Small business woes

[andygates]

Our town is being menaced by the faceless horror of Tesco.  That's what the local small businesses would like you to think ,at least - big business putting the plucky small trader out of work unfairly.

In the last few days I've turned up with a fistful of shinies to two of these local shops and had my money turned away.  At the phone shop, I was turned away because I was dealing with the other salesman, and he's not in today - and the rural simpleton behind the desk presumably couldn't split the commission so he'd rather turn away a sale.  And I've been told by the electrical goods shop that they will give me a price for a storage heater if I give them a product number.  I'll just go to another shop and get it then, shall I?

Straw-chewing knuckle-dragging subprime gibbons, the lot of them.  Using "we're small businesses, love us!" to defend this sort of feeble service is weak, weak, weak. 

Small businesses can be great.  The personal service, working relationship and deep knowledge from years in the trade are well worth the modest premium you may pay over big-box retailers.  But "small" is not and never should be an excuse for "lazy".  Lazy businesses deserve to go under.

At least there'll be room for a Starbuck's.

Comments

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

We're getting - uh, I think it's a Sainsburys - over the road, and what I'm mostly thinking is, oh good, somewhere to scuttle to for emergency bread or eggs or whatever where the food available won't all be a week past it's sell-by date and/or stored in chill cabinets that look like they were installed during the Napoleonic War. And I can pay by Switch without them trying to pull the 'We'd charge £1.70 to use the cash-machine at the end, and it's the same card, innit, so pay up' line.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I for one welcome our superstore overlords. Well, except for Starbuck's. They're still evil.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Apparently they're colonising that place in Broadmead opposite Debenhams that used to be a suit shop. It'd actually be kinder as well as more entertaining if they just blindfolded their franchisees and made them mud-wrestle.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Do you think franchisees get a choice? I imagine there being a creepy, enthusiastically corporate and faux-relaxed weekend bash for new "partners", in which the culmination has coffee-bean pinatas smashes with title deeds inside. Enthusiastic thirtysomethings may be seen falling to their knees as they get allocated something in Ring Road Hell.