Never On Sunday

I had to run an errand at Best Buy today, picking up replacement batteries for our cordless phone, as the current batch, while rechargeable, had progressed to the point of holding only a few minutes’ charge. The experience wasn’t exactly consumer hell, but it was a far cry from what I remember of Best Buy when I first started shopping there. They’ve still got staff eager to help you find things to buy, but it’s grown misinformed, and aims at bigger-ticket items. I was sent twice to the wrong place—first to the all-purpose batteries, then to the cell phones—before finally being directed to the proper section of the store, only to find they didn’t carry the appropriate batteries any more, part of the ongoing program of planned obsolesence. And in place of the previous automatic reply, “We’ll order it for you,” I was told, “I guess we don’t have it.” Ultimately, I had to to go Radio Shack for a brand of battery I don’t recognize.

It echoed eerily the slow decline of Barnes & Noble, and after it Borders, in book retailing, my recent complaints of Toyota’s maintenance department and, come to think of it, lots of chains that build an empire on quality and service only to descend gradually towards the lowest common denominator.

What makes this such a common story? I don’t know enough about business to know, and I’m curious. My best guess is the continual, downward pressure of short term profit concerns. It’s a lot easier to cut training, salaries, or product lines than to ride out a downturn, especially for executives whose income depends on bonuses for short-term stock values that benefit big speculators without growing the economy in a substantial way and not on long-term dividends that benefit investors and do help the economy grow. If my guess is right, and short-term concerns are the problem, then the $64,000—nay, $64 trillion—question is how to divorce that kind of short-term thinking from business without destroying the nature and benefits of a free market. I’m sure I don’t know that, either, but I sure wish I did.