Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The place that some/many appear to be failing to me is that you can only order in stock inventory at your pickup store in many cases ( Target! ) where if I need to split, I'd rather pick it up all there and I have to assume that in cases of things in teh actual target warehouse, shipping it to the store then tagging it for customer order is a savings.

I think that's how B&N does it. moving stuff between stores and warehouses as needed. I agree, it does seem like it'd have to be a cost/time savings to do it in bulk like that.

 

[TiQuinn]

No one likes a narc.

 

[RealAlHazred]

No one likes a narc.

Don't listen to him! We love narcoleptics around here! In fact, we

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The way that brick and mortar stores seem intent on self-immolating is bizarre. You can't keep making it harder to shop at your stores at the same time that Amazon is openly coming for your business.

I went into a guitar store that had a PHENOMENAL inventory, such that I was really struggling as to what I would buy. (Note- I had already decided to buy something from them.) So I went home to mull it over after dinner.

I made my decision, went online, and placed my order. Then I went to bed.

When I checked my email over breakfast, I got a notification from the store: my order had been cancelled- no explanation. So I called them to ask what happened.

Seems that the guy who opened the store had a customer waiting when he arrived. Before checking the online orders, he attended to the customer who was physically present, and sold him the guitar I had ordered.

The guitar in question was a limited edition made in 5-6 colors, with only 60 total made worldwide. I found one in a different color than I had chosen at a different store in another state.

I never did business with the first store, and they closed a year or so later.

 

[Jahydin]

The way that brick and mortar stores seem intent on self-immolating is bizarre. You can't keep making it harder to shop at your stores at the same time that Amazon is openly coming for your business.

I can't agree enough. Just having team members that are knowledgeable in what items are in their section of the store, what they do, and how to operate them would go a long way in drawing in more business. I mean, if I'm going to be on my phone in the aisle for an hour researching it myself, why not just do it at home and get it delivered to me?

 

[SkidAce]

Seems that the guy who opened the store had a customer waiting when he arrived. Before checking the online orders, he attended to the customer who was physically present, and sold him the guitar I had ordered.

They should have a customer order print out when the ordered item is received into their inventory. That way when he went to get it, it would have been tagged with your name.

 

[overgeeked]

Some fan communities are simply hostile to new people. And then they wonder why they’re a niche within a niche within a niche and don’t grow. Good luck. You’ll need it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

They should have a customer order print out when the ordered item is received into their inventory. That way when he went to get it, it would have been tagged with your name.

It was a perfect storm that got me.

I ordered the guitar after regular business hours, so even if that was their system, there was nobody there to make a printout and tag the item at that moment in time.

And the first person in the store immediately had to deal with a customer who wanted the exact same guitar. It’s understandable that you’re going to handle a customer who is waiting at your door before you open FIRST, then check what business was done overnight. (He still should have checked overnight sales first, but I understand why he didn’t.)

The only thing that might have saved me would have been point of sale software that automatically removed sold items from sellable inventory. Such things do exist, but I’m not sure a small store in the early 2000s would have been able to buy it.

 

[trappedslider]

Waterstones opens 10 new stores a year as younger adults embrace reading

Bookshop chain says people are keen to escape their screens and says rise in sales is partly down to BookTok

www.theguardian.com

 

[Mannahnin]

Those are pretty good. They're all different, with little crossover unless you squint and decide, behind the scenes, that you're playing the same guy.

The best four series:

• TolkienQuest: The first three gamebooks produced by ICE under the license with the Saul Zaentz Company were written by John Ruemmler, who made each one a hexcrawl-in-a-gamebook. Night of the Nazgûl has you bringing a message to Hobbiton that there are dark figures in the night. The Legend of Weathertop has you searching for the ruins below Weathertop to retrieve an item said to lie below. Rescue in Mirkwood has you searching for a noble elf who disappeared within. Some people don't like them, but I absolutely love that each playthrough can be wildly different.
• Lone Wolf: This series was fairly standard in style, but had a really well-realized setting, and your character can develop all sorts of cool abilities; you get a new power after completing each book. It was popular enough to spawn a spin-off, The World of Lone Wolf, which had a different protagonist. All books published in the 80s are available online at Project Aon.
• Steve Jackson's Sorcery!: This was a spin-off of the Fighting Fantasy series. FF books were basically independent one-off stories you played through; instead of that, Sorcery! was four books with a series of linked adventures. And you could play a warrior or a wizard, which was cool! The magic system involved memorizing three-letter codes for spells in a separate book, and then trying to pick the right option in each encounter where you could use magic. A really good part of it was the excellent evocative art by John Blanche; in some of the encounters you had to notice a clue in the art that would only be obliquely referenced in the text. Really good. You can play this on Inkle as well.
• The Way of the Tiger: I had forgotten about this one. You play a ninja, and each book builds on the story of the previous one. It was disappointing that the publisher canceled the series one book before it would have ended, but it shared the feature of Lone Wolf that you could gain a skill after each book. It was another spinoff of Fighting Fantasy (sort of), but the setting was different from the rest of that series; it was originally seen in Talisman of Death (FF #11), but it's very different from that one.

I picked up The Legend of Weathertop as a kid but I seem to remember it being a bit complex and not quite getting it. And I think I let it go in paring down some possessions when we moved back to the East coast when I was 17. Making me sad about that one.

Lone Wolf I played several of. The whole art style and vibe was so distinct; darker and grimmer and earthier than the Elmore Basic D&D set I started with. The British gaming scene just had a different feel. I remember picking up a few issues of Gamesmaster magazine, which was a British general gaming mag, and them having a Warhammer or similar game battle report in one issue, set in Magnamund, and which Joe Dever participated in. That was cool seeing the author interact as a gamer.

I had a few Fighting Fantasy books, but Steve Jackson's Sorcery! takes the crown for me, for that dark swords & sorcery vibe and for difficulty and depth. The John Blanche art boggled and enchanted and disturbed me a decade or more before I ever got into Warhammer.