The 100th Post (Last for 2012)

As this is my 100th blog post, I wanted to make it special, but instead I decided to weigh in on the current events that have happened in Newtown Connecticut.  This post is being duplicated to all my blogs as I feel it is that important given everything that has happened this year.

Certainly there are no words that can express my feelings for what happened in Newtown, Connecticut this month. What I can express words on is that this could have been avoided if only we had tighter gun control laws.

The bad thing is that it seems that everybody wants to blame “Mental Illness” as the cause of the events. Seriously, is this the excuse to be used on every violent incident now?

It has now even gotten worse as other things have been blamed for all the recent violence. Amongst them include:

• Movies – Let’s stop blaming movies for all the violence. After all, I don’t know of many cars that fly through the air and have weapons in their front grill. The blamers want to convince us that movies are the problem. This has been blamed for too many years and foolishly.
• Video games – I have heard this one ever since the 1990’s when games like Doom came out back them. Do killing monsters really make people want to kill people? I have didn’t buy it then and certainly don’t buy it now.
• Music – Poor Ke$ha. She is being blamed for her song of “Die Young” for being the inspiration for the recent violent acts. I have heard this song many times and I don’t think the blamers get it. Yes, this song gets me pumped only because I like it, but I certainly don’t feel violent because of it. Of course, I still get pumped up over Britney Spears “Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman”, but then again that’s just me.

What we should REALLY be blaming are the things that really count and amongst them are:

· NRA – One of the largest political action groups buys the people who make the decisions in Congress. They wave their second amendment rights around like they were the American flag. We need to get people in Congress who are not puppets of the NRA.

· Gun Resellers/Retailers – Many states don’t do background checks before they sell a weapon and sometimes they ignore the laws anyway. The laws vary from state to state which makes matter worse. I remember when I was working at Woolworth, the rules were that the gun application would have to be faxed to Augusta and then wait about 3 days to get a response. However, one time there was no response after 3 days so the salesclerk went ahead and sold the weapon anyway. It turned out that one NEVER should have been sold after the report came back as being a risky person. Nobody ever heard the end of that one. Resellers have to act more responsible and keep the laws in mind and abide by them.

· People like Norman Hamann – This nutcase needs to be in jail or a mental facility. He believes his own fears allow him to walk around with a gun in his belt. Sadly, I believe everyone else is scared of when he might crack and start using it. What bothers me even more is that he thinks that it is ok to film his encounters with the police. If anybody is mentally ill, Norman is the top of the class.

Sad to say there will be more gun violence if the real issues are not addressed. It does not matter what the President does or Vice President thinks he can do will matter. Mental illness is just a rubber stamp that I believe that everybody has if pushed far enough. Even I was once called mentally ill. I will have more to say about that in a future post.

The biggest question that has been asked lately is “Are we really safe anymore?”. My answer is “I don’t believe so and never will, just don’t scare the children with that information.”

For now the only things we should worry about is the fiscal cliff or even worse the Mayan’s prediction of the end of the world.

Notice to all:

I will not be posting to this blog until after the first of the year as I feel that both the reader and myself need a holiday vacation from everything that has been going on in the world lately. I plan on being back right after the first of the year with possibly a look back at the previous year and my look ahead to the next one. So until then Happy Christmas and Merry New Year or something like that.

Woman Collects $123,000 (Stupidly)

RyiSHisa Morris has done the virtually impossible. It was reported this week that this African-American/Native American mix had won a settlement against the company Piercing Pagoda. However, I believe that this should NEVER EVER have happened!

Apparently Ms. Morris experienced what she calls harassment after trying to return a piece of jewelry she had purchased the day before. The kiosk apparently had a different employee working on these two days therefore when Ms. Morris tried to return the item. When the employee who she dealt with on the second day told her that she could not return the item, Ms. Morris got angry and wouldn’t leave. This is when the employee stated, "I've had enough with your kind," along with some profanity and that is when things got very heated. When Ms. Morris would not leave, she called mall security. At the same time, Ms. Morris was calling the Piercing Pagoda customer service number. When the mall security arrived, the security along with the customer service person told the employee to give Ms. Morris a store credit. This seems that this should have been the end of this situation, but it wasn’t. Apparently Ms. Morris was recommended by a friend to get a lawyer and sue the company.

Since this event happened in March 2010, Ms. Morris filed a complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission (MHRC) shortly thereafter. In September 2011, the commission decided to award Ms. Morris a total of $123,347 ($100,000 to Ms. Morris and the remaining in legal fees and interest charges). This is the highest amount allowed under Maine law.

Ms. Morris lawyer, Kelly Hoffman of the firm Norman, Hanson & DeTroy, wrote in a statement:

"Those who discriminate need to learn the impact their actions have on victims and society, not only for the sake of justice, but also because doing so will result in more tolerance in the future." She continued on by stating "I'm so impressed by individuals like Ms. Morris who find the courage to speak up when subjected to this type of behavior." 

Oh, please! This is all about a woman who is a whiner and a scammer! Now here’s why:

When I first heard this story it was on WGME 13 television station. Ironically, the station neglected to say that Ms. Morris was making a return and not just being a casual customer. Whether or nor this was purposeful to mislead viewers is unknown, but certainly made Ms. Morris’ story much more effective. However, I thought that there must have been much more to this story.

So I did a Google search on this woman. What I uncovered initially surprised me. Apparently Ms. Morris had previously had a case against Regis Corporation back in 2006 for employment discrimination for guess what? She had proclaimed racial discrimination then as well. However, the law office she used in that case was the same one I started using when I had my case against Staples. They failed with her and they failed with me. Unfortunately they went as far as doing a representing of her, whereas they dropped me before it went before the MHRC.

So Ms. Morris tried again in 2010 with a different lawyer and a different type of case by suing for discrimination from Piercing Pagoda. I believe that this scheme was something that was cooked up by Ms. Morris and her lawyer to seek revenge against her previously lost case. Unfortunately, Zales (the parent company of Piercing Pagoda) didn’t show up at the MHRC hearing, which to me meant that they were dissatisfied with the result of the MHRC investigator’s report. If they did the type of “investigating” against Piercing Pagoda as they did against me, nobody with Zales or Piercing Pagoda would have been contacted, therefore the case became a one-sided story with all the other side ignored. Sadly, this is ABSOLUTELY THE WRONG WAY to do any type or case, but this is how they do EVERY CASE! So realistically Ms. Morris deserved NOTHING and I am hoping that Piercing Pagoda will appeal this payoff even though the money has already been given out.

Honestly, in over 20 years in the retail industry, I believe that every employee have had customers who they do not want to deal with or like Ms. Morris plays games to try to beat the system. Many times I have heard the old story that “another employee” said it was ok to return a product when realistically they never said that in the first place. Customers like Ms. Morris like to create their own stories to make it seem easier to do returns. Unfortunately, a smart employee can see through their schemes and refuse to “help” the customer as which was the basis of Ms. Morris complaint. There was many times over the years that I had refused to help a customer on their fraudulent return and sometimes was reprimanded for it, but I usually just brushed it off because I knew that I was right and the manager on duty was completely in the wrong. Whether or not either of the employees at Piercing Pagoda had a managerial title is unknown, but the level of disrespect given to Ms. Morris would be justified if she continued to be an aggressive customer who interfered with normal business of other customers. Having called upon mall security for their assistance is a joke, as they have no authority to do much of anything even regarding shoplifters. (I will have more to say about mall security in future posts).

