And the worst part about this is that each cashier seems determined to relentlessly pester me with annoying questions at the register! Did I want to join this loyalty program? Did I realize that I could save $5 by signing up for so and so. Do I want to get on the B&N mailing list? Really aggressive questioning.

Oh my God. I realize that the cashiers have been ordered to do this (I assume) but knock it off already! This is so consumer unfriendly. I just want to pay and go. I'm sure that this also delays checkout times significantly over the course of a day.

This is one of the main reasons I use Amazon when possible. Retail checkout in the US has become a one-way grilling. You end up leaving the store feeling like a murder suspect.

Also, in this space, there's a competitor that's on it's way to a monopoly. if B&N goes belly-up, I'm not even sure where I could buy books besides Amazon.

It shared a cursed strip mall with a Blockbuster, a LAN gaming center, and a music shop that was finally torn down last year.

Anyways props to ur comment hah

It seems like the "Old Business" world is just a nest of snakes eating each other until there's just one left to die of starvation.

Apparently the corporate morons have figured out how to pester the customer even against the better judgment of clerks. Fortunately I have a choice in which convenience store enjoys my custom.

Why should they? If they don't they will get fired. Business goes up or down that cashier doesn't get paid more or less...they have no incentive to risk their job for a customer. These companies are so obsessed with squeezing a nickle out of 5% of their customers because they can _measure_ that. Its 'impossible' to measure losses like you with any granularity, so it doesn't matter. They 'can't' incentivize it.

At one point Best Buy was trying to get you to sign up for MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTIONS at checkout. Who thought that was a good idea?

A bunch of corporate people who never had to ask someone face to face about buying stupid shit after they've already decided what they want, and a bunch of corporate people who never actually shop at their own stores.

Overall the whole experience is way better. Finding a book is a tiny bit harder (emphasis on tiny), but honestly, I'm not in a hurry when I'm in a bookstore, so I don't care.

I actually don't think finding a book is harder, either. If I know what I want, I just walk up to the counter and ask. If it's in stock, I go grab it. If it's not, they order it, tell me it'll arrive within a month, and I swing back buy to pick it up it about 2 days later. If I don't know what I want, the staff recommendation slips most independent bookstores put out are great, especially now that I've gone enough times to know which staff members share my reading tastes. And have led me to many, many more delightful books and authors I wouldn't have tried otherwise than Amazon's sad attempts at getting something useful out of collaborative filtering. ("You liked Pride and Prejudice? Well, how about... Sense and Sensibility!! Ta-daaaa, isn't AI amazing!?")

What's BAM?

Another thing is I like knowing what kind of readers have read similar books to me, and their opinions of said book. I prefer to just buy everything on my kindle, its easy and convenient. Not a big fan of hard copy textbooks much anymore

"Traditional" media did the exact same thing when faced with competition from the internet. They reduced the quality of their service & product when they saw a reduction in customers which only fueled a further reduction in customers, rinse and repeat til death.

Because they aren't worth it.

In certain failing businesses, the activities of senior management aren't directed towards trying to save the sinking ship, but to free up as much cashflow as possible and direct it to themselves. Rather than the creditors who would get it in bankruptcy.

MG Rover is my go-to example, but there are plenty: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/may/08/mg-rover-di...

Business schools have studied this. One of the strongest indications of a great CEO is how long they worked at the company before becoming CEO. The best CEOs started 20+ years ago and worked their way up the ladder (ie first job out of school). The worst CEOs were hired externally for the CEO role. There are exceptions that you can think of, but when a company brings in an outside CEO that should be a red flag: they don't have the internal development in place to make someone who knows the business the leader. Sadly investors have for the most part not caught onto this. (Warren Buffet knew is in the 1950s which is why he buys companies for their great leaders and keeps the leaders in place)

Even if you can find a great CEO with a great plan with your company, I don't think paying him 10M$ instead of 500k will make him more efficient or be necessary to retain him.

