I Said Everything Sucks Now And These Viewer Comments Prove It
Episode Stats
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198.7425
Summary
The quality of everything has declined significantly over the past many years, in particular over the last 20 years. People from various industries have been writing in with their perspective on this and what they ve seen behind the scenes. What are the odds that this decline in quality will reverse itself within the next 20 years?
Transcript
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All right, we're going to take a look at some comments today.
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This is one thing we've been talking about on the show.
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If you've been watching the show, you know this.
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If you haven't been watching the show, then how dare you?
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But we've been talking about the decline of everything.
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The quality of everything has declined significantly over the past many years,
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in particular over the last one or two decades.
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People from various industries have been leaving comments.
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They've been writing emails, talking about their perspective on this
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And we're going to go through a few of those today.
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what are the odds that this decline in quality will reverse itself within the next 20 years?
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It's really depressing to think that the world peaked when I was 12 years old
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and far too young to really enjoy it or understand it.
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Yeah, I think the possibility that it reverses itself within the next 20 years is pretty low, unfortunately.
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So the collapse in the quality of everything is not ever going to reverse itself.
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It's not going to ever just magically get better, right?
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When you say reverse itself, it sounds like something that will happen on its own.
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Can we see in all of these various different industries a re-emphasis on quality?
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Now, the reason why I'm skeptical about the next 20 years is that these things happen slowly over time.
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And it took us many decades to get to the point where we are now,
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which means that I think logically it will probably take many decades to get out of it.
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And part of that is going to be it's like it's on us, right?
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And that means that the companies that are in, whether we're talking about construction or home appliances or restaurants, right?
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We could put the blame on the corporations or the companies, and they deserve a fair amount of it.
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Like, we as consumers have to make different choices.
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Everybody complains about another area of decline.
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Movies, films, TV shows, streaming services, right?
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The streaming services are getting more and more expensive.
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They're adding ads to everything, even after you pay for the subscription.
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And then the original content that they're churning out sucks.
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Most people, they still go get the subscriptions.
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Like, you lose track of how many subscriptions you have.
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If you really feel like Netflix is putting out slop, you could just not pay for Netflix.
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There's like a huge number of people, a huge number, probably millions of people,
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who pay for that service and don't even like it and yet continue to pay for it.
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So a lot of that's going to come down to the choices that we make.
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Now all we get is rushed slop from lazy formulaic developers.
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A game that reminds players and development teams that you don't have to cut corners
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It gets pilloried by every other developer and gaming activist for the simple fact
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that gamers got a small reminder of how things could be again.
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I've heard a lot of this as we've talked about.
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The quality decline, the shiftification, the end shiftification of everything.
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I've heard this a lot from gamers saying that gaming, this has also happened with games.
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I've talked about how I think movies and films peaked from like 2006 to 2008.
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It was a very, almost a specific time you could point to.
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And what I've heard from people who play video games is that that was also the peak right then
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around that time frame, the peak of video games.
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That's very interesting because video games are such a new art form.
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Uh, but video games are so new, relatively speaking.
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And so the fact that they've peaked, yet they're so new, is also an interesting fact.
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And that is something that I would look into and probably talk more about.
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But the last time that I tried to speak in depth about something that was happening in
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the video game world, I got ripped to shreds for it.
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And not even because people disagreed, but because they said they agreed, actually.
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And, um, it was just based on the research I had done about it.
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Not, not claiming I had, not claiming I had any personal experience with it or not claiming
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Everybody knows I'm not, but I'm capable of like reading articles.
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And so I did and said, oh, this is, you know, here's the thing that's happening.
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And I got ripped to shreds for it by people who agreed about the wokeness of video games.
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But they said that I should not be talking about it.
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They said, get, get, get video games names out of your mouth.
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So, and then I always have to think, well, do I, okay, so if I talk about it, this is
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I talk about a lot of things where that's the reaction.
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Do I care enough to deal with that headache when it comes to video games?
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So I'll let other people discuss the decline in video games.
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Although it would be just, it would be like me to become a gamer now out of spite.
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When this dumb controversy happened several months ago and everyone was mad at me just
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for talking about video games, one of the dumbest controversies I've ever been, I've
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Just out of spite now, I'm going to start, I'm going to become a big gamer.
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I'm going to start playing video games nine hours a day, just out of spite.
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So the cannibal says on the topics of food quality, the topic of food quality, I'm a
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small farmer who operates a lot of my business at farmer's markets.
