Business Meeting Humor
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@Polygeekery I feel like there's a Law here, (maybe Yami's Law? Or someone else may have already named it): every problem eventually breaks down into "write a natural language parser".
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@Yamikuronue then you have @xaade's...
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@RaceProUK Yami's Second Law, then XD
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@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
tomatoes
Getting hungry here.
@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
fudge
Really hungry.
@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
anal
Never mind.
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@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
But then, how do you process their checkout screen. For you they would have to go get two tomatoes and weigh them before you could really checkout. Especially so considering that tomatoes can vary a lot in weight through the year.
When you think about it, you get the exact same problem even if you order in pounds. Rarely is item weight in pounds an integer.
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@Polygeekery You could have the UI always ask in pounds, but report "aprox. X tomatoes at Y lb per tomato" next to the weight, with X being updated as the weight changes. That way people know what they will be charged and how many units that's likely to be.
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@Zecc said in Business Meeting Humor:
@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
anal
Never mind.
Ron White Just For Laughs – [05:44..07:04] 07:04
— sabcanada
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@Kian said in Business Meeting Humor:
You could have the UI always ask in pounds, but report "aprox. X tomatoes at Y lb per tomato" next to the weight, with X being updated as the weight changes. That way people know what they will be charged and how many units that's likely to be.
@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
With 3 seconds thought, it would seem that each product item would need two blanks where you could choose. You could request two tomatoes and if @Yamikuronue is making sauce she could enter in a different box that she wants 1lb.
This is all ignoring that they're not going to slice a tomato in half and put the other half back on the shelf.
I'm skeptical on buying produce on a form.
I've walked into a store where 1/3 of the product was bad but the rest was ok. Recipes can be sensitive to size, too.
I won't be comfortable buying produce online until they put a robot arm on the shelf with a camera.
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@Jaloopa said in Business Meeting Humor:
@darkmatter said in Business Meeting Humor:
You buy pretty much all produce by weight, so it only seems logical to me that the entry on the form would be some measure of weight
Bananas are a bit of an edge case. I think of them as per banana, since I eat one at a time rather than one measure at a time
Maybe they did 10 "bunches" of bananas instead?
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@dcon said in Business Meeting Humor:
"bunches"of bananasNo quotes.
Does anyone ever say "a hand of bananas"? I've never heard that, but apparently it's an alternative.
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@dcon said in Business Meeting Humor:
@Jaloopa said in Business Meeting Humor:
@darkmatter said in Business Meeting Humor:
You buy pretty much all produce by weight, so it only seems logical to me that the entry on the form would be some measure of weight
Bananas are a bit of an edge case. I think of them as per banana, since I eat one at a time rather than one measure at a time
Maybe they did 10 "bunches" of bananas instead?
That would be even more retarded of a denomination. Some bunches of bananas have 3-4 bananas, some have 8+.
Then you have people like my wife who gets a bunch of the single bananas that people have pulled off to get to the right number, all because she feels sorry for them... FFS woman, they are fruit, not puppies.
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@Polygeekery
At least she feels sorry for the fruit, rather than bringing home all the puppies at the shelter?
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@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
@NedFodder said in Business Meeting Humor:
@darkmatter said in Business Meeting Humor:
You buy pretty much all produce by weight
What? I don't buy tomatoes by weight. If I want two tomatoes, I buy two tomatoes, not 0.243346 lbs of tomatoes. The store might charge me by weight, but that's their problem, not mine.
For tomatoes you may not buy them by weight, but you will pay for them by weight.
Toby faire, it is a difficult thing to write UI around without making things really clunky. With 3 seconds thought, it would seem that each product item would need two blanks where you could choose. You could request two tomatoes and if @Yamikuronue is making sauce she could enter in a different box that she wants 1lb.
But then, how do you process their checkout screen. For you they would have to go get two tomatoes and weigh them before you could really checkout. Especially so considering that tomatoes can vary a lot in weight through the year. Or, you could program in a fudge factor for the per item shoppers and then have anal retentive types that weigh their tomatoes after they are delivered start bitching.
