May 1st, 2024Kyle’s Rant

What a weird world we live in. A couple of issues ago I wrote my column about mushrooms and how I would avoid scavenging them and stick to the greengrocer. And I don’t know what happened over at Clunes, but it is such an unfortunate situation that will impact on the lives of so many for so long.

Speaking of food or fresh food and in particular “The Fresh Food People”, Woolworths boss Brad Banducci was threatened with a contempt charge in a fiery Senate inquiry hearing recently.

I did watch the news program which was a bit theatrical from chair Nick McKim who took issue with the CEO’s refusal to disclose his company’s return on equity. I guess with the cameras around it was his time to show who had a big stick.

As it turns out the contempt charge, if he had have been charged, was six months’ jail time or a $5000 fine. I am sure ‘old mate’ who takes home $10.6 million in salary was quaking in his boots at the thought of the fine.

I am pretty confident just like the many inquiries that have gone before this current one, little to no action will happen at our (the customers), end of things. A bit of an apology and some head-down, bum up behaviour will be called for, before they get back to business as usual.

It’s like the whole petrol price rise débâcle that usually happens before a long weekend. That toothless tiger of an organisation, the ACCC, gets involved and really gets the petrol companies on the ropes, right?

The thing is that the ACCC’s parent is the Department of Treasury, which enjoys the spoils of our petrol consumption at an excise rate increase from 48.8 cents per litre which has just gone up to 49.6 cents per litre. So why would they bite the hand that throws the sausages?

And have you ever heard of surge pricing? This is a legal practice that enables companies such as airlines to put up prices when they are busy.

Imagine when we at TL HQ brought out that 104-page whopper of a paper in early February if we could have invoked surge pricing. Our advertisers would have laughed us out the door. We are local and real human beings whereas surge pricing is fabulous for the faceless AI bots that serve the mainframes of the airline computers.

And we go full circle to another grocery store, Blake Family Grocers. Daylesford’s small specialty grocery store going about its own business. The management team have long since decided to go cash free and what an uproar from the great unwashed.

Online diatribe like “they have to take cash it’s legal tender” were floating about. Well, no they don’t, they don’t have to take your cash or serve you if you’re being a dickhead, it is their business how they conduct their business and if you don’t like it, go somewhere else.

Don’t get me wrong, I want to see cash remain and I don’t want the bastards knowing everything, and I still do operate personally with cash albeit a bit less since the pandemic.

But you can’t tell a business how to run its business. You can leave feedback and advice, but a business is just that, a business not a community service.

For example, here at TL HQ we have had many suggestions on how to run the show over the years. And we have developed our business from the ground up taking on some suggestions and ignoring others, but the one rule we always invoke and is the only suggestion I have for other businesses, is the “no arsehole rule”.

These folks are painful, take up too much energy and will hassle you when it’s time to pay the ferryman – even when they are at the other side.

No arsehole rant over…