation.
Yeah.