Given Ms. Morris’ past, it is apparent to me that she was only out for the money and used the race card in order to win her case. Unfortunately, it is lawyers like Ms. Hoffman who are money hungry and blame others for discrimination when none really exists. Its fools like the commissioners and investigators of the MHRC that continue to fuel the pot by approving huge financial windfalls as in this case. Certainly discrimination will never end, but it is the smart one who walks away and brushes it off, the scammer will try to seek financial gains as Ms. Morris tried twice to do.

On another note, what makes this case so different from another story reported on WGME of the Santa Claus, who was fired at the Maine Mall for being grumpy and rude to customers? What stops the parents whose children were traumatized from seeking a monetary settlement against the mall for a type discrimination as well for not being allowed to visit Santa unless the parents were willing to pony up for the picture package to get their picture taken with the jolly old guy? Ironically, this story got as much top story billing as Ms. Morris’ did and brings up the whole idea that they too should sue to get money as well. Sadly, Ms. Morris’ case has brought bad precedence to all kinds of discrimination and has opened the door for even more stupid frivolous lawsuits in the future. My advice to all the parents whose kids were traumatized: Get a lawyer, sue the Maine Mall, file a complaint with the MHRC, then wait till your case comes up than claim your case is just as stupid as Ms. Morris’ was and sit back and collect your $100,000 payday as well. And on that Merry Christmas to all (except Ms. Morris and her money hungry lawyer, of course).

Store Review: Newbury Comics

Newbury Comics has been in the mall now since mid-June of this year, but now I have finally gotten around to give my review of this fairly new store, at least in the mall.

Let me say that when the store was across the street from the Maine Mall I visited the

store just once and wasn’t impressed by it at all and never returned. Now that the store is located in the mall, I decided to give the store another look.

The store is located in the Sears wing of the mall next to Sears in the location that previously was occupied by Waldenbooks. Since I am very familiar with the old Waldenbooks location I was a little surprised at this new store. First thing of interest is the sheer size of the store. Anybody who remembers the old bookstore will remember that it was significantly smaller than this new store. This is a deception portrayed by the fact that they did 2 things to make the store larger:

1. Broke down the walls in the back creating a much larger store. The old bookstore had a pretty large stockroom whereas the new store has the fire exit right as part of the store area itself. This door leads right outside the store to the parking lot. It appears that the new stockroom is to the back right corner of the store and possibly goes into the empty area between Payless Shoes (in the front end facing the mall) and Old Country Buffet (in the back end facing the parking lot). Back in the 1980’s, that entire area was occupied by the Anderson-Little store (owned by the Woolworth company) from front to back with an actual exit from the mall to the parking lot.
2. Broke down the side walls to expand the store’s space. Back in the early 1990’s, Waldenbooks had down a remodel, which reduced the physical size of the store by about 30%. This was at the time they created the Waldenbooks/Waldenkids split store idea. This was something that when I asked the managers at the time if they liked the downsizing of the store, they said they didn’t. Little did they know that a few years later it would all be over for the company permanently.

Now onto the new store format:

The store has a large glass front not uncommon in most mall stores nowadays. Any indication of its past is completely gone from existence.

Inside the store, merchandise of various types is kept in an orderly manner. New releases greet the customer on entering the store and the remainder of the store is loaded with all kinds of items. These include:

• DVDs, both new and used
• CDs, both new and used
• Clothes including shoes, hats, gloves, jackets, pants and other miscellaneous items
• Calendars
• Toys
• Books (a small selection)
• And finally comic books and other items

Ironically, for a store that calls itself a comic book store is lacking in 2 ways:

1. The comics are way in the back of the store.
2. No back issues of the comics are available like a normal comic book store would have. To add insult to that is that many of the new comics look well read.

It appears that the bulk of focus is on CDs and DVDs. However, the prices on most of these items are significantly higher than the competitors. This is true of both new and used items. In fact many of the used prices are more expensive than what other stores are selling new versions for. Yet if you are looking for some old item long out of print, they may have it even if it is used, if of course you are willing to pay the price. Somehow, I don’t think some prices are worth it though.

Overall compared to the competition, this store just doesn’t deliver a good value therefore it is one store I will not be doing any shopping in at all. However, if you enjoy overpriced items than this is the store for you.

Pros:

· Decent selection of DVDs and CDs

· Descent selection of movie and TV related toys

Cons:

• Small comic book inventory
• Overpriced compared to competition
• Weird looking staff members

Overall: My Rating: 2

Black Friday Aftermath for Walmart

Now that Black Friday is behind us, it seems that things were not so good at Walmarts around the country. Some of the stores had protestors in and around the stores as employees demand more from the company. Rumors were that many of these “protestors” were not even employees of the company! These “protestors” should be protesting in front of Staples stores as many of their employees don’t make nearly as much as many Walmart employees are making on an hourly basis. Maybe the Staples employees are just afraid of being fired and given the company’s anti-union stance.

It was reported that in Georgia, that store employees stopped a shoplifter by sitting on him which unfortunately killed him. Shouldn’t employees be taught not to perform this type of physical harm to people in this matter? Staples policy is to let shoplifters go which is going stupid in the other direction! Certainly an employee should try to stop a shoplifter without putting either party in harm’s way. There has to be a happy medium somewhere along the way.

And finally here in Maine, a couple of customers were passing counterfeit money early Friday morning at the local Walmart. The excuse was that it was too busy and the employees weren’t checking the money that the cashiers were taking in. Personally, I see no excuse to making sure what cash is being taken in is real. This just adds to the problem that most Walmart employees are incompetent and don’t care enough or are trained enough to know a fake bill even it bit them in the ass. I have yet to find a competent Walmart employee in any of the stores that I have ever visited.

It’s apparent that Walmart needs to make some serious changes with some of their policies. It will be interesting to see how long it will take them to decide to make those changes.

On another note, it has been reported that there was an increase in sales on Black Friday than the previous year. My total expense for the day was $9.00 and it was NOT at Walmart. They didn’t have what I was looking for and neither did most other retailers when I arrived on Friday afternoon. Oh well, there is always next year!

Black Friday Gets Blacker

Apparently this year many stores are celebrating Black Friday on Thursday night. Some stores opening as early as 4pm on Thursday to be exact. In Maine, laws prohibit businesses from opening before midnight on Friday morning. Lucky for us here this is not the case.

Things are worse for employees for Target and Wal-Mart as work stoppages could upset the flow of business on Friday. It seems that employees at Wal-Mart are making demands that I find rather foolish. The following is a list of some of their major demands:

1. Better working conditions – Seriously, what are they looking for here? It’s Wal-Mart known for being a dumpy place to work anyway. Are they expecting massages and buffet meals for lunch breaks? If you work at any retail store, expect a crappy work environment no matter what.
2. Desire to unionize – This will never work, as people will complain that they are never paid enough and there never would be any fairness.
3. Increase the minimum wage to $13/hour – This is absolutely crazy. During my 12 ½ years I spent with Staples I barely made over $10.50 over all them years. I saw a television interview with one employee who has worked for Wal-Mart for only 4 years and is making almost $10/hour. It took me nearly 9 years to get to that level. These employees don’t know how good they have it when compared to other retail jobs. In fact, I applied several times in the past with Wal-Mart and each time I went for a lower pay rate each time starting at $10, moving down to $9 then to the low point of $8.50. Still, the company NEVER considered my job application even though I had over 21 years of retail experience! Certainly Wal-Mart is a stupid company.

