Dina has had a crush on Jonah for a while, but Jonah was always able to avoid the situation because he said he wasn’t comfortable dating a supervisor. He shares this news with his friend, shortly before the store manager announces that Dina has decided to step down as assistant manager so that she can focus on personal matters. Either-or decisions of this matter require people to weigh the costs and benefits of actions. Some of the costs for Dina include not being able to criticize Glenn, a reduction of her authority, and likely a pay reduction. She must believe that the benefits of dating Jonah outweigh those costs.
Category: Microeconomics
Cloud 9 won’t sell products that have been damaged, which seems like a good policy. Unfortunately, this means that if an employee wanted to take something, they just have to accidentally damage it. Glenn is frustrated with Cloud 9 and destroys some of the alcohol by marking the bottles with a marker. He declares it party time, sponsored by his family’s old store (Sturgis and Sons) which had been driven out of business when Cloud 9 entered the market.
Glenn’s family used to own a local hardware store before Cloud 9 entered the market and put them out of business. Cloud 9 was probably able to take advantage of economies of scale and a large distribution network to offer competing products at lower prices. Monopolistic competition in the long run results in zero profits for firms, but if a small company already has relatively little profit before entry, a decrease in demand could result in that particular firm incurring losses and leaving the market. Because Sturgis and Sons specialized in hardware, some of those workers may be structurally unemployed if their skills are no longer needed in the local market. Later in the episode, Glenn finally shares his frustration with Cloud 9 and how they killed his family’s business because of their devotion to profit maximization.
Categories
College as an Adult
The employees are locked in the store after hours while hanging up signs, but Amy laments that she has more important things to do: she has a midterm to study for. Trying to be relatable, Jonah reminisces about his time in college: getting drunk and having philosophical debates. It begs the question of how much human capital accumulation actually occurs and provides some support for the signaling model. Amy is treating college like an investment, so she resents Jonah’s downplaying of its importance.
Bo and Cheyenne are shopping for wedding supplies in the store. Bo really wants to buy some laptops so they can smash them during the wedding as a form of entertainment. Amy is shocked because she knows how expensive it is to raise a child and believes that the couple should be saving the money instead of spending it on one day. Amy tricks Bo into playing a game with a price gun so that Bo and Cheyenne can see how expensive a child can be. People struggle to recognize the opportunity costs in their decisions, but Amy has made the cost more salient.
Categories
Wedding Sale Rush
The store is having a one-day wedding sale and the discounts are steep enough that there is a line of women ready to purchase products. The increased purchases represent a change in the quantity demanded for items from the store. Since they didn’t stock enough items, the low prices will result in a shortage and likely an inefficient allocation among the shoppers.
Categories
Wedding Premium
Garret notices that the store sells two dresses that look identical, but one is marketed as a white dress and the other is a white wedding dress. The wedding dress costs $200, but the other dress only costs $30. The wedding industry is notorious for high markups on products that are labeled for weddings because brides and grooms often have fairly inelastic demand for their products. Because of this inelastic demand, firms are able to price discriminate and charge higher prices.
Categories
Shirking at a Gun Range
On the hunt for a runaway friend, Amy and Dina take some time to hang out and get to know each other better. Right as they’re deciding to head back to work, Amy suggests they treat themselves a bit. Even though the store manager believes they’re away from the store searching for a friend, Dina and Amy are actually shirking
Glenn is embarrassed about how he handled a gay couple earlier in the episode and he seeks Mateo’s help in trying to differentiate their product offering by providing a section tailored to gay weddings. Even though Mateo points out that it’s the same as s straight wedding, Glenn is convinced they should setup a section specific to gay weddings. Product differentiation is a characteristic of monopolistically competitive firms. By offering a specific section of the store to one group of people, Cloud 9 can set themselves apart from other retailers.
Categories
Unnecessary Bean Hopper
In order to win the Color Wars, teams have to sell as much as they can. Jonah doesn’t feel comfortable with the premise of this competition, even when the customers explicitly state that money isn’t a consideration in their purchase decisions. The coffee maker with the built-in bean hopper isn’t really necessary (which Jonah points out), but the customer is displaying some conspicuous consumption behavior.
Teaching with Superstore 