Somehow, Tesco does this right. You can choose if you want to buy by weight or by no of items. It's quite clear in the UI. ;)
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@kt_ said in Business Meeting Humor:
Somehow, Tesco does this right. You can choose if you want to buy by weight or by no of items. It's quite clear in the UI.
Do they have separate pricings? Like, $0.45 per pound, or $0.10 per banana?
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@Polygeekery That's overthinking it. You should buy them by how they are priced - and it should be listed how that is.
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@PleegWat said in Business Meeting Humor:
@Polygeekery That's overthinking it. You should buy them by how they are priced - and it should be listed how that is.
So how do you handle items that do not fit neatly in to those delineators? As was mentioned earlier, tomatoes are usually sold by the pound. If I buy 1lb of tomatoes, should they shuffle tomatoes around until they get to exactly 1lb? Or should they deliver two Beefsteak tomatoes and then toss in three cherry tomatoes to get it up to the quantity that I ordered?
It works well for packaged goods, not so much for produce or meat. When I buy 1lb of bacon from the meat counter I usually get somewhere between .97-1.03 lbs.
On the other side of this, I have to believe this will cut the sales of grocery stores. I don't know if I have ever been to the grocery and not gotten there and had my memory jogged and bought several other items that I also needed.
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@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
Avocados, bell peppers, bunches of herbs, lots of things are priced per item.
I guess it could easily depend on the market/store. I've only ever seen them throw it on a scale, slap a code in for a per weight measurement.
I've worked in the food industry developing that sort of software, I have had to deal plenty with the technological difficulties of pricing per x on food.
Try convincing the idiots that try to price out Ice Cream(among other things) portions in our software system by DRY weight instead of FLUID weight... :(
No there are not 2oz of ice cream in that scoop, it is 2 MOTHEREFFING FLUID OUNCES AND NO WE CAN NOT JUST ASSUME THOSE TWO THINGS ARE EQUIVALENT (we started with a goddamn gallon of icecream, not a pound of it).
Though I lobbied to just ignore the problems that might arise and go ahead and let our system convert from lbs -> floz and gallons -> oz because why not I don't care anymore.
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@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
I don't know if I have ever been to the grocery and not gotten there and had my memory jogged and bought several other items that I also needed.
you underestimate their ability to suggest other items you might "need" in relation to your purchase.
Buying ketchup? Hey you probably need mayo, mustard, miracle whip, ranch dressing, cocktail sauce, and cool whip too right?
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@darkmatter said in Business Meeting Humor:
@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
I don't know if I have ever been to the grocery and not gotten there and had my memory jogged and bought several other items that I also needed.
you underestimate their ability to suggest other items you might "need" in relation to your purchase.
Buying ketchup? Hey you probably need mayo, mustard, miracle whip, ranch dressing, cocktail sauce, and cool whip too right?
No, I am talking about wholly unrelated items. Like walking back to the dairy section to get a gallon of milk and realizing we are almost out of sugar.
Or, going to the grocery while hungry and coming home with one of everything from the snack food aisle.
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@darkmatter said in Business Meeting Humor:
@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
I don't know if I have ever been to the grocery and not gotten there and had my memory jogged and bought several other items that I also needed.
you underestimate their ability to suggest other items you might "need" in relation to your purchase.
Buying ketchup? Hey you probably need mayo, mustard, miracle whip, ranch dressing, cocktail sauce, and cool whip too right?
Also, there will never be a day when this household purchases Cool-Whip. Whipping cream, but never that vile oily shit.
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@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
@kt_ said in Business Meeting Humor:
Somehow, Tesco does this right. You can choose if you want to buy by weight or by no of items. It's quite clear in the UI.
Do they have separate pricings? Like, $0.45 per pound, or $0.10 per banana?
Both are approx. in kilograms, AFAIK. It all depends on which bananas are put into the bag and the same thing goes for weight orders: it's not like anyone is going to give you two bananas and a half, because you wanted exactly x pounds.
So you usually see different prices on the final bill.
