[chasd00]

It's Family Dollar, margin has to be almost nothing and sales per day is probably < $1k. That's why I said 50% of sales and not profit.

I go there daily because it's a nice 30min round trip walk and I wfh. I go up there to get a diet coke or something else just to get out of the house. It amazes me when i see a handwritten sign on the door "closed, system is down". I've gotten to know the cashiers so I asked and it's because the internet connection goes down all the time. That store has to one of the most poorly run things i've ever seen yet it stays in business somehow.

[hinkley]

I think the point people are trying and failing to make is that asking for half of means sales is half of revenue not half of net and that you’re out of your goddamned mind if you think a store with razor thin margins would sell at a massive loss rather than just close due to connectivity problems.

Your responses imply that you think people are questioning whether you would lose money on the deal while we are instead saying you’ll get laughed out of the store, or possibly asked never to come back.

[chasd00]

i'm not a businessman, just a computer nerd ( swe turned tech. consultant )

It seems like an easy problem to fix and a retail store being closed for a whole weekday because of inet access sounds crazy to me.

[gwbas1c]

They're all run on a shoestring:

1: I doubt they're "with it" enough to put together a backup arrangement for internet.

2: Their internet problems are probably due to a cheapo router, loose wire, ect.

3: The employees probably like the break.

[progmetaldev]

Unfortunately they are largely corporate, which is how they can sell items for such a cheap price. The store manager probably has zero say in nearly anything. Even if they wanted to "break the rules," I doubt they could make use of your connection as a backup, but I've also worked for smaller companies that were able to sell internet access to individual locations like Denny's and various large hotels in the US. Being able to somehow share sales would be the difficult part, since all sales are reported back to corporate.

Good luck if you make this work for you, it would be exciting to hear about if you're able to get them to work with you.