Em Adespoton

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Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 4th, 2023



  • Then you lucked out.

    I used to buy all sorts of stuff at Canadian Tire in the 90s, and while it was affordable, it almost all broke within 2 years, from CCM bicycles that had their frame welds crack to Hunter kitchen appliances that had power supplies that overheated and failed, to even bouncy balls that would harden and crack. Air pumps where the plastic would crack or the pump rod (which was held in by glue) would disconnect, foldable chairs where the stitching would unravel, knives where the blade would snap.

    The list goes on and on. Never had that volume of problems with any other store I’ve ever shopped at.

    Also, I had relatives that worked in CT in the 90s. They’ve got even worse stories to tell.


  • I have a story from the one time I took my car there… when I got the car back it had a funny smell in it, and the checklist said that the horn was non-functional. This car had the horn on the end of the signal stick instead of on the steering wheel. I immediately tapped the horn to verify that it was indeed working, and one of the mechanics flinched and got this funny look on his face.

    It wasn’t until I got home that I realized what the funny smell was: it was silicone glue. They’d hammered on the steering wheel cap hard enough to break the clips off, and then glued it back on, without mentioning what they’d done.

    This was in the early 90s, and I’ve never been back.






  • Like Trump, Musk revealed his personality early on. In the 1990s when Trump was losing his father’s money in casinos, Musk was making his money by using his father’s money to buy profitable dotcom startups and claiming them as his own. Then he sold them before the market crashed.

    SpaceX has been kind of a blip in all this; all his other companies are very much run in the traditional Musk style though, with him taking credit where luck and other people’s hard work are responsible.








  • I used to be a MEC member/shareholder, around 25 years ago. There was an AGM, we voted on major store policy, and there were sometimes even dividends, but usually we all voted to roll those back into the co-op.

    Back then, it was very much member-owned.

    Since then though, the structure changed significantly, even before the buyout. More and more power was put into the hands of the executive, to try and deal with the cash flow issues the company was having. It didn’t work.