Saving the economy one breakfast sandwich at a time

Subway is now serving breakfast!

Full disclosure.  Subway is not one of my advertisers.  I don’t expect Jared’s face will be popping up here any time soon.  I don’t get any discounts at the local Subway shop.  They don’t even give me an extra slice of cheese or take care to put actually red tomato slices on my turkey sub.  I am not at Subway at the moment.  I’m home, on my front porch, with no plans to head out to Subway for breakfast now that Subway’s serving breakfast.  I’m hardly a regular customer anyway and I’m probably not going to become one now that Subway’s serving breakfast.

So I have no financial or personal stake in telling you this.

I’m thrilled Subway’s now serving breakfast!

Tell you why.

Because this is the first example I’ve seen in a long, long time of a national chain of businesses trying to make more money by doing something to attract more customers and offering existing customers a new service that those customers might actually want, need, and enjoy.

I’ve whined about this before and I’m sure I’ll whine about it again, but the business model the big box stores, and the littler box stores, have pinned their greedy hopes on is, basically, that every customer who comes into the store to spend one dollar ought to leave having spent two.

Customers aren’t human beings who should be given good value and good service for their money.  They’re walking wallets that need to be pried open, turned upside down, and shaken until there’s nothing left in them but a library card and the stub of a ticket from the dry cleaner’s for laundry that was picked up months ago.

The usual practice is to cajole, annoy, or trick customers into parting with the extra buck on a “deal” that is not actually much of a deal.  This is the Would You Like Fries With That? principle, and, as MaryRC pointed out in a comment the last time I whined about this,  it’s been going on for a long time, since well before the Recession.  It just feels more common, insistent, desperate, and blatant these days.

But there are places that go that extra mile, and not to serve you, but to try to fleece you.  Their goal isn’t to get you to spend more money on something you wanted than you’d planned---the Supersize It strategy.  It’s to get you to buy something you had no thought of buying when you walked in the door.  Usually this involves trying to pass off as being on “sale” something that if you had time to do the math or make the comparisons you’d figure out quickly was decidedly not.

Which makes every trip to the cash register not the completion of your business with the store but the beginning of a shake-down.

This is what the poor minimum wage workers the company is forcing to be their un-commissioned hard sales force get up in the morning and head out to work with songs in their hearts for---to face long lines of customers who regard them as phony, lying, dishonest, and annoying.

So everybody’s having fun.

Then, the other way the Big Business has hit upon to make money is to charge more for less.  This isn’t just a matter of putting a new box of cereal on the shelf that is as tall as the old boxes but half as deep, knowing that most customers won’t notice that they’re buying half as much cereal at a lot more than half the price.

It means cutting store hours, cutting staff, shrinking inventory, turning out lights, turning down the heat and not turning up the air conditioning, and having the cleaning crews in once a month instead of once a week, making shopping more and more unpleasant and frustrating.  And if this seems to be driving customers away, then step up the efforts to gouge and con the saps who still wander in because they haven’t figured it out or they have no other choice.

So, in a business climate where when I go to the nearest chain video store to rent, say, Some Like It Hot and have to hear how I can pre-order a copy of God of War III for PS3 for only five dollars down and no savings on delivery before I’m allowed to pay and get on my merry way, it’s nice that if I decide to go next door to order a sandwich I’ll see just a polite and cheerful sign that essentially says, "If you like our turkey subs, maybe you’ll like our egg and bacon breakfast sandwiches too” and “If you’re looking for a quick and tasty breakfast on your way to work or school tomorrow and you’re tired of McDonald’s, why don’t you give us a try?  We’ve got great coffee!”

It’s the difference between being told, pretty much, “We think you’re so stupid you’re accidentally spending five dollars to rent a classic movie to watch with your kids when what you really want to do is spend sixty bucks to buy an M-rated video game you wouldn’t in a million years let your kids play” and being asked “Is there anything else we can do to help you?”

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The last time I wrote to whine about this, some of my readers felt I was blaming the sales clerks who have to try to sell sell sell or risk losing their jobs.  In fact, I’m very sympathetic to the clerks.  I think they’re being used and abused.  Which is why I always listen to their sales pitches and also a reason I resent the practice---I know what’s going on and I want to help them but I don’t want to encourage their corporate masters.  A trip to the store shouldn’t be a guilt trip as well.