Also I don't think the CEOs salaries are a results of competition for the best (like tech workers), but CEO being generous with themselves (and their peers as they're all in each others' board).

Of course this assumes that one more year of development is required for the next CEO to be ready. Great CEOs try to have a replacement (or several) in training at all times.

Note that I'm assuming a great CEO - most are not great.

And I don't think he was more expensive than the previous Apple CEO (Gil Amelio?) or any alternative they had at the time.

This is what you get when your business culture rewards quick profit-taking by a small sub-class of actors over long-term business building that benefits customers and employees.

It's more profitable - personally - to asset strip a struggling company, even if it still has prospects, good will, and loyal employees, than to put in the creativity and hard work needed to make it prosper.

I sometimes feel like a shoplifter on my way out, but nobody's ever looked at me sideways.

More than once I've decided to pick up an adapter or headphones or a hard drive at the Apple Store instead of Fry's or Best Buy or Target because of the iPhone checkout.

I wonder if Barnes and Noble sells reduced quality books the same way that Wal*Mart gets brands to make cheaper but reduced quality versions of their products for their stores.

Either way it turns me off. They are pretty good at getting me into the store to use my laptop at the Starbucks or for when my son is doing a group project and the other students are meeting there -- only to immediately turn me off with inferior products.

As in the story above, bad experiences don't just cost a sale immediately, but they might cost all future sales from that customer.

It's especially a shame because Barnes & Noble classics editions from 10 or 15 years ago are actually very nice.

Certainly I have put down books that were made way too cheaply, and I have impulse-purchased books that are exceptionally well-designed.

The employees are also really helpful. This Christmas, I was trying to find some books as a christmas gift, and the staff made a bunch of suggestions based on books that they had actually personally read.

Sidenote: finding appropriate books for 8-14 year old girls is really freaking hard.

Philip Pullman's, His Dark Materials trilogy [1]. The protag, Lyra, is one of the most interesting young female protags in literature. (This is one of those trilogies that you can reread at different stages of your life and get new things from each time.)

Patrick Ness's, Chaos Walking trilogy [2]. (Read the dead tree versions, because the use of typography adds a lot.)

Also, checkout Malorie Blackman.

You might also want to take a look at the Carnegie Medal longlist [3] (released yesterday) for ideas.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lie_Tree

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Walking

[3] http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/press.php?release=pres_2...

His Dark Materials (HDM) is a retelling of Paradise Lost [1] – Milton's epic poem of the story of Adam and Eve. Its foundational myth is the keystone of much religion. Pullman is a scholar of Blake, and his grandfather was an Anglican vicar whom he was close to as a result of his father dying when he was young. Pullman knows precisely what he's doing.

Where some Christian groups – I will refrain from labelling them as fundamentalists – seem to have backed into their breeches is with Pullman's portrayal of The Magisterium (which some Catholics believe represents themselves), and that in the telling, Pullman kills God.

The Catholic church has – to say the least – had a colourful history. Much of it sanguine – in colour, that is. That's undeniable. And if a parent should want to censor their 8-14 year old reader from the harm that HDM might thrust upon them with the behaviour of The Magisterium, then they are going to have a whale of a time "protecting" them from history of the Catholic church. Good luck denying Martin Luther's place in history; let alone the Inquisition.

Before I tackle the alleged murder of God, can I point out that the Archbishop of Canterbury loves HDM [2]. This is someone who holds a role first filled by Augustine in 597. (Augustine was quite something. Do read his tale.) If anyone on the planet was going to callout Pullman on atheism, the ArchBofC was the man. Nope. Not only loved it, but recommended it.

And yet, in the US, the books were censored [3].

The most telling expurgation is this from the point of view of Father Gomez (of The Magisterium) watching Lyra (the protagonist):

"And there it was: the dark-blonde movement that was the girl's hair. He moved a little closer, and took out the rifle. There was a telescopic sight: low-powered, but beautifully made, so that looking through it was to feel your vision clarified as well as enlarged. Yes, there she was, and she paused and looked back so that he saw the expression on her face, and he could not understand how anyone so steeped in evil could look so radiant with hope and happiness."

