Re: B&H puts another local camera store out of business (with my

Rita Ä Berkowitz spake thus:

> Ken Hart wrote:
> 
>>> TOTALLY IRRELAVANT! I don't believe in passing out subsidies nor
>>> do I feel I have an obligation to enrich a local merchant. The
>>> merchant need be very competitive if they want loyalty and a
>>> chance at survival.
>>>
>> Spending money in my local community does the following:
>> -- provides employment for other local people who would otherwise
>> have to drive miles to work elsewhere.
> 
> Sorry, but I'll bet these very same people commute out of you
neighborhood
> to get the more lucrative and rewarding jobs.  There's no sense in
wasting
> four years chasing a degree to work at Ace Hardware.

Why impugn Ace Hardware? As a handyman, I spend lots of money there, and 
I could think of far worse places to work.

>> -- provides a tax base to pay for essential services such as police,
>> water, sewer, etc
> 
> Doesn't my property tax take care of that?

Come out to California, where we have this little thing called 
"Proposition 13".
> 
>> Whenever possible, I will buy from the hardware store down the street
>> rather than Home Depot ten miles (and a county) away.
> 
> I would like to sup****t that theory as well, but have you ever looked
> at which big hardware cor****ation these "little" work under? My local
> hardware store is under Ace Hardware and their prices are beyond
> criminal. I'll burn the extra cost in fuel going to Home Depot so
> hopefully those gouging bastards will be run out of town. It's simply
> not worth my time sup****ting the "local" merchants that aren't loyal
> to the community. Price is a good indicator of their community
> loyalty.

Well, as someone who faces the choice all the time whether to shop at 
Ace Hardware or Home Despot, the choice is easy: I avoid the Despot as 
much as possible, and only buy there when I really need to (i.e., when 
the cost savings is considerably more than the aggravation of dealing 
with that monstrosity). For one thing, there's that matter of people who 
actually know the products they sell again, which I'm much more likely 
to find at *any* Ace than the Despot. Then there is the fact that Ace 
Hardware, unlike Home Depot, is *not* a monolithic cor****ation, with 
nearly-identical stores that could have been plopped down by helicopter. 
You see, Ace stores operate as franchises, and are not required to 
adhere to some ironclad set of guidelines that control what they carry 
and how they operate.

To illustrate, there are 3 Ace stores in my area that I shot at, 
depending on what I want and where I am. One of them is unique, in that 
it's an old-style store where instead of browsing shelves, you go up to 
the counter, tell them what you want, and they get it for you. What a 
concept! This store is prospering, the conventional wisdom about the 
Internet and big-box stores to the contrary, because it actually serves 
the needs of the neighborhood.

The other Ace stores have all the things I need when I go to Home Depot 
but can't find there. And if things are a few cents more there, BFD. 
It's worth it.


-- 
Any system of knowledge that is capable of listing films in order
of use of the word "****" is incapable of writing a good summary
and analysis of the Philippine-American War. And vice-versa.
This is an inviolable rule.

- Matthew White, referring to Wikipedia on his WikiWatch site
(http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo.htm)