That some small businesses are failing because they don’t adapt to the needs of their customers?

[Isawyou]

I try to shop local. Fortunately I do have some great independent places nearby.

What I am finding frustrating is for example the fruit and veg shop closes at 4.30pm. They start packing up at 3.45pm and it is really difficult to buy things from there where they are stacking all the stands with the produce inside. They also look unhappy at customers coming to buy at packing up time. It is easier to go to the Tesco express that stays open until midnight.

Other shops do not open until 10am and close early. So I can’t get there before work or after work.

They complain their businesses are not doing well and people do not shop local but they are not exactly facilitating it for the customers either.

@Aphrathestorm

I have a choice of local cafes. One is open til 8. I went into a close at 5pm one the other day. I'd done the school run at 3 then went into a couple of shops so went to the cafe at 4pm. By 4.30 the staff started cleaning up around me and at 4.45 said they were getting ready to close. It's not somewhere you can stay comfortably until 5 so I just won't go there at all after school.

How many other customers were in the cafe when you were there? Was it pretty busy?

@lieselotte

museum being closed on Saturday afternoons, Sundays and bank holidays.

Presumably owned by your local council? They don't like working weekends or bank holidays, do they? Our town's tourist information centre is closed on Sundays, and it's a seaside resort! (No surprise it's council owned and operated!).

I have a lot of severe and chronic medical issues and I have lots of GP appointments and I’m in my 50s and work full time. In fact, many people I know in their 50s have major health issues -this week alone, a stroke, a heart attack, cancer, admitted to ICU with multiple organ failure, diabetes -all different people. All work full time. And even those that don’t have these things are being investigated in case they have these things.

Yes, I think it's a problem that, IME, a lot of HCP seem to classify people as either well/healthy but with the very occasional blip that needs to be seen or otherwise non-functional members of society who are available 24/7 and have nothing else going on in their lives apart from living as the 'human packaging' of the illness/condition that 'defines' them.

The number of times GPs will assume that everybody with a chronic health condition will have a carer with them 24/7 is staggering.

We see this all the time amongst the general public, whereby everybody is binary: either fully healthy and 'normal' or a helpless severely disabled person with no personality, individuality or quality of life.

Everybody is a psychic doctor when it comes to declaring that "there's nothing wrong with" somebody they see in the street from time to time - with the accompanying hatred and judgment, when they could easily walk a mile or two, therefore anybody else driving the same distance is a disgraceful, lazy, useless lump who wants the planet to die tomorrow.

I do wonder how many of the people who don't see the doctor for decades maybe should see them a little more often. I know people (drivers) who haven't been to the opticians for decades, saying "Oh, my eyes are still fine - they haven't changed". Like Mrs Twitt's walking stick, this is clearly very disingenuous; but the same must surely be the case with other health functions.

Just surmising, but might it be a vicious circle that GP surgeries are considered (by HCP and the general public alike) 'not for the generally well' (including those who may not be well, but assume they are), meaning that those with hidden or slow-burning problems may never go and get them checked out/discovered early on?

It is true though that most GP appointments go to elderly people, people too ill to work, or people not working. My GP surgery does late night appointments and they are not that popular.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

The number of times GPs will assume that everybody with a chronic health condition will have a carer with them 24/7 is staggering.

Yes, yes! That happens with both my OH and myself and we're both working as close to full time work as possible despite chronic health conditions.

OH has cancer, and still works full time (self employed), although he obviously needs time off for chemotherapy and other infusions, scans, x-rays, blood tests, GP and consultant appointments, etc. It's amazing how virtually all the doctors, nurses and other HCA's just assume he's given up work. They look incredulous when he asks for an early or late appointment (especially when not at our local hospital, some appointments are in the next county over an hours' drive away) so that he can get work done before or after it - they just assume a mid morning or mid afternoon appointment is fine although that means he loses at least half a day's work every time! On one week of his 4 weekly treatment cycle, he has 4 appointments, so that would basically be 4 out of 5 working days lost if he didn't get appointments at the start or end of the day! It's bad enough that he feels crap at certain points in his 4 weekly treatment cycle, so there are days when he either can't work or can only do "light/easy" work anyway!

I have diabetes so can live and work a pretty normal life, but still get the "assumption" I don't work from the GPs, GP nurses, diabetic eye screening unit, even opticians, dentists, and audiologist. I do wonder what they think a "normal working person" looks like? It's always the small talk, such as at the end of the appointment, they ask "are you going somewhere nice now" or "are you going straight back home or somewhere else", and usually look genuinely shocked when I say I'm going back to work!

Perhaps they see so many people who don't work that they just get used to it and assume you don't work unless you turn up in a uniform or wearing a lanyard??

@Kazzyhoward The cancer assumptions surprise me less, but surely virtually everyone of working age with diabetes works? DH has diabetes and has never had assumptions that he does not work. Do you look particularly old so they assume you are retired?

Maybe I look old now, but it's 25 years since I was diagnosed, and don't think I looked particularly old in my 30's, yet still there was the implied assumption I didn't work. The only thing back then was that I was grossly overweight (but still active enough to walk, cycle, swim, golf, ski, and even play squash, so hardly shuffling around at a snail's pace - a GP once even told me to "slow down" when I did a fast walk from the waiting area down to his consulting room as he didn't want me walking fast to raise my BP which I was there for him to check!).