"... he could not understand how anyone so steeped in evil could look so radiant with hope and happiness."

For me, in context, this one of the most beautiful parts in the trilogy, but in the US – the Land of the Free, the bastion of free speech – you cannot read it.

God, of course, is not murdered in HDM. First, let us see how Pullman describes the place of God in his universe:

Balthamos (an angel) said quietly, “The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty — those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves — the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself. Matter loves matter. It seeks to know more about itself, and Dust is formed. The first angels condensed out of Dust, and the Authority was the first of all. He told those who came after him that he had created them, but it was a lie. One of those who came later was wiser than he was, and she found out the truth, so he banished her. We serve her still. And the Authority still reigns in the Kingdom, and Metatron is his Regent.”

Pullman uses the idea of sentient matter – he calls Dust – as a core theme of his books. This can be linked to panpsychism, which has a broad history and many proponents both ancient and recent.

But the murder of God?

The two protagonists, Lyra and Will, simply open the crystal cell that contains the Authority and he/it dissolves with “a sigh of the most profound and exhausted relief.”

There's no "fictionalized advertisement for atheism" here, however hard you look.

[0] If you are at all interested in storytelling, please read this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1602869.The_Voice_That_T...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3613962/The-Dark-Material...

[3] https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/118137/what-passag...

But I liked the Dealing with Dragons series from Patricia C. Wrede (humorous), The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword from Robin McKinley, and the Dragon's Blood series from Jane Yolen.

As a male I enjoyed it, and one of my best female friends also remembers it fondly.

I'd also throw in Sabriel, as a YA fantasy novel that I really liked, that had a female protagonist who kicked ass (rather than was there to support a male, or something else equally stereotypical)

For the adventurous tomboy: "Alanna: The First Adventure" and "First Test" are the first books in two different series.

In general a good series: Sandry's Book (Circle of Magic Series)

Some of them do have romances/crushes (Alanna series more than the other two), but they're all focused on adventurous girls doing cool stuff, and the importance of hard work, friends, learning new things, etc. etc. I loved them as a kid (and now).

Source: was an 8-14 year old girl

Wrede's Dealing With Dragons series is incredible, the Circle of Magic series is a good read (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_Magic), same with the Alanna series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_of_the_Lioness).

The award covers a wide range of ages, so some books might be too young.

Here's a press release for the 2018 long list: http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/press.php?release=pres_2...

Here's a list of all Carnegie winners: http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/archive.php?medal=carneg...

Here are some Twitter accounts that might be useful: https://twitter.com/FaberChildrens

https://twitter.com/PuffinBooks

https://twitter.com/WalkerBooksUK

https://twitter.com/KidsBloomsbury

https://twitter.com/hodderchildrens

The Explorer by Katherine Rundell (but anything by this auther, she's written some excellent books) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Explorer-WINNER-COSTA-CHILDRENS-AWA...

The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd https://www.amazon.co.uk/London-Eye-Mystery-Siobhan-Dowd/dp/...

and The Guggenheim Mystery by Siobhan Dowd and Robin Stevens https://www.amazon.co.uk/Guggenheim-Mystery-Robin-Stevens/dp...

Source:

I work/live near there and always went.

Also http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2018/01/barnes_noble_close...

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/geek-gals-books

(Hope you see this!)

Start with The Hunger Games and if she likes it that’s next year sorted too, buy her a bow.

"hey, let's suppress rebellion in our outlying provinces by drafting their children and making them fight each other."

"wouldn't that cause rebellion?"

"Yep"

Edit: why the fuck would someone downvote this?

Questions about society, future and such are very interesting at that age, older people tend to be interested in different things (at least I went that way). Asimov packs it together with kinda normal fun to read story which kids at that age like too.

And, I also downvoted this comment because asking why you're being downvoted is not only dull, it adds nothing to the conversation.

