Season Greetings?

‘Twas the week before Christmas and all through the town

Shoppers were scurrying all around.

Lost and confused I must say

Before they knew it they lost another day

Heading south on Route 1 to Scarborough Maine, there is a large sign on the sign that says “Merry Christmas”. Of course, to some this is an offensive sign and to others it is just a sign of the holiday season.

However, a big question comes to mind when seeing this sign: who paid for it and why is it there anyway?

I can’t answer either of these questions, but it does remind me of problems that come up this time of year.

The problem is that not everybody celebrates Christmas or any other holiday this time of year. So realistically, this sign can be very offensive to those who don’t believe in Christmas or anything it represents.

Turning the clock back 25 years, when I worked at the late Woolworth chain, Christmas was everywhere. Santa Claus, Merry Christmas, elves and everything else was all over the store. No other holiday was ever mentioned within the boundaries of the store whatsoever.

There was no mention of Jewish holidays, African holidays, Buddhist holidays or any other holidays during the period. It was like these others didn’t exist. And to Woolworth they didn’t. They never ever existed during the entire existence of the company.

After all, Woolworth was note noted as “America’s Christmas Store”. With a line like that, it was obvious nothing else existed.

It was also expected that employees keep the spirit alive by saying “Merry Christmas” to everyone they waited on and everybody they saw.

Being the Grinch type I was, I always gave my standard ‘thank you” and nothing more. I was one of those who never embraced the holiday of Christmas for many years and to this day still don’t.

Forward the clock to my years at Staples and things were different, much different.

Don’t even think of even mumbling the words “Merry Christmas” to a customer ever or else you would face being reprimanded by the management.

Why?

Not because they were Scrooges, but because like other anal policies, they decided not to do Christmas as a greeting. They preferred instead the more generic “Happy Holidays” if anything.

The important part is the “if anything” as they would prefer no greeting at all to one of any type of celebration at all. Personally, I don’t believe that Staples ever had or ever will have any holiday spirit whatsoever.

However, it seems that now, we are overwhelmed by Christmas/holiday tunes/TV movies/specials/merchandise and everything else earlier and earlier every year.

One local radio station started playing holiday songs at the first of November 24/7.

Target started selling Christmas decorations even before Halloween was over.

Yes, Virginia there is a “War on Christmas” as reported by some news outlets. We start the holiday season earlier and earlier despite that this year is the shortest period between Thanksgiving and Christmas so it is no wonder everybody is starting to hate on the holidays especially Christmas and Santa Claus.

Unfortunately, there is nothing that will change in these modern times. We are too individualized and polarized to be united anymore to celebrate holidays as we did years ago. The ways of Woolworth certainly would not be deemed acceptable today under any circumstances.

Is there are a solution to all this mess? Sadly not a solution is to be found that I can tell.

All we have is the memories of a bygone era.

So now I close the book on another year

Many of you may shed a tear

He is gone you may say

But don’t worry fellow readers I will be back another day

Please note:

This is the last posting for this year. I will return the first week of January with a brand new posting (if all goes well). For you date counters out there, that means approximately 3 weeks from now I will return

Until then, remember have a safe and happy holiday season or if you don’t celebrate the holidays, make one up.

Email Receipts

Have you ever made a small purchase in a store and wound up with a receipt that was several feet long?

Well that exact thing has happened to me recently at a local retailer. It is rather embarrassing to be handed such a long receipt when somebody only buys a couple of items.

So what do you get in all that footage of paper?

· Name of store

· Address of store

· Phone number of store

· Name of manager of store

· Company or store’s email address

· Transaction information (date, time, transaction #, register #, cashier employee # or name, etc.)

· A listing of products that you purchased including any discounts

· Type of payment including any authorization number if it was any form other than cash

· The company’s return policy

· A customer satisfaction survey request including information needed to access either a website or a phone number plus any codes needed to complete the survey

· A friendly closing like “Have a nice day”

Certainly some receipts may even have other things than this including rebate information or coupons for future purchases or other items.

With all this information and the spacing between items, it is easy to get a receipt that could easily be measured in feet not inches.

Now companies like Macy’s has decided to adopt another way to save paper: the email receipt.

While this sounds great on the surface, in reality it is full of red flags and gotchas that they don’t tell you about.

First the good news or not so good news, if you opt for an email receipt only you walk out of the store with no receipt. This works great if you just so happened to walk into another store and the security alarm goes off and you have no receipt. Expect to spend some time with store or mall security without that receipt.

So you save paper then what?

If you are like me, then any number of scenarios could happen.

Here are just some of them:

The cashier types your email address wrong so you never receive the receipt. One wrong character could send your email to the wrong recipient. This could lead to the potential of identity theft especially since the recipient of the email could acquire credit card information from the receipt. Are you listening Google?

The email is sent but ends up in your spam inbox and not your regular inbox. With some email systems, chances are that the email may get deleted before you ever get it. In other words, the email system blocks the email from entering your system because it was predetermined by the email system to be spam.

Your email address is sold to third parties without your consent. By accepting an email receipt, you are probably subjecting yourself to a privacy policy that allows the store to do whatever they want with your email address. Just try asking the cashier what their privacy policy is and expect to get blank stare.

Of course, the worst of all is that you could delete the email by mistake and find out later that you really need that receipt. Good luck if you paid cash.

Overall, I would never give my email address to receive an email receipt. If I don’t have physical receipt in my hand at time of purchase, I would never be happy.

I don’t know of how many stores have started this procedure, but I feel it is dangerous one at best. So far I have seen this at Macy’s only and even lately they have been bypassing this prompt at the register to “paper receipt only”. Maybe they have already had complaints like the ones listed above.

As far as I know to date, Staples has not started any sort of email receipt program or testing any sort of program. Given their past with how they handled my email address with rewards cards, I hope they never even think of this procedure. EVER!

Consider yourself warned…

Black Friday Aftermath

So here we are 5 days after the Black Friday event.

Reports say that spending was down over 13% from last year, but was up about 2% when Thanksgiving Day sales are figured in. This of course, assumes that the stores were open on the holiday. Here in Maine along with Massachusetts and Rhode Island, most stores were closed until at least 12:01am Friday morning.

While I did not join the midnight crowd, I did go out around 11am that day. Here are just a few of my observations:

· It was easy to find a parking space everywhere. Apparently, many have already left most places and called it a day. While I had to sometimes park out a little further than usual, the parking was still plentiful.

· The ads were not great. Nobody had any really great doorbusters and many had just average discounts on many items. Even companies like Staples, which in past years, have had multipage ads; this year was limited to a 4 page ad. In fact, many of the items on sale at Staples were rebate items and not upfront sale prices. Also, on the back page, Staples offered a “buy 1 get 1 50% off on all ink cartridges”. However, in common Staples fashion, the blurb had a footnote attached to it which referred to the nasty small print at the bottom of middle pages. However, Staples definition of “all” as previously noted in a past post doesn’t mean all at all. Both HP & Epson cartridges were excluded from the sale. Nice job, Staples, by once again creating a false advertisement. When will they ever learn?

· Incompetent help was everywhere. Sadly, many of the seasonal associates were not properly trained and lines backed up because of this.

· One Walmart store I visited only had 4 registers open (yes you read that right) out of a possibly 25. This was around the 4pm hour when many people were shopping and the lines were around 20 people deep. To make matters worse, the cashier of the line I was in constantly forgot to give the correct change. She had her purse at the register looking for money to give the customer along with searching her pockets for change as well. Eventually a manager did come and open her drawer after wasting time doing her own personal search for money. In most other stores, this cashier would have been fired for this type of activity, however given that this was Walmart and they were so shorthanded they probably overlooked this problem.

· Poor placement of sales items in stores was another major problem for most of the stores I visited. Items of like types should be together, toys with toys, DVDs with DVDs etc. However, this was not the case as items were spread out all over the stores creating mass chaos as searching for some items was impossible and sometimes not worth the time. I probably would have spent more than I did if I could find what I was looking for. Don’t bother looking for help especially at Walmart and Best Buy as these stores lacked any salespeople on the floor.

Overall, I would say that this year I was underwhelmed by the whole Back Friday event. For a holiday period nearly a week shorter than normal, the stores seemed completely unprepared both staff wise and product wise. I believe that some retailers may have seen their last holiday season this year and that will be the discussion of a post in the very near future.