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@kt_ said in Business Meeting Humor:
Both are approx. in kilograms, AFAIK. It all depends on which bananas are put into the bag and the same thing goes for weight orders: it's not like anyone is going to give you two bananas and a half, because you wanted exactly x pounds.
So you usually see different prices on the final bill.Fair enough. That seems like a sane way to do it, as long as asshole customers are not pissy that they spent $0.35 more than they had planned on bananas, or that their total bill ended up being $5 more than they had planned due to cumulative overages.
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@Polygeekery I invoke the holy mayo wars of miracle hwhip and you're on about cool hwhip instead?
i suppose all hwhip related food items are controversial.
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@darkmatter I must have glossed over that one. But, it is also fetid shit that no self-respecting foodie would ever allow in to their home.
But, Cool-Whip is worse. It leaves an oily film on your tongue and blocks the flavor of anything it is applied to. blech
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@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
@kt_ said in Business Meeting Humor:
Both are approx. in kilograms, AFAIK. It all depends on which bananas are put into the bag and the same thing goes for weight orders: it's not like anyone is going to give you two bananas and a half, because you wanted exactly x pounds.
So you usually see different prices on the final bill.Fair enough. That seems like a sane way to do it, as long as asshole customers are not pissy that they spent $0.35 more than they had planned on bananas, or that their total bill ended up being $5 more than they had planned due to cumulative overages.
Or the company can just eat that cost.
We actually ordered from one of those delivery companies. We ordered milk which has a $2 deposit, but they didn't account for the deposit in their system, so I didn't have to pay it, but they did (I got their receipt).
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@dangeRuss said in Business Meeting Humor:
Or the company can just eat that cost.
Perhaps, but groceries and especially produce are fairly low margin as it is.
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@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
@dangeRuss said in Business Meeting Humor:
Or the company can just eat that cost.
Perhaps, but groceries and especially produce are fairly low margin as it is.
If they can afford to have sales having 50% off, I'm sure they've got pretty healthy margins.
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@dangeRuss said in Business Meeting Humor:
If they can afford to have sales having 50% off, I'm sure they've got pretty healthy margins.
Those are negotiated with the suppliers to have a lower rate for sales that occur during those sales.
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@dangeRuss said in Business Meeting Humor:
sales having 50% off
Selling some product at 50% off that you likely were going to have to write off as a loss when it goes bad > not selling product at all
Plus they're hoping to gain customers of full price items as well.
Grocery store margins are fairly low indeed; restaurant margins are a good bit better.... they're selling the same crap at 2x-10x the price with much less than that in extra wage overhead
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@Helix explain me the end of season 2
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@Kian said in Business Meeting Humor:
@Polygeekery You could have the UI always ask in pounds, but report "aprox. X tomatoes at Y lb per tomato" next to the weight, with X being updated as the weight changes. That way people know what they will be charged and how many units that's likely to be.
That is also how the supermarkets here are doing it (well, with kg instead of lb because we use sane units, of course). It works well most of the time.
The issue with that is that the actual weight/unit is really dependent on the batch, not all produces are well calibrated, so sometimes you order like 4 oranges and they turn out to be very small ones. You still pay the correct price (i.e. of the weight of whatever you get in the end), but it's not as convenient as picking them yourself in store.
Plus, as @xaade said, you can't check the quality/ripeness/... of the produce, so it's OK when all are more or less the same (root vegetables are usually pretty much all the same), not so much for fruits (: any produce that is botanically a fruit, including etc.).
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@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
@dangeRuss said in Business Meeting Humor:
Or the company can just eat that cost.
Perhaps, but groceries and especially produce are fairly low margin as it is.
They don't do money on the actual margin on the products (at least that's what I've heard), they do money on the time difference between when the customer pays and when they pay their suppliers (i.e. 60 or 90 days later). Well, on the margin as well, of course, but not so much that they can't afford to drop it when it's convenient for them.
Anyway, my experience with online groceries is that supermarkets do regularly eat some cost. They regularly substitute one item that wasn't available by the same item of a different brand (and ask me if that's OK with me, in case I wanted a specific brand) and when they do that, not only do they always pick a more expensive brand (so that I can't complain) but they also make me only pay the price of the original item, not the substitute. On a typical bi-weekly shop, there are almost always 1-2 such items.
