The future of work

[slimslob]

I can't imagine too many reasons why a one man home office would need a production copier. In an office environment, you have gaggles of people using the machine. Home office? One person.

Production machines but a quality low volume in the 25 to 35 ppm speed range. These do not require 240v service but do require stable line voltage. FYI most modern day homes do provide 240/208 service as most electric clothes dryers, ovens and AC operate better with the higher voltage service. Plus most utilities charge you more for power during the day. California is even introducing a new higher rate tier for energy usage between 4 and 9 PM. That's right right when most people are getting home and trying to prepare dinner.

Far too many end up with either entry level machines many of which give you only one paper tray that holds maybe 250 sheets. Not the greatest if you need to print quality business letters with the first page being letterhead and the rest not. You could opt for a paper bank, I guess.

Many also go for the ink jet MFP. Again not the best for doing business letters and will eat you alive on ink. And if a child or pet or a drunken friend or neighbor happens to knock it over spilling ink.....

[copier addict]

I can't imagine too many reasons why a one man home office would need a production copier. In an office environment, you have gaggles of people using the machine. Home office? One person.

Please, tell us all what you consider a "production copier" .
Hint: everyone else in the world knows they are the ones in print shops.

[D_L_P]

The traditional office is changing everyday and the roles of copier service techs have to adapt to it.

It's rare to do calls inside a house but I think it will be more common. The first few times it seemed awkward but now I hardly think about it. I see a lot of wide format copiers in homes. Accountants are probably the most common copier placements in homes.

One thing I noticed is people are much more picky about their carpet in their house (and rightly so). Little toner spills blend into most office carpets while homes tend to have solid colors which will show the slightest drop. We had a copier inside an Amish house with nearly white carpet. We had to be very careful during any service call.

[KenB]

I can't imagine too many reasons why a one man home office would need a production copier. In an office environment, you have gaggles of people using the machine. Home office? One person.

Back in the early 90s, I had a Canon NP6650 (remember those?) in a home office. I think it was a Segment 4 machine, and probably the best one Canon ever made.

I forgot the business she was in, but she produced a ton of copies, certainly enough to justify that size of machine.

I had just assumed that power would be an issue, but it was not. The customer was wise enough to work with the sales person to get the specs, and she had the appropriate power installed by an electrican.

Never had any power issues there.

Years later, I had a production size Konica Minolta install in the home of an independent printer who made customized flyers for car dealerships (he used a lot of Planet Press for the variable data).

That machine ran on 208 volts, and he, too, had good power.

Just a few years after that, we had about 6 or 8 Ricoh MPC 450x machines in the model homes of a major builder. Once the development was sold out (or close to it), the machine was removed. About half of those had power issues.

[SalesServiceGuy]

It's rare to do calls inside a house but I think it will be more common. The first few times it seemed awkward but now I hardly think about it. I see a lot of wide format copiers in homes. Accountants are probably the most common copier placements in homes.

One thing I noticed is people are much more picky about their carpet in their house (and rightly so). Little toner spills blend into most office carpets while homes tend to have solid colors which will show the slightest drop. We had a copier inside an Amish house with nearly white carpet. We had to be very careful during any service call.

.. great point about the carpets. I will bring some extra cardboard. In all three installs next weeks, there are tricky avenues to approach the front door and then down a set of stairs to a basement office. My installs are all 100 lb A4 colour mainframes strapped to a two wheel cart so a little too heavy for one person to manhandle.

A lot of home offices were formerly located in commercial space that is no longer wanted/ needed. The print volume is still there with 1-2-3 people in the office.

[SalesServiceGuy]

Walmart drew one in four dollars spent on click and collect — with room to grow in 2022

• Walmart scored 25.4% of all click-and-collect orders in 2021 — the largest share of any U.S. retailer, according to market data.
• Click and collect, a more profitable e-commerce channel for retailers, has become a powerful sales driver during the pandemic.
• Sales are expected to jump by about 21% to $101 billion in 2022, according to Insider Intelligence.

One in every four dollars that Americans spent on online purchases retrieved through either curbside pickup or inside of stores this year went to Walmart, according to Insider Intelligence.

The big box giant drove 25.4% of all click-and-collect orders in 2021— the largest market share of any U.S. retailer, according to recent estimates by the market research firm formerly called eMarketer. That translates to an estimated $20.4 billion in sales.