Torn Between 2 Systems

Last week Sony released the latest version of its PlayStation gaming system. This week Microsoft is releasing their latest Xbox unit. At $399 and $499 respectively, these systems are nowhere near cheap. Add the cost of at least 1 game to each and you are at a $1,000 if you invest in both systems.

Yes, that is a 1 with 3 zeroes attached. Too much for many people to afford especially given that many people can’t even afford to put food on the table. Even the cost of 1 system could send anybody well over $750 if they buy even one of the systems. Even that is too much for many.

This is why I have never been swayed into buying a gaming system. Never. Ever.

Oh yes I used to sell video game systems back in the days of Woolworth. Back then, it was Nintendo versus Sega. Both were around the same price, but each had their strengths and weaknesses. I always preferred the Sega Genesis system because the games looked better and seemed less glitchy. However, the biggest difference was that the Sega display was the game “Sonic the Hedgehog”, whereas the Nintendo display was a laserdisc playing a loop of various titles with the ability for the users to press buttons to watch various categories of titles.

At one point, I asked the reps of both companies if they had any sales brochures on how to sell the units. Both companies response was that they didn’t and felt that the systems could stand on their own merit. In other words, no salesperson was necessary to sell the units and the employee like me was left being unable to answer customer questions unless I did my own research mostly from reading magazines in the bookstore across the way on my lunch break. It was my own opinion that usually swayed the customer. I was probably the most researched employee who was the most knowledgeable on these products even more so than the department head. In fact, the department head preferred the Nintendo system because it was a better seller. Not a great selling philosophy to me.

Fast forward to today and we still have some companies running playable game displays whereas others are still using loop DVDs to show off their systems. Unfortunately now, employees are still left stumped about the merits of the systems they sell.

This of course will lead to much customer buyer remorse this holiday season. It is expected that retailers will see many returns with the customers saying that they should have bought the “other system” or “none at all”. Back in the Woolworth days, this was very common right after Christmas and there was nothing that could be done about it. It came with the territory.

When Woolworth was selling out of video game systems, the Nintendo and Sega systems were marked down dramatically, to the point where $200 systems were selling for as low as $50. As much as I wanted to buy, I still resisted. Today, I regret that a bit, but given that obsolescence is guaranteed when new systems are released and old games don’t work on new systems, I thought better of it.

So, my advice to those million people who bought the new Sony or the million who will probably buy the new Xbox, stop and think of the following:

Do I really not need this?

Will the price come down right after Christmas?

Did I buy the WRONG system?

Will my money be better spent elsewhere?

After answering any of these questions with a yes, then walk away like I did. As I have done through every evolution of the video game industry.

Have a happy Black Friday!

Please note: There will be no posting next week in celebration of thanksgiving. I will be back in 2 weeks with a new posting at that time.

Shaw’s’s Hidden Policy

Just when you thought that Staples was the only bad company (actually I have discussed others here), I now introduce Shaw’s to the bad company crowd.

For those of you who don’t know what Shaw’s is, it is a grocery store chain located in the New England/New York area. Up to a few months ago, the chain was owned by the Supervalu chain of stores, but now is independent. Apparently independence has not done the chain well as I describe here.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the local Shaw’s store where I was purchasing 8 dental products, which each of them had a 55 cent off coupon on the package. After I scanned all the items at the self-serve register, I started scanning my coupons from the packages. Everything was fine for the first 4 items so I continued scanning the remaining coupons.

After I finished scanning all 8 coupons, it required management approval for some reason. So when the woman supervisor scanned her employee card, I noticed that the register only doubled the value of the first 4 coupons and not the last 4.

The woman supervisor told me that it was policy that there was a limit of 4 coupons to be doubled. When I asked where it was stated, she either did not hear me or ignored my question. As she started taking the items off the receipt to void the transaction, the other coupons started doubling themselves over the limit of the 4.

Being irritated over the whole thing, the woman supervisor told me to go to a “regular checkout with my items” and she threw my coupons back at me as if I was to be blamed for the system not to work the way it should.

So off I went to the regular checkout grudgingly. I decided to checkout as 2 transactions my 8 products to eliminate any possible problem. The first transaction went fine, however the second one stopped me in my tracks as my credit card was not accepted because the same amount was in 2 consecutive transactions. I have used my card many times at other places with same amount consecutive transactions with absolutely no problem whatsoever. This is apparently a Shaw’s’s problem and not a credit card issue. After a couple of minutes, the transaction did go through but this embarrassment could have been avoided if the registers were programmed correctly. To insult to injury to all this was that the cashier was sort of rude to me while doing my transaction. This is true of many of the cashiers who work at Shaw’s being rude. This is why I use self-serve registers and recommend anybody with any intelligence to use self-serve when available.

Overall, I was very dissatisfied with my experience this particular day. I filled out a survey on their website expressing my displeasure with how things went. Thankfully, unlike Best Buy, I never received an email asking me to respond to them with either a phone call or an email. Apparently Shaw’s does respect the privacy of their customers unlike companies like Best Buy and Staples.

What is the takeaway from all of this?

First, the woman supervisor was extremely rude to me unjustifiably. She tried to create policy where no existed. Nowhere is there a coupon limit posted in store or located (easily) on their website. Therefore, the policy really does not exist.

I saw this type of event happen many times over the years at Staples. However, unlike Shaw’s, the supervisor was NEVER rude to the customer despite sometimes not satisfying the customer. As far as I am concerned, this woman supervisor should be terminated. Shaw’s is no position anymore to lose customers or have people like me making postings like this explaining how bad the customer is treated.

Shaw’s like Staples is desperate to keep customers, but creating hidden policies that don’t exist is no way to retain customers. Hopefully, Shaw’s unlike Staples will correct their problems and unhide their policies and post them where all can see them.

This is a lesson that both companies could learn from.

Maine Politics Winners and Losers (Sorry, Just Losers)

The following special post is being presented in all my blogs this week.

This has been a very interesting week for the political climate here in Maine and mostly not in a good way.

Let’s start with the admission by U.S. House member Michael Michaud coming out to admit he was gay. Michaud was trying to beat the gossipers to the news, which he probably never wanted to release publicly. As someone who wants to become Maine’s next governor, he may have put himself out of the race with this revelation. He claims that he is the ‘same old Mike as yesterday”, but I believe that people won’t adjust to the “New old Mike”. I really have my doubts about his political future.

On the same day, current governor Paul LePage launches his reelection campaign. He claims that he has lowered taxes, paid off our hospitals, and getting rid of welfare fraud.

Is he serious?

He has raised taxes by raising the sales tax to 5.5% and allowing taxing on items not previously taxed. He has cut the homestead exemption therefore raising property taxes on many citizens of the state to new highs. Paying off the hospitals just added to the expenses that Maine taxpayers have had to suffer especially given the non-expansion of the MaineCare system (Medicaid). Finally, welfare fraud came at the expense of not enrolling anybody who shouldn’t be on the rolls, which includes people like me who are uninsured and currently unemployed. Certainly, not a smart move for those whore really need it.

Now onto the Election Day mess.

For those people living in Lewiston, congratulations. You got more time with your loudmouth Robert Macdonald as mayor. This is the guy who wanted to get rid of the Somalia people from the city as they were a drain on the city’s resources. Expect him to compete well against LePage for more offensive comments during the coming year or so.

For people of Portland, congratulations on legalizing marijuana of 2.5 ounces within the city limits. Bad news is that the people can’t get it from the medical dispensaries and there is no regulation of how this will be implemented. However, considering that it’s still illegal at the state and federal level, expect that those who want their pot will get it somehow illegally. Just don’t step over the city line or you will risk being arrested for possession.

For my fellow citizens of South Portland, congratulations are in order double. First, you approved big oil to win in a close vote (under 200 vote difference) to allow tar sands to come into the waterfront region and allow big oil to build nice smokestacks in the city as well. Apparently many of the citizens of SoPo were smoking their weed in Portland to realize the future pollution in South Portland. Secondly, the stupid people of the city voted to build a $14 million public works garage, when something about half that price was once suggested. Add this to the $50+ million approved for the high school a couple of years ago and you will realize that property taxes will go through the roof. Don’t people realize that the city doesn’t have any money trees growing in the city?

And finally, congratulations to all the citizens of Maine for approving 5 bond issues totaling around $150 million. Can we afford all this debt? After all, we are already the worst state in the nation to do business. Did we want to make more debt a priority in raising taxes even more when this is combined with the $450 million hospital bill? Who will pay the $600 million back? Certainly not getting any money from those money trees growing around the state.

