Business

Black Friday

The shopping day after Thanksgiving of dubious value.

Black Friday is the big shopping day after Thanksgiving and is considered the start of the Christmas shopping season. It’s the day retailers offer discounts on all sorts of items, creating a surge of shoppers out for the best deals. These days, while some of the biggest sales are limited to Black Friday, most retailers start offering “Black Friday” sales ahead of time in the days leading up to the day (and then continuing the sales the days following it, extending Black Friday in both directions).

The name Black Friday comes from late 1950s / early 1960s Philadelphia. People would descend on the city the day after Thanksgiving causing vehicle traffic & herds of people shuffling around the city – suburban shoppers coming to town for the day, relatives visiting for Thanksgiving, fans in town for Saturday’s Army–Navy Game with a day to kill, shoplifters, etc. To describe this chaotic mess the Philadelphia police called the day Black Friday.

Over the years, to try and separate the day from a nickname that implied chaos and headaches, attempts were made to rebrand Black Friday. In the 1960s Philadelphia retailers tried to have this day called “Big Friday” but it didn’t catch on. Eventually they accepted the name but with the spin that the “black” referred to their profits. Even this new interpretation came with the myth that retailers operated at a loss all year and relied on Black Friday and holiday shopping to take them out of the red and into the black financially. While this red to black was never true Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping days of the year and can make up 20-40% of a store’s annual sales.

Shop till you drop

Philadelphia and certain other cities have had Black Friday for decades but it took until the 1990s for it to become a nationwide event. Perhaps not surprisingly it has also become an international shopping event with at least 129 countries using Black Friday to generate sales. International Black Fridays are still held around the same time as the American version despite the absence of a Thanksgiving to pin it to.

The same companies who pushed to make Black Friday a day you’re supposed to buy things, also invented Cyber Monday as a day you’re supposed to buy things. Begun in 2005 Cyber Monday is the Monday after Black Friday when people would supposedly go to work and shop online. This wasn’t true at the time but by pushing this idea it actually became true. Cyber Monday is now the biggest online shopping day of the year in America.

Small Business Saturday is the day after Black Friday and was invented by American Express in 2010. Its goal is to encourage people to shop locally in small businesses … and of course spend more money.

Amazon launched Prime Day in 2015 as a sort of Christmas in July Black Friday sale. That said Amazon has a history of increasing their prices before they release their “deals” for Prime Day. Camelcamelcamel is a price history site that helps shoppers decide whether or not Amazon “deals” are worth it.

A perhaps silver lining to these invented days of commerce is GivingTuesday. This is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving when people are encouraged to donate to charities.

Is it worth it?

All of that said, Black Friday is not what it once was. The days of people lining up in the dark before stores opened, the grotesque violence, for doorbuster deals on big ticket items, are largely over. As mentioned many retailers begin offering Black Friday deals in advance of Black Friday. Some other holidays actually offer better discounts than Black Friday – President’s Day, for example, typically offers bigger discounts on appliances and mattresses. Some companies run the scam of raising prices in the days leading up to Black Friday to then offer a “discount” back down to the previous price. Bait-and-switch deals are also used to lure in customers with the possibility of big savings on scarce items, hoping they’ll shop for other things once there.

There isn’t one answer as to whether shopping on Black Friday is worth it. It depends on the sale and whether or not you really need something. Look into the price history of an item to see if it is really being discounted or not. Shop around for the best deals. Only buy what you need – buying more stuff is not the path to happiness.

Added info: while Black Friday may be a day for big sales, the practice of beginning the Christmas shopping season the day after Thanksgiving existed decades before Black Friday. Thanksgiving parades, most notably the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, end with Santa Claus as the finale. Santa’s appearance ushers in, quite literally, the end of Thanksgiving and the beginning of the Christmas season. Further, in 1939 President Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving from the last Thursday in November to the fourth Thursday in November, specifically to give shoppers (and retailers) an extra week of Christmas shopping (an extra week being dependent on the number of Thursdays in a given year’s November).

If you are feeling nostalgic for the simpler holiday shopping of times gone by you can browse old Sears Wishbooks.

