Due procrastination I'm doing the drinking but still working away in cubeville. Photo: iPhone4 HDR
As seen and purchased at Potrero Hill Whole Foods, the store I think is about the best in the city for choice, experience, parking, convenience of location.
Now I've bought trail mix in a box with these outer dimensions before...I recognize it and know roughly what I'm getting, right? This allows me to judge whether or not the price is acceptable, before I buy. Well I was wrong about the Safeway brand. Their box has a modification;
That's right, a pyramid of plastic in the bottom that peptides into the container space and reduces it's effective volume by about a fifth. Now I speculate that someone at Safeway wanted to improve profit margins but already had the cheapest plastic container and the cheapest foreign ingredients, so they wanted to reduce the amount without dropping the price, and finagle the margin. And instead of being upfront and honest with customers they hid an airspace inside the packaging that took over an ounce of mix out. I further theorize that when the package was introduced the price did not adjust.
Finally, some people would suggest that the packaging is shaped thus for “strength”. Bollocks. These packages have been on the market with flat bottoms, and more contents, and apparent proven strength - for years. To me (note, me) this is plainly a straight-up customer swindle.
What would work? Smaller packaging, certainly. Less contents, absolutely. But without a corresponding drop in price those would have been obvious. So instead we're left with the feeling we got swindled and those of us who noticed will probably not be back, at least, for this product.
That's just fucking broken. The wrong incentive controlled the decision. The customer is (often) left unhappy. No repeat business (at least from me), and maybe a loss of further potential business (definitely from me in this case). I was so angry I've rather stopped buying much from Safeway at all. No, this didn't take a lot of thought, or occupy my mind, it just happened. And that's how customer reactions go.Do the right thing people; make better product, don't try to fuck the customer, and be proud of it.
Fremont Bank ATM, Townsend St San Francisco Even with HDR photography it's clear that controls in the bottom right are completely obscured. Guess where all the confirmation messages are? Yep. A simple shade/visor could fix this; the sun is in the same places every day. Or a screen that adjust brightness as ambient levels change.
As seen at Farmer Brown's Little Skillet
I saw this on a flight back in January this year (2010). It struck me as so broken that a photo was warranted. Two days ago I stumbled upon Seth Godin's "This Is Broken" video from TED, http://on.ted.com/8YqB that didn't quite start it all, but certainly brought it to the forefront for most (as usual with Seth).
Sometimes I wish Seth would re-activate http://thisisbroken.com. The Flickr photo pool is ok, but just not as good.
Fully restored, vintage, well-used La Pavoni Europiccola espresso macchina from 1987 or 88, Rocky grinder, Reg Barber tamper, scales, knockbox full to overflowing. Rocky is full of Bluebottle's Hayes Valley Espresso blend, roasted 2 days ago. This is not even that bad...if you got it bad you'll have 3 machines each worth $1500 to $3500 hanging around in your house. If you go to Starbucks, you simply don't have it that bad. No offense.
Actually I'm about ready to move the Breville, at left, on. Anybody want it? $150 OBO and it's yours (no warranty, as is, 3 years old). Drop a note to "sendthenote [at] me.com" if you're interested.
Everytime I run or ride along the Embarcadero I'm reminded of Wallace and Gromit's Big Day Out
-NickW