MoonSong
Rules-lawyering drama queen but not a munchkin
Toys R Us failed because it got bought in a hostile takeover then saddled with the new parent company's debts.
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- Thread starter Neonchameleon
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Chaosmancer
Legend
Good to know, doesn't sound like anything that they made a bad decision about. Sounds like it was... kind of just inevitable and had no involvement from them.
Chaosmancer
Legend
What do you mean by "uses it this way"? Do you mean polling for public opinion that can be expressed as a percentage? Because.... everyone uses it that way. There is no other way to use it. That's the purpose of its design.
No, I am not saying they are infallible. I am saying that your evidence is weak, and considering that if this was a major issue, you wouldn't be the one to figure that out, then it is likely not an issue.
Again, your evidence rests almost solely on the idea that it is possible to make written communication that no human could possibly misunderstand. That just is not how people work. In the face of the realization that people can and will misunderstand even the most well-crafted and clear statements... finding a single person who says they misunderstood is not a sign of potential failures, it is a sign of human nature being exactly what we expect. It would be like being told someone is sweating and assuming they are sick. Sure, that COULD be what is going on, but people sweat, it is a natural thing, so it doesn't MEAN that something is wrong with them.
Then why would you make the claim that you assume I have made no effort to understand the survey?
No, that is not what logically follows. You are assuming that "requires" is binary, and that anything less than 80 therefore must require improvement. But language and data is more complex and nuanced than that.
Shouldn't be. There shouldn't be this constant conversation about how WoTC lied and decieved us, because they literally have laid it out for us, multiple times, and yet here we are.
mamba
Legend
Par for the course for you... The bad decision was to buy out with so much leverage that you failed to make enough money with the business to pay off the interest and stay afloat at the same time
How vulture capitalists ate Toys 'R' Us
Hope you enjoyed your leveraged buyout, guys — because 33,000 workers sure didn't
theweek.com
Chaosmancer
Legend
You claimed that a single new brand, new coke, was a sign of Coca-Cola making a mistake. I pointed out that Coke owns over 200 other beverage brands.
So, if we assume they have a 99.5% success rate (1/200) ... does that make their error matter more than their successes?
No Max. I think there is a difference between a shareholdering meeting where 20 serious people look over data and make serious decisions, and one rich jerk who throws money at things that hurts his feelings acting out because he was too dumb to do research before signing a legally binding contract.
I mean, saying "Elon Musk did a stupid" is the equivalent of saying it was cloudy outside. Doesn't happen every day, but it ain't exactly news if it happens every day for a week.
You linked that to them failing as a company, which makes no sense. And stupider products have made lots of money, and I have to wonder... were they actually the designers of that toy? They sold toys, but I was not familiar with them having an in-house design team. Have you actually researched who designed it, or did you just claim they made it because they sold it?
Because, you know, I can tell you a story about the Foresst Gump sequel that might offer an alternative explanation.
I've been following the surveys and Unearthed Arcana for years, and I've never had this debate before. I'd remember it too. So, somehow, I don't think there has been a large outcry about WoTCs survey methodology for years.
So you believe all big corporations exist purely out of luck?
That is... certainly an opinion. Not a good opinion or a correct opinion, but it is an opinion.
Except you haven't proved their methodology is flawed, just that your interpretation of their methodology is flawed. Again and Again, I keep pointing out, you don't actually know how the data is processed, what weights, measures, and degrees of accuracy are at play.
You seem to assume they just count all the votes and divide them to get the percentage. That is very likely NOT what they do. There is something far more complex that they do to make sure they account for as many variables as possible.
Chaosmancer
Legend
Par for the course for you... The bad decision was to buy out with so much leverage that you failed to make enough money with the business to pay off the interest and stay afloat at the same time
How vulture capitalists ate Toys 'R' Us
Hope you enjoyed your leveraged buyout, guys — because 33,000 workers sure didn't
Sigh
As I understood Max, I thought they said that TOYS R US made a bad business decision. Please go ahead and explain to me how being forcibly bought out and saddled with debt is a decision that Toys R Us made? Were they just "asking for it"?
Now, you might want to claim that AHA! There is proof businesses make bad decisions, because this even bigger business made a bad decision! But... did they? They made a short-term decision, but there is a reason they are called "Vulture Capitalists". Their goal was to get rid of debt from their company, which they did. They didn't actually CARE if Toys R Us was profitable, because when it went bankrupt, all that debt was forgiven and disappeared. You can argue they could have made a better decision by keeping the other company profitable, but that was never their goal.
It is like claiming that a murderer made a bad decision by framing an innocent man, because that innocent man went to jail. The Murderer didn't frame the guy so NO ONE would go to jail, they did it so that the MURDERER would not go to jail.
mamba
Legend
if I ever get a straight answer to my questions from you, I will tell you. We have had this dance around the 70% and 80% thresholds for at least 5 rounds by now, and still no definitive answer. That in itself feels pretty telling.
What is binary is 'threshold', not 'requires'. That is very much the definition of threshold
I grant you that WotC is not even good at sticking to their own thresholds, but even so, there is not just the 'pass, you are in' threshold. Why is there a second, lower threshold?
if by 'yet here we are' you mean 'and yet I am unable to answer this after having been asked 5 times', then I agree
Apart from that, no one is talking about deceiving, incompetence is not deception
mamba
Legend
are you saying it was no mistake?
mamba
Legend
Toys R Us is the example of a bad decision, the bad decision was made by the guys buying it at that leverage ratio, and then failing to fix the issue in any way
See also Bed Bath & Beyond, Sears and plenty of others
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From the pov of the venture capital company buying them it was pretty much the point. I don't know if Eddie Lambert was involved in toysrus too but books have been written about the playbook used in all three. It wasn't a bad decision to shove the company in an inescapable hole from their pov, doing that just meant that they could extract maximum profit from whatever assets it hsd asap.
