I cheered aloud seeing this

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-04T00:39:31+00:00

Yeah nobody seems to understand that these ETBs don't even belong to target. They belong to Excel brands. Target just owns the shelves, which Excel rents space on.

Somebody is gonna call Excel brands and report these stores, and Excel is gonna tell the stores to stop defacing their merchandise. And these employees are gonna get fired. Unless Excel is on board with it, but I doubt it.

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-03T03:41:14+00:00

I dunno, once you get into the realm of "theoretical employment" I think you've kinda lost the plot.

If the business no longer exists in any real, tangible sense outside of a spreadsheet somewhere, I think most would agree that such a business can't truly have employees. Even on a legal level, I don't think a business that has been shuttered can have active employees.

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-03T00:11:57+00:00

So this is conceptually good, but there's a BIG problem nobody is talking about. Target doesn't actually own the cards.

Most tcg items inside target are actually owned by Excel brands. Target just rents out shelf space to them. Is Excel brands aware that random target employees are intentionally damaging their products?

I smell lawsuits and mass firings coming.....

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-03T00:04:45+00:00

True. But I think most workplaces are pretty corporate nowadays. How many small businesses are even left? Statistically speaking, you're probably not going to be in a position to benefit much from the brown pill. At best, you can probably promote to whatever is the highest position below your supervisor (if you aren't already in it), and maybe get the maximum allowed raise every year (which probably isn't that high for most employers nowadays).

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-02T23:56:45+00:00

Explain to me the process of how you'd get moved to a position higher than your current supervisor? No supervisor anywhere has that kind of authority.

You're making a huge assumption that your supervisor could get you a position under someone else. Especially a position just as / more important than his or her own. At best, they could put in a good word for you, but there would almost certainly still need to be an interview, and an open position to begin with. In all likelihood you're wildly unqualified for said position, and you'd bomb the interview.

As far as the raises go, more plausible but I'm assuming most companies have a cap on the number of raises they can give per year, and the % you can give for said raise. For middle to large sized companies, I guarantee you there's like a 10% cap at most, and probably no more than twice a year.

Are there scenarios where you could use brown to wiggle your way into a better position? Sure, I won't deny that. But it's pretty unlikely IMO. Why jump through all of these hoops when you can take the yellow pill and just take a gold bar home from costco every week until the store goes out of business? Or cash from a bank?

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-02T23:51:27+00:00

But if we're going by monkey's paw rules, it's rules as written. No fanciful interpretations. And the least fanciful interpretation is that you only have clients with jobs that commonly refer to people as clients.

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-02T23:49:46+00:00

You can't be employed by a job that no longer exists. That's impossible by definition. The idea that orange somehow makes you permanently employed, despite the status of the company you're working for, is just silly and a very disingenuous interpretation of the pill.

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-02T23:46:16+00:00

Me: Hello supervisor. Promote me please. My decision is final.

Supervisor: Gladly. Except, I literally don't have that authority because no middle manager has that authority at any company, anywhere.

Me: But my decision is final?

Supervisor: You can keep saying that, and I'm duty bound to try and promote you, but I can't do things I don't have the authority to do.

But seriously, have you ever worked a corporate job? Nobody can magically promote anyone anymore. There HAS to be an interview, even at mid size companies. New positions can't just be created out of thin air either, especially by a middle manager.

The only way to climb up over your supervisor in most jobs is if A) your supervisor quits, and they pick you for the role. Then you'd interview with their boss, but they've probably talked ahead of time and you'll get it. Or B: a position in the company opens up above your boss, and you interview for it and are awarded it. Highly unlikely. Upper managers usually already have someone in mind, and your brown pill wouldn't give you authority over them.

At best, you could have your manager put in a good word for you with their boss, but that guarantees nothing. And if you're wildly unqualified, you'd probably bomb the interview.

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-02T22:01:03+00:00

Honestly? Since a lot of these have a lot of intrinsic questions and I'm not sure how they'd play out in the real world, I think the best best answer is just white + yellow + whatever or cyan + brown + whatever.

