Silver Tongue
The entirely unnecessary demise of Barnes & Noble

conspicuouslad:

audreyii-fic:

“Whether the Andrea Gail rolls, pitch-poles, or gets driven down, she winds up, one way or another, in a position from which she cannot recover. Among marine architects this is known as the zero-moment point – the point of no return.” –Sebastian Junger, “The Perfect Storm”

Posts like this aren’t my usual fare, but there’s a lot of readers on Tumblr. So y’all might be interested – or, if not, you really should be.

On Monday, this went down:

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That’s the bloodless, matter-of-fact, ho-hum business event way of describing it. Let me paint you a different picture.

On Monday morning, every single Barnes & Noble location – that’s 781 stores – told their full-time employees to pack up and leave. The eliminated positions were as follows: the head cashiers (those are the people responsible for handling the money), the receiving managers (the people responsible for bringing in product and making sure it goes where it should), the digital leads (the people responsible for solving Nook problems), the newsstand leads (the people responsible for distributing the magazines), and the bargain leads (the people responsible for keeping up the massive discount sections). A few of the larger stores were able to spare their head cashiers and their receiving managers, but not many.

Just about everyone lost between 3 and 7 employees. The unofficial numbers put the total around 1,800 people.

People.

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We’re not talking post-holiday culling of seasonal workers. This was the Red Wedding. Every person laid off was a full-time employee. These were people for whom Barnes & Noble was a career. Most of them had given 5, 10, 20 years to the company. In most cases it was their sole source of income.

There was no warning.

But it gets worse.

Keep reading

Holy shit, between this and Sam’s Club just flat out closing their stores with no warning, I have to wonder how legal this is? It would be one thing to say that “We may have to cut you in x amount of time, get ready for it” but no, they promise that everything will be fine to these people and then pull the rug out from under them.

I’m willing to bet they lied to their employees specifically to prevent their shareholders from panicking and selling off stock. But there has to be some kind of protection against this kind of mass layoff, this is entirely unethical.

the-weird-vector:

holy shit i’ve never seen the whole thing

hetaliagurl5:
“ parks-and-rex:
“ onigod:
“ parks-and-rex:
“ parks-and-rex:
“”
if I see someone in the theater recording.. ”
Flagging bootlegs online like
” ”
reblogging for the last part 😂
”

hetaliagurl5:

parks-and-rex:

onigod:

parks-and-rex:

parks-and-rex:

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Originally posted by angelisironman

if I see someone in the theater recording..

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Flagging bootlegs online like

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reblogging for the last part 😂

comcastkills:

tattooedheart:

comcastkills:

people who aggressively hate cats are weird

people who hate cats are who u should look out for. they hate cats because cats will not be controlled by a human and that fact upsets so many people.

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charlesoberonn:

helly-watermelonsmellinfellon:

shiftingpath:

reygf:

i’m watching olympic snowboarding and this guy just checked his phone before going down the hill and put it in his pocket.. he brought his phone down the hill at the olympics… this is so chaotic 

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OMG!

Is the guy op is talking about the same olympian at this guy?

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konduits:

creepturtle:

literally my favorite part of dishonored is that mission where you sneak into a costume party dressed as yourself and sign your own name in the guestbook and NOBODY catches on

#and all the nobility are like ‘haha you’re dressed as that guy that’s murdering all of us? hot’

ladyloveandjustice:

fandomsandfeminism:

lazdrax:

fandomsandfeminism:

“What? Like, a disabled protagonist? How would that even work? How could someone with a disability be the hero in an action show?” local anime trash boy wonders while sitting next to his box sets of Full Metal Alchemist, showing no hint of irony or self awareness. 

but is Ed really disabled? sure I get he lost his arm and leg

but he’s still able to move and do things perfectly

He has prosthetics. Having prosthetic limbs (that more than once break amd need repair) doesnt make him not disabled

It should also be noted that Ed:

-had to undergo very painful and lengthy surgery to get automail 

-had to relearn how to write because of his prosthesis (there’s a post going around showing he had to switch hands etc) and his handwriting is likely a lot worse due to that. This means automail isn’t super good for delicate work, unsurprising, considering what it’s made of. 

-experiences phantom limb pain and therefore other associated stuff (this was only really shown in the manga)

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-cannot go anywhere too cold without changing his automail or he’ll get really bad frost bite and it will stop working

-cannot go anywhere too hot, period, because the metal attached and under his skin will overheat and he will be badly burned

-Reattachment is painful, but needs to be done frequently if he breaks or outgrows his automail

- it’s HEAVY so much so that the strain has the potential to cause stress on his body, enough that it’s even theorized as possibly stunting his growth.

-it requires really frequent maintenance or it will break down, as shown by how when he first moved out he forgot to do that and it…broke down.

-when it does need to be repaired, it takes time to do that, during which Ed uses regular prosthetics (that usually don’t quite fit him).

-costs a lot of money (not a problem for Ed due to high state alchemist salary/having mechanics as surrogate family, but explicitly noted to being the reason why most people in the fmaverse stick to regular prosthetics along with the painful surgery)

So Ed can’t actually do everything perfectly and experiences a lot of extra hassle, problems and pain people without automail don’t have to deal with!  And any advantages he does have are more suited to fighting than day to day life (being able to incorporate weapons/fake out people who want to blow up his arm). 

Arakawa did her research and thought it through. Automail is by no means a magic cure that solves all problems associated with losing a limb.

zendayascoleman:

older american fans of the olympics are Big Mad about some of these young/outspoken athletes. chloe kim tweeting inbetween her runs, adam rippon being sassy and himself in interviews, red gerard dropping f bombs because of his excitement for a gold medal. they’re so mad because older, conservative fans of the olympics see athletes as belonging to them, a prop in their extreme nationalism and a way to be better than other countries. but these athletes are here for themselves, for their own dreams, with their own personalities and reactions and none of these conservatives know how to handle it. they hate that chloe kim was proud to ride for both south korea and america, they hate that red gerard overslept, they hate that adam rippon is outspoken about his dislike of pence, that gus kenworthy is as well. 

too bad so sad, buddy. 

anyway, 2018′s olympians are Special and i would Die For Them thanks for coming to my ted talk.