Ok so this is going to be long and I don't do TL:DR so either read this or shut the fuck up.
On Monday I got a typed flyer in my mailbox from my mailman that has been with USPS for 25 years. He explained that today was his last day of employment with the post office because of how Amazon is going to be handled.
A while back there was a bid put in to have Amazon prime shipments delivered on Sundays. Well that sounds great you say right? Always more to the story and that is what this is about.
Well when my postman started it was agreed he didn't work on Sundays which for him was great as he is religious....like super religious and such. Which to me is fine dude never pushed that on anyone or at least me. Dude is the Need Flanders of post office in PA.
The postmaster over him said he was going to be written up each time he failed to show on Sunday. Well he tried to explain his position and to me it is valid and been that way since I have known him at least.
Doesn't matter to them and for that he attempted to give his two weeks. Well his postmaster said then you will be here this Sunday or you are terminated......well obviously he won't be so today is his last day.
This is a growing problem of America and consumerism going forward people. Small ripples now will become big waves in the future I promise. We have already lost many family owned businesses here were I live and the hardware store will soon go.
Don't believe how places like Amazon are fucking the world? Go into a GameStop and look around. It doesn't have many games in it. Looks like a hottopic took a shit in there with all the garbage that isn't games litters the floor.
Maybe I am just being that old man with a cane and reading more into shit than I should, but I don't feel I really am with this.
My question for you is with you save that little bit of time to buy from Amazon and drive that knife deeper into the community you live in, or will you get out of your house and at the very least try to find it within your local area and perhaps keep that money working for you?
I know that it is impossible to boycott the USPS as it is a fixture of America.....I can limit my interactions with them and I assure you I will find the alternative way as often as I can, but Amazon?
Never again. Just never and I canceled my memebership to them and will not be renewing it.
GameStop as a business has a shelf life; it may not survive the next round of consoles unless they do focus on selling non-game products. Remember when Microsoft announced the Xbox One at E3 and said that disc games were non-transferable because of the DRM built into the system? One disc would only work on the first console that scanned it (unless your family plan had multiple Xboxes). Microsoft almost killed GameStop entirely in 2013 until they reversed that policy.
The cost of creating physical media and packaging, the cost of distribution, the cost of buying/renting shelf space at retail stores, the loss in revenue to used game sales and the loss in revenue due to unsold physical copies make physical games a lose-lose for the publishers and developers. Not to mention the man months/man years added to game projects to have them function properly off of physical media - that's not as large of an issue anymore because you are no longer allowed to literally "play the game off disc". You have to do either full installs or iterative installs with known stop points.
It makes very little sense for companies to ship box titles, minus the "grandma saw it on the shelf at walmart and bought it for jonny for Christmas". That can easily be replaced with download codes on the shelf in a box.