Small Business Saturday and Christmas Shopping
I started doing these prompts shortly after AMEX started the promotion. Short answer? Yeah, I’ve broached ordering from our favorite Indian joint for dinner. Obviously, the food is great, and the prices are reasonable, even for inside the Beltway and the price spikes courtesy pump-priming from the Federal Reserve, and massive Federal spending surrounding COVID.
Strangely enough, they’ve given up on their own app, and their online registration form is now not working. Pfft.
But causing a bit of hesitancy on the ordering is us trying to be as frugal as possible until either the disability gets approved, or I hold my breath and try to go back to work.
I’ve written before about what I see as the value in small business, but with so so many things being done by back offices elsewhere, part of me wonders how much you’re really helping at this point.
I’m really happy I didn’t take the advice of one of the advisors at VEC when I was unemployed after one of my several layoffs from 2013-2019. “Get a vendor certification. That Microsoft Exchange cert will keep you employed forever.”
Yeah, about that.
I was thinking about this in relation to a memory of driving around Biloxi last time I was there. I think my brother rolled past the place where our great aunt worked for years and years. I really don’t know what she did there, but I think it was something in bookkeeping. The boxes she’d use to send us her famous peanut butter fudge overseas were largely reused stuff that was sent to her company.
I seem to remember them doing things like stocking cigarette machines in local restaurants. Tinge of irony as I’m pretty sure my great aunt died of health conditions exacerbated by smoking, but she’s been gone for probably 35 years; memory is weak that way.
I do appreciate when Carolla talks about things like finding items for his various construction projects, and finding a local hardware store to get the tool or material ne needs. Sure, it’s probably available at one of the big stores, but the guy in the shop he knows will get him exactly what he needs for not very much more money in the grand scheme of things.
I read Human Progress quite a bit. Virginia Postrel, who is, and has been incredible for an awful long time wrote about the sorts of things humans did in antiquity.
Humans don’t spend all their time doing stuff like making thread and fabric anymore.
And that’s okay.
Numlock, another of my daily Substack reads, had a discussion recently about how home brewing has really tailed off.
My comment there was, “As for the craft beers, I wonder if it’s just a matter of the novelty wearing off. I would guess that most people would have trouble differencing a draft Miller, Bud, or Coors Light.
Similarly, if you asked me to find a big difference between your cousin’s fancy homebrew IPA and a Sierra Nevada…..”
Back on topic, though, yeah, I’d like to throw a bit their way. Is there another place that could fit my desire? Sure. but they’re nice folks, and I appreciate that they’re nearby.
And work with me as a loyal customer.
Are they growing and grinding their own spices? Maybe. But it doesn’t matter.
And they’re not running their own online presence. They’ve caught up to the delivery services, and often will dispatch UberEats or DoorDash when their own delivery staff are no-shows, or are overloaded.
Might something come along that I find more attractive? It’s possible, but there’s no need to go look, honestly. They do an acceptable job, and I’m happy they’ll pick up the phone of there’s a problem.
One more day of this.