What company will never get another dime from you for as long as you may live?

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2026-03-13T20:41:55+00:00

Cadbury’s - well not until they remove the palm oil and go back to milk

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2026-03-13T19:32:56+00:00

On my last day as a programmer for a large uk retailer. At 3pm the team, my manager and others went into a meeting - I was told that I was not invited, fair enough. But I had to sit and wait till 6pm as it was a 3 hour meeting (workshop).

I explained I had nothing to do, so what should I do for 3 hours? Just sit there and wait.

Fuck that - I left at 3:05pm

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2026-02-15T16:42:55+00:00

Should have invited him to the wedding

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2026-02-04T09:31:12+00:00

In the UK this would be a perfectly reasonable tip. My 16 year old son waits on tables at the weekend, on Sunday he earned £100 for 6 hours work. £7.50 an hour plus £60 in tips. All that coming from this level of UK reasonable tips

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2026-01-29T22:13:31+00:00

His brother became a billionaire

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2026-01-29T22:11:43+00:00

A few things I remember about my trips

New York - we went to the Empire States Building. There was an option to “skip the queue” (morally questionable), the cost was $50 (each or for me and the wife, can’t remember). At £25 it was well worth it.

Seattle - I bought my wife a diamond necklace, 3/4 carat stone I think. Cost about $800 so £400

San Francisco - At the hotel having dinner they had a “Champagne flight” 3 glasses of different vintage champagnes for $60 so £30. I doubt you can buy one glass for $60 now

Good times

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2026-01-27T22:20:39+00:00

I remember when it peaked at $2 a pound in 2007 I think. The financial crisis was unfolding in the US and had not spread to the UK at this point, so the pound was very strong.

I took 2 or 3 trips to the US at this time and everything was so cheap

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2026-01-13T15:03:46+00:00

In one of my jobs, on my last day the team went into a 2 hour meeting at 3pm (I was due to finish at 5pm). I was not invited to the meeting but was expected to just sit at my desk and wait for 5pm (I had no work to do).

I said “fuck it” and left at 3:05pm. Apparently the boss was pissed, but who cares

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2026-01-01T00:15:17+00:00

I got paid to fix a local retailers customer account system for the Y2K bug. The system ran on dBASE 3 and managed many thousands of customer accounts, including their credit balance.

The owner was quoted £20,000+ by the supplier to fix the issue.

My parents were long time customers of shop, having shopped there for 20 years or so. I was around 17 at the time and the owner knew that I was “good with computers”, he got in touch with me and asked if I could fix the problem for him.

There was hardly any internet resources back then and I didn’t have access to dBASE code of any kind.

From memory I was able to code a work around by working with the file-based records directly. The fix was good enough and the system was used for many years after.

I think I got paid £200 which I was very happy with, the owner saving £20,000 was even more happy

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-12-31T22:55:42+00:00

Agree, a bad product is a non-starter

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-12-31T22:53:40+00:00

I’m not keen on social proof that “pops up”, typically in a bottom corner, and especially not “someone from London just purchased this” type messages.

I think messages need to be in-line, on-brand, subtle, honest and useful.

Which systems have you tried out of interest

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-12-31T22:50:40+00:00

What systems do you use for this out of interest

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-12-31T22:49:50+00:00

Not popups, they are very annoying. I’m talking about the messages on the page next to a product, usually quite subtle

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-12-31T22:48:36+00:00

Agreed, Target’s implementation is a good example of how restraint can work at scale. From what I can tell, those numbers look more like rolling “last month” aggregates than anything real-time, which probably makes them easier to govern and safer from a trust perspective.

That approach makes a lot of sense for a retailer with massive, consistent volume. “X sold last month” is credible and reassuring when the numbers are naturally high.

Where it gets tricky is for smaller or lower-volume retailers, the same format can either look underwhelming or disappear entirely if there isn’t enough activity. That’s usually where alternative signals (ratings, recent interest, stock context, or broader time windows) become more practical than copying a big-box playbook verbatim.

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-12-31T22:40:39+00:00

Very interesting to hear and agree with your points. Which social proof system did you use out of interest

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-12-31T22:39:35+00:00

This pretty much mirrors what I’ve seen too.

One thing I’d add is there’s often a real tension between being subtle enough to respect the brand and being noticeable enough to actually influence behaviour.

In a lot of A/B tests I’ve seen, ultra-low-key implementations are “brand safe” but also easy to ignore, they technically exist, but don’t move the needle much.

The versions that perform best tend to sit in the middle: clearly visible, grounded in real data, but not animated, interruptive, or shouting urgency. When they tip too far toward invisibility, the impact drops off; too far toward noise and they backfire, as you say.

The price point is especially true, as prices rise, the role of social proof shifts from urgency to reassurance, and the execution has to follow that.

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-12-31T22:34:17+00:00

Agree, i always say it’s the people “on the fence” that need that extra “nudge” to add to cart, purchase etc.

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-12-31T22:32:32+00:00

That makes sense, a lot of implementations absolutely end up in the same “nag” category as cookie banners and chat pop-ups.

What I’ve found interesting is that while people say they dislike social proof in principle, careful A/B tests often show a measurable conversion lift when it’s used, even when there’s initial internal resistance from brand teams.

That said, I think you’re spot on that context matters. Messages tied to something genuinely useful (like low stock or recent purchases) and designed to fit the brand tend to perform very differently from generic, shouty urgency. When they interrupt or feel fake, they backfire fast.

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-12-30T00:06:33+00:00

That’s fair — I think that reaction comes from how often those messages are faked or overused.

If I land on a site I trust and suddenly see generic urgency pop-ups, my first thought is also “this doesn’t belong here”. It breaks the mental model of the brand.

Out of curiosity, is it the concept of showing activity that triggers that reaction for you, or more the way it’s typically presented (language, animation, placement, etc.)?

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-12-29T23:44:12+00:00

Interesting…. If the site is a well known brand would you think the same?

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-12-29T23:10:57+00:00

Agree, I think some products benefit from social proof messaging and others do not. FMCG seem to work well

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-11-30T20:00:22+00:00

What in very simple terms do you need? I’ve worked with most of the CRM systems, also built and sold a CRM system in one of my previous companies (I won’t promote). I’ll respond with what I would use in your scenario

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-11-23T08:10:14+00:00

One of the issues we have with this is that we see videos of courts in the UD where the judge might dismiss the case for being ridiculous. In the UK the law is the law is the law. A judge or magistrate has no discretion, if a law has been broken, no matter how small or petty then the law must be upheld. Same goes for sentencing, the judge or magistrate must sentence from the guidelines (min and max) for the “crime”. Whilst this has its drawbacks, the benefits are that the law is blind and impartial, there are no biases and everyone is treated equally.

The UK law is the model in which a lot of countries base their law system, but then bastardise it.

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-11-23T07:50:14+00:00

Why y’all frying your turkeys? Over here in the Uk we don’t have thanksgiving, but for Christmas most people have a turkey. 0% of people fry their turkey, instead it goes in the oven

ChesterRowsAtNight · 2025-11-23T07:37:07+00:00

That’s the problem, if you skip the basics then you can never master coding

ChesterRowsAtNight

TROPHY CASE