Click-and-collect sales are expected to jump by about 21% to $101 billion in 2022, according to the data tracker. They’re expected to grow by nearly 20% the following year to an estimated $120.15 billion in 2023.

“It’s something people are used to doing now,” said Suzy Davidkhanian, principal analyst for retail and e-commerce at Insider Intelligence. People began to accept the behavioral change during the pandemic, along with such practices as scanning QR codes to read restaurant menus on their phones.

Click and collect — also called buy online, pick up in store — is now a key sales driver for pandemic-era retailers to deliver a safe, fast way to buy goods and limit person-to-person interactions. Consumers order groceries, sweatpants, lightbulbs, etc., online and then pick up their purchases in the parking lot or at a designated store counter.

For retailers, the option comes with financial advantages. The e-commerce sales are more profitable than other kinds of online sales because they eliminate the cost of delivering packages to people’s doorsteps and allow store employees to double as order pickers.

Shipping to the home still remains the more dominant e-commerce option in the U.S., however. The click-and-collect channel is on track to drive roughly 11% of all e-commerce sales for retailers next year, according to the market research firm.

For Walmart, click and collect has turned a huge store footprint into a weapon to fend off e-commerce colossus Amazon — not only to drive more sales but to improve margins and nudge online sales closer to profitability. Walmart has more than 4,700 stores in the U.S., excluding its membership-based store Sam’s Club. Amazon’s store footprint is just a fraction of that, consisting mainly of its more than 500 Whole Foods locations.

Walmart, the country’s largest grocer by revenue, began piloting online grocery pickup long before the pandemic. It tested the mode of shopping at a store in Denver in 2013 and marked its 1,000th location with the service in 2017. It now has curbside pickup at more than 3,700 stores.

Walmart’s click-and-collect sales have nearly tripled over the past two years, soaring from an estimated $7.21 billion in 2019 to $20.4 billion in 2021. Its market share has grown, too, up from 20.6% in 2019. Its U.S. e-commerce business has yet to turn a profit, despite expanding 79% in the previous fiscal year, which ended Jan. 31, 2021.

After Walmart, Home Depot is expected to have the second-largest market share for click and collect in 2021, accounting for an estimated 13.3% of all sales through the channel, according to Insider Intelligence. Target, Best Buy and Lowe’s round out the top five.

Home Depot rolled out curbside pickup to stores across the country in spring 2020 at the outset of the pandemic. Prior to that, customers could retrieve online purchases inside of the store from an employee or a pickup locker.

For shoppers, buy online, pick up in store has become a popular way to get time-sensitive home improvement supplies — such as a small hardware item, one more strand of Christmas tree lights or another can of paint — when trying to finish a do-it-yourself project or a professional job, said company spokeswoman Margaret Smith.

Target has added hundreds of groceries and other items to curbside pickup during the pandemic, including gallons of milk, cartons of eggs and bottles of wine. It credits its same-day curbside pickup service, Drive Up, for fueling digital sales growth during the global health crisis and has reported triple-digit percentage growth of sales through Drive Up in multiple quarters.

Davidkhanian said she expects Walmart to remain the country’s market share leader in click and collect. She said the big-box retailer is “leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else,” because of its early launch — and grocery sales, a purchase that lends itself to the shopping method due to their frequency and immediacy.

She said she expects Target to move up in the rankings — and potentially bump Home Depot from the No. 2 spot because of the former’s heavy emphasis on click and collect.

... I never heard of this term before but I have ordered electronic product from www.walmart.ca and gone into the store to pick it up.

[SalesServiceGuy]

What is the most reliable machine out there on the market at the moment? Your opinion?

... Your question has little to do about the future of work. That future involves a great generational shift from the traditional office to a distributed office where many employees work remotely and only periodically need to arrive at the official place of business.

My employers place of business has had to flex on-premise employees up and down several times in the last year to adjust to changing COVID restrictions.

It almost seems that senior management rarely meet in person anymore. They predominantly use Microsoft 365 and rely on Outlook and Teams for easy voice, video, conference calls.

This creates many home offices where higher demands become more common. For example, I had to learn both how to terminate Cat 5e network cable and the latest Mac OSX 12 Monterey operating systems with six computers this week. The brand new high end Mac desktop computer with CPU embedded into the 24" monitor only worked via wireless.

