I came back from my last trip to Japan with more than $50 in pens and notebooks, so in a nutshell: the Japanese stationery market is amazing, and even a 7-11 on any random street corner will have a better and dramatically higher quality stationery selection than most big box stores in the US.

> - A high quality manual stapler is really hard to find. I haven't found any equal to my Apsco 2002 stapler which is no longer made. Everything I tried jams more often.

Luckily, the dimensions of a standard staple haven't change in 50+ years, so you can purchase a beautiful used old Ace Pilot for under $15 - http://munk.org/typecast/2014/05/21/stapler-of-the-week-1938... (Or just get a new-used Apsco 2002 on ebay..)

But I agree. We (?) have a tendency to turn iteratively refined utilitarian items into commodities, and in the process, lose the subtle design aspects that made them remarkable in the first place.

That's capitalism in a nutshell. Quality, or "actually working" is not an important value and in time it gets cut out (those who don't get outcompeted by those who do).

That's human nature, not capitalism. Remember the socialist republics of the 20th century? Their goods were shoddier still, because they didn't have enough competition to keep them honest.

Boy that is one of the most inaccurate definition of capitalism I have ever heard. By your definition there would not be any quality product left in US or in any free market. As others state, this is human behavior. Most people does not care about the quality of the trivial items, so they prefer cheap but functioning goods. For niche consumers, prices will be high and production will be less. There are however things block actual capitalism to function well, such as protectionist policies that prevents you importing superb Japanese staples and pens cheaply.

Yeah absolutely. There's definitely no market for high quality items and people are most decidedly not willing to pay extra for quality. Nope, everyone wants the exact same mass produced crap, which is why everyone shops only at the dollar store and why the terms handmade, handcrafted, and artisinal are now in the popular lexicon.

Hold on, there's no "mass" market for high quality items. If you want extreme quality handmade stuff you can find it, but you may need to look for it rather than just go to "box store" and you pay a lot more.

Do you know about http://www.jetpens.com ? They import lots of stuff from Japan. It is a fun place to get interesting pens, etc.

the selection of Drafting Pencils and stationary are top notch!

> I've never been to Japan, so I'm curious to know what it's like there.

There's no comparison, Japan is light years ahead of the U.S. when it comes to stationery. Premium stationery items in Japan are often more technically-oriented than those of Western Europe, which has more of a conservative/old-money feel to it.

For instance, I recently bought a Sharbo X LT3 three-way multi-pen (two ink colors plus a mechanical pencil component). The pen is all-metal, perfectly balanced, no wider than a regular pen, and (with Jetstream ballpoint refills) writes beautifully.

> All sorts of high-quality stationery are becoming impossible to find.

I'm starting to feel like a weirdo looking for decent bookmarks.

I've been a coder for 27 years. My experience was that it was always far more effective to apply for jobs with dead-tree cover letters, resumes and envelopes, all on matching stationery.

I prefer a formal yet understated look, either pale blue or pale grey watermarked cotton bond.

A while back I looked for matching paper and envelopes at office depot. I quite sadly found a few scattered boxes of paper and envelopes, but none that matched each other.

I have two partially empty boxes of paper but no envelopes. I know I can order them online but I far prefer to support brick-and-mortar stores.

I went shopping for what I thought was a desk lamp but it turned out I wanted a "task lamp". I found just the right lamp at Sears.com so I dropped by a Sears store in Portland.

"No, we don't carry lamps but you can find them all on our website," said the cheery young salesgirl.

"Yes I know, I found just the lamp I want at Sears.com," I solemnly replied.

"But the reason I am here today is so you will have a job."

Her face fell; that had simply not occurred to her.

Whether it occurred to her or not, she most likely has absolutely nothing to do with Sears' inventory decisions, so I don't understand what the need of saying something like that is.

Perhaps to get other people to realize the impact of online-all-the-time shopping has on brick and mortar retail and the people it employs, and the human contact lost.

I might have said the same thing, with no malice.

Then your problem is with the corporate office, and not individual salespeople who don't need to be reminded that they're being obsoleted by online shopping, and who can't do anything about it even if you do.

I don't think she was aware that the corporate office was working towards obsoleting her.

I eventually found the exact same lamp at Fred Meyer.

One time I went to pay my AT&T bill. "Use the kiosk" they said. "No I want to pay in cash." "We can take cash but there's a fifteen dollar service charge for that."

"I just took the bus twenty miles so you will have a job."

What I'm hearing is that ignorance is bliss.

I was pointing out that her management had instructed her to make herself unemployable.

And she's supposed to do what? Disobey, when it's already been made clear that management doesn't care about her job? Apart from boosting your own ego or scoring points against a low-wage retail worker, I really don't see anybody benefiting from your pointing this out.

Sears grew up as a mail-order catalogue merchant — they were the Amazon of the day, tookin de jerbs of local brick-and-mortars.

Or more likely her face fell because she took it as an insult.

(I don't mean to come across as standoffish -- quite the opposite. I'm just being curious) How that could be taken as an insult?

Offering charity to someone can be seen as putting yourself above them socially, and someone could read that as the primary intent. She might see him as denigrating her job. Especially if it is after she just offered help and the he seemed non-plussed.

I don't know if that was the case here. There is a lot of phrasing and body language involved as well, which we aren't seeing in his retelling (other than her own, "face fell," which he manages to read large amount into the same as she might have read (or misread) out of his).