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https://cohost.org/NireBryce/post/4929459-here-s-my-five-minut
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the walgreens fridge tv died, and tvs are opaque so now it's physically impossible to tell what's inside the fridge
the employees have taken photographs of the fridge's contents, printed them on the largest paper they can get out of the photo-printer kiosk, and fucking taped them to the screen
my Fail-Deadly 21:9 Ultra-Widescreen (Portrait Mode) Refrigerator Display is Causing Me Business Problems Yet Again
Never seen these, why did they think they needed a technology to replace glass? Are these cheaper somehow?
I think they might have only installed them in illinois
and yeah as far as Low-Interest-Rate Phenomenon Startups go it's too idiotic to even succeed at being evil lmao. There's like two hundred different ways they lose money (literally heating the inside of the cooler, using a shitton of power, reducing sales because nobody can tell what's inside the goddamn fridge, the actual hardware is insanely expensive, etc etc), and that's even if they worked correctly, which they do not
it's functionally a scam that worked because execs are genuinely stupid people lmao. Also now they're both trying to sue each other because SOMEBODY'S losing a fortune and neither company wants to be the one holding the bag
my understanding was they actually paid walgreens to have the screens (because they're data collection and advertising trojan horses) and walgreens was like "you lied about the capabilities of your project, we're out" and then Cooler Screens sued them for breach of contract to control the narrative
not that walgreens isn't at fault here, but they're at fault for seeing dollar signs when promised the sky at the expense of the average rando, not because the CEOs are at war or whatever. it looks like walgreens is in the right, for the first time in a few decades
i can double verify that they've been deployed in SF and that they've all broken down in various ways damn near immediately
...is it bad that i want to go down to columbia city just to see
Reporting in from FL: they have these stupid things down here too lmao
Boston person here - they have them installed here as well. Don't worry, they're not working any better here.
wh... what is even the theoretical benefit of these fucking things...???
the theoretical benefit is that they run ads 70% of the time instead of displaying what's inside the fridge, and also they're covered in cameras and microphones so they can uhhhhhh I guess do facial recognition and have an Algorithm decide that you want a red bull and then show you an ad for The Concept of Red Bull, while preventing you from actually purchasing a red bull at walgreens
anyone who thinks about this for four seconds will correctly conclude "walgreens loses a fuckton of money while making everyone from customers to employees to shareholders mad at them" is the only possible outcome, which rules
I'm already lying down and I feel like I need to lie down even harder. christ alive
the only thing that would make it funnier is if it locked the door closed while the ad was playing
and maybe they license Sony's infamous "say McDonald's to skip ad" patent so you could say "Red Bull" out loud in the store, to no one, to skip having to wait until the ad finishes so you can open the case and get the thing you wanted, which is not a Red Bull because targeted advertising is also junk
the more doors the customer has to open to find their product, the more targeting data you can collect
our product not only increases user engagment with ads, it also teaches them the Monty Hall problem
a conveyor system increases engagement by making sure they never find it on their first round of linear search
The end-game, here, is "buy a Red Bull to skip the Red Bull ad".
"Yes, preventing people from seeing the product they're currently trying to purchase will increase sales. We definitely thought this one through."
If I walked into a Walgreens with these I would walk down the aisles with my pocket knife and stab every TV from the back so that they all broke and then leave and never come back to that Walgreens.
Fortunately you don't need to because they reportedly all broke anyway. I bet they get condensation on the inside and that alone is enough to break them.
Man, somebody missed an opportunity to hack these to play something funny. Like Rick Rolls, or porn.
(EDIT: oh i saw The Rest Of The Story about the suing. haha. thats so funny)
i worked for walgreens for 7 years, saw these complained-about on the subreddit the minute they were first implemented and i was dreading their eventual arrival in our store but thankfully it never happened. i think they've probably been such a failure in the places they were rolled out that it stopped lol. i assume the ones that were installed will be neglected until they're broken badly enough to need replacing and by that i mean in pieces and a safety issue
i can't fathom who came up with this. clearly not anyone who works in a store, where corporate's shelf plans don't always hold up with whatever equipment your store has, and where customers constantly put shit back in the wrong spot. would hate to have to go change the settings on the fucking door instead of just moving the mylar if a product couldn't fit in the spot corporate wanted it. WILD idea to put an LCD screen on something that customers have access to and that is opened and closed constantly, bonked with stock carts and mobility aids, kicked by People Having A Real Weird Day, etc. etc. etc.
that said i would have preferred this to having to try to sell every customer on a credit card with a 32% interest rate for the last year i was there
can't fathom who came up with this. clearly not anyone who works in a store
i thought i crossed my wires in my memory of the articles.
but no, you're absolutely right, and the ex-CEO really did catfish and hard-sell his old company on something that exists to steal the market data of his old company
LMAO god... of course. of course it'd be something like that wouldn't it. christ on a bike
If someone 50 years in the past wanted to know what the future of capitalism is like, this is the example I'd like them to see.
This is such a perfect conglomeration of everything wrong with corporations. The shitty unnecessary unsustainable replacement for something perfectly functional (JUST USE GLASS) in the name of a quick profit, companies spending more money than it would take to fix the problem trying to screw each other for more money, overworked employees providing a lazy slapped on solution because the hire ups could not even comprehend their sit com quality solution to fridge doors failing... it has it all. Watch, this will somehow turn out to be racist and it really will have everything wrong with corporations.
Watch, this will somehow turn out to be racist and it really will have everything wrong with corporations.
I am willing to bet the last $8 in my bank account that these sensors did not detect racial minorities, especially those with darker skin tones. My dad has to constantly deal with stupid sensors that can't detect his skin tone, and he's half native. I hate to see what it's like for black people.