If you would read my reply again, you'll note that I said, "I downvoted you because of the suggestion that "most books" are appropriate for (and interesting to) 8-14 year old girls."

Frankly, I don't think that's controversial enough to have to explain.

First, it's flat out wrong to group 8-14 year old girls together. The sheer amount that girls grow between those years makes that highly questionable. The kind of book that the average 8 year old would gain from would be insulting to the average 14 year old. And the kind of book that a 14 year old girl would gain from wouldn't make much sense to the average 8 year old.

And yes, there are outliers, but if your child is an outlier, for the love of all that is holy, spend time in bookstores with her and figure out what she's actually interested in. In distributions like this, outliers tend to have very strong interests that overwhelm all the social pressure. If you're dealing with an outlier, figure out those interests and cater to them.

Second, let's look at the word "most". Do we have to talk about how most popular fiction geared towards adults may not be appropriate for the average 8 year old? And what about interest? I'm a 40 year old man who reads voraciously yet "most" books are neither appropriate, nor interesting to me. There isn't anything wrong with that. It's just that we all have interests.

It's annoying when someone edits a comment to ask why they were downvoted. But, it's flat out dull when they edit a comment and then make an entirely different reply to ask the same thing. That adds absolutely nothing to the conversation.

There. Just a friendly suggestion: I think you may be a bit over-extrapolating from your personal experience and your sense of "common sense", to make overgeneralized statements about things as arguably complex and idiosyncratic as "appropriateness" or "interest" in books. (Hence, perhaps, the pushback from other readers.)

To answer it succinctly, I'll use the programming language example that I used.

Let's say that you have never programmed before, so you come to me for help. I start teaching you. The first lesson, I teach you how to output "hello world". The second lesson, I teach you about monads. Honestly, how do you think you'd do?

There isn't anything absolutely wrong about monads, but I'd tend to argue that they're a little too advanced for someone who only knows how to output "hello world". In this example, I'd say that teaching you about monads in the second lesson was inappropriate - you likely won't gain from it, in fact, it's more likely that learning about monads too soon will actually hurt your progress.

Young girls are primary demographic for reading. While it is true that 8 years old are not there, 14 years old already are. Majority of what is in bookstore is appropriate, maybe boring, but I don't recall running into something super inappropriate while randomly browsing bookstore.

Second, I don't think that 8 year old girls and 14 year old girls should be grouped together. I have an 8 year old stepdaughter and she talks to her stuffed animals. She knows (at least, I hope she knows) that Unicorn is stuffed and I make her voice. But, she still talks to, argues with and consoles Unicorn. And, when I meet her friends, she wants her friends to meet Unicorn.

Let's flash forward six years. What do you think she will say/do if I talk like Unicorn in front of her friends? Or, what will happen if her first boyfriend comes over for dinner, I plop a faded old stuffed unicorn on the dinner table, affect a squeaky voice and ask him "do you like unicorns?" That's not appropriate! It will either embarrass her, keep her friends away from me, or otherwise hurt my relationship with her.

Finally, you talked about how you don't recall running into something super inappropriate while browsing bookstores. I'm not talking about Fifty Shades type of stuff. Rather, let me give you an example.

I love The Catcher in The Rye and genuinely believe that every person should be required to read it before being allowed to graduate from high school.

So, that's a book that I would definitely recommend to 12-16 year olds. The thing about the Catcher is that it's best when you've already started questioning the social world around you. Otherwise, it's too easy to declare Holden Caulfield a whiny little twat and not gain from the book.

So, I would argue that while that book is amazing and all kids deserve a copy, not every kid will be ready for it at the same age. So, while the sentiment is appropriate, the book isn't appropriate for every young person at the same time.

Or, in terms of code, let's say that you've never programmed before. It wouldn't be appropriate to teach you "hello world" then go right into monads. There's nothing particularly wrong with monads, it's just that they would be so far beyond you that you wouldn't gain from the lesson.