And finally, the Philadelphia area not only gave us the name for Black Friday but it also gave us another day, Mischief Night, the night before Halloween when teens cause havoc.

Monster Cereals

The seasonal cereal Halloween treat.

Autumn brings seasonal foods – pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin beer, apple cider, and monster cereals. Created in 1971 by General Mills, monster cereals are a line of sugary cereals with cartoon mascots based on classic Universal Monsters.

Cereal mascots as we know them began in 1933 with the Rice Krispies characters of Snap, Crackle and Pop. After WWII with televised commercials cereal mascots became animated, increasing the competition for attention & dollars. In the late 1960s General Mills had new flavoring ideas and was in search of a marketing strategy that would appeal to kids. They had a chocolate and a strawberry flavoring that, when added to milk, would flavor the milk like chocolate or strawberry. What they needed were mascots to sell the cereal.

Laura Levine of the ad agency Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, who had been hired to help sell these new cereals, was the person who had the inspired idea of using monsters. Introduced in 1971 Count Chocula and Franken Berry were the first monster cereal creations, based on the classic horror monsters of Dracula and Frankenstein (or “Frankenstein’s monster” if we’re being pedantic). In 1973 the ghost Boo Berry (whose animated voice was loosely modeled off of actor Peter Lorre) was added to the lineup, selling a blueberry flavored cereal.

monster cereal collage — Various monsters have been a part of monster cereals over the years.

Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry have been the reliable trio of monster cereal flavors since the 1970s but other flavors have been tried. Frute Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy were both been launched, discontinued, relaunched, and discontinued again over the years with their flavoring reconfigured at different times. In 2021 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of monster cereals General Mills began selling “Monster Mash” boxes, which are a mix of the monster cereal flavors. In 2023 the zombie themed, caramel apple flavored, Carmella Creeper was released as the latest new monster cereal. Finally, monster cereals used to be available year round but in 2010 they became a seasonal product, rising from the darkness every autumn Halloween season (but you can search for them all year round).

Frankenstool

One curious side effect of the Franken Berry strawberry flavoring was realized in 1972 when a 12 year old boy was admitted to the hospital with pink / red poop. Documented by the University of Maryland Medical School the condition of “Franken Berry stool” was publicized in the paper “Benign red pigmentation of stool resulting from food coloring in a new breakfast cereal (the Franken Berry stool).” Later it was discovered that Boo Berry would change poop green.

The formulation of both cereals was eventually changed to avoid this.

A deep dive into Monster Cereals.

Slippery Rail Season

The annual autumnal slow-down of regional rail is due to crushed leaves releasing oil on the tracks.

After the leaves change into their autumnal colors they fall to the ground. The ones that fall on rail lines are responsible for slower trains. As trains roll on down the line they crush any leaves on the rails, releasing pectin which acts as a low-friction grease making it harder to control the train. This is even worse when it rains. It becomes harder to slow down a train but also harder to accelerate again, resulting in delays. This is slippery rail season.

Transit organizations try and deal with leaves in a variety of ways. Trains & cars equipped with pressure-washing machines spray the tracks to remove the residue and uncrushed leaves (NJ Transit calls the train that does this the “Aqua Train”). Some organizations will also apply a mixture of gel & sand to increase traction.

Added info: another place you want traction is Pamplona, Spain during the Festival of San Fermín and the running of the bulls. Every morning, before humans and bulls run down the tight cobble stone streets of Pamplona, crews clean all trash from the streets as well as coat several sections of the route with a chemical anti-slip substance.

How SEPTA deals with leaves in the Philadelphia area.

An extended explanation from the MBCR on how they clean slippery rails in New England.

Corporate Jargon

The intentionally confusing language of business, politics, and advertising that helps the speaker fit in, lie, and pretend to say something when saying nothing.

After WWII there was increasing interest in the sociology of leadership, how groups of people interact, etc. The military as well as corporations (such as General Electric, AT&T, IBM, etc.) wanted to know the most efficient ways to run their organizations. They wanted to know how workers could find personal fulfillment in the workplace while also increasing profits. They turned to researchers and consultants to help them manage their growing workforces. This was the dawn of corporate jargon.

