Corporate Culture
The chain is known for its often self-deprecating humor, both in their advertising and throughout their stores. Their weekly circulars often feature caricatures of founder Jerry Ellis with a number of sarcastic captions, many of which are repeated in their in-store advertising.
Each Building #19 location offers free coffee with "free fake cream." Signs near the free coffee stand warn customers not to make fun of the poor quality of the coffee, because "someday you'll be old and weak too." Their price guarantee awards a bottle of "Chateau du Cheapo" champagne if a competitor beats their price.
Jerry has two daughters (each owns a part of the business) and a son, Bill, who is the president of Building #19.
In 2006, Building #19 put a cartoon in their President's Day advertising flier showing A-shirts labeled as being "Wife-Beater" shirts. Building #19 was criticized and promptly apologized. A flier two years later poked fun at the 2006 controversy and was similarly criticized.
The main Building #19 store is located in Weymouth, Massachusetts; other stores have a fraction appended to their name (such as Building 19½, in Burlington or Building #19¾, in Norwood).
Read more about this topic: Building 19
Famous quotes containing the words corporate and/or culture:
“If when a businessman speaks of minority employment, or air pollution, or poverty, he speaks in the language of a certified public accountant analyzing a corporate balance sheet, who is to know that he understands the human problems behind the statistical ones? If the businessman would stop talking like a computer printout or a page from the corporate annual report, other people would stop thinking he had a cash register for a heart. It is as simple as that—but that isn’t simple.”
—Louis B. Lundborg (1906–1981)
“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than as a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.”
—Henry David David (1817–1862)