Overall, I feel that if you work in retail, then you should not bitch about Black Friday. However, during my existence with Staples, I had made an agreement with the manager who gave me full time status that I would work both Saturday and Sunday of every week (except vacations) in exchange for having off Tuesdays and Fridays for personal reasons. This worked for several years until one dumbass manager wanted everybody to work that Friday no matter what. What really bothered me about that was the first year I did that was that my annual trip to Connecticut had to be cancelled because I had to be back on Friday and would otherwise not have made it back on time. What was really sad about that was that my uncle died a few months after that Thanksgiving and I would never be able to spend another holiday with him ever again. I never forgave that manager or Staples for that as a promise was broken and for showing up at 1pm on Friday to a near empty store for the rest of the day. Certainly wasn’t needed that day at all nor was I ever needed on any following years that I was forced to work or else get fired.

This leads to my final comment about this day. No job is worth losing. However, if these employees wish to strike and jeopardize their jobs then there are plenty of people who would be glad to take their jobs and possibly at a lower pay rate. I can’t wait to see how all this plays out.

So maybe I will be joining the crowds at the mall or Target or possibly even Wal-Mart just not at midnight though. Until next time, enjoy the extended weekend and the impending holiday.

Microsoft Updates Cause Problems (Again!)

It has happened again. Microsoft has released a huge number of updates to Windows causing all sorts of havoc to my primary computer. Why does Microsoft release updates only once a month only to be buggy? Nearly 140MB of updates this month and really too many problems to think about. Add to this the fact that Time Warner Cable has been having internet problems in the last couple of days. Really getting frustrating on all fronts. Hopefully, things will get straightened out soon as this is getting really old really fast.

One Big Win and One Huge Loss

Well, the elections are over and it was a 50/50 split for me.

Obama got back in which was a good thing.

Unfortunately, Maine decided to approve the gay marriage law. It’s sad to say that now we will have to work to repeal this law and make the state livable again. It is so bad that the people of the state were fooled into approving this bad law.

However, one thing that really bothered me when I went to vote yesterday was the sheer number of people who were registering to vote for the first time. This line never had less than 15 people in it at any time I was there at the voting location. What really bothersome was how were these new voters being processed? I did not see anyone around to input data into a computer much less anyone with a computer. How were these people prevented from multiple votes at different locations? Since these people looked like college age people (and many looked gay), I really think that people who should not be voting in the first place persuaded the voting. Can we say crooked voting? I believe it is. All we can do now is unite to repeal the awful law and become the state where “Life Should Be” and not “Gay Life Is”. I can see many people being very angry given how close this referendum was and much discrimination will still exist no matter what the law says. Let’s start the repeal process NOW and get this on the ballot as soon as possible!

Vote Against Romney

Tomorrow is a the biggest day in political history in a long time.  It is important to vote against Mitt Romney to protect society as we know it.  Unless you really want to go back to what caused the problems in the first place, we must keep Romney out of the presidency.  

Do the right thing and keep the multimillionaire and his friends from destroying our society again.

Vote early and vote often.

Once Again Off Not by Choice

Unfortunately it happened yet again. I took an unexpected week off. This time I put the blame on a couple different things that happened. The big thing that happened was that my internet connection was interrupted because after receiving a postcard from Time Warner Cable stating that I would have to pay a $3.95 rental charge for my modem effective on the first of November, I decided to go out and purchase my own modem to avoid such charges. This was the smartest move I ever made since the modem I purchased is actually faster than the modem that it replaced. I highly recommend that anybody who has TWC Internet service get their own modem and chances are that the speed will improve for you as well.

The second problem was that the service that I received from TWC has suffered severely in the last week or so as the signal to my neighborhood has been going on and off. Sadly, the only thing that the automated phone line says “we are working on the problem no need to let us know of the problem”. How long does it take to fix a service problem anyway? It has been nearly 3 weeks with this same message.

Finally, third and most importantly, Microsoft released a couple of updates for Windows 7 that created havoc on my primary computer, which made the machine want to boot endlessly and wanted to update itself with the same updates over and over again. Apparently, Microsoft knew this was an issue and released a fix for it, but a new bug update has appeared with the release of Windows 8 to make older operating systems able to communicate with machines with the new Windows.

Overall, it seems that TWC and Microsoft hate me by adding new fees and updates that don’t work. Hopefully, I will be back with a new post either tomorrow or next week, depending on what other weird things happen next. Let’s cross our fingers and hope for the best.

Polls and Statistics - Twins of Evil Data Collecting

It seems as though every five minutes some group releases a new political poll in recent weeks. It has gone so bad that as many as a dozen or more different polls are released every day.

In each poll, one person is sometimes substantially ahead of their opponent and in another poll, the numbers favor the other person.

Of course every poll is skewed toward the group that produces the poll. For example, if a Democrat group takes a poll a Democratic candidate gets the better percentage. This is not by accident. It is done to purposely make people think that their candidate is the better person.

It is the number of people who are polled that is the important part of any poll. This sample size has to be large enough to represent the group it is supposed to represent, but not so large as to alter the results. This margin of error should be small enough to make the poll truthful and not favoring any particular result.

So at this point, you may be asking how does this relate to Staples?

Its simple. Staples used all of the customers to determine the amount of rewards cards that employee takes in during their shift. As the day goes on, the lower the percentage becomes. Early in the day and the percentage of customers with cards is high, at night customers rarely had the rewards cards.

So if Staples only took a random sample throughout the day of rewards cards, the numbers would be much more realistic as far as percentage of customers who actually had the cards. But like a crooked poll, Staples believes in the “poll everything” approach, which unfortunately gives an unfair advantage to those who worked later in the day like myself.

As we get closer to Election Day, everybody should pay close attention to the number of people polled and who does the polling. Chances are that the poll is as crooked as the group performing the polling. Just like Staples does everyday with every employee.

When Store Policy and Morals Clash

A little over a week ago, I got a post in my Facebook newsfeed that caught my interest.  The posting dealt with a customer at Walmart who was short of funds and the cashier used her own personal charge card to pay the roughly $8 remaining balance for the customer.

What was so interesting about this post is that many people said “God Bless” this employee or “Kudos to the employee”.  However, there were people like me who were realists that stated that the employee would get fired immediately for her actions.  Ironically, it was only a small handful of people, including myself, who threw the gasoline on this good deed.

But as they say, “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished”.  This must have been stated by a head of a retail company because many times moral values clash with store policy.  Most stores have the policy that employees cannot carry any money or charge cards on the sales floor.  If they did they would be reprimanded accordingly including up to termination.

However, over my 20+ years in retail, I saw this sort of thing happen 3 times.  There were some major similarities in all 3 instances:

• All 3 were done by females.
• All 3 were in some sort of management position.
• All 3 regretted their decision after performing the action even going as far as saying “Don’t ever do what I just did”.