The wireless router had no free ports on it. I had to insert a simple network switch. There was no free electrical plug available. I had to insert one power bar into another power bar. The original power bar powered a crazy complicated wall of electrical devices. I accidentally took down the home's internet but got it back in 10 minutes.

I installed two quality ESP Digital Edge Surge suppressors at a luxury home with a back up generator that came on as recently as the previous week. One for the copier and one for the new expensive Mac desktop computer.

These home offices need reliable Copy/Print/Scan/Fax/Cloud/Label equipment. I suggest Toshiba.

[Phil B.]

General Electric Suspends Vaccine Or Test Requirement After Supreme Court Ruling | The Daily Wire

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

[SalesServiceGuy]

Census signals it's time for Canadian investors to act their age


The old saying “with age comes wisdom” is being put to the test for people investing for and during retirement after the latest Statistics Canada 2021 census.

The data revealed the number of Canadians aged 55 to 64 surpassed Canadians aged 15 to 24 for the first time in history.

It also showed the number of people over the age of 85 has more than doubled since the 2001 census, making that cohort the country’s fastest growing demographic, at 861,000 people as of 2021. That number is expected to triple over the next 25 years.

As the so-called grey wave approaches, record-high household debt levels, rising borrowing rates, inflation, and the prospect of longer life expectancies can create complications for retirees and demand for a more ‘mature’ response to investment strategies might be needed.

NO MORE CRYPTO FOR YOU

Another trend that doesn’t bode well for those in or nearing retirement is the decline in workplace pension plans over the past 50 years.

Even those with company pension plans are having to cope with a long-term shift from professionally managed defined benefit pensions, where the benefit amount is pre-determined, to defined contribution pensions, where the benefit in retirement depends on how well the investments perform during the persons working years.

This structural shift has led many Canadians to take matters into their own hands by investing for their retirement through registered retirement savings plans (RRSP) and tax free savings accounts (TFSA), which has opened to door for casino-type trading platforms to push speculative investments like cryptocurrencies.

There’s nothing wrong with speculative investing if you’re younger or have extra ‘play money’ on hand, but the risk of losing everything and starting over in your fifties would be devastating.

Equity investments more suitable for older Canadians are those that generate, maintain, and grow earnings over time. Many successful retirements ride on the backs of companies with intrinsic value - companies that produce a product or provide a service, consistently expand their market share, and widen profit margins.

TIME FOR AN INCOME STRATEGY

Companies with consistent earnings often pay dividends, and companies with growing earnings, often grow those dividends. A dividend income stream is gold for older investors who need to meet day-to-day living expenses regardless of where markets are trading at the time.

The big Canadian banks, multinational corporations, and real estate investment trusts (REITs) tend to be among the most reliable dividend payers.

Rising interest rates are opening up opportunities for even more reliable income through guaranteed investment certificates (GICs), government bonds, and even investment grade corporate bonds.

Fixed-income investments also act as a good inflation hedge because yields tend to rise with interest rates, which tend to rise with inflation.

As a general rule of retirement investing, the portion of fixed income in any portfolio should increase as the investor gets closer to retirement.

SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP

The secret sauce for a stable retirement portfolio is diversification to prevent any particular stock, sector or asset class from having too much sway.

It’s not easy to determine the right mix for any individual’s specific situation and that’s where professional management can be worth the cost.

When we’re in our 20s, we think of an advisor as someone who merely picks stocks that should go up. However, vital offerings such as risk management, income generation, tax and estate planning, and education frequently go overlooked.

High fees often keep investors away from advisors, but retirement-age investors might have more leverage than they think when it comes to finding a good advisor without having fees eat into returns.

Money managers are usually compensated each year with a predetermined percentage of the amount invested - sometimes as high as three per cent on a portfolio of mutual or segregated funds. Older investors with significant savings can often negotiate a much lower rate because the advisor can invest directly in the market or recommend low-fee exchange-traded funds.

Alternatively, fee-only advisors can set a fixed rate to initiate a portfolio strategy and review it each year as circumstances change.

[SalesServiceGuy]

‘Lunchflation’ is real. Returning to the office is costing us a fortune


Millions of employees started working remotely after the pandemic first took hold in 2020. But now, more people are returning to the office – and they’re being greeted by much higher prices for just about everything.

Food. Commuting. Daycare. Rising gas prices and soaring inflation have made going back to the office more expensive. And that is eating into workers’ incomes, especially if their pay increases aren’t keeping up.