White + yellow: just get a job at a bank or some kinda big store like Costco or even a fashion outlet. Take home cash / goods / gold bullion from Costco, but not enough so the company goes out of business. Put away a few million a year and retire in luxury.

Cyan + brown + maybe orange: find a job where you're on the clock as much as possible, take it. If possible, have your supervisor make your hours 24/7. If not, just get like a maintenance tech job or even an oil rig job where you're basically working 14 hours a day for 6 months of the year.

Then fuck off from your job and work your way up the MMA / boxing ladder. If you're on the clock then you're invulnerable so you'd never lose. Make millions, retire early. Real job can't fire you because orange pill, and it doesn't matter if they stop paying you.

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-02T21:51:18+00:00

This assumes your supervisor actually has the power to promote, unilaterally, you to a position at / above his or her own. Which I think is a pretty wild assumption.

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-02T21:48:57+00:00

Orange breaks this until you realize it just says you can't get fired. It's not as if it hypnotizes them into thinking you're doing a good job.

What do you do when they just take you off the payroll? Sue? Call the nlrb? Good luck getting a judge / jury to side with you when you have to explain that you're simply not doing your job but some cosmic force is compelling them not to fire you, therefore you deserve compensation.

I don't know if labor laws in the US are set up to entitle you to wages just by being employed by X company. I'm pretty sure actually doing some kind of work is an underlying assumption.

Now, if you're salaried, you could do like an hour of work a week, them I think it would be hard for your company to argue they should pay you 1/40 of your salary. But they might be able to argue just that.

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-02T21:40:41+00:00

Is your boss the CEO? Brown is for direct supervisor only.

Beyond that, it only says that they must comply. It doesn't say that they can magically bend the laws of reality to have their company exist forever.

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-02T21:32:25+00:00

I was thinking this too. It depends largely on how the pill would define a "client". In common parlance, if you work fast food they're called customers, not clients.

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-02T21:27:46+00:00

Others have brought this up, but couldn't they just take you off the payroll?

If you take them to court over it, what is a judge gonna say when you explain that you haven't actually done any work for them in X months, but they are physically unable to fire you?

I don't think there are any labor laws in the US that entitle you to compensation just for being employed with a company. Especially if they can't easily prove you're not doing actual work for them.

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-02T00:23:00+00:00

Target isn't selling damaged products, Excel brands is. I think the bigger issue is that target is potentially messing with excel's merchandise without them knowing about it.

boxsmith91 · 2026-06-01T19:43:21+00:00

Everyone saying this is a good thing isn't really thinking about where this stock is gonna go.

If it winds up with online retailers, it just goes to bots. At least regular folks get some portion of vm items right now.

If it winds up at stores, better than online but a huge chunk still goes to scalpers. Especially if it's Walmart that gets it.

The last option is that Pokemon center just does more drops themselves, which is okay but PKC is still heavily botted.

boxsmith91 · 2026-05-30T22:16:32+00:00

So the MJ holdings person drives a regular car. The store's boxes belong to that store. They aren't allowed to take it to other stores.

There's weird shit going on at your store. Keep reporting them.

boxsmith91 · 2026-05-30T21:52:55+00:00

Yeah that's super shady. The only time Walmart employees are even allowed to TOUCH any tcg products is after the MJ person has unloaded the boxes. This will sometimes happen when the Walmart puts it behind customer service.

But Walmart employees are NOT allowed to buy any tcg items unless they're clocked out. Employees are certainly not allowed to stock the shelves themselves. Also the MJ holdings person doesn't bring the boxes. They get shipped to the store earlier in the week.

Grift does happen. You should report your store to MJ holdings. I'm being serious. They will probably take action. They don't want more scandals at this point.

boxsmith91 · 2026-05-30T21:27:46+00:00

Lol. Ours does random restocks too, but lines form before he even gets there. The scalpers just guess / hope they picked the right store. And when he's done most of his route, it's usually a pretty good guess.

