Another day, another mistake.

We thought we knew what people wanted. We thought we understood a thing or two about how to make people happy. It used to seem so easy. All we had to do was follow our instincts and everybody would love us forever.

How could we have been such idiots?

Because it appears that only idiots would think, as we did on Monday, that a desktop aquarium would be a big hit. Oh, we weren’t expecting massive sales. But bringing a smile to people’s faces, maybe getting a few “attaboys” for mixing a fun new element into our product selection, would have been enough.

Instead, we were accused of fish torture.

Then, yesterday, we’re all “What does everybody love? iPads!” Alas, we didn’t have any iPads. But we did have one of the best iPad mini hardshell cases at its best price ever. What did we get? Scorn. Indifference. Disgust. Less-than-negligible sales. Maybe it’s an Android crowd. Maybe it’s that problem where iPad mini 2 and 3 have a rear mic and this case doesn’t have a hole for it. Whatever. We were wrong. Loudly, publicly, embarrassingly, expensively wrong.

We don’t know. We don’t know anything. We don’t know anything anymore about making people happy.

So here we are with this fryer. A few days ago, it seemed like a ridiculous discount on a countertop deep fryer would be a sure-fire winner. We know everybody loves fried food. Or at least we thought we knew.

Now, though, we’re not betting on anything. It would be so sweet, feel so right, to slip into that groove again. But it just feels like our knack is just gone forever. Like we’ll never get it right again. Like the world has changed into something we don’t understand… something we can’t understand. Now what are we going to do?