- Dec 21, 2009
- 572
- 3
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Quote:
Two words.
Best Buy.
Two words.
Best Buy.
ok so remove the tags and give to a charity in the time it took to destroy each item they could have bagged them and driven them over to any shelter or charity.
Nowhere near as fast as tossing it in a trash compactor. Removing tags/packaging can take forever, and what is more, many charities will then turn it down if it doesn't have the tags/packaging. Especially true if it's food or sanitary items, which are the items that should be the most in demand for those that are truly destitute.
Not to mention driving them to a shelter or charity is not something most stores, even big box stores, can do. They would have to be asking employees to use their personal vehicles which opens up a massive can of worms regarding liability as they often don't have their own trucks/drivers. An employee hits someone while making that delivery and the store has a multi-million dollar lawsuit on it's hands that even if they win, they lose.
It's not a simple black and white solution I'm afraid.
I worked for a company in the past that tossed a lot of stuff into the compactor. Just seeing that, you'd have criticized this company as wasteful and your PR campaign quite probably would have driven us out of business.
All of the employees at that company volunteered for habitat for humanity, and what we could donate went to several different charities, including a local animal rescue for whom we were the biggest provider of their most needed items. Without us, they'd have had to shut their doors. My boss made a point to hire people that came from the welfare office looking for a job to get back on their feet and all of us that chose to attend school while working for his company got part of our tuition paid.
We had to toss items from certain vendors, it was in the contract with that vendor, and they were some of our biggest sellers. The vendor had this in their contract because some unscrupulous charities were reselling the items in a manner that directly competed with the vendor AND the items came with a lifetime warranty that required some proper handling which the charities had often violated prior to reselling the items, thus causing myriad problems for the vendor.
But if you drove by, you'd have seen us throwing what looked like perfectly good merchandise into a trash compactor. It would have looked great on a you-tube video demonizing our company, and our employees. We'd have been hard pressed to come back from that kind of tarnishing of our name, as reputation mattered a lot in that business.
There is more to the story than you think. Sure, some companies waste stuff. Others, well, you are only seeing part of the story.
If you want an idea of what this kind of slur campaign can do, realize this - there are still people who refuse to shop at Target because of the Salvation Army ringers, in spite of the actual truth involved in that story.
But hey, if you like capitalism all that much, keep in mind that giving stuff away really isn't part of capitalism. I believe the giving away of items that could otherwise be sold for money qualifies more as socialism.
Nowhere near as fast as tossing it in a trash compactor. Removing tags/packaging can take forever, and what is more, many charities will then turn it down if it doesn't have the tags/packaging. Especially true if it's food or sanitary items, which are the items that should be the most in demand for those that are truly destitute.
Not to mention driving them to a shelter or charity is not something most stores, even big box stores, can do. They would have to be asking employees to use their personal vehicles which opens up a massive can of worms regarding liability as they often don't have their own trucks/drivers. An employee hits someone while making that delivery and the store has a multi-million dollar lawsuit on it's hands that even if they win, they lose.
It's not a simple black and white solution I'm afraid.
I worked for a company in the past that tossed a lot of stuff into the compactor. Just seeing that, you'd have criticized this company as wasteful and your PR campaign quite probably would have driven us out of business.
All of the employees at that company volunteered for habitat for humanity, and what we could donate went to several different charities, including a local animal rescue for whom we were the biggest provider of their most needed items. Without us, they'd have had to shut their doors. My boss made a point to hire people that came from the welfare office looking for a job to get back on their feet and all of us that chose to attend school while working for his company got part of our tuition paid.
We had to toss items from certain vendors, it was in the contract with that vendor, and they were some of our biggest sellers. The vendor had this in their contract because some unscrupulous charities were reselling the items in a manner that directly competed with the vendor AND the items came with a lifetime warranty that required some proper handling which the charities had often violated prior to reselling the items, thus causing myriad problems for the vendor.
But if you drove by, you'd have seen us throwing what looked like perfectly good merchandise into a trash compactor. It would have looked great on a you-tube video demonizing our company, and our employees. We'd have been hard pressed to come back from that kind of tarnishing of our name, as reputation mattered a lot in that business.
There is more to the story than you think. Sure, some companies waste stuff. Others, well, you are only seeing part of the story.
If you want an idea of what this kind of slur campaign can do, realize this - there are still people who refuse to shop at Target because of the Salvation Army ringers, in spite of the actual truth involved in that story.
But hey, if you like capitalism all that much, keep in mind that giving stuff away really isn't part of capitalism. I believe the giving away of items that could otherwise be sold for money qualifies more as socialism.
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