Overall, the state is pretty much screwed up and the people are screwed paying for years for things that really are not needed or required. Maybe next year, we can get something right for once and get back from the bottom of the deck of states and stop being the butt of all jokes.

Happy Halloweenie

This week I was going to write about a sad story, but because of the holiday of Halloween, I changed my mind because it would probably be deemed as some sort of trick or treat joke. Instead, this week I decided to wish everyone to have a safe and happy Halloween.

To be relevant to Staples this week, I would like to say that only in 1 year out of the 12 ½ years that I worked for the company was Halloween ever celebrated. This was the only year that the store decided to give out candy. However, and this is a big however, the employees could not dress up in costume under any circumstances. Ironically this was their belief when celebrating any holiday. It’s sad that Staples resents all of the holidays.

This definitely was not the case back in Woolworth when not only was Halloween celebrated but was encouraged for the employees to dress up and not only that but we gave out a significant amount of candy in each of the 9 years I was with them. Maybe it helped that Woolworth was located in the mall and Staples is located in a strip mall.

So Woolworth was a party environment and Staples was a party-pooper environment.

Maybe that is where we get the phrase “Trick or Treat”, just many years too late.

Stay safe and stay away from the monsters at Staples otherwise you will feel tricked everyday.

The Last Meal I Never Had

Hilltop Steakhouse (Photo credit: Marissa Babin)

Please Note: This week’s special post will appear in all my blogs.

Back when I was younger in the 1970’s, our family would make the 2 ½ hour trip to Route 1 in Saugus Massachusetts to have lunch at the Hilltop Steakhouse Restaurant. You never could miss this place. It had fiberglass cows out front in a fenced in yard and a giant cactus sign out front announcing the restaurant’s name.

As the years wore on, we made fewer trips to the place as the lines usually were at least a 2 hour wait to be served. One time the wait would have been nearly 3 hours so we decided not to stay and wait. However, every time we did stay to have a meal we were never disappointed.

We had not gone to the restaurant in the last 10 years because nobody had the time to make the trip and waiting would be an all-day event. When initially we heard that the place was closing down at the end of October, we decided to make a date to make that one last trek to the iconic restaurant for that one final (hopefully enjoyable, but sad) meal.

So this last Tuesday, we decided to make that drive from southern Maine to Saugus Massachusetts. As we got closer to our destination, the anticipation of that last meal grew.

Then it happened.

We rounded up the hill on Route 1 and saw the giant cactus only to see the smaller sign before the large one saying “Open Until Oct. 20”.

What!?!

The local newspaper stated that the place was to be open until the 29^th. Imagine our disappointment when we found the building abandoned with “Closed – NO TRESPASSING” on all the windows.

Sadly, the cows were gone but the fence was still there. For the first time for use, the parking lot was completely void of any vehicles at all. So we left the empty parking lot and drove down the road a short distance to turn around and start that long journey back home.

Now, of course, I could have checked the restaurant’s website to tell that the place had closed. Unfortunately, with the exception of an update to the butcher shop specials, this site has not been updated since 2008. No mention of the closure could be found on the site anywhere. I did not bother doing a search for the company as I expected the place to be opened until the end of the month as promised.

So in the end, no meal for me or our family. But what happened to this company that always was very busy became a victim, according to the company, of a bad economy and a “dramatic drop” in customers based on competition from other places on the Route 1 highway.

However, this confuses me as many of the businesses on the nearby area were either crappy places, places long abandoned, or empty plots of land with new construction on them. It makes me wonder if this place was sold out to some developer who wants to use it for something else.

This same sort of thing happened a few years ago when Miller’s restaurant in Bangor Maine was closed because the temporary home of Hollywood Slots wanted the location because it was across the street from the future location that they was building. This also was a great restaurant of a buffet-style as opposed to a steakhouse variety. A sports bar has since opened in the location after the casino moved out.

Of course, we didn’t know about that closing until we arrived there and found it closed. It was during the in-between time when the restaurant had closed and the casino had moved in. It was yet another disappoint that we had over the years for the “they aren’t there anymore” syndrome.

Yes, it was sad that I didn’t enjoy one last beef meal at the steakhouse, but never was unexpected given our luck over the years. At least we have the internet to remind us of the pictures of what was one of the best meals ever had.

My score: Incomplete

Summary: If you didn’t make it before the closing like I did, then a great meal was missed. If only anyplace, anywhere at all, could compete to what this place had to offer than I would say I would try it. Goodbye cows. So long cactus sign. We hardly knew you.

Misdirected Anger

It seems that in the last week that people have become stupid and not just a little stupid, but to the point of misdirecting their anger at the wrong people.

For example, consider those veterans who took barricades from the war memorial in Washington D.C. and carried them to the gates of the White House and dumped them. Seriously, if these people were actually thinking then they would realize that the President did not cause the government to shutdown but it was the Congress that did so. However, in people’s haste and anger they directed their wrongful frustration to the person who really never caused the problem in the first place.

As a second example, consider that in a Louisiana Walmart, welfare customers went wild clearing the shelves of merchandise after finding out that their EBT Debit card (food stamps) was not working. Some of the customers even left the store with full carts of unpaid merchandise. This problem was not a Walmart problem, but a problem created by a glitch by Xerox, the company that runs the card program. Sadly, Walmart became a victim of somebody else's problem, which they had no control over.

Finally, a third example is the signing up for the Obamacare program. It is the programmers who developed the software that should be blamed and not the Obama administration as many media outlets have reported. Since the healthcare.gov website is a portal to state programs, it is the states that should be at fault for not having enough bandwidth to handle the incoming traffic. Other sites such as Twitter have suffered from similar problems in recent years. My response is “get over it and eventually everyone who wants to sign up will be able to, it is just that the system is clogged by too many users”.

As you can see from the examples above, people miss direct their anger at the wrong people more often than you think. As someone who worked in customer service for 25 years, I realize that customers misdirect their complaints about products to people like me instead of contacting the real source of many of the problems which is the companies themselves.

So what causes all these problems? I feel that people like to blame the easiest person that someone can get ahold of whether they are the source of the problem or not. Sadly, as long as people direct anger to the wrong people, mostly innocent people will get blamed or possibly hurt either in a verbal or sometimes as I have experienced firsthand, a physical one. The latter one which shows total disrespect and unfortunately for someone like me doesn’t get the kind of acknowledgement from management as it should, just like those people who misdirect their anger in the first place. I will have more to say about this type of abuse in a future posting.

In a way, I am glad that I am away from the customer service circle, as I feel that things have gotten progressively worse for many companies as people misdirect their anger even more so than ever. I really wish that management would step up more so to eliminate the problems, but they don’t which just adds more to the issue. I can only hope that people someday learn to direct their anger properly.

Pay for Nothing?

So here we are. The government has shut down, people are furloughed and soon if this is not solved it will trickle down to state levels.

The plan that Congress has is to pay these workers regardless whether or not they actually do any REAL work at all. On top of this, they can apply for unemployment benefits as well. Does this mean that they would have to look for a new job while collecting a paycheck from their government job at the same time?

Anybody else see a problem with this? Why should government employees get a free pass to get a government pay while robbing states of unemployment benefits?

While I like government employees being unemployed, I don’t care for them to double dip into funds that they don’t deserve either of. My suggestion is that if any member of Congress votes for this foolishness than I say that we the voters send them to the unemployment line without getting a government check anymore. It’s time that we slim down government, but not at the expense of paying them for doing nothing.

However, comparatively that evil company Staples is top-heavy with executives that should be let go as well and not given a check for doing nothing, which is the way the company has been operating for years. Their plan for existence is to eliminate store employees to pay for the corporate people. Just walk into any of their stores and you will see what I mean.

This is exactly what I did last week while I was away on a family trip. This is the reason why there was no post last week, but anyway I have visited this particular Staples store annually with basically the same results.

I walked into this particular location, which I won’t identify except to say it is in New England as I always would. At no point, was I ever neither greeted by anyone nor was I asked if I needed any help. I stayed in the store for about 20 minutes to see if anyone would ever come around to ask if I needed help. It never happened. In fact, I never saw an employee on the sales floor until I got to the door where I found just the unoccupied cashier and 4 (yes 4!) gray shirt managers talking amongst themselves while ignoring everything around them. Nobody, not even the dumb looking girl cashier acknowledged me on the way out the door. It was apparent that the store was run without employees and was held together with incompetent management that just didn’t care. It will be interesting to see what happens next year when I visit this location that is assuming that the location is still in business next year much less the company still in business.