Ironically, 2 of these were done at Staples and those women were more nervous than the one who performed the action at Woolworth.  Maybe its because Staples has no morals and doesn’t care about the customer.

What this brings me to is that over the nearly 13 years I worked at Staples, I performed several things that I felt were morally justified even though they went against Staples store policy.  I always believe that if something is in the best interest of oneself or a customer then it should be done.  Simply put, store policies should be a guideline, but common sense and good judgment (and good morals) should triumph in every case no exceptions ever.

Lewiston Mayor Gets It Right

It would almost seem that Lewiston Maine mayor Robert Macdonald is cut from the same cloth as the state's governor.  His recent remarks regarding Somalian people might be harsh, but I believe that they are truly justified.  It's bad to think that somebody though would actually say it publicly.  I believe that a lot of people probably feel the same way.

Let's face the reality.  We didn't invite these people into our country nor did we force them to come here.  This state along with other states got screwed into taking these people whether they like it or not.  The mayor is probably angry at the fact that these people are taking many city resources without giving anything back to the community.  It costs money to educate their children and to make matters worse to teach these people English as a second language.  Many probably don't care to learn the language and wish to rely on translators instead.  Again, this is an abuse to the system.

I remember going to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) a couple of years ago to try to get on the MaineCare system.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get on because I had no kids and they were no longer accepting any new people to the program.  Unless of course you consider that the majority of the people there in the lobby were foreigners who didn't speak English and wish to get on some sort of state aid.  Why should they get onto a program when they have never worked in this country when somebody like me who needed it couldn't get it?  Certainly our system is messed up and the Lewiston mayor is probably fed up with them.  I feel that what he said was certainly not out of place nor do I feel it was wrong.  If these people are offended, I say too bad.

Consider also that if we went to visit their country, women would be required to where their garbs and dress accordingly.  Why they can't comply to our customs is beyond me?  After all, it is a two-way street.  Unfortunately, these people are all take and no give.  

Feel angry is you ever felt like you lost a job to one of them -- guaranteed it will happen if it hasn't happened already.  The U.S. needs to get serious on immigration reform and stop the flow of people into this country.  This is causing more problems than any other problem in our economy.  Why is nobody addressing this problem?  Are they afraid of offending anybody..certainly the Lewiston mayor wasn't at all?  Kudos to him...this country needs more people like that in politics.

First Sprint Now Verizon–Another Identity Theft

I don’t own a cellphone.  However, given all the problems I have had with cellphone companies, I never plan to either.

I mentioned a few months ago that Sprint was sending me bills through my Gmail account for somebody else’s cellphone account.  After several months, I finally got this straightened out and am no longer getting billed from them.

Now, this week, through this same Gmail account, I started receiving notices of cellphone charges from Verizon.  After going through nearly a week of emailing back and forth with them, they finally said that they will be “taking care of the situation”.  Of course, I will believe that when I stop getting emails from them. 

It seems that somebody has been using my Gmail account as their point of reference to send their e-bills to just so they think they wouldn’t be responsible for the bill.  What’s worse is that in both of these cases, identity theft is prominent.  Yet, the biggest problem is that there is NO WAY to contact Google to let them know that this is happening.  I eventually did send an email to Google about my email problem and got back the canned response that sometimes accounts that have periods in them confuse accounts and thus route email incorrectly.  This wasn’t even what I was asking!  Of course that was over 6 months ago and I never heard from them again over this form of identity theft.

As I mentioned in a previous post awhile ago, Staples also used my email account (a different account,though) linking it to a credit card purchase that my mother made in one of their stores last year during the holiday season.  Unfortunately, after contacting the Better Business Bureau (a waste of time, by the way), Staples WOULD DO NOTHING even though they were guilty of identity theft.  Of course, Staples is king of the lying and identity theft.  Thankfully, other companies are a little bit better than they are when identity theft is called into question.  Sadly Staples will never learn.

New Home Up and Running..

This is a great day for those who follow this blog…my new site is up and running.

For those familiar with my other WordPress site, the layout is exactly the same.  The reason for this is that I wish to have consistency between my blogs.  I will mirror entries to this site as long as it remains feasible, but I expect it to be phased out eventually.  However, I have no timetable as to when it will end.  Until then enjoy the new site.

The link to the new site is louisbrowntruths.wordpress.com.

You may also notice that the title has changed slightly as to reflect the new site.

Important Change–Move/Expansion to new site

Within the next week, this blog will be expanding/moving to a new home.  The new home will be with Wordpress.  The biggest reason why is that this site just has not had any comments since it started over a year ago.  I feel that moving the blog to Wordpress will allow for a much larger audience and will spread the messages that I want to tell. 

I have yet to decide if this site will continue on or just be discontinued completely.  My thought was to mirror the two sites while feasible then at some point ending this blog site.  This is not in the immediate future however.

My disappoint with Blogger is compounded by the fact that the current version of Windows Live Writer has been not as cooperative as I would like it to be.  It is still a better editor than many of them out there and most importantly it is FREE.  Until I find a free alternative to WLW, I will continue to use it to post to this site.

Again, my plans are not to shut down this site for now but mirror it until further notice.  I will be giving the URL as soon as I get it active.

Let me remind everybody that comments are always welcome and hopefully the change will reach a much larger audience.  I feel it is the best for everyone.

Q & A

I love the site where it is.  Why the change?

People.  I want more people to read the blog and I feel it is the right move.

What happens to the old posts?

I will be moving the old posts to the new site possibly, but this site will remain an archive for all the old posts.

What will the new layout look like?

If you have read my other Wordpress blog, then the layout will look familiar.  They both will use the same layout to standardize my approach to blogs.  I was never really happy with the Blogger layout, but it was the best from what there was to choose from.

Can I comment on this change before it goes into effect?

Yes.  The comment period starts now and will continue through the end of September.  However, the new site will be active before the end of the month.  Comments will be in consideration of whether to continue the site here or mirror the two sites.

Why such short notice of this change?  Shouldn’t it have been a longer period of time?

I have been giving this a lot thought for a long time and with the overwhelming success of my other blog, it was a no-brainer decision.  I wanted to implement the change as soon as possible.

Can I still follow like I did on Blogger?

Most definitely as I expect even more followers within a few months.

Can I become an author of your blog as I have a lot to say as well?

Just send me an email at the address on the right side or send me a message on Facebook and we can discuss it.  I am always open for the input of others on retail topics.

Will there be more frequent updates?

My plan for this blog and my other blog is to write at least one post per week sometimes more depending on what comes to mind.  Hopefully, I will get that one per week at least accomplished, but things do happen which may delay some postings.

Can I use any information I get from your blogs for my own use?

I do not limit the use of information of my blogs.  All I ask is that if you use the information give me the respect to credit me to the information used.  However, information that I use from others will be used anonymously as to protect the identities of their providers.

Can I cry now?

Go ahead and do it.  Its going to be a rough road ahead for years to come.

Bad Time to Be a Staples Employee?

In the last 3 years, the stock has fallen by 50%.

In the last 3 years, 401 (k)s probably have lost at least that amount.