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Updated late Saturday afternoon: Revelation!  Retailers are discovering that if you don’t sell things customers want to buy they stop coming to your store.

Comments

[DaveH]

The local Office Max always has their clerks ask for a zip code at checkout. This quickly grew tiresome as I live a mile away from the mall. I have since begun answering 'no' when they ask and then quickly telling the clerk that I mean no personal offence but that it's none of corporate Office Max's business. They usually shrug.
Doing my part:)

[Victoria]

Some years back, I went to a weekly meditation group that met on Sunday evenings in a wicker store in Berkeley. It was so pleasant to turn those comfortable chairs into a circle and do our thing and I was grateful for the space. So when I heard that the owner wanted to go to a retreat but couldn't pull together enough staff to keep the store open all week, I offered to give her a day for free. She accepted immediately and plopped a pile of four books into my arms. "Read these - mainly the bookmarked sections, but it would be nice if you could sort of skim the rest and then let's meet on Thursday to talk through the approach you need to take with customers." - Okay, I was a little surprised at the speed-read seminar assignment but I took a dive into the books nonetheless and was immediately and completely appalled by every single notion in those tomes, all of which you can boil down to this: "People have no idea what they want. You've got x number of minutes to make them believe they want something. Here's how to scope out fast which thing is the most likely thing to force on them. If they leave without buying you are a failure."

The owner preferred missing the retreat to having me fill in for 7 hours on a Tuesday in a conscientious objector status to the hard-sell-to-morons school of retail.

[CathiefromCanada]

And sometimes you can barely find the clerk to pay for an item because the cash register is almost surrounded with last-minute impulse buys, everything from candy to batteries. When the kids were little once, I was in the corner store with them and my stock excuse for not getting any of this junk for them was to keep on saying "sorry, we can't afford it" everytime they asked for something. So you can probably anticipate what happened -- this little old man came up and silently pressed a dollar bill into my hand. Well, I was so embarrassed that I left without buying anything at all.
I asked the clerk about him the next time I was in and he said the man was a little strange, but well-meaning. But I tell you, it was the last time I used the "can't afford it" excuse in earshot of anyone else. I just hope he felt he had helped out my poor poor little kids...

[actor212]

Lance, is that Blockbuster (or whatever chain) physically delayed you, or that they had a sign by the cash register?

Because if it's a sign, somehow I think you've placed a value judgment here.

[fillyjonk]

What I really, really loathe are the groceries (some do this) where, as you're checking out, the checker HAS to ask you (I presume: or risk losing his/her job) whether you want their "Bonus Buy" or somesuch.

it's never ever something I want. And I feel intruded upon. And I know they're playing on my kind nature, where it's hard for me to say no to a request. And that I feel rude telling the cashier "no." It's all a game to break my will and make me buy.

Once I figured that out, saying "No" got a lot easier. But why make the poor cashiers ask every single dang customer? It seems kind of cruel when you're not making a lot of money at your job to also have to shill Fruit Roll-Ups or some dang thing.

I also object to being asked for a phone number, e-mail address. Zip code I'm not so troubled about, simply because I know there's no way for me to be spammed via Zip code. (And I often shop far from home, so giving a non-local Zip code generates cognitive dissonance in the cashier.)

[xaaronx]

"People have no idea what they want."

This, unfortunately, is often true. I work in a coffee shop, and my basic assumption is that my job is to get people out of there happy enough with us that they want to come back and spend money with us again (and hopefully tip, because that buys my gas and groceries).

A lot of people come in, know what they want and need to get their drink and get on to work. Other people wander in and kind of look at the menu board, seemingly dazed and usually with some of the hurried people behind them. They came in and got in line, so I think I'm safe in assuming they want to buy something, but a lot of times I have to push them towards something (especially when they want to be by the register, maybe talking to me which means I can't give them a quick "do you need a minute to think?" and help the next person).

I'm not a fan of the hard sell--and respond badly to it myself--but while you may walk in knowing exactly what you want, a lot of the public does not. Just a little something to keep in mind. Maybe I should go all deep and comment on the consumer mindset a la "Lost In the Supermarket" here (they want something and don't know what it is), but for now I just try to deal with it pragmatically and help the people who walk in the door, whether they know what they want or not.