Maybe a Staples shutdown is in order.

Dairy Queen, Bon-Ton & Staples Too

You may have heard of the teen who worked at Dairy Queen that took a $20 bill out of his own pocket after a lady picked it up after a blind gentleman dropped it. According to the report, he ordered the lady to leave the store when she refused to give the money back to the blind gentleman. After that, he took out his wallet and gave the blind man $20 from his own pocket. He got many phone calls thanking him for what he did including mogul Warren Buffet himself.

Now if this incident happened at Staples, the employee would more than likely get fired before the end of his shift for taking money out of his own pocket. The reason is that Staples requires that employees carry no money with them out on the sales floor. Since the company would have zero-tolerance toward this type of action, he would have no recourse despite being the “right thing to do”.

Secondly, by treating the woman rudely, it would be possible that if that happened here in Maine that the woman could sue for discrimination and collect a huge payday like the woman who had a case against Piercing Pagoda and made a $100,000 collection.

Certainly both Staples and Maine itself are messed up in their priorities. Both need to change their ways and dig deeper into details before jumping to conclusions.

On another front, a new store opened at the Maine Mall back on Thursday, September 12. Bon-Ton, however, was open for business 2 days earlier for those like me who was interested in browsing the store.

The store is located in the former Filene’s location that pretty much has been vacant since that company’s closing 7 years ago. For a short period of time, a recreational area was located in this space, but has since moved to another part of the mall. Pretty much the store looks pretty much the same as when Filene’s occupied the space. As far as the outside goes that is a different story. Gone are the beautiful windows that overlooked the parking lot from 2 sides and the gray color of the building itself. The store is painted the same color as the other side of the mall which houses H&M, Forever 21, and Sports Authority. Not that this is a bad thing, just not unique anymore.

When I entered the store, there were several employees around the front of the store. However, not a single one of them greeted me as I walked in. I didn’t really feel bad as most every place I go I am never greeted by anyone at all either. The layout of the store is very similar to Macys, Lord & Taylor, Bloomingdale’s and all those other similar stores. And this is where the problem exists: too many stores all selling basically the same things and being just like each other. The bad thing about this store is that it reminded too much of the former Filene’s store that occupied the space.

When I went to the second floor, I took the elevator up. Here is where I noticed the big flaw in the whole remodel process. The metal numbers by the push buttons inside the elevator were significantly worn out. Whether this was an oversight, it was obvious that the equipment was very old. Other than that the store looked pretty “new” otherwise.

Overall, it took me about ten minutes to walk both floors as I really didn’t care anything about what they were selling. Apparently nobody else was neither as I never saw a single transaction rung up during my stay in the store nor did I see anybody walking around with a bag from the store either.

What really bothered me the most though was the television ads that the company ran prior to its opening? They claimed that their store was located in PORTLAND Maine when in reality it is located in SOUTH PORTLAND Maine. Even the website points to a link of Portland instead of South Portland. If you don’t know what city you are in, you will confuse the customer and anger the local residents of that town like myself. For this reason alone, I am deducting 4 points off my grade for not knowing their location.

My Score: 4

Summary: No greeting by any employee in a store that is so much like many others that there is nothing here to differentiate from the competition. I have no interest of returning to this store ever again. Hopefully, this company dies like so many lookalikes.

Randomness This Week

Last week was not a good week for me. Between bad storms that played havoc on my electricity to extreme heat to a near concussion that I suffered from hitting my head, it was absolutely one of my worst weeks ever. To top off all that, I go my annual allergies again that have yet gone away.

Since I still am not feeling the greatest and missed last week without any explanation, I have decided to offer up some random thoughts this week.

First, before everything fell apart for me last week, I was going to write about 9/11. Instead since nothing major happened that day, it was best to say nothing about it and save my thoughts for next year when we celebrate the unlucky 13^th anniversary.

However, I am confused why MSNBC still has to show this tragic event year after year as it happened on the tragic date. Doesn’t this network ever think about being respectful to those who lost their lives on this horrific day? After all, I know of no other event that gets this kind of annual replay.

Second, the government is on the verge of another shutdown and the republicans want to defund the Affordable Care Act. Why have they never offered their own alternatives to the program? Are they in the back pockets of the big insurance companies that continue to rip people off with over-priced premiums while at the same time denying people the benefits that they are paying for?

Third, over the last few weeks, I have opened the times that I have been online to answering any questions on my Facebook page. The results have been less than stellar except for a couple of overly curious people. In a way this is good, but somehow it can get a little intrusive, but I don’t mind answering questions on virtually any subject. What does bother me in all this is those people who post to my comments well after I have logged off for the day. This is the same effect as talking behind my back. This is I find rude and proof that some people don’t really want to talk to me. I will continue to do these question sessions as I feel that they are fun and interesting nonetheless.

Finally, some of you may know that recently my high school celebrated its 30^th class reunion. Some may be waiting for my explanation for my reason of not going and trust me, it will happen soon. It is just that every time I start wanting to write about it, some other topic or somebody has something to post about it on the class’s Facebook page. I haven’t forgotten about it, but I do feel that some may be offended about what I have to say. Consider this a pre-warning.

I am hoping that next week I will have something more exciting to write about than what I wrote about. I just feel that every once in a while it is important to stray off into a different direction. Maybe it is just my allergies talking right now so I will stop now until next time.

The $15 Question–Staples NOT Exempt

Last week around the country, fast food workers went on strike demanding a wage increase to $15/hour.

While in concept this sounds like a wonderful idea, the strikers’ message was to the wrong people and certainly for the wrong reason.

First off, these strikers should have been striking in front of the corporate offices of the companies they work for, the offices of the shareholders, or the offices of the board of directors.

Doing their striking in front of the restaurants in which they work is just proof by how misguided these people really are.

While there are some of the restaurants that are corporate owned, the vast majority of them are owned by franchises. These franchises control things like hiring and wages of the employees. Of course they could pay everyone what these strikers want, but in doing so prices would have to go up considerably or so they say.

Beyond the franchising fees that the local owners pay the corporate offices, these restaurant locations usually do a pretty good take of profit. So where does this money go? Again, it usually goes into the hands of shareholders, board of directors and to other non-deserving people.

What usually happens is that the daily moneys are deposited in a bank account, that the company usually withdraws most of it leaving just enough for the store to pay for its expenses. This is the way it worked back when I worked at Woolworth despite that the company was not a franchise, but a corporate entity. However, the concept remains basically the same. The local store must live within its budget to pay its employees and pay its other monthly expenses. And yes, all expenses such as lights, electricity, water were all paid by the local store not the corporate office.

Of course, these restrictions in budget meant that when money was scarce, hours were cut of the lower end employees like me while the higher paid employees still had all their hours sucking out all the budget money. So realistically, strikers should also be angry at their peers when these people lose hours to fellow employees. Again this is another misdirected group that the strikers should be angry at.

It was not just Woolworth that had to live within a budget in my work life, the horrible company Staples was even worse in that regard.

Way back when I was hired $9/hour was considered the minimum for full-time employment. This is also about the same that workers at fast food places get whether full or part-time. Ironically, I spent the first 6 months of my career with Staples working on average 35+ hours a week, but getting just part-time pay. Sadly, I was given NO back pay for all the time that I was really working full-time at part-time pay nor was I ever given a raise after my probationary period as was required by the company at the time.

Over the next 12 years, I was given a total of about $1.50 in raises over that time period, leaving me nowhere near the $15/hour that the striking workers are asking for. In fact, during my last 2 years of employment, I was told that I had reached a “dead end” and that my raises would be just a “couple of pennies a year”. This is hardly a working wage nor a cost of living adjustment.

So where does all the company’s money go?

· Other floor people such as department heads, front-end supervisors, money room person and other non-managerial positions. Granted at Woolworth, I was trained as both a front-end supervisor and a money room person, but I was NEVER even offered a chance at either of these positions. Apparently, Staples wanted to suppress my career with them.

· Big bonuses for management. At one point, I heard that one low-end manager got a Christmas bonus of $5,000. Imagine what the high-end managers got. Imagine that the hourly employees get NOTHING in bonuses EVER!!!

· Corporate paper pushers. The do-nothing people in the company need to get paid something for doing nothing all day.