Now the rumor is that Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital wants to buy Staples and turn it into a private company.  Anybody thinking that with all the problems that the company has had in the last few years that this buyout will be yet another Bain buy and shutdown approach.  I believe it is and I think it is a very scary time to be a Staples employee.  Sometimes small miracles do happen when you least expect them (at least for me)…

Oh the Merchandise We Carried!

Editor’s Note:  I know it has been about a month and a half since we continued this story, but I felt other topics were as important to discuss and will continue to discuss other topics between set topics that are pre-planned.  Hopefully, I won’t have such a long stretch like this again, but if I do I will do another note like this.

Instead of being an exhaustive list of everything that all the places carried, this is basically a short list of items along with a short bit on some of the more interesting items.

Woolworth:

Besides candy, jewelry, cosmetics, cigarettes, toys, housewares, curtains, sewing supplies, video/audio items and clothes, the store also had its share of odd items.

ODDEST ITEM::

Nintendo Virtual Boy – for those who remember this joke item will recall that it had a bright red screen that you looked into like binoculars and tried to play the games on it.  Sadly, it added more to headaches and really didn’t work very well.  At about $100, it was Nintendo’s worst seller and was only in our stores for a couple of months.

ITEM I REALLY SHOULD HAVE PURCHASED:

The Sega Genesis or the Nintendo Super Nintendo were both great bargains when they Woolworth went out of the video game business. 

While other stores were still selling these systems for over $100, Woolworth worth selling each of these units for well under $50. This was a stupid move on my part.

Home Quarters (HQ):

Everything for the home could be found here, just like as Home Depot and Lowes still does today.  The only difference is they are still around and HQ is long gone.  HQ’s biggest problem was that much of its merchandise was loose and never tagged such as screws.

Screws were matched up to a drawing in a flip book to determine which one it was and what to charge for it.  Usually it took more than one person to figure it out and sometimes even the front-end supervisor took a guess on some of the items.  The difference of prices in some of the screws were priced from about 10 cents up to almost $2 a each.  Certainly a big difference in price that could cost the company a lot of money and I believe it cost them quite a bit.

Staples:

It would easier to list the items that they didn't carry during my time with the company.  However, one product stood out far and above as the worst product I have ever seen.

Worst Product:

Flexplay DVD discs were simply the worst product ever carried by Staples.  The lifespan after opening the package was just 48 hours which meant that after that time the disc was no longer usable.  The item started out around $5 per disc, but eventually dropped to under $1 each. Unfortunately, these discs didn’t conform to the DVD specification so they were not as high quality as real DVDs, nor were the movies in widescreen format or have any extras on the discs either.  Sounds like 3 strikes and you are out, Staples.  If only that really was the case as this joke item was ignored by virtually everyone.  Sort of makes that Virtual Boy a great item now.

Up Next:  Pricing the Merchandise

9/11–Are We Any Safer 11 Years Later?

Here we are on the eve of one of the most destructive events in the history of the United States, yet are we any safer today than we were before that tragic day?

If you listen to the government, you would think we were.  However, the truth is we are not any better off.  In fact, we are probably worse off today because of everything that is in place to protect us.

As some of you may know, Staples and I played a part in the 9/11 terrorist plot.  Yes, you read that right.  If you don’t know the story, I will not explain it here as I don’t feel it is the time or place or time do it.  Let me just say that Staples still has the ammunition to recreate yet another terrorist act and its doubtful that anybody would ever stop it.

Even though I have never visited an airport, it seems that the TSA agents are nothing short of overpriced unionized idiots.  They seem to offend everyone and do things that are simply uncalled for.  Let’s face it: they have only stopped one person since the TSA was formed, not a good track record and certainly not worth the cost of the agency.

What this country should be doing is keeping immigrants out and being more careful with who gets citizenship.  More importantly, we must stop companies like Staples from selling products that allow terrorism to occur in the first place.

As sad as 9/11 was, it is hard to believe that it all started by a few people letting their guard down even though they never even knew it.  We will never forget 9/11 especially myself given my own guard being let down only because rotten Staples allowed for it.  I and 3000 others could not thank Staples enough for their assistance—live long and prosper Staples at the expense of the American blood spilled on 9/11. 

Let us now pray that Staples will die as a company like everybody else did.

Amen (on this topic until next year).

One Year, One Month, and Two Day Anniversary

Yes, it has been that long when I began this journey.  Those of you who came along for the ride may be wondering when something earth-shattering will be said.  Actually, I have been hinting at some of the stuff all along if you have been a regular reader of all these posts.  Naturally, if you missed one, I recommend going back and reading the ones that you may have missed.

You may also be wondering if we are anywhere near getting to all the good stuff.  If this was a road trip, we have hardly got the first suitcase packed yet.  Yes, you read that right.  The road to the end is a very long journey.  I have no timetable in mind as far as what topic will occur on what date.  I just write as things come to me, but hopefully putting some things in a reasonable order.  There have been and will continue to be many detours along the way as I believe in keeping this blog both current while also commenting on the past. 

I feel that it is just important to discuss important current events along the way that may or may not relate to the big picture of this blog.  But keep in mind, I never said at any time that this journey was ever going to be a short drive. 

I have also heard from a few people that they were offended by the way that I talk about people.  These people who I discuss in this way are jerks or do jerky things and therefore deserve the treatment.  As I say right in the banner that I name names, I keep that promise.

Over the last year or so, I have talked to several people who agree with me that Staples is a VERY bad company and what they did to me was an outrage.  However, they got the short form of a story of which I have not even really discussed at length yet.

My goal for the next year is to further the topic to a deeper story, but that depends on everything that happens in the world.  You may wish to follow my other blog as well to keep up with other topics that I discuss there. 

Overall, let’s remember one thing: STAPLES IS EVIL AND MUST ELIMINATED AT ALL COSTS – DO NOT SHOP WITH THEM, DO NOT RECOMMEND THEM, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY SPREAD THE HATRED!

I now return you to our regular blog next week! and enjoy the Happy Anniversary!

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Change to My Twitter Account

Effective immediately, I have changed my Twitter account to protect my tweets.  The reason for this is that there has been some harassing to me from people that I do not follow.  Therefore, for my protection and the safety of other followers of mine, I have had no choice but to protect my tweets.

Please be advised that I will still accept anybody who wishes to follow me by approving them and I will block anybody who shows any harassment to me.  I have ZERO tolerance to people who harass me at all.  Thank you for your understanding and please continue following.

Stupid Maine State Agencies

In the last couple of weeks, there seems to be a rash of Maine agencies that have made some very stupid moves.

Consider first, the Maine Turnpike Authority has had its share of problems.  Now with a new head of Peter Mills, the agency was supposed to put itself in order.  It seems that instead of order, they are creating disorder.  The agency held several meetings across the state to get input from Mainers on alternative suggestions on how to raise revenue for the MTA.  The agency had an idea to raise the rates significantly in some area and after several meetings decided to keep their initial plan in place.  So was this all just an act to make it look like that the agency was really listening?  I highly doubt it and just think of the money that could have been saved by NOT having these meetings in the first place.

The Maine Republican Party had decided to throw out half of the Ron Paul delegates and hand them off to Mitt Romney instead.  Talk about not playing fairly.  Certainly the delegates deserved to raise a stink on the National Convention floor last week and certainly a meeting was in order of the party people afterward.  However, this meeting did nothing more than tear people further apart by not coming up with any solution at all, but just listening to the people’s blah-blah-blah.  How much was wasted by having these delegates travel to Florida for no good reason and then go to this stupid useless meeting afterward.

