Comment by ryandrake
Comment by ryandrake 2 days ago
Lately, the number of times (across different businesses/industries) where I've found myself thinking "Will you please just fucking take my money and stop bothering me?" is too damn high.
Comment by ryandrake 2 days ago
Lately, the number of times (across different businesses/industries) where I've found myself thinking "Will you please just fucking take my money and stop bothering me?" is too damn high.
Businesses aren't in business to prioritize the customer point of view [1].
They are not in business to prioritize the employees point of view.
They are in business to maximise revenue, and profit.
If you work for a business, your job is to work on their priorities. By all means object or quit if you don't agree with them. (And yes, assume you'll be fired for refusing to do their tasks.)
If you're a customer, and you font like their behavior stop being their customer. You have agency. Use it.
[1] good customer service, good customer experience, are all good for revenue. Happy customers are the ultimate success. But maximizing the revenue from those happy customers is very much the business goal.
The old "use your agency" response never gets old does it, no matter how much consumer alternatives are whittled away, and no matter how much the abusive corporate behaviour gets ratcheted up and normalized. Do you actually make a profit yourself from forcing ads on paying customers who can't choose to avoid your services, or just aspire to one day?
Thats a cop out.
There are lots of alternatives to McDonald's.
There are lots of alternatives to most things. Some cost more money though. That's kinda the point.
As others make clear here you have agency in theory, but in practice your ability to use that agency is very much dependent on how well the world enables the exercise of that agency. Something to think about, interdependence and all that.
> They are in business to maximise revenue, and profit.
Correction, "they" are not a hivemind with one goal, they are a collection of individuals with individual goals to maximize their own profit. If some marketing employee can get a bonus or promotion by showing ephemeral monetary gains at the expense of the long-term integrity of the product, they'll jump all over that.
It does not have to be this way. This should not be claimed as some kind of law of gravity-like nature of the universe. Businesses have operated in an enormous variety of manners over the years and continue to do so. Businesses have agency.
Just look at EA vs Nintendo for one. And I'm not even a Nintendo fan.
Badmouthing bullshit practices of a company is also a part of the agency here.
E.g. Yes, I hate that McDonalds (like tons of other companies) is incessantly bugging me and quite blatantly trying to upsell me. As a result, I rarely go to such places anymore. So they lose my business. But I will also complain out loud. This is part of the deal with bullshitting your customer base. This is part of my agency. Losing me as a customer, as well as getting badmouthed left and right is the cost of extracting that 3 additional cents from me. Now the company also has a choice.
That’s nonsense. Some businesses exist purely to fund the ability to do exactly that thing as well as possible. Making money is a means to an end.
It’s just that they always seem to lose to those that optimize for money.
I think some small businesses start because the owner wants to do something well. Sometimes this aligns with some group of customers and it's sustainable.
Most small businesses fail of course. Usually because while they do a task well, they're bad at the business part.
Once you get large (McDonald's in the parent thread) the focus is necessarily on the business part. At that scale it's not "doing the thing as well as possible " - it is "making money as well as possible".
Clearly lots of people use McDonald's. So they provide customers with satisfaction. But that doesn't mean they aren't out to maximize revenue.
Actually, in a way this is already true. If you consent to installing their mobile app (which includes god knows what kind of analytics), you are rewarded with at least 20% off all McDonald’s food list prices.
So you can pay for “McDonald’s without analytics” by paying list prices in cash at the register.
Now, if there was an option when booking a flight to pick a fare class not subjected to the stupid branded credit card offer walk of shame prior to landing, I would sign up in a heartbeat.
> So you can pay for “McDonald’s without analytics” by paying list prices in cash at the register.
I didn't know they took orders at the register still. I've only been in once (last year) in the past 20 years, but they seemed to insist on kiosk-only. Not sure if the drive-thru is like that too.
Yup, it's not good enough that you're already a paying customer- they have to try their best to manipulate and coerce you into spending even more. It's insulting, abusive and honestly pathetic. These thirsty lamers have to try every trick in the book to eke a few more cents out of me? Embarrassing. Modern tech/business does not have a shred of pride or dignity, as per TFA.