· The Board of Directors. Do some of these people ever been in a Staples store before? Hey, they get paid anyway even if it is with stock shares.

· And lastly, all the other corporate people hired to do nothing. These are the people who will lose their jobs when the hierarchy falls apart in the company because they were never needed in the first place.

As anyone can see from this posting, it is not just the fast food workers getting screwed; it is anybody in the service oriented industry. However, the only way the voices will really be heard is if the people take their protests to the people who steal the money that rightfully entitled to the employees and get rid of the slackers once and for all. Until this is done, any protest will fall on deaf ears and will continue to be laughed at by all the media outlets. It is up to everyone to fight the corporate injustice.

Great Expectations–Greater Failures

Last week while I was not around, Staples along with other companies reported their quarterly earnings.

Unfortunately, the picture is not pretty for really anybody. Staples, Walmart, Target, Abercrombie & Fitch, Sears and J.C. Penney amongst others reported sales that did not meet expectations.

So the real question to ask is: Are the companies estimating too high or are shareholders wanting too much?

The way I see it, it’s both.

It is important that companies make money, but the possibly of sales going up continuously is very much a misconception especially in this economy.

Sadly, shareholders are expecting much more every quarter as they want to see a better return in their investments. However, many of these shareholders probably don’t even shop at the companies that they hold shares.

This brings me to the point that many if not most of these shareholders are actually sucking money out of these companies when the money is much more deserving to the people who really deserve it: the employees.

Comparatively, many shareholders make much more than the employees that the company has. And for what reason? Just because they can or just because they are that privileged.

Companies like Sears, J.C. Penney, and Staples would not be tanking if investments were made to employees and not to shareholders. Unfortunately, many of these companies are clueless as to where their money is going and where it really should be.

Also companies are using gimmicks. Consider what Staples has done during the back-to-school season this year. They have their scam of the savings pass and this year they have decided to have greatly reduced items with a minimum purchase. No more free rides anymore with them. Given that the competition does price matching, there is no incentive to ever shop at Staples.

However, Staples blames once again their foreign stores for their problems, not the fact that realistically that their domestic stores are tanking. Ironically the stock price has lost better than 1/3 of its value since I sold all my stock 5 years ago and it has never recovered.

Ironically the story is the same at other retailers as well, just that Staples won’t admit to their real core problem. Instead they would rather fire full time employees for no good reason rather than man up to the real problems with the company.

Eventually, after all their full time employees have been fired, they will no longer be able to save money that way and inevitably have to start shutting down stores here in the United States and abroad. Other companies are already doing this to try to save themselves but are still failing.

My suggestions are to lower sales expectations for companies and lower stock ownership. Many companies have already had buybacks of their stock just for this reason. It will be just a matter of time when some of these companies will disappear completely because more was cared about the shareholders rather than the employees that they could have had.

The Day of the Lawbreakers

This week’s post is being posted in all my blogs as I feel it is that important to be presented everywhere. Enjoy this week’s post.

When I started thinking about what I was going to write about this week, I was pretty much at a loss, not because of lack of topic rather which topic I was going to discuss.

That was until this morning, when everything nearly came crashing down physically. If ever you thought that laws could be broken, today was the day and it happened in spades.

It all started around 8:30am this morning. I live down a dead end street clearly marked as such. I also live on a road perpendicular to a busy road where 18-wheelers drive down constantly. Usually everything is fine with no problems that was until today. Apparently, according to some GPS systems, my street is a shortcut pass-through to the place where these trucks are supposed to go, which is very wrong.

Today, one dumb truck driver ignored all the dead-end street signs and decided to travel down my street. The problem was that the driver was unable to turn is vehicle around given the brick business building across from my house. As ugly fate would have it, in the process of trying to turn his truck, he rammed the corner of the brick building significantly enough to knock several bricks out of the building and cause significant damage to it.

When the driver tried to straighten his truck, he moved the trash bins out for collection up further into our yard then proceeded to turn his vehicle up onto our lawn doing significant damage to that along with cracking our driveway. After the driver got out of my yard and parked his vehicle across the street on the side of the building, I went out to go over to the police car that was there during this entire incident. As I was approaching the police car, I saw the truck driver approaching my lawn to put the trash cans back at the end of our yard.

At this point, I yelled over to the driver on “who is going to pay for the damage done to our lawn?” Either the guy didn’t hear me or didn’t want to hear me as he stepped into his vehicle and drove away. I talked to the cop and asked him what I was supposed to do as this guy did significant damage to our yard. He refused to write up a report for the damage done. The cop said that it was OUR responsibility to contact the company for what had happened and to get a settlement from them.

Isn’t it the police’s responsibility to collect information on property damage, not the citizen to having to deal with the truck’s owner? Apparently the cop was much more interested in the damaged building without caring at all about the damage done to our lawn. Is this what we really pay cops for, to let stupid people destroy people’s property with no ramifications?

This was just the beginning of just where the day went downhill with lawbreakers. The second one came from uncle.

For the first time in about 10 years, my aunt and uncle came to visit us from Texas. Apparently his wild cowboy ways has gotten the best of him. As first of all, he really doesn’t like wearing a seat belt while driving. Since we went several miles with him unbuckled it bothered me that we could possibly get stopped because of his ignorance.

To add insult to injury, he made a left hand turn on a red light onto a busy road. It is apparent that he has no respect for the rules of the road. Where are the police when all this is happening? Probably the cop was taking a break after the truck/building/lawn accident.

It seems to me that the police have their priorities all messed up as they don’t do what is important and do a half-ass job at what they do. It is not surprising that my day with my relatives ended 3 short hours after it began. I wish them good luck that they don’t get stopped by ignoring some simple road rule. It is no wonder why so many criminals get away because the cops don’t do their job.

Thankfully, I had enough time to write this post while staring out the window looking at our torn up lawn and the damaged building across the street. Who knows what tomorrow will bring…maybe that will be next week’s post.

Of Likes, Friends, and Followers...

This week’s blog post is being distributed to all my blogs as I feel that it is important information. Thank you and please enjoy it.

Yesterday in my Facebook inbox, I received what appeared at first to be a pretty nasty message from one of my Facebook friends. The person was angry of the types of things showing up within their News Feed sidebar of “People You May Know”.

Now I can understand this person’s frustration of seeing things that offend them. I have this same issue with other people as well. That part is the subject of a future posting.

Unfortunately, I have absolutely NO control of what you see in your feed. I can’t alter any of the settings to prevent you or anybody else from seeing it all. This is a sad bug to the privacy of Facebook as it allows everybody to see everything you do.

As this friend wanted to do was to unfriend me and then re-friend me to try to end this problem. Unfortunately, this would never be a solution as this will always come back.

So do I believe that I should take care of what I click on just to please others? My answer is definitely not. Realistically, people should just “man up” and accept the way Facebook operates works warts and all.

So let’s break down the 3 individual problems with the Facebook timeline.

1. Likes – As I writing this I have just a little more than 3400 liked pages. To many people, this may not be many or it may be excessive depending on their own Facebook usage. Unfortunately, my likes may never be the same as yours, but sometimes they still show up on friend’s sidebar just because I like them.

2. Friends – You don’t have to be friends with anybody else if you don’t want to. However, Facebook wants you to be friends with the friends of others. This can be bad if these others post things that may not be appropriate. As of this writing, I have about 950 friends so don’t be surprised if one or two may show up in that sidebar to be added to your friends. This to me is the biggest problem as I feel that others should not see who I friend as I don’t care who my friends decide to add as friends themselves. Hopefully, you are as confused as I am over all this.

3. Follow – This should actually be renamed “stalking” as it allows you to become friends with someone without getting their approval. While this feature needs to be enabled by the user, I feel that I would have no control over who sees what I post no matter what. I like to be in control of who are my friends and who sees what I write.

My bottom line recommendation is to do what I do: JUST IGNORE THINGS YOU DON’T LIKE!! Wanting to unfriend someone just ticks them off and doesn’t really solve anything.

So how did I handle the message? I just deleted it like it never happened as the person found their own non unfriending procedure. Good for them. Hopefully, I don’t get anymore complaints, but I expect it at some point down the line.

Special Notice: I have decided to reopen my Twitter account to everyone without getting approval. My hope is that I can get more followers as my follow numbers have been stagnant for months. I also feel that by reopening my Twitter account, I can get my messages out there much easier. However, if any harassment comes along, I will put a protection back on the account. I am hoping that I won’t have to do this again. You can follow me safely at @louisbrown.