Corporate jargon (e.g. customer-centric, CSAT, flywheel, hard stop, disrupt, in the loop, stakeholders, value added, value stream, synergy, restructure, disrupt, circle-back, think outside of the box, paradigm shift …) is a product of post-WWII consulting. Corporate jargon is the language of white-collar business – it’s metaphors, acronyms, euphemisms, and other linguistic tools used to dress up ideas.

Mid-century consultants peppered their advice with this new business speak. Their clients heard these terms and used the same jargon towards their coworkers, who then told other coworkers, etc. Over time the business lexicon changed & grew as it spread around the world like a virus.

Doublespeak

Corporate jargon is a form of doublespeak and doublespeak is designed to deceive. It’s a way to obfuscate the truth. George Orwell’s ideas of “doublethink” and “newspeak” in Nineteen Eighty-Four are the basis of our modern idea of doublespeak. You find doublespeak not just in business but in politics and advertising as well. It’s a way of speaking that can make it seem like you’re saying something when you’re saying nothing at all. It can make the simple seem complex. More dangerously it can make intolerable concepts seem benign – “downsizing” instead of “we’re laying people off”, “gaming” instead of “gambling”, “collateral damage” instead of “we accidentally killed/hurt civilians.”

In the closing of his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language (which you can download here) Orwell says that “Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Doublespeak isn’t about communication it’s designed to achieve conformity, or as Joseph Goebbels said, “We do not talk to say something, but to obtain a certain effect.”

The court of King Louis XIV found numerous ways to emulate him including unneeded anal fistula surgery.

The in-crowd

Despite knowing that corporate jargon is nonsense people keep using it, and not just to lie or confuse. Using this kind of speech can serve as a signifier that you’re part of the powerful in-crowd, that you’re a serious member of the workplace. Linking right back to how corporate jargon spread in the first place, people use the words & phrases they hear their manager say and they, in turn, use the same words when talking with coworkers.

Using corporate speak is but the latest example in a long line of things subordinates have done to curry favor with their superiors. In the mid 17th century French King Louis XIV began to lose his hair (a side effect of syphilis). He turned to wearing a wig to hide this problem. Soon other members of court also took to wearing wigs so as to copy the style of the king and seek his favor. More extreme is when Louis required a surgery for an anal fistula and, again to be like the boss, other members of court also got the surgery (even if it wasn’t needed). In the court of Louis XVI & Marie Antoinette some women got special pouf hair styles constructed to advertise that they had been inoculated against smallpox just like the king & queen had been — people finding ways to signal that they are (or want to be) like the people in power.

People have always found ways to appeal to those in power and to signal their membership in a tribe. People want to be a part of the in-crowd. While corporate jargon is relatively new the motivations behind it are nothing new.

Bonus: have fun (while a part of you dies) using a corporate jargon generator.

The king, George Carlin on soft language and doublespeak.

On the usage of corporate jargon.

Muffler Men

The roadside giants of the 1960s used to lure in customers.

Muffler men are the giant fiberglass statues found along American roadsides. For 10 years starting in 1962 the International Fiberglass company of California turned out hundreds of figures in a variety of styles. The first was a 20ft Paul Bunyan holding an axe for the Paul Bunyan Cafe on Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona but later figures included cowboys, Indians, astronauts, golfers, vikings, etc. While their heights ranged from 14-25ft tall they all tended to have a similar basic pose (because the tooling to create new poses was expensive). The basic pose was to have the arms extended to hold something (such as a car muffler, hence the nickname).

While these three muffler men are different in style the basic design is the same. The Paul Bunyan on the right most likely had an axe but now holds an American flag.

These roadside giants were sold as attention getters. Similar to Googie architecture, muffler men were built to catch the attention of drivers as they sped down the road. An American Oil gas station in Las Vegas installed a Paul Bunyan in the early 1960s and reported that their sales doubled after installing the giant. This was the beginning of an “invasion” of giants around America. The craze lasted for about a decade until the price of materials increased and the novelty wore off in the early 1970s. As for the price, a new character originally cost between $1,800 to $2,800 depending on the complexity, but today these giant pieces of Americana can fetch between $15,000 to $20,000 or more.

