One of the high points of the current economic meltdown is seeing the demise of horrible businesses that should have failed years ago. Yes, the raw elation at seeing a Circuit City or Office Max go belly-up is one of the few pleasures to be had in these dark times.
What are your favorite victims? Who can’t you wait to see on the chopping block?
For me, it’s the local gourmet “take-and-bake” pizza place. In what universe is pizza that you have to take home and cook yourself, which costs twice as much as just ordering a delivery a sustainable business mode? Buh-BYE!
Also, all of the yuppie baby clothing boutiques here in Chicago. They’re all cutesy, comically overpriced, full of weird ironic baby clothing choices for urban parents, and they’re all on the chopping block. SEE ya!
I don’t think anything will match the satisfaction of seeing all those stupid dot-com businesses fail when the tech bubble burst, where supposedly smart people thought “I’ll offer a pointless, low-margin product or service, but I’ll offer it ONLINE and market the crap out of it!”
I like take and bake pizza (Papa Murphy’s). The ingredient quality is far better than, say, Pizza Hut or Papa John’s - the veggie deluxe is my favorite. You also tend to get a lot more of the individual toppings. Plus, no delivery fees or tips necessary.
Oh, you’re a wuss. A couple electronics stores go belly-up and you’re dancing in the streets, probably because you paid too much for an XBox game or something.
If you’re going to root for something, root for full-scale collapse of the socio-economic system as we know it. Go for the gusto. Have some stones, dammit.
The hair salon at American Girls stores. I hate for the “stylists” to be unemployed (though people and animals will always need their hair done), but seeing people pay money to have an overpriced doll’s hair done is one of those things that makes me feel like Vettrianno’s butler.
It’s a long shot, but I hope some of the local megachurches go out pof business. They sell an aspirational (rather than inspriational) sort of religious experience that I find unsettling. They’re like some kind of social club for suburban Stepford wives and their Ken doll spouses. To my jaded eye, it looks like most people attend in order to show off and play the same kind of ‘in crowd’ games that they should’ve outgrown in high scool.
It’s sad to think of the huge amount of the congregants’ money they spend on multimedia extravaganzas and newer, bigger, more grandiose buildings (now with a coffee bar!), instead of helping the poor or whatever it is churches are supposed to do with donations.
Bob Nardelli used to run this show, until he went straight into the toilet almost dragging the chain with him. Now he’s doing the same to the auto industry.
HD lost sight of their main purpose. The day they go under I will celebrate. Low prices my butt, Lowe’s beats them 80% of the time.
Take perfectly good software and great innovation and flush it right down the toilet by buying it, bloating it up, and making it unusable. I’ve been wanting this company to crash for a long, long time.
Fuck you Freejooky! I can find no perverse pleasure in people losing their jobs, homes, and life savings. I’m suprised at most of the rest of you too. I guess you or no one you know goes to work each day not knowing if you will have a job to return to tomorrow. I guess if it doesnt affect you personally, it gives you permission to be an insensitive prick. So fuck you sideways with a porcupine covered in razor blades. (Yeah the economy has me a little on edge.)
In a good economy, I’d be happy to see some businesses fail because I loathe them, but I can’t even get a perverse pleasure about any of them failing anymore. It’s just more bad news when we’re already standing on the precipice of a worldwide economic crisis. We don’t need more bad news.
But if I could conjure up that dark side of my soul, I’d have to say Time Warner.
I’m pleased at Circuit City dying not because they are inherently evil (they used to be fine) but because they fired all their senior employees - and then discovered that people didn’t want to buy $1,000 boxes from clueless newbies.
Around here the take and bake pizzas are a lot cheaper and better than delivery. I think your view is distorted from living in one of the few places in the country with really good pizza.
I don’t know if any tanning salons have gone under, but it would improve the health of the public if they did.
Just because I want to see a failed business, you know, out of business… does not mean that myself or others who feel the same take pleasure in folks losing their jobs. So cut the shit with that accusation already. Sustaining jobs for the sake of jobs sounds oh so nice and sweet on the surface, but isn’t realistic.