The Most Wonderful Time of Year -- 25 Years Later

It is the most wonderful time of year. They are going back to school.

Remember those lines along with the images of a father dancing around a Staples store while his moping kids look extremely sad. Eagerly, the father tosses back to school items in the shopping cart.

This ad that ran about 15 years ago to promote back to school for Staples was the high point of their existence. I remember everyone was still talking about that ad years after it ran and missed that kind of advertising. Quite frankly, from that point forward, it was all downhill for Staples from that point forward.

So what happened?

To understand, we have to turn the clock back in time. For me, that means turning the clock back 25 years ago. At that time, I was working at the mall at Woolworth. At that time, Woolworth was still a fairly successful company. That company along with Bradlees, Ann & Hope, Caldor, Ames, and others were the places that everyone shopped for back to school products. Target and Walmart were not even on the radar at the time.

However, a fairly new company named Staples broke in around the country in the mid 1990’s and took the back to school world by storm. One by one the above listed companies started going out of business as they could no longer compete against the newcomer. Around the same time, both Target and Walmart started penetrating many more areas of the country and started to make a name for themselves.

Back in the Woolworth days, much of the back to school items started arriving in March and April for the year. By the time, the first week of August arrived, all the back to school products were on the shelf. Nowadays, many stores start setting up for that time by the first week of July.

By many, it is considered an even more important time of year than Christmas. Back in the Woolworth days, it was so busy that it was not uncommon to run all 8 registers at the front of the store all at once and also have both the back registers running as well. Of course, this was when there were actually stores that the ordinary person would shop in unlike today where many of the stores are too upscale for many.

The back to school period was considered to be from late July through mid-September (depending on your viewpoint, it could have run through mid-October). It was during this period back in the Woolworth days that everyone who was entitled to a vacation took at least one week. There certainly was enough coverage to allow for it and it was actually encouraged to do so. Usually, I took my 2 weeks together to travel with the family. However, Staples would have none of that as no vacations could be taken in late July, August, and September. Add to this the blackout periods of late November, December, and early January, one would realize that there would not be much time for vacations. I shame Staples for such bad policies on this. Staples ended my summer vacations and also ended the family vacations along with other things.

As Staples was ramping up their back to school period, most of the other department stores were falling by the wayside as they could no longer compete against them. Eventually, Woolworth closed up shop just a short 18 months after I was let go.

Fast forward to about 5 years ago and now Staples is on the edge of collapse. Target and Walmart has been eating away at the once-dominant Staples’ back to school sales. According to surveys recently released, Walmart has the lowest prices by far with Staples coming in dead last for back to school prices. Forget those ads as the competitors will now match any of those ad prices so places like Walmart become one-stop shopping for everything.

As Staples’ empire continues to crumble, other types of stores have also emerged as back to school places to shop. Here is a partial list of those other places:

· Dollar stores -- Cheap products, but beware of cheap knockoffs that are defective. Similarly, Staples is known for defective store brand products and should be avoided. Don’t get too attached to any particular item as restocking of any item is very iffy.

· Warehouse clubs -- Sure, you can buy those 500 rolls of toilet paper there at a dirt cheap price, but occasionally you can find back to school items there as well especially if a family has multiple kids. Don’t expect much variety though.

· Salvage stores/bulk stores -- They may not have the most current items, but sometimes their prices are better than the competition. However, beware of possible damaged merchandise.

Now the places one should NEVER shop for back to school: your local drugstore such as CVS, Rite-Aid, and Walgreens. They not only are the most expensive, but by far have the least variety of any retailer. I used to cringe whenever some customer said they was going to go shopping for other back to school items that they couldn’t get at either Woolworth or Staples.

In summary, go take that Staples ad to either Walmart or Target and have them price match them. It is time to put Staples out of business as they put so many other retailers of the past out of business.

Then it would REALLY be the most wonderful time of the year.

I Am Back (for now)

Well, the last couple of weeks I have not posted anything here of any importance.

Actually, I made a post 2 weeks ago, but the information that was posted on that date was found to be invalid by Friday of that week. So, the only logical thing for me to do was to delete the post rather than try to make excuses for the information posted. The facts were there Tuesday of that week and by Friday, it all fell apart. I wish not to go into any details of it, only to say that it was just an unfortunate circumstance of incomplete truths.

As far as last week was concerned, it was just way too hot to use my equipment. I was actually writing that quick post from a local retailer with internet access as I wrote the correction the previous week from the same place.

Over the years, I learned not to turn on things like computers when it gets real hot as it is possible to overheat the equipment or worse experience a power outage. Actually, I experienced 3 power outages during the past week. 2 of them lasted just a few seconds and one lasted nearly 1 ½ hours. I could have used my machine on its battery without being plugged in, but the machine would have possibly overheated since I don’t have AC. Of course, I could have used my cooling pad on my machine, but the only thing that does is suck up battery life by being plugged into the USB port and it really doesn’t cool that much anyway. So the safest thing to do was not to do anything last week.

Overall, I was disconnected for more than 10 days. No email, no Facebook, no Twitter, no nothing. It almost seemed like a relief to be away from it all for a while even though it was completely unexpected. This all leads to a simple Q&A session.

What is the publishing regularity of this blog?

My plan always was to publish at least one day per week. The only times this would not happen if a holiday was in the week or severely inclement weather. There may be other times as well and notification will be published in advance, when available. Occasionally there might be multiple posts in a week if necessary.

Since a post was deleted a couple of weeks ago, is it ever possible to have a replacement post ready instead?

When I started this blog on Blogger, a couple of years ago, I had a bunch of posts written up ahead of time. The problem was all the information seemed canned and didn’t reflect the times. While it laid the groundwork for this blog, I prefer to write current and insert current information when appropriate. If I ever use a canned posting, I will probably indicate that it is such just so readers don’t think that the information is current. It was just an unfortunate happening that the posting was deleted and nothing else was ready to replace it.

Is it ever possible to suggest topics for the blog?

Absolutely, just contact me through one of the ways listed on the right side of this blog. Any topic relating to retail or retail scams can show up here. All topic suggestions will remain anonymous.

Hopefully, if all goes well I will be back to a regular posting schedule for a while next week.

And next week’s topic is planning on being the most wonderful time of year and I am not talking Christmas.

Nothing This Week...

Because of the weather, I was unable to do a posting this week.  Hopefully, I can return next week.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

Sorry..

Due to some misinformation, I had to delete this week's post.  Hopefully, I will return next week with a fresh and accurate post.  Sorry for the inconvenience and please keep following.  Thank you.

What Food Network and Staples Have in Common

I don’t watch the Food Network.

I really never paid attention to Paula Deen.

However, the unraveling of Paula’s empire sparked my interest. Here is what I have figured out from various reports, granted it is in no way comprehensive and not complete:

· Paula used the N-word over 20 years ago.

· She has not used the word since.

· It was originally said during a private conversation and presumably never recorded.

· It had nothing to do with any of her enterprising endeavors.

Now that this revelation of her saying the N-word happening, her empire is falling apart with companies like Walmart, Target, and Home Depot leaving her products. But seriously is this really justified?

Many people don’t remember way back in the mid-1940’s when Disney released “Song of the South”. This film featured the N-word several times and characters that today would be deemed inappropriate. Sadly, Disney has never released this in many years under any format and has no intention to ever release it. Are they afraid of the backlash or are they just hoping that people had such a short-term memory as to have long forgotten this film. It seems that the impact of that movie never hurt the company whatsoever.

Note: The movie was released back in 1990 on laserdisc as a Japanese import. It had Japanese soundtrack/subtitles along with English soundtrack/subtitles. The quality of the video was very poor when compared to other laserdiscs. The transfer was plagued with various scratches and blurry scenes. I purchased this disc from a now-defunct store back then and know just how bad it is.

So how does Paula Deen (PD)/Food Network compare to me, Louis Brown (LB)/Staples? Let’s have a looksee:

The targeting of the person:

· PD had her contract up for renewal, however the ratings of her show was down at least 15%. Was it worth renewing her contract for more money with falling viewership?

· LB had returned to work just weeks after being out for 3 weeks with a leg infection. LB was unable to stand for a full shift anymore and needed a stool. Original manager didn’t mind that, but the new replacement manager had major issue with that.

Locking the crosshairs:

· Food Network looked back in PD’s life and saw she made a racial slur 20+ years ago. Didn’t sit well with company.