2.) I did not objected to your downvote further. I was honestly curious when I asked those questions. (And also appreciated the answer about glib interpretation.)

For the rest, thank you for answer. I guess I have every different opinion about amount of harmful books for kids in bookstores or maybe we have different bookstores around here. At that age, I was freely selecting books from adult section in local library without any supervision or control. I assumed that other girl is the same.

30 years ago I was a part-time employee at a big box store from October to January. Large retailers long ago figured out how to ramp up their workforce temporarily to adequately handle the sales season that accounts for the largest portion of their sales every year.

For any retailer to blow the Christmas sales season by not adequately staffing it, which has been basic retail management for at least three decades, actually does argue for malpractice on the part of executives. It's a criminal level of incompetence, and I'm not sure whether "criminal" means "criminally negligent" or "fraudulent".

“Well, give ‘em one more Christmas.”

As you say, it’s unthinkable they didn’t see Christmas coming. And it’s equally unthinkable layoffs of this size weren’t planned out twelve weeks ago.

As for not adequately staffing it, you simply can't. You cannot get a decent workforce via part time seasonal work. the way it worked before was part timers just took extra hours in peak periods, but Obamacare killed this by forcing any part timer over so many hours to be eligible for benefits, making it impossible to do.

And yet, virtually every retailer for the last 3+ decades has, in fact, done so as a matter of normal operations.

It has nothing to do with Obamacare. The employment norm was not to only schedule full-time hours for part-time employees (which, even before Obamacare, violated a lot of employment law). Aside from laying off full-time employees after the cycle (which they justified by the crap sales during Christmas), B&N refused to staff-up as normal for virtually every other retailer in North America, to accommodate the most predictable sales cycle in the world... basically in order to justify the firing the full-timers.

This was a hit job by insiders looking to profit off the corpse.

Even still, see how Amazon’s flex/contractors handle deliveries (ie atrociously, as there is no incentive to care) vs UPS (a union shop).

You have to align incentives. Your employees’ success is your success. Otherwise, close up shop and go home. You’ve already lost.

I don't know, $14mm for the executive team of a company with tens of thousands of employees and 600+ stores doesn't seem crazy to me. Maybe you think that smart, capable, experienced executives grow on trees, but you're wrong. And what smart, capable, experienced executive would ever want to take this job when they probably have much better options with companies who aren't dying?

Would you want to go be lead developer on the Nook team right now, knowing that you probably won't have a job for long, that your equity will be declining in value, that it'll be miserable unless you can miraculously figure out a way to turn things around? Would it be unreasonable for you to only be interested in doing that if you were getting paid very well?

Also, it's all well and good to say this when it's not your money on the line, but the board is responsible to the shareholders, and I doubt they're interested in taking a chance on some unproven person who has "belief in the company" as their primary qualification.

I’m sure their individual point of view, their self interest, it’s perfectly reasonable. But from the outside it’s disgraceful. How do you justify taking a $4m payout after working less than a year? Especially when you know the axe is going to fall on the lowest paid employees.

Maybe you could, you know, skip your bonus, so the people laid off might have a little breathing room.

Frankly, this kind of stuff looks borderline close to fraud. Maybe not a legal fraud, but the fraud of management who wave their hands around to act like they know what they are doing, while they loot the company before it goes down.

B&N needs to think like a Startup again. Vision and dreams might be more important than a Harvard MBA and 10 years of experience at BigCo, Inc. Remember, Barnes and Noble is default bankrupt right now. Their situation in some ways is more like that of a startup that needs to raise capital fast or die than Amazon or Google. That means that barring drastic changes, their trajectory intersects with the ground. Why not take a big chance? Who's more likely to bet big, a young dreamer who wants $100K and a ton of stock, or the experienced executive who wants $5M a year and is going to get majorly paid no matter what happens? They're going to lose everything as it stands anyway.

That is to say, people whose salary demands are at the lower end of the salary range for that career have outperformed those whose demands are at the higher end.

