This can't be good news for Dunder Mifflin.
Good thing Michael left the company when he did.
Today OfficeMax's shares rose 21 percent because of rumors that it's going to merge with one of its rivals, Office Depot. My initial thoughts:
DAMN I WISH I INVESTED IN OFFICE MAX TODAY
The merger makes sense, because I always thought Office Max and Office Depot were the same brand, anyway.
Both brands, which sound like the same brand (see initial thought #2), I tend to call by an easier-to-remember name: "Not Staples."
CAN I STILL INVEST IN OFFICE MAX AND MAKE MONEY OR WILL IT BE TOO LATE LIKE THOSE THIRTY-SEVEN OTHER TIMES I INVESTED TOO LATE TO MAKE ANY MONEY DAMN WHY DID I SELL MY FIVE SHARES OF GOOGLE AT 450
For what it's worth (in my case, it's worth nothing, because I didn't invest any money today), Office Depot's stock went up 9 percent, while Staples' stock went up 13 percent.
The Chicago Times sez that part of Office Depot's I mean OfficeMax's recent success is due in part to its ability to "shrink and become more nimble." I'll have to use that phrase next time I deal with the wife.
Hi! You said something about having me for dinner? Oh, wait...
Though I've eaten plenty of so-called meat products that could have actually been made of horse (such as the McRib and most of what they served in my high school cafeteria), no actual horse products (or, shudder, byproducts) have ever been discovered.
Across the pond in the UK, where I'm told they like to boil or fry everything, revolting revelations reveal that 11 meals sold by the Swedish frozen-food company Findus, contained "between 60% and 100% horsemeat," thanks to its French meat supplier, Comigel.
Not a win, place, or show kind of day for any of those brands, as well as the stores that sold the products.
The brand is probably pronounced "FIN-dus," but I can't help but think it's pronounced "FIND-us," as in "Try to find us," where "us" means "horses in our products."
In today's Slate, Seth Stevenson, who's a writer I admire (as far as I can admire writers), wrote an article on the power of the Rolls-Royce brand and as part of his research was actually able to test-drive a Ghost that cost $352,000 or, using the metric I prefer, $92,000 more than I paid for my house.
The main reason that a Rolls — am I allowed to be that informal? — costs so much is because of the craftsmanship. Seth — am I allowed to be that informal? — notes that the average car requires 25 to 30 hours to build, whereas the Rolls takes up to 450 hours, and 90 percent of the work is performed by humans (as opposed to the 90 percent performed by robots on your hunk o' junk).
But before you assume that $300,000 of that Ghost sticker price went into labor costs, what with unions and all that, Stevenson describes the construction of the part of the Phantom (the Rolls for folks who think the Ghost is too pedestrian) into which you plant your ass, and you might think you're reading an article in The Onion:
Consider the leather shop, which turns the hides of 11 bulls into the
interior of a Phantom. The natural grain hides are chosen with absurd
care — not from farms in South America, where the bulls' skin might be
blemished by energetic roaming and run-ins with barbed-wire fences, but
from European farms where they enjoy lives of sloth and ease. Only male
animals are used because females' milk production can cause unsightly
belly stretch marks.
Rolls is entering its second decade as part of the BMW Group, which also includes brands like Mini and Husqvarna (the "qv" in the name always makes me a little uncomfortable for some reason) and is enjoying its greatest year ever, thanks to the combination of "German engineering and British craftmanship" — and a lot of worldwide drooling.