· Staples didn’t like what they had to put up with when dealing with LB. Staples made excuses of threatening termination if not improve in both health and sales performance.

AIM, FIRED!:

· PD fired for the racial slur.

· LB fired after a fake period of 2 day waiting period. LB was already been training someone new for the past week for his shift a week before the termination. They already knew the results without ever giving me a real chance.

Aftermath:

· PD makes video apologies and goes on morning new show explaining what the truth is. No response from the Food Network. Various companies drop PD’s product and endorsements. Why did Food Network wait until PD’s contract was up to bring up slur, especially given that it had absolutely nothing to do with them and happened years before the network even existed?

· LB files claim with Maine Human Rights Commission. Staples brings up incidents that happened over 5 years earlier as to why LB was terminated. LB has been unable to get a job since then because the lies that Staples said continue to follow LB through any job that LB applies for. Nobody has even considered LB even for an interview because of their actions. My question was if I was so bad why did they wait 5 years to terminate me?

Overall, I feel that I and Paula Deen were both highly mistreated by our respective employers. Fortunately Paula has enough money to live comfortably for the rest of her life, I, on the other hand, is not so lucky. And with my health continuing to decline and no insurance, the possibilities of getting a job look even more hopeless.

In conclusion, I will never watch the Food Network nor will I give the Staples store any business. It’s time that companies that do wrong to employees suffer and those that lie to get ahead suffer even that much more so.

Special Notice: In celebration of July 4^th next week, there will be no blog post. I hopefully will return the following week with a brand new and exciting post at that time. As always, thanks for your continued support.

Safety Not Welcome Here?

This week’s post was inspired by an incident that almost happened last week.

When I was walking through the entrance of the local Walmart last week, a customer with an overflowing cart was heading right toward me. Yes, they was going through the enter door despite that there were quite a few people in front of them using the correct door. When I told the customer that they were going through the wrong door, the woman’s response was “Who cares? Does it really matter?”

This led me into thinking: What if this was the highway and she was going the wrong way? Would she have the same attitude then?

My thought was that maybe. The store wouldn’t have “Enter” and “Exit” on the doors if they didn’t care about safety. At least they tried except that the words are up about 20 feet above the door. It really doesn’t really help all that much.

Walmart is one of those stores that really don’t seem concerned about safety, at least not the local one. Consider this: back when this store was built a few years ago, the company said that the racetrack would NEVER be cluttered with merchandise. For those of you who don’t know what a racetrack of a store is it is the main walkway that circles a store, sometimes with straight paths that lead from the back of the store to the front. Unfortunately, after a couple of years, the racetrack area would become not just a little cluttered, but a complete hazard. It is not bad in just one part of the store, its bad everywhere throughout the store. To add insult to injury, many of the aisles are so narrow that you can hardly walk down them without knocking something off the counters.

But do the employees care? I hardly doubt it because nobody ever seems to make any adjustments or pick things up that fall on the floor very often.

In comparison, Target never has anything on their racetrack and the store always looks pretty safe to shop in.

The same can’t be said, though, of Books-A-Million. Ever since they took over the Borders location nearly 2 years ago, the rugs still have sections that are loose and that sections don’t come together properly. I know there are sections that I always trip over. Sadly that nobody ever has thought of fixing this problem.

Then there is Staples. Staples is too often an accident waiting to happen and sometimes do happen. Over the years that I was employed with them, I saw merchandise fall on people that wasn’t properly placed on shelves, overheads with merchandise that hung over the side of the shelf it was on and other hazards. Add to this the occasional employee who decides to climb a shelf without a ladder and you get the idea.

Speaking of ladders, they are supposed to be chained and left near the back of the store when not in use. How often does this occur? Rarely if ever despite that all the ladders are supposed to be chained when not used. The excuse that is used is that it wastes time to chain the ladders all the time. What the employees don’t realize is that customers will try to use the ladders themselves to get to merchandise when they think nobody is watching. I saw it many times over the years and thankfully no customer got seriously hurt.

To add insult to injury of Staples’ problems, there is no real racetrack area to their stores. Over the years, with all the Staples stores I have visited not a single one of them had a racetrack area or anything that closely resembled it. Some people may say that this may not be overly important, but if you needed to leave the building quickly it would be almost impossible to do. Since I haven’t visited the local Staples store since my termination, I don’t know if they have ever improved the layout, but during the 12 ½ years I was there, it was always a disaster.

So the bottom line is this: Stores need to step up on safety, not just for the sake of the customers but also employees as well. It is the store’s responsibility to create safe shopping environments, even though they usually are blind to their own problems.

No Privacy Ever Again?

So it was announced this week that your phone records and emails are being looked at by the government.

Am I surprised?

Not at all. Anybody who owns a landline phone knows that for many years the phone company has been keeping track of every long distance call you make, displaying on your bill the number you called and when you called it. It may not seem like much information, but what else were they getting as well over all these years?

While the government is having their fun, Staples is having their own fun collecting and storing data about its customers that it should NOT be entitled to.

So here’s the story:

About a year and half ago in this very blog, I wrote that my mother made a purchase on her charge card at an out-of-state Staples store. She did NOT have a rewards card during the transaction nor was one indicated on the receipt.

A couple of days later, I received an email from Staples wanting me to review the product that my mother had purchased. So how did Staples get my email address without a rewards card? Let’s look at the facts:

· The charge card was NEVER linked to a rewards card even though I had one in the past but it hadn’t been used for over 3 years. Granted the charge card number was the same as mine, the name on the card was not the same.

· My original rewards card was deactivated when I got the employee’s version of the card. The employee one should have been deactivated when I was terminated. So I should not have had any card whatsoever with them.

So was Staples storing old information about my credit card and linking it to a deactivated card, which still had my current email address attached to it?

It seems that they did and after filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, Staples could not explain to me why they were doing this. After going back and forth 4 times with the BBB as 3^rd party, the case was closed by the BBB with no solution to this problem. You can read about this complaint and the back and forth conversation by searching BBB in this blog.

Certainly Staples had NO legal right to store my credit card number, much less link it to a rewards card’s email address without my permission. Sadly, Staples is breaking many laws regarding credit card retention and should be investigated for this.

However, given that the government is doing its own tracking of people, it is highly doubtful that companies like Staples will ever be investigated for their improper behavior.

Since I have rewards cards to other stores that I still use with this same charge card, it seems that no other retailer has performed the underhanded tricks that Staples has done.

If we can’t trust the government, internet service providers, and Staples, then who can we trust? The answer seems to be nobody, nobody at all.

Half Year Assessment

Here we are: near the half-way point of the year.

Ironically, I have heard some very extreme comments aimed at me in the last few weeks. Some have bothered me and some I find downright annoying.

First, there seems to be a couple of trends I have heard:

· Staples is eliminating many full-time positions in exchange for more part-time positions. Many companies are doing this same sort of thing, but it doesn’t appear to happen as rapidly.

· Staples stores that get new management seem to target one certain full-time employee and aggravate them until they either quit or force them to get fired. The latter was my case exactly. The bad thing is that much of this is unwarranted, unjustified or in my case both. This is a growing trend I have heard a number of times in recent weeks.

Second, there seems to be concern by some commenters that I am unaware of the facts regarding the company:

· As I have pointed out in the past, everything that I write is either based on personal experiences or information that is provided when I write a posting. If I feel that a correction is needed I will do it in a future posting, not re-edit an existing post. The reason for that is that I want to make people aware of the incorrect information that is/was available at the time of that particular posting. Certainly, Staples has the right to change any information they want to at any time for whatever reason. However, the one thing they can’t change is the truths that I tell them about my personal experiences.

· Which leads me to this: One recent commenter didn’t seem to like this blog because it was “bashing” with false information by an uneducated, rude person. This right here is just the type of person that Staples embraces as their ideal employee. Certainly this person not only understands the purpose of this blog, but doesn’t like the hatred that I am spreading with it.

I have no intention of stopping or changing this blog in anyway whatsoever. In fact, since I extended this blog to WordPress, the number of followers has increased significantly. I believe that there are many people who hate the company as much as I do.

In the coming months, I plan on advancing my own story (hopefully), but I also like to stay current with the lies and scams that Staples does along with other retailers out there. As always I accept all comments and will post them accordingly. Let me make clear, however, that rudeness will not be tolerated under most circumstances.