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I've noticed some vegetable farmers will show up with, with produce that's out of season
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Yet the implication of being in a farmer's market is to trick consumers that it's local
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That's how you know it's bad when it's even hit the Amish.
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You know, I enjoy a farmer's market on occasion, as any white person does.
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And I've noticed this a little bit also, that you see these, now farmer's market has
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And so you go there and things are marked up and you find a lot of great stuff, but
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you also find, as you say, you find things that this is not fresh.
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Um, this is not local, but it's just has the farmer's market brand.
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It's the same thing that's happened with organic.
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And it's an excuse to, uh, mark up the price, even if the quality is not any better.
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Says, decided to go to an indoor mall to do Christmas shopping for the first time in several
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Thought I'd get out and not purchase everything in line this year.
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Selected a shoe from display shelf and was approached by a young female employee who asked if I needed
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Asked if she could see if they had a shoe in a certain size.
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She looked at me befuddled and suggested I download the store app and I could check myself.
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Explained not something I wanted to do and was she unable to check for me.
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I walked with her across the store and she checked with another employee who confirmed
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She then directed me to go put the shoe back on the rack.
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Not a big deal, but I think I would have taken that responsibility from the customer.
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Seemed like it was a standard procedure at that store.
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Well, when you talk about the client customer service is the right there at the tip of the iceberg and it's gotten so bad.
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This thing of going to a store and they tell you to check for something online.
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Very little of this started with COVID and the COVID lockdowns.
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But as we know, the COVID lockdowns made a lot of it worse.
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This is one thing that did seem to start there where I can remember.
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I remember going into a Chipotle at like the height of the lockdowns.
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I mean, depending on where you live, maybe this was standard operating procedure.
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And they were standing right there on the other side of the counter.
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And I said, yeah, can I order the burrito bowl?
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Like the food is right there and you are right there and I'm right here and I'm speaking to you.
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Can I just audibly tell you what I want from the, can you just do that?
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And they said, no, you got to put it on in the app.
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So you want me to plug it into the app so that you can then look at what I plugged in and then make what I.
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And so that was the thing that started with COVID lockdowns.
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It's not that bad anymore, but there's vestiges of that that have remained.
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And it will probably remain forever where they want you to, even things they could do, they say they want you to do it online.
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And the thing with customer service is that, so if someone's going to give you good service, right?
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If you're going to go to a place and you're going to get good service.
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There's like two things that would motivate someone to deliver good service.
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And one is that they take a real pride in their job.
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And then the other is that they have, they're incentivized.
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That they have, they have a real incentive to deliver good service.
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So if you have either of those things, if you're dealing with someone who's incentivized to give good service, then you'll probably get decent service.
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Even if they're not directly financially incentivized, if they just take pride in what they do, then you'll get good service.
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If both of those things are in play, they're taking pride in it, they're also incentivized, then you'll get great service.
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Well, the problem is you walk in these places now and neither of those are in play.
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You're dealing with people, they take no pride in what they're doing at all.
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And, uh, which you can kind of understand if you go into a Walmart and you're, it's like a minimum wage employee and they work a cash register, they're stocking shelves.
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I mean, you should take pride in anything you do.
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Like whatever you're doing, no matter what you're doing, right?
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If you're like my parents would tell me, you got to go vacuum the rug.
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Well, even if you don't care about it, it's your responsibility and you should just, in general, it's a matter of character.
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It's a matter of forming good habits and being, uh, becoming a successful person is taking pride in everything you do.
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So you should take pride in everything you do, but it can be hard when it's something mundane and you're not being paid well.
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And you're in one of these big box stores and you're under fluorescent lights all day.
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And you're dealing with these dead-eyed customers who are there and don't care about you and you don't care about them.
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It's like, it's hard to take pride in that, although you still should.
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Like you're dealing with, with, with these customer service representatives who, if they deliver good service to you,
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it's, it's not, they're not going to get any benefit from that.
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And if they deliver bad service to you, it's not going to hurt them.
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They're not going to get fired for just like your standard service.
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And even if they give great service, they're not going to be rewarded for it at the moment.
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There is an incentive, but it's a little bit, it's a longer term.
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If you're really good customer service, you're delivering great service.
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And so with those two factors out of the way, it means that, yeah, you're dealing with people not incentivized to give good service,
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And then you end up with exactly what you're talking about at Foot Locker or anywhere else.