My sample size is small but significant. Food for thought.

Pay me what market rate is and don’t give me sob stories about passion or making sacrifices to work on some life changing BS. Pay me.

What’s eating away the civic fabric are those who put their own self interest above everyone else.

Once you get up into the millions in compensation, I don’t think the concern is that the poor naive CEO is being exploited by working for less than the absolute most they can get. Especially when the level of pay is so high, that it disproportionately impacts the bottom line.

I’m sorry, this primacy of market and money above all is sickening.

So if you're supporting a family you may want a new approach for thinking about your career.

Better said above, "Working for “passion” is for suckers."

Here's more food for thought: the five biggest companies in the US are all data-driven tech companies that are renowned for paying ridiculously high compensation. Why wouldn't they apply your framework to both save on hiring costs and boost performance?

None of the top ten US companies, by revenue, fit that description.

http://fortune.com/fortune500/

Ranked by profit, only Alphabet squeaks into the top ten at number five.

http://fortune.com/fortune500/list/filtered?sortBy=profits&f...

I’m not seeing much correlation here between rank of CEO compensation and company performance.

https://aflcio.org/paywatch/highest-paid-ceos

The fame of the high salaries at tech companies relates primarily to technical staff, not executive pay. These companies are also located in some of the most expensive areas to live.

The market cap of a company is largely based on a bet of the “size” of a company in the future.

Tesla is the most “valuable” US auto maker, by market capitalization. This illustrates that market cap is inherently related to predictions which have a large speculative component, which can be influenced by pure market phenomena.

Because a) at their scale they need to hire in bulk b) their business (advertising, "media"...) simply don't inspire that level of passion in anyone, so money is all they can do.

It’s easier to hire cheap workers when your actions are keeping wages lower than they otherwise would’ve been.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...

If anything, that undermines the point I'm arguing against: why would these companies feel any need to collude to suppress wages if they could get better performance just by hiring cheaper workers?

Also, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, etc. weren't part of this suit, so again, not relevant.

person who really wants the job but is kind of underqualified > person who is highly qualified, but doesn't really want the job (unless the money is right)

edit: I'll add that, for CEOs who should all look amazing on paper and know how to sell themselves, maybe willingness to do the job for less than market is a better signal than most

Apparently the qualification that they care about is "Willing to take $10 million in payments while laying off 1800 to save $40 million". Competence at the CEO level doesn't always have to look like malevolence.

And apparently B&N was against even spending for that, even during heavy sales periods. If I were a shareholder before I wouldn't be after reading this news - I'd be going and buying Amazon stock. And a lot of this explains why Amazon has been crushing Wal-Mart - people are just done with going to stores and waiting in lines, looking around at empty cashier stations in frustration when they can point, click, and have something on their doorstep the next day with less effort.

Really? It would take 10 people 18 months to produce some type of ecommerce app that would

a) allow people to bar code scan something

b) pay for it on their phone

??

Yes, certainly there would be more tie ins to do - tie the same in to existing POS system for inventory purposes (real time or nightly), for one.

But... 18 months? $4M?

Walmart and apparently target are working on or piloting same day pickup. I can order online and go pick up at the store right afterwards. Saves walking around the store (which might cut down impulse purchases, but hey... we'll get bombarded with upsells on the future purchases, no doubt). I might not actually want something on my doorstep the next day, but want it in my hand or car 90 minutes from now, while I'm passing the store on the way home, etc.

* 2017 Amazon revenue was $178B

Profit would be a different story, of course, but you can go dig for that if you want. Certainly Walmart still has markedly higher revenue.

Similar to how PG and RTM created Viaweb (a web application that allowed non-technical people to build online e-commerce sites), are there any sites/tools which allow non-technical people develop non-trivial retail/online purchasing iPhone/Android apps?

But the time criteria is best said in terms of when to go, since that's a much narrower window than when not to go.