The ice cream man and the American Indian are basically the same design but with a few modifications. The Mortimer Snerd muffler man on the right is the same design but with a different head.

Added info: you can still find muffler men around America. This map from RoadsideAmerica shows you where to find them and what kinds of statues they are. You can also find more examples of these giants on Roadside Architecture as well as American Giants.

Sunglasses

Humans have been making devices to shield their eyes from the sun for thousands of years. Today one company dominates the market.

Living around the Arctic where the bright sunlight reflects off the ice & snow, the indigenous peoples of North America & Greenland developed the earliest sunglasses. These 4,000 year old proto-sunglasses were carved from a variety of materials (ivory, antler, wood, etc.) and featured very thin slits allowing the wearer to see while keeping their eyes protected by blocking excessive sunlight. This idea has been recreated many times in a variety of styles from the 1930s to the present.

The traditional “sunglasses” of the Arctic have been reinvented many times over the years.

The Venetians, who had been making clear corrective eyeglasses since the 13th century, were among the first to produce sunglasses with glass. In the 18th century the glass makers of Murano produced green-tinted eyeglasses (as well as what resemble handheld mirrors but with transparent green glass) through which wealthy Venetians could look across the water while protecting their eyes from reflected light. Green glasses were also thought to help with eye strain caused by long hours of reading.

Venetians used green glass to protect their eyes while soldiers in the American Civil War used a variety of colors.

By the 19th century it was not uncommon for soldiers, on both sides of the American Civil War, to wear colored spectacles of blue/gray/green to protect their eyes while marching in the sun. But sunglasses were still primarily utilitarian. They didn’t become a fashionable part of mainstream culture until the 20th century.

20th Century Sunglasses

In the early 20th century Sam Foster had a plastics company that primarily sold women’s hair accessories, but as the trend in women’s hair changed to shorter hair styles (negating the need for so many hair accessories), he had to find a new product to sell. In 1929 he began selling inexpensive plastic sunglasses to beachgoers for 10 cents a pair on the Atlantic City boardwalk. This was the beginning of the Foster Grant eyewear company. Foster Grant sunglasses became the shades of Hollywood celebrities which helped make sunglasses not just about protecting your eyes but also about fashion. Sunglasses could now be about style as well as function.

In 1929 Bausch & Lomb, who were already making optical equipment for the military, began work for the U.S. Army Air Corps developing sunglasses that wouldn’t fog up and would reduce glare for pilots. This gave us the iconic “Ray-Ban Aviator” sunglasses. Aviator sunglasses were also the start of Ray-Ban eyewear company, which began as the civilian division of Bausch & Lomb. Ray-Ban would go on to make another iconic model of sunglasses, the Wayfarer, in 1956.

(Side fact: Roy Orbison fell into his wayfarer signature style accidentally while on tour with the Beatles in 1963. He forgot his regular glasses on the plane and had to wear his wayfarer sunglasses on stage, and thus was born his iconic look.)

Sunglasses became about function & fashion in the 20th century. Also, Tom Cruise movies helped popularize two of Ray-Ban’s most famous models.

Luxottica

Today the sunglasses market is dominated by Luxottica, an Italian eyewear juggernaut which is the largest eyewear company in the world. They’re the company actually making the sunglasses of luxury brands such as Chanel, Prada, Ralph Lauren, Versace, etc. Luxottica’s dominance is due in large part to their vertical integration control over the eyewear industry. They own major distribution retail stores such as LensCrafters, Target Optical, Pearle Vision, and Sunglass Hut. They own major eyeglass brands including Oakley and Ray-Ban, and they manufacture the eyewear for all of the above. They even own EyeMed, the second largest vision insurance company in America. You could go from getting a vision prescription, to selecting a pair of glasses, to buying them at a retail store and pay Luxottica at every step of the way.

