Famed outdoor outfitter REI acknowledged today that the LowEndBox and LowEndTalk Black Friday juggernaut makes staffing their retail stores infeasible and announced they will be closed that day.
There is some pretty language about spending more time outside, but we all know what’s really driving this.
Some excerpts, with translations:
REI: “prioritizing the experience of our employees”
Translation: “Cell reception in some REI stores isn’t all that great and we don’t want our employees missing out on deals.”
REI: “an annual observance will serve as a yearly reminder of this commitment to doing the right thing”
Translation: “We know how critical low-priced virtual servers are to humanity and we want to make sure we mark the urgency of this market every year.”
REI: “While customers can still place an order on REI.com, order processing and fulfillment will not begin until the following day.”
Translation: “There’s no point trying to grab any Black Friday sales because everyone will just be hitting reload on LowEndBox and LowEndTalk that day.”
It’s all there if you read between the lines 😉. Welcome, REI employees!
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Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.
As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.
Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.
His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.
You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.
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