Farewell, Disingenuous Little Computer Store

I hate it when people lie.

But I can’t decide who’s worse:
#1. The liars who actually do the lying;
or,
#2. The pro-liars who so effectively enable the liars to lie that they can make the untruth seem true.

After the way that iconic little computer store in South Minneapolis shut down at the end of March, I’m leaning towards #2. Why?

Because the big lie perpetrated here was so obviously untrue that lying didn’t even make sense.

In this case, lying to customers in person and through the media didn’t help them to stay competitive or stay in business. Fibbing about way they were going out of business only made them look like the other computer hacks that have festered in the marketplace -- like the bad guys they kept reassurring customers they would never become.

Of course, almost everyone lies. Almost everyone, at one time or another, has chosen the untruth over the truth. Lying does happen, and lying is part of being human.

But for too many businessmen and women in 21st century America, lying has become part of their habitual, almost mandatory, modus operandi. They lie all the time because they firmly believe their business environment compels them to lie, lie, lie. They feel they HAVE to lie in order to stay “competitive.” So they keep lying -- almost all the time -- because they believe they must lie in order to stay profitable and stay in business.

Look, it’s one thing for businesses to make up stuff. It’s quite another thing, though, to perpetuate such an obvious lie and then use some FOX TV outlet to go along with their blatant disingenuousness.

That’s really lame.

Come on, guys. That’s going beyond lying. That’s going into corporate soap opera mode. That’s creating an unnecessary corporate myth about your little store and that international computer corporation that used to supply you with computers but doesn’t want to anymore.

That’s what’s really going on here, right?

My spidey senses have been tingling OT, ever since little store and big box computer giant started their canard last month. Not that your corporate M.O. is any of my business. Not that you owe me or the rest of your loyal customers the truth...Maybe at this point, though, telling the truth wouldn’t be such a bad thing to do -- especially since most customers already know what’s going on.

You know how the Dairy Queen junta wanted to shut down all the little, locally-owned Dairy Queens in favor of bigger year-round DQ restaurants that would compete with other fast food outlets like McDonald’s, Burger King, and Culver’s? You must have read about it. It was in all the newspapers and magazines. It was even broadcast on those cable TV business segments that nobody likes to watch.

The truth was out there because International Dairy Queen, Inc., the corporation that owns DQ, pulled no punches. The corporate heads told the truth.

No big melodramatic excuses. No rehearsed whining about how bad business was because nobody wanted to buy a Peanut Buster Parfait anymore. No lame PR about how McDonald’s substandard cones were driving them out of business.

Nope, those greedy bastards refused to lie outright about their strategy. They simply went after those hold-outs who kept clinging to their little seasonal Dairy Queen drive-ins and let everybody know about it. Not a pretty picture, but at least these barbarians at the gate didn’t insult the intelligence of their customers by churning out another CYA dog-ate-my-homework lie to make the bloodletting look good.

Not so with this little mom & pop computer store and the gigantic computer corp. that had been supplying them with Little Orangebird Computers. (We’re calling them Little Orangebird Computers because this reporter doesn’t want to get crushed).

Big Box made Little Store go public with the old song-and-dance that nearly all businesses use when they no longer want to be in business but don’t want to share the real reason.

So instead of telling us the real reason, the owner of this beloved store went on-air and gave the usual company line:
We tried, but we just couldn’t compete.

Ah, the familiar Weltschmerz of capitalism gone bad. As though bigger stores really were offering the very same computers and items and selling them at cheaper rates?

TV viewers heard AND saw the store’s owner deliver this canard. They also heard and saw customers lamenting the “inevitable” demise of a store that had become an iconic institution in the community, thanks to its commitment to teaching, educating, repairing and recycling. For a minute, it all seemed pretty convincing. If you know anything at all about computers, though, you soon realized it was all B.S. Convincing and sincere, but still B.S. Why?

Because the Little Orangebird Computers that this little computer store specialized in selling NEVER went on sale!

Whether you bought your Orangebird online or at the Big Box Orangebird HQ down the street or at this little store that had to go out of business, you STILL PAID THE SAME PRICE.

In fact, the only way you could find an Orangebird Computer at a lower price would be if you went to Craigslist and bought a USED one.

Of course, the gang at FOX went along with the script without asking the obvious question: How could you possibly get undercut and underpriced when the computers you specialize in selling never go on sale and are the same price all over -- no matter who’s selling them?

My intuition (that can neither be proved nor disproved) has led me to an ugly truth. The big boys from the Big Box Computer Corp. down the street probably gave our friendly little guys an ultimatum: You can either take our ridiculously huge buyout we’re offering you and go out of business. Or, you can stay in business, but you won’t have much of a business because we’re no longer going to supply you with any computers to sell.

Bye, bye, Little Orangebird -- and decades of fair trade, fair business practice, and inestimable good will.

Under such cutthroat circumstances, I understand why you chose to go out of business. What gripes me about your departure, though, is the way you went about doing it.

For years, you’ve worked at creating a business that customers could trust and believe in. Then, in just a short time on broadcast news, you became just like the other slick salesmen you’d sworn you’d never become. How easy it would have been to simply tell your customers the truth. At least then you could have closed your store with your integrity still intact.