(although for produces, I think they bill me for the exact price at delivery, which may be slightly higher than the quoted price at order. I have to admit that I don't check the bills that closely...)
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@remi said in Business Meeting Humor:
They don't do money on the actual margin on the products (at least that's what I've heard), they do money on the time difference between when the customer pays and when they pay their suppliers (i.e. 60 or 90 days later).
Huh?
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@Polygeekery Basically they put the money in the bank in between, so they gain the interest accrued even if they sell it to you at the same cost as their suppliers sell it to them. At least that's what I've heard.
Of course that's probably only a small chunk of what they earn from the margin, but it might allow them to sell without margin on a few products (basically, if they can get 0.5%/3 months i.e. around 2%/year -- and they can probably get more than that!--, they can drop their margin by 0.5% and still make money on a given article).
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@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
@kt_ said in Business Meeting Humor:
Both are approx. in kilograms, AFAIK. It all depends on which bananas are put into the bag and the same thing goes for weight orders: it's not like anyone is going to give you two bananas and a half, because you wanted exactly x pounds.
So you usually see different prices on the final bill.Fair enough. That seems like a sane way to do it, as long as asshole customers are not pissy that they spent $0.35 more than they had planned on bananas, or that their total bill ended up being $5 more than they had planned due to cumulative overages.
Well, this is Poland, not the US. We generally have much lower number of this kind of customers. ;)
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@kt_ said in Business Meeting Humor:
@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
@kt_ said in Business Meeting Humor:
Both are approx. in kilograms, AFAIK. It all depends on which bananas are put into the bag and the same thing goes for weight orders: it's not like anyone is going to give you two bananas and a half, because you wanted exactly x pounds.
So you usually see different prices on the final bill.Fair enough. That seems like a sane way to do it, as long as asshole customers are not pissy that they spent $0.35 more than they had planned on bananas, or that their total bill ended up being $5 more than they had planned due to cumulative overages.
Well, this is Poland, not the US. We generally have much lower number of this kind of customers. ;)
Tesco does it the same in the UK. The final price is "approximate" - might be slightly more if they have to substitute an item or slightly less if they don't have one. Any deviation can be rejected on delivery.
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@loopback0 said in Business Meeting Humor:
@kt_ said in Business Meeting Humor:
@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
@kt_ said in Business Meeting Humor:
Both are approx. in kilograms, AFAIK. It all depends on which bananas are put into the bag and the same thing goes for weight orders: it's not like anyone is going to give you two bananas and a half, because you wanted exactly x pounds.
So you usually see different prices on the final bill.Fair enough. That seems like a sane way to do it, as long as asshole customers are not pissy that they spent $0.35 more than they had planned on bananas, or that their total bill ended up being $5 more than they had planned due to cumulative overages.
Well, this is Poland, not the US. We generally have much lower number of this kind of customers. ;)
Tesco does it the same in the UK. The final price is "approximate" - might be slightly more if they have to substitute an item or slightly less if they don't have one. Any deviation can be rejected on delivery.
It's all kinda cool, right? :)
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@dangeRuss said in Business Meeting Humor:
@Polygeekery said in Business Meeting Humor:
@dangeRuss said in Business Meeting Humor:
Or the company can just eat that cost.
Perhaps, but groceries and especially produce are fairly low margin as it is.
If they can afford to have sales having 50% off, I'm sure they've got pretty healthy margins.
The more perishable food is, the higher the markup typically is. Produce is typically priced with a 2-4x markup, but that doesn't take spoilage into account. Their actual profit margin won't be as high, because for highly perishable goods they'll almost inevitably end up with some product that is unsellable.
If they have a 50% off sale on produce, they're probably selling it for very close to their cost. It's an easy way for them to offload whatever's still sellable from a bunch of product that wouldn't be sellable for much longer. And, in some cases, they'll sell product below cost, just to try to get something in return for it before it spoils, so they end up with less that they have to throw away.