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These customer service representatives who, who actively hate you just for being there.
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Worst case scenario is going into a place, one of these big box stores, or this is not a big, you know, you're talking about Foot Locker,
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but one of these retail places, and actually needing some kind of help.
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I went, I think I said this on the show last year, I went to Walmart around, like around the same time.
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And I was getting, oh, it was a, it was an electric scooter for my kids for Christmas.
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And so you had to go back to that section of the store.
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And then everything, as is so often the case these days, especially this, these kind of high dollar items,
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And I just knew, I knew this was going to be a thing.
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So like now I got to go back into this section of the store where it's not,
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they don't have a specific employee for this section probably.
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And I'm going to get, I have to find someone to open the glass.
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This is going to, this is going to be a thing now because I need a little bit of help.
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I'm going to need to find someone in the store who is motivated to help me.
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And sure enough, it took an, it took almost an hour to find someone who would just open the glass
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RedNicky9 says, bakery frosting and vacuum cleaners.
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I'm a caregiver now, and I've worked for people in their 80s who still have their old metal Kirby
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The wheels are a little rusty, a little harder to push, but they can be greased up or something
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They're repairable, unlike the vacuum cleaners I buy nowadays, where if you even own a dog
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and a cat and vacuum up the tiniest bit of fur or tiny little bits of cat litter, vacuum
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cleaner breaks and everybody, and you've got to buy a new one every year or two.
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As for bakery frosting, I was a cake directorator 20 years ago at Safeway and at Fred Myers.
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We made our own buttercream icing, which was delicious.
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Then about 10 years later, all the icing gets shipped in plastic buckets.
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And I'm not exaggerating when I say that frosting smells like plastic sugar and grosses you out
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every time you have to open one of those buckets.
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We've had tons of customer complaints about the quality of the frosting when I worked there.
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The last good bakery I worked at where things were homemade was in a small town in Idaho
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where the baker still actually baked the cakes, something that was not happening at
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Safeway or Fred Meyer, and they still made their own frosting.
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The case tasted so good that even in that tiny town, one-tenth of the size of the town
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where I worked in Safeway bakeries, the cakes would sell just as fast.
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I'm wondering if a lot of people at home are just going back to baking their own cakes.
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All you need is to look at the picture of the cakes they sell at the big grocery chain stores,
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watch some YouTube videos, and practice with icing to make the flowers and decorations with real icing.
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Yeah, this is why it's interesting to read these comments because there's all these little things.
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When you talk about the decline in quality, there's all these little things that you don't...
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This has impacted us in big ways that we all notice, but it's also these little things that really add up
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Most people, you don't think about that when you think about the shittification of everything.
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But I grew up in a home where we had home-cooked meals every night.
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And, well, six nights a week, we did pizza Fridays we were really excited about always.
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But I only ever had homemade cakes, like around birthday.
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My mom would make a cake, and she'd make the icing homemade too.
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Like, I can't eat a store-bought cake anymore because...
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I just bought a new construction house in North Carolina, put up this year.
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Home inspection revealed three broken trusses and one broken rafter in the attic.
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The outside electric meter was never weather-sealed.
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The anchor bolts securing the house to the foundation slab were installed incorrectly, among other things.
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They'll get me started on modern cars or the medical industry.
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This is just a representative one little sample.
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There's a million comments like this in emails from people talking about...
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I mean, in construction in particular, this is a major problem.
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That the houses are shoddily built with cheap material.
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And that's one of the reasons why, you know, we've moved around a lot.
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Not to own all at the same time, but we own one house at a time.
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A lot of people avoid older homes because, you know, it needs more maintenance.
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You're probably going to need to do some renovations.
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There's, you know, the plumbing might be old and all these different things.
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But the older homes, one thing you get, number one, is character.
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You get the real craftsmanship that went into it.
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When you go into an older home, a home that was built 100 years ago or farther back than that,
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there are all these little details that just, like, don't exist in modern homes at all.
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But you walk in and it's beautiful in all these little intricate ways.
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Time being put into, care being put into every little detail of the house
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because they wanted to make it not just functional but also beautiful
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because they knew that someone's going to be living here.
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So there's the craftsmanship that goes into it.
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I mean, these were houses that are made with, you know, brick and wood.
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That's why it's 100 years later and people still living in it.
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I like to live in a house that has that kind of history behind it.
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We will be part of the history of this house that someone else will live in.
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So I'm glad that we could read all those comments.