Yes, exactly. I don’t know what they expect people to be living off if they don’t work? I have to work or I have no money. I look really fit and well and slim, and I’m vegan. In fact, I have serious cancer, am at very high risk of both a heart attack and a stroke, and my mental health is now so shot to pieces, I’m frequently suicidal. I have endless appointments and tests and investigations that I have to fit around my full-time job. I’m not entitled to any benefits, so of course I have to work. Begging for an early appointment or a lunchtime appointment or an evening one is normal, negotiating with my employer, using up my annual leave etc. My employer is understanding and accommodating, otherwise it would be impossible.

@Kazzyhoward That really surprises me. My DH has never had that assumption. He is often asked what his job is.

It's not local to me, but I think it is run by the local council as the town council offices are there too.

I think assuming you don't work is a common thing, there are enough discussions about schools assuming it's still the 1950s on here.

I have recently encouraged my employer to start an "age" group as part of its diversity and inclusion activities - one of the reasons being elder (and in my case husband) care and the fact that the NHS assumes that you have all day to go to an appointment. DH has to go for regular eye appointments and they never tell him in advance if it's a 10 minute appointment or a two hour one where they might put gunk in his eyes so he can't drive himself home. So I have to take him and need time off work as well as him needing it. Probably one for a different thread but fits in with the idea that the NHS workers (and teachers) think nobody else works except them.

How many other customers were in the cafe when you were there? Was it pretty busy?

Not many. But that's the chicken and the egg isn't it.

No one's going to go in after 4 if you are herded out by half past.

The reason most of us find shopping at corporate outlets 'convenient' is the existence of competition - in the form or other large corporates, but most importantly small businesses.

The minute the latter disappear, large businesses will most likely collude, and you will be at the mercy of the monopolies. The 'convenience' and value will soon disappear

It's Economics 101.

It's shocking that people don't see why it's important to keep small businesses and local high streets alive TBH

Same. I would get one or two people but we have diabetics type 1 in families in 2 countries, within frirnds here + type 2 and all of them work so it's very unusual to have everyone assuming poster doesn't. Especially when that everyone is dealing with all the working diabetics!

What do you mean, keeping small business alive? Have you read the thread? People have said over and over why they don’t feel obliged to plan and finances around small business, but around their families.

Yes, I have RTFT. I agree nobody has to be out of pocket or plan their activities to suit small businesses (or their owners). But some of the responses on the thread indicate that people just won't support them even if they could, as if they were irrelevant. And they are not

The minute the latter disappear, large businesses will most likely collude, and you will be at the mercy of the monopolies. The 'convenience' and value will soon disappear

that is why we have competition law to prevent collusion. And the Groceries Code Adjudicator, to try to keep the large supermarkets in check.

Laws don't always work as they should.

And when they do, it's usually too late and many otherwise viable businesses would have disappeared and consumers are left in dire straits because they couldn't be bothered to carry cash or choose wisely between two equally convenient options

Supermarkets aren't "in check" at all. They collude with each other and their suppliers. They have "retro bonuses" paid back by suppliers so that they can show the regulators an invoice showing, say, they buy tins of beans at 20p and sell at 25p, so no "super" profit, but the regulators don't see the hundreds of thousands pounds paid back by the supplier to supermarkets for "incentives" such as hitting sales targets, marketing contributions, etc. Suppliers collude with them in that they do a "carousel" of offers around the supermarkets, so there'll only be one supermarket at a time doing a BOGOF or a big discount on multipack crisps, but there'll always be one supermarket doing them. If there was genuine competition, it would be possible for several supermarkets to run the same offers/incentives at the same time! (By the way, the BOGOF and other hard discounts are paid for by the suppliers, not the supermarket!).

If there was genuine competition, it would be possible for several supermarkets to run the same offers/incentives at the same time

They do regularly. I often know that when I see something on offer in the ASDA it will be on offer in Tesco.
Many, if not most, promotions are run by the brand itself not the supermarket from what I remember from my retail years

While SMEs are really important, large number of people are employed in SMEs, we are really not what's holding supermarkets and big chains back on prices....

Small independent business probably can't afford the wages to stay open for long hours.

Large companies actually like minimum wage laws for this reason. They can afford to pay it, if begrudgingly, but the smaller independent shops are in a tough spot unless the owner stays and runs everything.

I'm also reminded about the old observation that there's only one Monopolies Commission

Brilliant, never thought of that!

As the co-owner of a small independent business let me ask you this. If we were to stay open until late 7 days a week when do you expect us to go to the warehouse to restock the shop? We don’t get deliveries because we are small.
When do you expect us to spend time with our family? We don’t have staff.
Our business does have a card machine, but if you pay with cash we don’t lose 1.67% on every transaction. We still have to pay our bills!

The idea is you support local business so they can grow, afford to take on staff, open a little longer etc etc. when you shop at a big corporation you are lining the pockets of millionaires. When you shop at small businesses you are helping a family buy their groceries for the week!

Fully agree. Same with the posters above whingeing that some small shops close for lunch - when do they think the shop owner goes to the loo or has a short break, or goes to bank the takings, or goes shopping themselves?

Fair enough it would be strange for a larger shop with several staff to close for lunch, but for a smaller shop where it's just the sole owner, they have no choice, unless you expect them to sit on a commode behind the counter munching their sandwich whilst they serve customers!