You scan the UPCs on things as you put them in your cart. When you're done, you select pay and it displays a barcode on your screen. The checker at the door has a handheld device that they scan the barcode with, it gives them an item count, and you're on your way.

I've only ever used it at Sam's where there's always a door checker. I've heard it can be more of a pain to use at Walmarts because the door people don't always have the handheld around and have to go hunt it down.

Really, it shouldn't be surprising that they'd be a company willing to experiment in this field. Cutting labor costs to an extreme (which is actually one of the reasons I avoid Walmarts, but that's another rant) is pretty central to how they operate. And they became the behemoth they are by innovating in logistics. People often forget that they were a key figure in driving the adoption of product barcodes in the first place.

Barnes and Noble would be decimated by that.

The collection desk is the same desk as the front of the store (there are payment desks on each floor of the store) and it was rammed. I ordered on Amazon instead of waiting.

All they have to do is put a sign saying collections are on X floor and it would be a better all round experience.

I also noticed that people were queuing and then asking if so-and-so book was in stock. How is this efficient?

This is a perfect instance for self-checkout kiosks. They're everywhere: big retailers like Target, chain groceries, national pharmacies, home improvement stores, and they're turning up in smaller places and even fast food venues. This suggests to me that the kiosk price is dropping and there's less reason to have empty registers and long lines except for deliberate ignorance.

At the kiosk, I realized I needed a carrier bag, and asked for one, none being visible. "A ten pence one is fine!" I said hopefully, the mandatory five pence ones nowhere. "We've only those." He said, pointing to one pound fifty fancy bags. Off I went, my basket left behind me. No sale.

Last night. Another Tesco store. This one has had random kiosks changed to accept card only. So I asked, as I approached the head of the queue and was told... This store doesn't accept cash. Another abandoned basket.

I have been able to complete less than half of every attempt at shopping in the second of those two stores, walking out each time over two years. Sainsbury's stock was paying ten percent dividends,last I looked. I see a classic long - short position.

1. Use their app to scan the bar code

2. Pay with a card

3. A self-service printer prints a receipt/confirmation of purchase.

4. Show it to an employee on your way out the door.

Might be an inventory nightmare, but it could be done.

Sure, the cellphone eliminates the slowdown, but it also eliminates the primary way they currently prevent theft.

Amazon is working on a store that works a lot like you said, with your cellphone, but doesn't rely on the customer doing anything other than logging in. After that, tons of cameras take care of the rest.

Potential pitfalls include the cost of the RFIDs, the ability to detach the RFIDs at any point, the ability to read the RFID on your phone, and alternative entrance / exits of merchandise (e.g. toss through a window).

Are there other reasons that this could not work?

If you used your phone, then it would easy to shoplift. Buy 7 items, but "forget" to scan the last two. Self-service kiosks at least prevents this with weight sensors, cameras, and a human kiosk manager.

Scaling retail is hard. Especially if you're against "be on call 24/7 for minimum wage without additional on call compensation".

They could buy self-checkout terminals, though, but I imagine they don't want assets like that and would rather let the business fail. That's the writing on the wall (if not the stock trend)

Especially in December - during prime holiday shopping hours - you staff up. It's more profitable to have a little bit of employee slack time than to have customer satisfaction way down and customers walking out without buying things.

This is a bad take - the whole "oh retail will die without self-checkout terminals" overlooks the realities of retail, what consumers want when they choose to go into an actual brick and mortar store, and how businesses can succeed. And it does so in a way that perpetuates the implication that we have to treat employees like computers to be successful.

For big box stores, but B&N are on the decline, while real estate and lease prices have likely risen.

"you staff up" works when you can actually pay for the excess, but B&N clearly don't want to. But you missed the point of my take in that they aren't willing to invest in assets for customer satisfaction. They're on the way out, so why would they care to staff up for holidays either?

I contacted B&N support and they gave me a response that it is due to their fraud detection service. There was no solution to buy. They didn't offer PayPal or another gateway. So I had to walk away.