Luxottica’s control over the market is why eyewear prices have gone up and not down. The proliferation of brands & stores competing for sales isn’t as competitive as it seems since Luxottica is behind many of them. In Luxottica owned stores 89% of the products available are made by Luxottica. Most of these glasses are the same quality, just different styles. Because of Luxottica, frames that cost maybe $15 to produce can be sold for hundreds of dollars. As of 2019 Luxottica controlled around 40% of the eyewear market.

60 Minutes’s 2012 report on eyeglass juggernaut Luxottica.

Added info: Beyond just blocking excessive bright light, good sunglasses block most ultraviolet (UV) light from damaging your eyes. Darker glasses don’t necessarily block more UV light so it’s worth buying reputable sunglasses that have been engineered & certified to offer UV protection. It’s better to not wear any sunglasses at all than ones that don’t block UV light because your pupils will widen in the shade of junk sunglasses and in so doing allow in more UV rays.

Coffee: Sun-Grown or Shade-Grown?

Coffee plants want to be grown in the shade, which is better for the flavor and the environment.

Coffee plants thrive in the warm (but not too warm) areas between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, an area nicknamed the “coffee belt” (although, with global warming the areas in which coffee plants can grow is shrinking). These evergreen plants grow to be about 12ft tall and, while they like the warmth, they also like the shade. Coffee plants naturally grow best underneath the canopy of trees. Traditionally people would collect the coffee berries from plants growing wild around the forest and then process the seeds to make coffee. Enter industrialization.

Sun-tolerant coffee plants grown in efficient rows for sun-grown coffee. Photo by Shade Grown Coffee film.

Here Comes The Sun

From the 1970s to the early 1990s coffee producers were encouraged by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to “upgrade” their processes and switch from shade-grown production to sun cultivation. Sun-tolerant plants had been engineered to better handle direct sunlight. With sun-grown cultivation you can grow coffee plants in greater density, harvest beans more efficiently through mechanization, producing higher yields, and make more money. This isn’t without costs.

One of the first steps for sun-grown coffee is deforestation (which increases global warming). Without trees there are no fallen leaves serving as mulch keeping weeds down. Leaves also biodegrade adding nutrients to the soil. This means sun-cultivated coffee requires more herbicides and fertilizers than shade-grown coffee. Further, when there are less trees there are less birds, and without as many birds to eat the insects, you need more pesticides. All of this means more chemicals on the plants and in the soil.

Made in the Shade

While still incorporating trees and other vegetation, modern shade-grown coffee farms can arrange their coffee plants more efficiently than former traditional practices. Even though this usually means lower yields and longer harvest times compared to sun-grown coffee, shade-grown coffee sells at a premium which can compensate producers for these factors.

The trees of shade-grown coffee farms serve as homes to hundreds of bird species. In Peru for example, the coffee plants of sun-grown coffee farms are home to around 61 bird species. This is in stark contrast to the trees of Peruvian shade-grown coffee farms which are home to 243 bird species. The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center has said that, “shade-grown coffee production is the next best thing to a natural forest.”

As for the coffee itself, shade-grown coffee plants produce beans with higher density, developing natural sugars, which makes for better tasting coffee. Sun-grown coffee speeds up the growing process, which is good for maximizing efficiency, but it also creates higher acidity resulting in a more bitter taste.

People in Ethiopia, sitting in the shade, processing shade-grown coffee.

So shade-grown tastes better, requires less chemicals, it helps hundreds of bird species, and it helps stop global warming. Next time you’re buying coffee spend the extra few cents for shade-grown.

Added info: Coffee beans frequently come with little logos attesting to various positive attributes in which the coffee was produced. The certification that best represents the environmental benefits of shade-grown coffee is the Bird-Friendly label from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.

Bird-Friendly is widely considered the gold-standard in coffee certification as it means the coffee is organic, shade-grown, and helps the local ecosystem. That said, given the various benchmarks that must be achieved, it’s hard to become certified as Bird-Friendly which means it’s hard to come by Bird-Friendly coffee.

Roses Instead of Cocaine

Most roses sold in the United States come from Colombia.

Most of the Valentine’s Day roses sold in the United States come from Colombia. Roses from Colombia make up around 60% of US florist rose sales and they account for most of the roses sold in supermarkets (and supermarkets make up about half of US flower sales).

