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The "Why On Earth?" thread


alison

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Coming soon, the thread for all those frustrating, rhetorical and other questions you may not actually need an answer to.  Especially if you need to sound off but think the Room 101 thread is a bit excessive :)

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(Yep, sorry, I was sitting on the train at the terminus and suddenly realised the WiFi signal was coming from the adjacent train which was about to pull out, and not mine :) )

 

Okay, starter for one:

 

Why on earth are slipper manufacturers designing these silly cutaway slippers which don't really have a lot of body to them, but have an upright strip about 1 cm tall running all the way round the back and heel?  All that happens is that your feet slip out the back, you end up treading the thing down and it looks silly.

 

Edit: I mean this sort of style.

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And why do the staff at Covent Garden tube station so frequently restrict the number of lifts to 2 out of 4 to coincide with the finish time of whatever performance it is at the Royal Opera House?  You have maybe 1000 people trying to get onto the tube system, and hardly any of them can even get into the station!  (I don't actually expect they stand there and go "Okay, curtain down in 10 minutes - lets take out two of the lifts", but it sometimes feels like it!

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4 minutes ago, Lisa O`Brien said:

Don't think i've seen those ones, Alison. I like the cute slippers myself. Either pigs or teddies.

 

You beat me to it, Lisa - I was just hunting on the M&S website for a suitable example.  Everyone seems to stock something similar.

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6 hours ago, Pups_mum said:

Why on earth did my youngest son's school send me not one, but two letters this week demanding a reason for his "unexplained" absence last week? He was on a school trip.....

GIGO  - do they use E-registration ?

 

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Mmm, but the platforms were by no means overcrowded on Friday night ...  I'd have thought if they were going to do that they'd have had all four lifts operative, but under staff control, so that they could reduce the frequency without anyone being much the wiser?

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  • alison changed the title to The "Why On Earth?" thread
  • 2 years later...

Next question: is there any good reason why you only seem to be able to buy nuts in shells around Christmas time? I never seem to see them at any other time of year.  Is it simply because the harvest coincides nicely, or is there another reason? We're always being told that eating nuts is good for us, but it seems that the rest of the year you can only buy them shelled, in nasty, non-recyclable plastic bags! Not very environmentally friendly 😞

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  • 3 years later...

Something else which struck me once again the other day: looking at reduced-price stock in supermarkets, am I the only one to wonder why on earth they pick the reductions they do?  I mean, is it a totally random, "let's-put-in-any-number" selection, because that's what it sometimes feels like (especially if you find the same thing reduced to two different prices in two separate branches)?  Is there any reason they don't simply reduce by e.g. 20%, rather than, say, 20% plus or minus a few pence?

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On 29/01/2024 at 00:34, alison said:

Something else which struck me once again the other day: looking at reduced-price stock in supermarkets, am I the only one to wonder why on earth they pick the reductions they do?  I mean, is it a totally random, "let's-put-in-any-number" selection, because that's what it sometimes feels like (especially if you find the same thing reduced to two different prices in two separate branches)?  Is there any reason they don't simply reduce by e.g. 20%, rather than, say, 20% plus or minus a few pence?

It may be that for some perishable merchandise, eg vegetables reaching their sell by date today, that store managers are given discretion to reduce it in any way they wish in order to clear the stock out of the store whether that is reducing everything to 10p or sticking a 70% off label to the items. Other branches may be doing very well selling that particular item and not need to reduce theirs. That's the most common reason I can think of.

 

Beware the discount that is not actually a discount though- I once saw a food item (I can't remember what it was but it was definitely edible) where it was £2.45 per item but a big sale label had been placed on the them saying "2 for £4.99".....which you'll notice is actually more expensive than buying them singly. Grocery shopping is always good exercise in mental arithmetic (or using a calculator)! 

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