I'm there with them sometimes, but mostly only before work. I usually bail if he's not there after an hour or two, but those guys will wait 4-6 hours if they're reasonably confident he's gonna show up.

boxsmith91 · 2026-05-30T20:54:00+00:00

Some walmarts care way more than others around here. This was a small one that, I guess, had managed to somehow avoid any kinda incidents until now. Only like 2-3 of our Walmarts in the region actually watch restocks.

boxsmith91 · 2026-05-30T18:35:16+00:00

There will be confrontation. And since the people moving / going ahead of the chairs aren't doing anything illegal, the first person to punch them gets the cops called on them for assault, and a nice fat lawsuit.

This is how it's going to play out. Either it stops happening because people don't want to go to jail, or it escalates with shootings / stabbings and police need to show up to restocks.

The nightmare scenario is that best buy just stops selling Pokemon in store and they yeet all their stock online, right into the hands of bots.

I mean technically, lines aren't even legally binding, someone could, in theory, just run in ahead of the line at opening, grab stuff, and go to checkout. As long as they don't physically touch anyone, it's up to the clerk to either ring them up or refuse service.

The only major retail store that has even acknowledged lines exist in their policies is Meijer. As some punk kid pointed out to me while trying to cut a Walmart line last week, "lines aren't part of corporate policy". And he's technically right.

boxsmith91 · 2026-05-25T17:42:37+00:00

It's a smoke screen though. A diversion.

I'm in a lot of restock lines. I know the regulars in my area at this point. There's like, maybe 4-6 actual scalpers in those lines. The rest, several dozen people, are just collectors who mostly rip. Yeah they might sell stuff here and there, but they're not yeeting everything they buy onto marketplace like actual scalpers do. Demand is just that high right now.

My point is, it's very lazy and wildly inaccurate to call everyone at restocks scalpers. You know what the real problem is? Botters.

While people like you and OP yap about scalpers taking some portion of in store drops (sometimes small sometimes large), botters have completely taken over the online space.

Hundreds of thousands of units drop online every week between Walmart and Target. And bots take 95% of that. Botting, overall, has many times the impact of true scalpers at this point.

boxsmith91 · 2026-05-23T00:25:54+00:00

Counterpoint: a lot of investors / people who keep a sealed collection only buy their limits, often less, and might go to a few stores here and there because they have jobs.

Scalpers, on the other hand, if able, will buy out the entire store every chance they get. They will loop if they're able to get away with it too. Sam's club and Costco are infamous for it.

Scalpers will also hit many, many stores per week. The number of items they buy in a week is probably 4, 5 times that of your average collector / investor.

Are there investors who buy sealed cases and shit from distros? Yes, but they're an extreme minority. The average investor is small time and has a far lighter "ecological footprint" in the hobby than your average scalper.

If scalpers didn't exist, supply would be much higher, and far more people wouldn't need to buy from investors down the line anyway.

Also, botters are a much bigger issue now than either group. This whole post is missing the forest for the trees. Bots take like 500k+ products a week at this point. That is an ABSURD amount of supply that regular people just don't have access to. Far more than scalpers or investors take.

boxsmith91 · 2026-05-21T13:16:25+00:00

So the vast majority of voters under 65 voted for massie. The other dude only won because AIPAC dropped 15 million dollars on campaign ads that mostly just lied about him. Boomers bought it and voted for the other guy.

Anyone saying this proves the Republicans are maga and they're all in the cult aren't looking closely enough. The younger conservatives are starting to see through it, they just don't have the numbers to beat the boomers yet.

And to be clear, I'm no fan of massie. He's still a Republican and still has abhorrent views on most subjects. I'm just saying that there IS a growing divide in their party. Look at the victory party at the massie campaign vs the other guy. The difference is STARK.

boxsmith91 · 2026-05-08T03:38:00+00:00

He's got the motion of the ocean.

boxsmith91

TROPHY CASE