This is what happens after several generations of people grow up being told they are all special and unique snowflakes.

 

Holy crap!

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...nges-the-brain

 

Any of you blue collar workers around here noticed a drop in the quality of Dickies pants lately? I bought two pairs 5 months ago and they already have little holes all over them. They aren't growing like they would on jeans, I'll give them that, but I don't know why they're just sprouting up randomly. There's a dozen on each pair that range from bb sized to dime sized.

 

Where are you buying the pants from? I have heard that the ones Walmart sells quality is slightly worse then other stores.

 

You guessed it. Wally World. I was wondering if Wal-Mart had lower quality Dickies. I've heard of big chain stores taking trusted name brands and making products at a cheaper price using lower quality materials. Lowe's and Moen come to mind.

 

It is because you went to the Manassas mall to get them. Nothing good comes from there.

 

Interesting article. I remember seeing a PBS special on epigenetics that went further into how those adverse physical effects actually become hereditary and can clearly be seen in subsequent generations. SO, when you beat your kid, you're also beating your grandchild and your great-grandchild and ...

 

We supply a lot of product to the 'Mart and the stories that come out of that place from our sales guys are simply amazing. Its real easy to price match when no one carries your specific PN or SKU, and you can drive the prices down even further by buying in volume and having the manufacturer make specific products to your specification (ie: cheaper quality, inferior materials.) Its this insane combination of massive volume and no autonomy at anything short of the regional level that makes it work. There is almost zero middle management in the org chart. The logistics chain for that company is nothing short of staggering as well.

Its not a company I'd go out of my way to work for, but its an impressive organization none the less.

 

My mother in law and sister in law both work there. I should write a book from all the stories they tell me.

It's a giant machine. The growth, volume, and pace of this machine is so absurd that pretty much nothing matters

 

I used to repair Singer sewing machines when I was in college and the Walmart Singers were different/cheaper internally than the ones sold in Singer stores. The home shopping network kinds of places had some doosies also.

 

This jives with what a friend of mine who used to work for one of the companies that makes battery-powered drills (can't remember which company) tells me. Not only were certain models made to spec for certain retailers using less-costly parts (plastic gears instead of metal, lower-Ah battery cells in the same housing, etc), but the same was also sometimes done specifically for Black-Friday type sales at both Home Depot and Lowes.

I find it hard to comprehend that a company which stakes its reputation on building durable, reliable power tools would so willingly cave to the demands of large retailers to produce sub-standard products with their name on them, without some kind of unique badging to distinguish them from the "regular" product line. Eg: or "Dewalt Wally Series" or "Porter-Cable Orange Edition."

 

<p></p><p>Agreed. Moen claims no difference in products regardless of retailer&nbsp;if the P/N is the same. Things like whitegoods, however, the HD or Lowe's the SKU's&nbsp;never match what you buy at an independent retailer.&nbsp;At least Sears put the &nbsp;Kenmore name on their products, obviously manufactured by the big boys, but to Sear's specifications.</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

 

<p></p><p>Kind of makes one more understanding of past generations that arranged marraiges or used other parental guidance to make sure their children married into the right kind of families. I certainly wish I had better understood these sorts of ramifications when my first daughter married for love (no... not any of the law enforcement SIL's).</p>

 

Internal Wastegate - Money well spent?

Looking at a 6-7psi IWG for teh futurrzz...

There is the Garrett for $90 new (ATPTurbo), or a fancy turbosmart iwg for $185 (Treadstone).

The only difference I can ultimately see is build quality, would the fancy TS IWG be worth it?

If you own either, weigh in with your experience

 

I have a NIB Turbosmart EWG actuator sitting in my garage that I'm probably not going to use. PN TS-0610-2072, PM me if you are interested. It's for a Protoge but not like that'll stop you

 

Very interesting, never heard this before, but it makes sense.
It's all about dat money. When they see consistent six figure numbers I'm sure it's hard to resist

 

 

Yeah, I certainly understand the front-end arithmetic. When I worked for a company that designed and manufactured networked broadcast audio gear, our volume was tiny. If we sold 50 VistaMax routing engines in a year, that was a *huge* year. Consequently, a proposed cost-reduction had to be pretty massive (eg: shaving a couple hundred dollars per unit off the cost) in order to be justifiable, and thus, didn't happen frequently. I'm not saying our stuff was massively exotic, merely that you had to amortize engineering time and tooling over a huge time-scale due to the low volume, and our parts and sub-assemblies tended to sit on the shelf for a long time.

On the other hand, if you're selling a few hundred-thousand drills a year, and your inventory turnover rate is measured in weeks, then saving ten cents on a part has a pretty significant payoff.

It's just hard for me to rationalize willingly making a decision to compromise durability in a business in which your products' reputation for quality and reliability plays a large role in the customer purchasing decision. Or, at least, I assume that it does.

 

<p></p><p>Throw dollar signs in front of someone charged with growing business $$ volume and the brain refuses to listen to logic.&nbsp; In the industry I deal with it's a fairly finite market so when someone comes along who tells the powers that be how their volume will go up in return for a discount it's all over.&nbsp; They forget how growing one channel comes at the expense of another channel (usually).</p><p>Unfortunately, for the poor bastard in mfg who needs to figure out how to make those same xxxx widgets at the lower price it's hell.&nbsp; Then the 'powers that be' leave for greener pastures or get fired and it starts all over.&nbsp; The cycle of business....</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

 

<p>And they get fired with a severance package that is more than I'll make ever in my life.</p><p>That was what infuriated me in the bank bailouts. I understood the &quot;need&quot; for the banks not to fall. But take away the ******* millions that you gave to the people who caused it all.</p><p>&nbsp;</p>