The Atlantic Monthly used to be a publication of some reknown and respectability, publishing thought-provoking articles and literary works worthy of attention. Now, they print useless tripe like the article above. I mean, what's the point? They bash my favorite place to buy shoes--Zappos, for making it easy to get what you want by offering trouble-free returns. The market rewards Zappos by becoming customers. The author is shaming us for this? What an absolute waste of words.
I used to click on their articles, still do occasionally if it pertains to my interest and is not directly related to politics or health, but I've found that they're relatively unreliable. If it is for entertainment, fine. If it is for news? Pass.
Unfortunately, many outlets like The Atlantic, have a bunch of overpriviliged, Ivy league school millenial journalists writing for them as they compete against each other to be the most woke.
I'll stop there before I get buried under a patio.
It's not a great article.
buuuuuutttt. I work in e-commerce. In logistics.
Nothing in the article is off base. It's dead on.
we send many trucks to liquidations daily. Returns is a nightmare and costly.
I could go on and on. The E36 M3 they have to do to shoes to make them saleable is nasty. It's amazing what the chemicals can do, but geeez. You should see what people return.
x boxes with no hard drives.
shoes covered in poop
blood on clothes.
In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :
Not to be snarky, but the reason I posted in the first place: It's not my problem, it's your problem.
In reply to 1988RedT2 :
That's fair. And we've conditioned customers to expect this level of service. But don't think we don't charge the sellers for all those services.
but Jesus. If you're ever offered a job in an e-commerce returns center. Run.
In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :
Oh, absolutely. I recognize there are cheaper places to buy shoes, but the combination of selection and convenience is something I'm willing to pay for.
And I'm sorry that you have to deal with returns of abused product by uncouth customers, but that's a symptom of an increasingly decadent, self-important society that wasn't raised right. But that's a whole 'nother can o' worms.
In reply to 1988RedT2 :
Physical stores used to be the filter on this kind of behavior, but now that you just send it back in a brown box, people feel empowered to do bad things to products.
now. If you can get in the refurbishment business. You can make cash. I know guys doing laptop refurbishment. They buy laptop returns by the pound, refurbish them and sell them back handsome profit. Many of our liquidations are just products that sat on the shelf too long and that storage fees outpace the profit thst would be made my selling it. So the sellers dump them at their expense. New in box.
OK, so I kind of skimmed the article, and it has some interesting information in it. What exactly if your problem with it? That it makes you feel bad for the things we all do? Was there anything actually incorrect in the article, or was it just that you'd rather not hear any downsides to our current shopping culture?
More information is good, in my mind. If my purchases and returns have a cost to the planet I'd like to know that cost. I'll probably actually read the whole article later. I really am curious why you think it's a waste of words and worthy of stopping a subscription to the Atlantic.
In reply to dculberson :
What I gather is that people like to virtue signal about virtue signaling about the virtues and their signals. Which leads to virtues being signaled.
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