Then of course we have the Department of Health and Human Services.  I know many of you are as shocked as I am over the 10 year old girl who murdered a baby.  To add insult to injury was the fact that this was not the first time that this girl attempted murder using the same technique.  The biggest issue in this is that the child had access to their ADHD pills and fed them to the two babies.  Why in the world would any parent who is sane keep pills in someplace where a child could access them?  Does the parent not know to keep medications out of the hands of children as mentioned on every medication in existence!?!  Ironically, the DHHS said that the parent was “partially responsible” for one baby’s death.  Seriously?  This is like saying that John Wilkes Booth was partly responsible for Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.  It is apparent that DHHS doesn’t want to take any real action against the parent, but instead blame the child.  With so many problems that DHHS has, why can’t they get a real caseworker who was willing to see the problems in the first place and get this child the help that she needs and for that matter issue a conviction against the mother.  This is just more proof of sloppy justice we have in this state.

Finally, as I have already mentioned a few times before is the stupidity of the Maine Human Rights Commission.  The MHRC usually rejects most all of their monthly cases without actually doing any investigating at all as I will prove in future posts.  Imagine how much money these meetings are costing just to assemble with the goal of rejecting everything put in front of it.

It should be apparent that not only does Lady Justice have one eye covered, she has both covered as well.  Along with that, she is also wearing earmuffs and has a gag in her mouth.  Sadly Maine agencies have turned from helping people to hurting people by not waking up and seeing reality around them,  Sure, the excuse of “procedure” could be said as being used, but there comes a time when logic should come into play instead.  But whoever said the state was logical, just look at dumbass Paul LePage.  As if we needed anymore proof than that!

Three Witch Hunts (and its not even Halloweenie yet!)

Over the last couple of weeks, there have been reports of two “witch hunts” in the news.  One of them is legitimate, the other not so much.  A third witch hunt is how mine from Staples can be sandwiched between the two.

First Up:  Julian Assange

Poor Julian.  He claims a “witch hunt” is after him by the United States for his postings on Wikileaks.  Gee, if you write things to a website that could jeopardize national security, doesn’t that make you a criminal?  Apparently , NOT according to Julian himself.  To make matters worse, some credit card companies cut off his accounts and his group of hoodlums went and attacked the credit card companies websites.  Now he blames the U.S. for being on a witch hunt against him.  Sadly, the U.S. government won’t hunt this guy down from where he is hiding and drag him back to the United States and put him on trial once and for all.  He is a criminal and should be treated as such.

Similarly, Staples decided to become a hacker into its attacks against me and attempted to get into my Hotmail account, my MySpace account, and my Facebook account.  I found out that they did it by the fact that all 3 gave me warnings that they were tampered with and who better to hack into them at the time than that evil company of Staples.

Secondly:  Lance Armstrong

Lance Armstrong and I share a lot more in common than most people would ever realize.  However, I can’t ride a bike nor would I ever try.  Yet we both have seen our lives destroyed by the stupidity of others and thus lost everything in the process.  Amongst the similarities  are:

• We both were accused of things that were not true by others.  He by the idea that he was doping on hi Tour de France rides and me by having Staples lie about my employment record with the company.
• We both had friends/teammates turn against us.  Never trust somebody who you think is your friend because chances are they really are not and they will turn against you when you turn your back.  Staples even went a step further and had people comment about me who never met me and had no prior experience with me whatsoever. 
• We both went before quasi-government agencies with bad results.  He went before the Anti-Doping Agency and I went before the Maine Human Rights Commission.  Similarly, each of us were condemned for our actions even though in both cases there was no proof to back up the cases.  You can’t win against ignorant people.
• We both gave up on our causes and decided not to go on fighting.  Sadly, you can’t win against liars or stupid people who don’t even look at the evidence.  I will explain my case much more thoroughly in future posts, but for now all I will say is that I exhausted my entire appeal process with less than desirable results. 
• We both had health issues.  Yes, Lance is a cancer survivor and my surviving had to do with the fact that I could have lost my leg (or legs) if it wasn’t for the irresponsibility of Staples by not heeding my warning of a potential hazard a couple years beforehand.  Staples was so aggressive in their fight against my health claim that they threatened to terminate me in both in-store meetings and a letter that was sent to my home.  I will have more to say about that in the future.

So are the witch hunts justified? 

Julian Assange – Definitely, as this guy is nothing but a criminal whose only desire is to create problems for the U.S. government.

Lance Armstrong – Not by a long shot.  Stripped of his Tour de France wins just adds to everything else this guy has to deal with.  Dealing with former teammates who lie and with no evidence, its hard to prove oneself easily.  It’s obvious he could never win against the government agency that refuses to realize that no evidence of drugs was ever found in his tests.  Sadly, the truth is ignored and he is the biggest losers.  Thankfully many of his sponsors has stood up and continued to support him along with his endorsements.

Louis Brown – Depending who you want to believe, I am either a good employee who got screwed or a bad employee, which Staples wanted to get rid of no matter what.  Sadly, the MHRC didn’t look at the evidence and like Lance had the word of others mean more than the real truth.  Even though I no longer have a case against them, I feel justified that this ongoing blog will spark the attention of those who are important and realize how bad Staples really is.

Last Minute Political Note

Apparently, Tom Stemberg (founder of Staples) will be one of the speakers at the Republican Convention tonight (8/30/2012) throwing his support to Mitt Romney as U.S, President.  If the American people are smart, which most are not, they would see through this feeble attempt at making Romney look like a job creator.  In reality, he is more of a life destroyer.  Please join me in defeating Mitt this fall and keep the Wall Street cronies from getting richer.  Don’t be fooled by Romney’s false front.  Thank you for your ongoing support.

 

 

Best Buy Slump

As was expected, Best Buy’s quarterly sales slumped a whopping 91% from the previous quarter.  To add insult to injury, the company has decided to no longer issue forecasts in the future.  This really sounds like a double whammy as to the future of the company.  I expect eventually Staples will do a similar thing as their sales have slipped significantly in the last couple of quarters.

I believe it is now a race to see which company will go out of business first.  However, lets not count out companies like JCPenney, RadioShack, Barnes and Noble, Office Max, and Office Depot to lead the way to bankruptcy.  It will be an interesting rest of 2012 to watch what happens.

Best Buy Gets New CEO

Best Buy has itself a new CEO in Hubert Joly, formerly of Carlson Hotel chain.  On the news of this, the stock has dropped over 10% on the news.  Tomorrow the company reports its quarterly earnings which may send the stock plunging even further sending it into the bargain basement level of fellow stock of Staples. 

I still stand firm on my belief that Best Buy is on its last legs and possibly be out of business by the end of this year or middle of next year.  I also believe that Staples is heading in that same direction and may be out of business itself by end of 2013.  Both of these companies deserve to disappear and be only time before it actually happens. 

I will keep you all updated on the continuing downfall of Best Buy and the inevitable downfall of Staples.  Stay tuned friends!

Thug Politics

It seems as though all the politicians are acting like they have a stick up their butts.  Just today, Maine Governor Paul LePage wants to call a special session of legislature to possibly do something that nobody in the state will love.  This is on top of other thug statements made in the last week or so.