Here are some of the daily costs that have crept higher, making the return to post-pandemic office life more expensive.

Eating at the office

Coffee runs and long lunches with colleagues are one of the perks of returning to the office. But they come at a higher price these days.

The index for food away from home increased 7.2% over the last year, the Labor Department reported earlier this month. Food prices were up 9.4% in April from the same time last year – the biggest jump since April 1981, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported. And grocery store prices increased 10.8% for the year ended in April.

Office workers are seeing higher costs for everything from their morning coffee to their lunchtime salad: Starbucks raised prices in the US earlier this year and in October 2021 – and said prices could continue to rise.

“We have additional pricing actions planned through the balance of this year,” said then-CEO Kevin Johnson during an analyst call in February, citing cost pressures such as inflation.

Salad chain Sweetgreen has raised its menu prices by 10% since the start of 2021, the company said in its most recent earnings report.

“Lunchflation is 100% real, everything is more expensive,” said Kelly Yau McClay, who lives in Potomac, Maryland. “Before, you could get lunch for $7 to $12. Now there is no way you can get a decent lunch for less than $15.”

Yau McClay had just started a job doing branding and marketing for a real estate company as everything was shutting down in April 2020. She had been working remotely full-time until October 2021. But now she’s on a hybrid schedule, going in to the office three days a week, and estimates she spends around $30 to $35 a day on work-related expenses, like lunch, coffee and snack runs and parking.

But for other workers, returning to the office has brought some relief – at least on some fronts. Consumers changed the way they spent during the pandemic, with expenses like dining out at restaurants getting replaced with higher grocery bills and more meals at home.

Sara Hill, who works in the insurance industry in Buffalo, New York, saw her food budget increase when she and her four children were home full-time.

“I was eating more food because I am closer to the kitchen… my food spending was still increasing because we were all home,” said Hill.

After working remotely full-time during the height of the pandemic, she is now going in to the office two days a week.

Before the pandemic, she spent around $25 to $30 a day on breakfast and lunch when working from the office. But now, with many of the food businesses near her job closed, she regularly brings lunches with her.

“I pretty much bring things from home, whether it’s leftovers or a cup of noodles to get me through the day.

Getting to the office

A return to commuting has also meant more gas usage.

With gas prices hitting record highs recently, it’s an expensive time to be filling up more frequently. According to AAA, the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline is now $4.60. In February 2020, it was $2.44.

In Orlando, Florida, Mike Tobin upgraded to a minivan in August 2020. At the time, he said it cost about $40 to fill up the tank – but now it’s closer to $75.

“My biggest driving thing is going to the office…everything else is really close to where we live,” said Tobin, who works for a wholesale electric distribution company.

For Hill, the higher prices at the pump have made her change her routines to try and fill her tank up just once a week. She fills her truck with premium gas, which she said costs between $110 to $120 a tank.

“That is extremely crazy for gas,” said Hill. “I try to pack the days when I go to the office – if I can do anything right after work or on my hour lunch break I will try to squeeze things in because…it’s a day I am already driving.”

She tries not to leave her house on the three days she is working from home.

For Yau McClay, any day she goes into the office she has to pay for parking. It used to cost $1 per hour, but increased by 50 cents earlier this year. Now she is paying $12 a day – up from $8.

Ditching the comfy sweatpants and dressing up for the office again is also costly. Apparel prices were up 5.4% in April from the same time a year ago.

“Now that I am going in to the office, I have to go buy new makeup sets – so I am spending money there when I wasn’t before,” said Yau McClay. “The things you used to spend money on, like hair cuts, makeup, manicure and pedicures and updating your wardrobe, those things were essentially on pause for two years. Yes, I was spending it before… I got so used to not spending that it was really nice. And now everything is more expensive.”

Caring for the kids

Child care costs tend to be one of the biggest expenses in working parents’ budgets – and that is getting more expensive for some parents, too.

In 2020, the national average annual cost of child care was $10,174, according to Child Care Aware of America.

In September 2020, Yau McClay put her three-year-old daughter in a new daycare facility full time for $2,150 a month. Though child care tends to get cheaper as a child ages, a series of price increases has eaten into those savings, Yau McClay said.

“Every time she got bumped up [to an older age group]…later, they would announce: ‘Sorry we have another price increase,’” Yau McClay said. “Between when we started there and now, the price [for her current class] has gone up almost $200 net.”