Kroger and people do dumb things and I’m powerless to do anything about it

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Every week I get several emails from the grocery store, run by Kroger. I click on an add, any add, in the email and I get Access Denied. That’s a slap in the face, they send me an email offering a good deal and then tell me I’m denied.

I’ve been getting these emails for months. I finally decided to do something about it. Of course Kroger doesn’t want to be bothered by its customers. There’s no working contact us link in the emails. So I goggled the CEO of Kroger and emailed him. No echo back that they got the email, nothing. Like I said they do not want to hear from their customers, just like most big corporations, they’re busy, they just want us to give them our money and go away. Well, I went away and deal with on line companies.

It cost Kroger money, lots of money to send out the emails. They have a big IT department with managers trying to build as big a department as they can, so the manger can earn more money because he runs a bigger department. That mean it cost Kroger even more money as time goes by. Then there is the advertising department. That’s expensive and adds to the cost of the emails. There are lawyers that make sure the emails meet state and federal requirements and don’t offend someone. More money. And the hidden middle men who earn their living by being in the loop. All to send a useless email out that the customer can’t use.

That’s dumb.

The workers inside Kroger use the company’s computers. I bet that the emails, they send out, look and work fine when viewed on the companies computers. Do high level board members see these emails on computers outside the company, if at all? Probably not. They have people that screen their emails, and other people to do their shopping at Whole Foods.

Has the CEO every looked at one of these emails? Why should he? He has people to do that. Has he every been inside a Kroger store except for an official visit? Why would he? His time is very valuable, he has more important stuff to do. The old idea of HP corporation where the two men that founded the corporation walked around the factory floor and talked to the workers and went to the customers and talked to them about their products is so old fashioned. Look what happened to HP when Carly Fiorina took over and stopped the old ways of doing business and ran the company by the book in the modern way . Hint, the stock price went from $78.00 a share to $13.00.

So Kroger will keep spamming people with email they can’t use, driving customers away, all the time the high level executives will keep giving themselves bigger and bigger raises. That is till we all go to on line shopping.

Stay strong, write on, and shop online.

Professor Hyram Voltage

The Candy Chute

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Sometimes you just got to live your art.

Just before Halloween I saw in the Rose Is Rose newspaper cartoon that MeeMa had built a chute to slide the candy down to trick or treaters. She tied the slide to the hand rail that ran along the front steps of her house.

OK, I can do that. I made a quick trip to the big box hardware store to get a length of 3 or 4 inch diameter plastic pipe. All they had was 2 inch in white. I wanted white so it would show up at night in the poor light.

It was Halloween, and I was in a hurry. I used big tie wraps to hold the pipe to the hand rail of the steps to my front door. The hand rail was not steep enough to make the candy slide to the end of the pipe.

I went into the back yard and found a four foot long stick. I tie wrapped it vertically to the hand rail and lifted the end of the pipe closest to the door higher. That fixed getting the candy to the bottom of the pipe.

Then I tried to slide a little “Fun Sized” bag of M&Ms down the pipe. The bags were too big to fit in the 2 inch pipe.

The tie wraps held the pipe loosely so I could pull the pipe out easily. If I used duct tape, the old stand by, I would have had to tear the tape off and get the cleaner out to get the sticky residue off the pipe. I’m down to my last bottle of cleaner and it’s half empty.

I took a hacksaw and cut the pipe length wise at the one third point. I now have two pieces. One piece is a long trough shaped strip, but isn’t deep enough to reliably keep the candy in the chute as it slides down. The second piece has sides that are high enough to keep the candy in the chute.

I cleaned the chute up, shoving a wet paper towel down the pipe did not get it very clean. The candy now slides very fast down the chute and over shoots the bucket at the bottom. I was sending candy out into the front yard.

I add a 45 degree elbow to the end of the chute as a down spout. Helps but still sending candy into the yard.

The first kids, I had come to the door, had a hard time understanding that they were to stand at the end of the chute and the candy would come to them. In fact the first kid would not move from the chute after he got his candy and stood there waiting for more.

The word got around quickly and kids would crowd around the chute. Some of the older kids would grab the candy before it could fall into the littler kids bag. Thinking back to my past, that is something I would have done. I must have been a greedy kid.

The bottom of the chute, where the candy ends up
Top of the chute

I did practice good safety. I handled the candy with gloves on and the chute was over six feet long. Plus, I wore two masks.

Stay strong, write on, and slide candy slide.

Professor Hyram Voltage