Examples include:

• Vice President Joe Biden calling that citizens will be “in chains” if Romney is elected President.
• Super PAC for Obama which airs an ad for a man whose wife had died because he lost his job and thus his health insurance because Romney shut down his company.

Both of these examples represent the type of extreme lengths that the Democrats will go to retain the White House.  However, I believe in both of these cases, there is more truth than falsehoods in the statements as has been reported by media outlets.

The reason I believe this is that big business and Wall Street have controlled the way politics are run without any consideration of the general public.  If these groups considered the general public, they would not be spending millions of dollars to defeat each other’s candidate.  These people would be spending their money on hiring workers and not wasting it on political campaigns.  But then again, individuals mean nothing to corporations.  Just ask any unemployed person like myself and they too would blame people like Romney for their unemployment. 

Even though both sides could be blamed for being thugs in these turbulent times, it is the general public who will have to decide which thug better agrees with their own beliefs.  May the lesser thug win!

Took Time Off

Last week, I decided to unplug from the internet.  I stayed away from email, Twitter, and most importantly Facebook.  Unfortunately, that also meant that I also stayed away from writing to this blog.  I felt that I needed the summer “vacation” just to unravel and get away from the connected world and feel the real world for a while.  Of course this meant that I have a lot to catch up on, but that is the chance I took.  Hopefully, I will be resuming this blog either tomorrow or early next week, as the weather starts to cool down a little.  So until then enjoy my apology and this posting.

The Other Woolworth Positions

Besides working the customer service desk, cashier, and front-end supervisor, I also held other positions in the store as well.  Some were one-time shots, others more often.  Listed below in order of appearances are those other positions and comments about them:

Restaurant Cashier 

There is nothing more awful to look at then watching people eat.  Try this experiment if you don’t believe me:  put a mirror in front of you and start eating.  If you are not freaked out within a couple of minutes, then congratulations, otherwise welcome to my personal hell.  Even though this was a sitting position, it had a lot of downtime.  Most employees read between ringing up customers and it was quite obvious why.  I just sat there staring at the smoke-filled room, waiting for the next customer to come to the counter with their bill to be rung up.  This brings up another point:  many of the bills were added wrong.  So I had to account for these errors and ring their bill up as listed on their check.  No wonder this register was always short.  Nobody ever knew how to ring up over in the restaurant.  It would not be for a couple of years when smoking was banned in the mall and smoking in the restaurant was eliminated.  This was an eventual state law, but too late for the couple times I worked in the restaurant.  Certainly not worth the 50% discount for restaurant employees, which I was for about a week.  Probably the worst place in the store to work short of the pet department, which I never worked.

Women’s Department

It wasn’t often that a guy would work in the women’s clothing section.  This section also included the baby section as well.  Spending a night or afternoon in this section might interest some people, but the thought of endlessly straightening women’s clothing on racks was more than just dull – it was super dull.  Besides that, dealing with the fitting room was almost an endless task as well as this was a babysitting job just to make sure that nobody ever stole anything.  I would also note that this position also required endlessly straightening up the shoe department.  As anybody who has ever looked at any store’s shoe section, this could be an endless task by itself.  I am so glad that I was only in this department a couple of times, just because the store was very desperate.

Men’s Department

Across from the woman’s section was my other hated section: the men’s department.  It was easier to relate to this section because I was a guy, but it still was not the fun section either.  Most importantly this section was small and had just one fitting room unlike the woman’s section that had 4 fitting rooms.  The worst thing about this department was the straightening of the Dickies clothes.  Anybody who has ever handled these clothes know how heavy they can be especially the full suits.  What made this department so bad was that it was a very claustrophobic space.  It was a great relief when I finally got to leave this department for even for a few minutes.

Jewelry Department

Speaking of tight spaces, nothing was any tighter than the jewelry register area. The space between a wall and a counter was about 3 feet wide, which made it a pretty tight squeeze to enter the register area. The rest of the department wasn’t much better either. It was not uncommon to bump into one counter while trying to maneuver around another. In doing so, it was very easy to knock the jewelry onto the floor, which I did frequently. This was another one of those thankful departments that I rarely appeared in only when the store was desperate.

Domestics Department

This one should almost be disqualified as this area was part of my customer service desk duties as well. During my downtime (read: when I felt like it), I was supposed to straighten up the curtain and bedding section, which was 5 aisles wide to the right of the customer service area and the area of the sewing section which was about 4 aisles straight forward of the customer service desk. I usually wandered into these sections just for the exercise alone, but the straightening was sometimes very frustrating. Curtains were especially troublesome as it was difficult to sometimes figure out which package each open package piece belonged to. I know many times I probably screwed this up, but what do you expect from somebody who knows nothing about curtains.  The sewing area was hardly any better as keeping the different types of yarn in the right bins was sometimes an endless battle of emptying the bins and resorting the yarns out by type.  No matter what neither section of domestics were enjoyable, thus I tried hard not to spend a lot of time in either section.

Sporting Goods Department

Yee-Hah!  Nothing more satisfying to a gun-toting cowboy than working in this section.  This section, which was nestled between the Stationary department, the toy department, and the housewares department, was probably the most depressing department to work in.  As I knew nothing about rifles, camping, or bicycles, this section was not a favorite of mine.  Since this department wasn’t visited much, not much ever needed straightening.  So this department was nothing more than walking around being bored.  The worst thing about this department was the handling of the rifles.  The smell of the gun oil made me sick and getting it on my hands was even worse.  I eventually figured a way to handle the guns by wrapping my hands in paper towels to handle them.  Yea, it looked stupid but it worked for me.  Worse than handling the rifles was the paperwork needed to sell one.  Thankfully, a form needed to be faxed to Augusta to perform a background check before any rifle could be sold.  This took about 5 days and it did anger some people.  I guess the satisfaction of having a rifle today was not in some people’s plans.  I usually got stuck working in this department on Saturday nights when one of the two regular associates were off.  Never looked forward to those nights at all.

Music Department

Finally, the one department that I spent the most time in by far was this one.  It was also the department I also enjoyed the most as well.  I mean who would not enjoy being surrounded by videos, cds, boom boxes, and video game systems.  This was my playground of fun.  When nobody was around, I would go over to the Sega Genesis machine and play Sonic the Hedgehog.  I was never any good at it, but I enjoyed it just the same.  We also had a Nintendo kiosk, but was not set up to actually play games – it just looped a demo on a laser-disc player contained within the display.  When we stopped carrying video games, I purchased that laser-disc player and got the Nintendo demo disc left inside as a bonus.  I think I have quite a collectable despite laser-disc players no longer being manufactured.

Another fun part of the department was watching VHS tapes, listening to the radio, and playing cds.  The important thing about cds was that I was working there when the transition was made from the long extended cardboard boxes that the cds were in and were left in their smaller cd jewel cases.  Thank the tree-huggers for that one.  To protect the cds, a new security package was introduced that housed the cd that needed to be opened with a special key.  A similar package was also used on cassette tapes as well as their cardboard packages were also eliminated as well.  I will have more to say about product security in future posts.  One thing I proved about cds while working there was that it was absolutely possible to play a cd to death, did that twice with the same title.  The cd, which was a department favorite, was Weird Al Yankovic’s “Jurassic Park”.  A very enjoyable cd for those who love parodies and all his work is always entertaining.

