Is it this bad everywhere?

IveSeenTheLight

chucky wrote: »

i love peasant shooting

Your not a peasant plucker
But a peasant pluckers son
Your only plucking peasants
Till the peasnt plucking done

Try saying that when your drunk or fast

Conrad

fc123 wrote: »

I used to have a similar view about online sales...until my recent experience.

My Daughter hangs out on the shopping centre with mateys (and spend nothing)...then shops (spends money) online (??!)

Likewise we buy lots online, from trainers to books, gifts to holidays, but not highly visible home furnishings as the piccies are not enough to tell you what the products will look like in your home. We personally need to see and touch.

dopester

fc123 wrote: »

Oooops...perhaps it wasn't much good? Anecdotal trade chat is Hotel Chocolat are cleaning up.
I don't know where Conrads premises are either...that would be impt. too.

Where we are going... hot-chocolate at home or in a flask will be quite a luxury for most people.

And isn't it serf - not surf? You're infecting me with your bad ways.

fc123

dopester wrote: »

Where we are going... hot-chocolate at home or in a flask will be quite a luxury for most people.

And isn't it serf - not surf? You're infecting me with your bad ways.

Come on Dopestar...you and me with a flask...the rest of the world like a nice, atomospheric, cosy cafe.

Serfs...really shoots them (and the pheasants) on his estate.;)

fc123

Conrad wrote: »

Likewise we buy lots online, from trainers to books, gifts to holidays, but not highly visible home furnishings as the piccies are not enough to tell you what the products will look like in your home. We personally need to see and touch.

Didn't Martha something Fox of Lastminute fame set up an interactive, furniture website.


Online can't replace everything, obviously, but sits niceley alongside most things.......even the socialising.....forums like this.

You can't beat a good night out though, good company, chat and the rest. Forums can't replace all social interraction....likewise, online retail will fill as many gaps as poss...but real life shopping will always have a market.

It's just going to reduce for a while....plus all the clone stuff has got to sort itself out over the next deacde.

Rents will reduce again...and the whole cycle starts again...by which time I will be looking after lambs near Chesil Beach.;)

dopester

fc123 wrote: »

Come on Dopestar...you and me with a flask...the rest of the world like a nice, atomospheric, cosy cafe.

Serfs...really shoots them (and the pheasants) on his estate.;)

Trouble is fc... if I remember correctly, you got hammered with rent increases due to other firms moving in who could only survive in boom conditions. They helped push up rents, but as soon as they were found out by the beginning of the downturn.. didn't they fold, but left sound businesses like yours having to pay inflated rents that don't reflect realistic market conditions? That is really unfair.

I like your tales of retailing, and you do come across as positive, knowledgeable, focused & very entrepreneurial for your line of work.

wymondham

As I work in lots of different places I'm hearing and witnessing redundancy processes going on in the majority of them. Some companies are on their second and third rounds!

mewbie_2

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Your not a peasant plucker
But a peasant pluckers son
Your only plucking peasants
Till the peasnt plucking done

Try saying that when your drunk or fast

Hmm, yeah.. but actually its pheasant plucker, not peasant plucker. Otherwise the tongue twister joke would revolve around confusing the leading syllables of peasant and plucker resulting in pleasant pucker, which is admittedly amusing, but not so solidly olde English amusing as pheasant and plucker which can result in the accidental pleasant phucker.

Just occasionally we find a topic I know something about, and boy do I like to go on about it.

Edit: And, as it took me a while to realise.. you can't actually pluck a peasant.

jackieb

My son has just finished an apprentiship and has got a job as a trainee. We think he's okay as there are a shortage of people to do his type of job. However, the rig he works on employs some contractors, and once they're finished doing jobs on another rig they're being paid off. My son says there are 40 of them in that one company. Their oil production has been cut right down because of the drop in oil prices.

My husband also works in the oil industry, working in Russia for a UK based company. In February the rig he's on is done for the time being and although he's tried to find out what's happening after that, he doesn't know. He thinks he might be off to Siberia. Someone offered him a job in Mumbai last week and look what's happened there today! He says he can't see much companies taking on due to the low price of oil at the moment. Exxon Mobil, who own the rig he's on cut off most of the phones a couple of weeks ago because they were complaining about the cost of calls and the low price of oil. The poor dears only made $14bn profit in the last quarter as well. :rolleyes:

sheslookinhot

my brother is now on 4 day week with major review in december, when he fears it could be worse. Steel industry.