In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, Colombia ships about 150 million roses to the United States. Walmart alone purchases about 24 million Colombian roses for the holiday. Upwards of 30 to 35 flights take off from Bogota each day filled with flowers, flying mostly to the United States.

Sniff Flowers, Not Cocaine

Between 1990 and 2018 American grown roses lost 95% of their market share, from 545 million roses sold to less than 30 million. So what happened? In 1991 the US government passed the Andean Trade Preference Act with Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru. This eliminated tariffs on certain products including cut flowers. The legislation was a carrot (as opposed to the stick) approach to encourage cocaine producing countries to produce & export something that wasn’t cocaine and make money in the process.

The system has had questionable success in curtailing the production of cocaine, but it’s been a big success for Colombian roses. Colombia now grows 20,000 acres of flowers across over 300 industrial farms. The flower industry directly employs around 90,000 Colombians and indirectly employs 40,000 more in adjacent industries. The biggest loser in this agreement has been the American cut flower industry. The American companies still in operation have transitioned to growing higher-end roses that sell for more money intended for weddings and other special events.

Dum Dums Mystery Flavor

The mystery flavor solves a logistical problem

In manufacturing you want as little machine downtime as possible. When the machines aren’t running they aren’t making your product, and you aren’t as profitable as you could be. It’s all about efficiency. The Akron Candy Company of Bellevue, Ohio created Dum Dums lollipops in 1924, eventually selling the product to the Spangler Candy Company in 1953. There were originally seven flavors but they broadened out to 16 flavors. To maintain flavor integrity the machines must be cleaned between flavors – this removes any remnants of the previous flavor and prepares the machines for a pure new flavor. This also creates machine downtime.

The solution: the mystery flavor. To maintain machine efficiency you want to start the next flavor right as you finish the previous flavor. Instead of shutting down the machines, the mystery flavor is created in this liminal time when two flavors are moving through the same machine at the same time. The end of the one flavor and the beginning of the next mix together in different amounts creating ever-changing new flavors. The Dum Dums’ mystery flavor isn’t just one flavor. The mystery flavor is always an unpredictable mix of flavors. It’s a fun game to guess which two flavors are making your version of the mystery flavor, and it’s a clever production solution.

Added info: In 2015 Spangler ran a limited time campaign and produced three specific flavors, outside of the normal flavors, to be the mystery flavor. These were pizza, popcorn, and bacon flavored Dum Dums. Also the name Dum Dums was chosen because a sales manager felt it was a name children could both say and remember.

Tide for Cash

Tide laundry detergent is a popular product to steal in exchange for cash and/or drugs.

During economic recessions the products that continue to have strong sales numbers are the products with desirable powerful brand names. Cheerios, McDonalds, Kleenex, Huggies, Coca-Cola, Tylenol – these are all strong “recession-proof” brands. Tide, which is the best selling laundry detergent in the world, is also a strong recession-proof brand, but it has an additional ignominious distinction. Tide is a popular product to steal as a de facto street currency to exchange for cash and/or drugs.

a case of detergent locked up — As a deterrent to theft, the detergent and in particular Tide, has been locked up.

Beginning around 2011 thieves started stealing Tide from stores around the USA. Some would grab a few bottles and run, others would load entire shopping carts and stroll right out the door. Over several visits, Patrick Costanzo of St. Paul, Minnesota stole almost $6,000 of Tide from a Walmart. Some stores were losing $10,000 to $15,000 a month from people stealing Tide. The stolen bottles of Tide are exchanged for $5 in cash or $10 worth of weed or crack. Dealers then sell the bottles through various middlemen at normal retail prices, or even discounted prices, but still making a substantial profit. Finally the stolen Tide appears on shelves at corner stores, flea markets, and sometimes even back at the store it was originally stolen from via shady local wholesalers.

Part of what makes Tide popular is also what makes it a great product for the black market. It doesn’t spoil, it’s a desirable brand name, and everyone needs to wash their clothes. It’s also very difficult to trace its origins, so once it’s stolen it’s hard to tell where it came from. As long as Tide remains popular people will find reasons to steal it.