However, not everything was fun and games in the department.  I spent a lot of my time endlessly pricing things that were brought over to me.  My hands were sore after a long day of pricing merchandise.  More will be said about pricing merchandise in a future post as well. 

The funniest thing that ever happened in that department was when a bird got loose in the pet department and decided to fly over to the music department to do a little looking around.  The little bird sat upon a video tape rack and one by one knocked each video tape to the floor while standing on the one next to it.  When the bird got to the last tape, the bird jumped to the shelf and pushed the last one onto the floor.  This bird was easily caught because it just wanted to sit on this rack with nothing else on it.  It certainly wasn’t the first time that a bird got loose and certainly wouldn’t be the last either. 

Conclusion:

Overall everyday at Woolworth brought variety.  Hardly a day was ever dull as there was always something to do or maybe just a little time for some fun.  But you can’t have fun if you don’t carry merchandise and with that will be the next topic as I discuss the regular merchandise carried along with the more odd stuff carried.

Up Next:  Oh the Merchandise We Carried!

James Holmes–My Take on Him

James Holmes (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

I am writing this in both of my blogs as I feel this is important enough for both of them. It is a game-changer of society and thus is needed to be discussed in both places.

It is no surprise that James Holmes has now become the most infamous villain of society of late. His actions in the movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado is nothing short of devastating, but I believe that this is a wake-up call to society.

The reason is quite simple: He was fed-up. Fed-up with a society where the haves got too much and the have-nots suffer. Consider the fact that this college honor student could only get a job at McDonald’s and you realize where society has failed him. In his position, who would not be angry?

The fact that the rich are spending millions of dollars wanting to put their candidate into the White House (or keeping the opponent out), when these same millions of dollars could be used to hire quite a few employees. It’s bad that the rich can take tax deductions on their campaign spending, yet can’t write off anything to hire new people. The rich would rather spend money foolishly rather than helping real people. This is the problem with society today.

James Holmes is not crazy, mentally ill, or some sort of weird loner that the news media is portraying him as, but instead someone who wants to wake up society to the problems that keep him and hundreds of others from succeeding. Sadly, the media has already executed his future, which means he will never get a fair trial and nobody could ever serve on a jury as too much information has been distributed about him and his victims. It would have been better if he hadn’t booby-trapped his apartment and went to court today with orange hair. Certainly, both of these have killed any credibility he may have had. His best defense now would be to say “I was just fed-up with the rich bastards once and for all”.

Now, because of him, we have introduced more paranoia in the world as theatres, once considered a safe place, no longer as such. However, I think this paranoia is unjustified and should be considered an isolated incident. Sadly, many don’t believe that 9/11 was this way even though realistically it really was. The copycats happened just because they wanted to test the U.S. and our ability to find out the perpetrators. We are paranoid society whose isolation is hurt by the technology that surrounds us and the isolation we wrap ourselves in.

Just an example is this was a woman who was talking on her cell phone the other day. I was walking behind her going into a store not more than 3 feet behind and twice she NEVER held the door open for me and let the door slam in my face. I continued to follow this woman around the store and notice how she never paid attention to the people she ran into or the counters she ran into as she was on her phone and acted like she was drunken by the person on the other end. Sadly, it is this type of social isolation that we have created by having people believe in false security.

As soon as we can separate technology from reality, then people can get real and see things the way they should be seen. We shouldn’t rely on fake profiles on twitter, Facebook, or even going back to the hardly used MySpace. Stop believing the fakeness and only believe the real person. Everybody will be better off for it.

As I will be discussing in a future posting in my Staples blog, sometimes a profile can cause problems even when no problem exists. It is when a company like Staples decides to make more out of something that it is when things go so wrong as I will explain in full details.

WMTW restored to Time Warner Cable

Finally after over a week being off the air, WMTW is back and it is reported that it will be back for a while as a long term agreement has been reached between the parites.  Let's hope we don't have to deal with it for awhile.

Catching a Breather Sort of…

This week has not been a fun week for me.  The wonderful world of Time Warner and their continued blockage of WMTW Channel 8 seems to dominate the problems with their service.  To top that off, much of my cable has been out for the last couple of days.  Most of the problem can be attributed to the fact that since the last cable box update a couple of weeks ago, nothing seems to work anymore like it should.  Even my trusty (or not so trusty) Road Runner service decided it was going to poop out on me for many hours leaving me stranded offline and just a small handful of cable channels.

The problems with my system has pretty much been fixed now accept my primary computer has forgotten what a cd drive is.  That’s right all 3 of my cd drives have become invisible to my computer.  Granted my primary machine is going on 10 years old and is running Windows XP Pro meaning that its future is not bright.  I use a family laptop to do these postings along with other important things, but this machine is tied into the primary machine for printing, networking, etc.

I am hoping by next week things will return to normal and I can resume this blog to its fullest potential, but humidity hurts the primary machine and when that happens, I am stuck not even being able to use the laptop since it relies on the other machine.  Isn't life grand?. I didn’t think so either.

I am also hoping to get this blog to a more regular schedule in the future.  Right now, that hasn’t been possible because of my underlying factors, many of which were mentioned above.  I will continue, though, to stray off-topic when I feel the need to as there are things that are important to mention.  As always, I desire your continued support on this blog and please continue to spread the word about this blog..the more who get interested in the cause the more hatred can be spread faster.

Thanks to all and hopefully be back next week.

TV Blackouts = No Solution

Yesterday, Time Warner Cable decided to blackout the channels hosted by Hearst TV.  Locally, this effected WMTW-TV channel 8 (the ABC affiliate in the Portland Maine area.  The problem with this is that is happened with ABSOLUTELY NO WARNING!!

Apparently, the local channel was either unaware of what was going to happen or else they thought that a solution would be found before the company’s owners went dark.  Both of these companies are pointing to the other in why contract negotiations broke down.  Each blame the corporate greed of the other as the reason for the problem.  Neither side seems willing to give in so it looks like the ABC shows along with local syndicated programs like “Access Hollywood” and “Jeopardy!” won’t be airing locally for some time.

It seems also that TWC doesn’t have any plans of bringing in another station into the area to air programs to replace the missing network programs.  Yet, TWC won’t give refunds for time lost due to the missing channel.

It seems like every year some station ends up in this mess and at the last minute (or slightly later), the station resumes like nothing really happened.  It just becomes a HUGE unnecessary inconvenience.

Don’t think, however, that satellite television is the solution as it was just reported today that DIRECTV has put the Viacom channels in the dark.  For those who don’t know what the Viacom channels are, they are stations like MTV, Nickelodeon, and all their associated off springs. 

So here we have 4 companies all finger-pointing as being greedy companies and dead-locked to bringing their respective programming back to their respective providers.  Ironically with all the millions of dollars that all these companies make that they would quibble over such contracts.

Sort of reminds me of a certain office supply company who decided that a certain employee wasn’t worth keeping because that person was too expensive to keep.  Unfortunately, there was no negotiations with them and thus I ended up on the street.  Too bad, we all could toss all these greedy providers and channel owners to the curb as well.