I am proud of how far this blog has come since it began 3 years ago. Because of you, the followers, it continues to grow.

As always, thank you for your ongoing support and tell everyone you know to follow this blog. Together we can put Staples out of business once and for all.

The Day Few Ever Notice

If you were a friend of mine on Facebook, did you notice last week?

Last week, I celebrated my birthday. Not that it is any big deal because I haven’t celebrated it in years (actually never).

My point is that there was a handful (a small group) who decided to wish me a happy birthday. What was strange was that some people who normally are usually part of this group completely ignored me this year.

Why?

Maybe it is because they are just too busy with their own interests or maybe they just simply don’t care about me in the first place. I know there are some people who I was once very close with who have friended me on Facebook and have NEVER sent me one message in the 3+ years I have been a member of the site. Does this mean that these people are not really friends or they just feel obliged to increase their own friend number?

Either way this is just more proof that people have no respect for others. You do remember that post from a couple of weeks ago, don’t you?

Even though my first and only birthday party was when I was 5 years ago and involved some strong hatred between my 2 grandmothers, this image still burns in my mind as a very bad experience. Yes, the fireworks between the 2 would make the Hatfields and McCoys look like a friendly game of checkers. Well, maybe not quite that bad but you probably get the idea.

In my later years, even though I had no parties I did occasionally receive gifts on the special day. Not often but it did happen. For just a moment, I felt like somebody remembered and might have actually cared. At least this is what I thought…

This feeling continued until my final year with Staples. It was the year that I was in the hospital for a week. Over the years from my days at Woolworth to Staples, whenever someone was out sick for a period of time, a get well card was sent to the person. This happened for everybody and everybody always signed it. That was until me. No card at all. Nothing at all whatsoever. Should I really have been surprised? Probably not at all.

When I returned and I casually asked a fellow employee why no card was sent, their response was that “NOBODY CARED!!”.

This response absolutely floored me. Why after the many cards I have signed over the years that anyone would have the audacity to say that statement to me. It was obvious that a reality check was in order.

Yep, I was being ignored even by the people I thought were my friends. For someone like me who thought that they may not even leave the hospital alive this was not a very reassuring statement or a very desirable either.

Over the last couple of years, I have had a few of my high school friends die. It is hard to believe that I have actually outlived them given that they always seemed to be in better health than me. I still wonder everyday why I am survivor and they weren’t. I have now learned to embrace what little health I have left (BLAME STAPLES for that) and realize how important every day really is.

I don’t know what it will take for the friends who feel that I am not important to them to realize that, but when you have been on the edge like I have everything changes and not necessarily for the better either.

I hope maybe next year some of those people will remember those two little words that mean so much: Happy Birthday!

Until then, I have cake to eat. Oh wait, nobody got me a cake! Oh darn it!

Why Maine SHOULD NOT Rush to Pay Hospitals

The state of Maine is a period of conflict. On one side, you have dumbass governor Paul LePage who refuses to pass any spending bill until hospitals are paid, and on the other side, you have the state congress who wants to add about 70,000 Mainers to the MaineCare system and also get bonds already approved by the voters placed in action. It seems that neither side is giving in anytime soon.

However, I believe that the governor is more in the wrong than the state congress. Here’s why:

When I was in the hospital for about a week a few years ago, I noticed that my bill had charges for things that I NEVER had done. The problem is that it is always the hospital’s word against yours. Since I had insurance at the time, I decided not to fight it and just accept what occurred on the bill. After the insurance was paid off, I still had nearly $1000 to pay on my own. Could more of this bill been covered by insurance if some of these charges didn’t exist? Quite possibly, but again I decided not to fight it. However, given that my bill was a 5-digit charge originally, it was still disheartening to pay as much as I had remaining. This brings me to my point. How much of the $400+ million is for services that were either not performed, overcharged for, or charged more than once for?

Another example of overbilling that I suffered from was that my own physician charged $200 every day for each visit even though he was neither treating me nor spending more than 5 minutes visiting me. These charges were added to my ever-increasing hospital bill.

I also wonder how much of the $400+ million is used to pay staff, board of directors, and CEOs. I don’t mind paying staff, but the other groups don’t need the money. Even worse than that is that many of the “local” hospitals are chains run by out-of-state companies. I found this out by seeing that the mailing address to send payments from my hospital went to Massachusetts, not a Maine address. Just how much money gets sucked out of state by all the states hospitals?

Overall, I believe that before one penny is paid of the $400+ million owed that a line-by-line evaluation be given and each item be scrutinized to the fullest extent. Of course, the government regardless of being either state or federal, is known for wasting money anyway so I don’t expect to see any evaluation be done and instead a blank check be sent to the hospitals to pay their bills. It is clueless people like LePage who would waste state money as he has done since he has been in office. Sadly, there is no accountability in Augusta or Washington DC therefore we as state residents continue to get screwed on both ends with things like roads not getting fixed while the governor awaits to pay hospitals piles of cash. Mainers should be ashamed of the way this continuing on with no end in sight. Personally, I would rather see the stalemate continue then overpay the broken hospital system..

It’s All About Respect

As young children, we are usually taught to respect others. I say “usually” because not everybody gets it. Or maybe they just don’t care at all.

Consider this scenario from earlier this week:

I was out at the local Walmart (not my favorite place, by the way). I was in line at the self-service register when these 2 young guys in their early 20’s decided to step ahead of me and stand behind a customer just finishing their transaction and start using that register immediately.

Of course, they cut in line and didn’t care. So when I got my chance to use a register, I passed them and commented to them that I didn’t appreciate their rude behavior and they should have waited their appropriate turn. Their response was virtual silence except for a couple of grunts. It is sad that these 2 idiots showed no respect to me whatsoever and didn’t follow the rules. What’s worse about this was that the employee who was watching these registers never said a word to these guys and just ignored them. She certainly wasn’t doing her job as far as I was concerned.

After I finished my transaction and was walking out to my car, an elderly guy was backing out of a handicapped space without even realizing that I was walking behind his car. Yes, he almost ran me over, but thankfully I was able to get out of the way before I got hit.

Both of these incidents within minutes of each other made me wonder: Am I invisible to everyone or do people just don’t have any respect for me? It could be both but I think the latter is more of the truth.

Granted, given that this all happened at Walmart, the home of the welfare recipient, it was not surprising that people were out and out stupid. I dare anybody to get help in the store and get somebody who actually knows what they are talking about. It will never happen. Walmart is stupid and that is the customer is stupid.

Now consider when I go to anyplace and if I am walking behind someone, how many times I end up with a door in my face. Simply put, people don’t look to see if anybody is behind them to hold the door open for. Maybe they are too busy on their little phone or texting somebody or just not paying attention at all. So, where did all the respect go or was I just not seeing the reality until recently?

I feel that I was more blinded by reality when I was employed because I always felt that everybody should be respected and they respected you. It was also that if you treated a customer badly, chances were that the customer would make a complaint against you. Been there, done that way too many times while employed at Staples, but not hardly at all during my years at Woolworth. The reason is probably that the clientele at Woolworth was similar to that of Walmart, the blind-eyed uncaring customer.

So where does the respect disappear to? Is it a cultural thing or is it dependent on where a person is and who they are around? Sadly I have seen people who are really friendly when I worked with them, but when they are no longer employed they become unfriendly thus disrespectful. While I have tried to stay respectful to people, I can’t help but get angry when people are disrespectful to me. Do I see any change of this respectfulness in the near future? I believe not at all by a long shot as people will still disrespect everyone no matter what. This probably explains why Walmart has never hired me because I still respect people.

Background Checks at Staples Coming Soon?

Soon it may be required to get background checks at Staples now that 3d printers are now available through them at least online for now. It has been reported that the stores will start carrying the printers around mid-year at around $1300, which is the same price online now.

The problem that I have read about these printers, which I really don’t understand a lot about them anyway, is that they can make virtually any type of object that the user desires. This even includes a working gun that one person made and stupidly posted online the schematic of how to create it. Apparently somebody else even created an assault weapon with this type of printer as well.

Does this mean that we should be worried that some idiot who doesn’t get approved to buy a real gun will purchase a 3d printer and “build” their own instead? My answer is most definitely. To make matters worse, these “guns” don’t need to be registered obviously nor do they have or need any identifiable serial numbers on them.

Even worse than that is that people could possibly get past TSA security with their weapons especially if they are unassembled, reassemble them on a plane and cause all kinds of havoc. The big reason why these guns may pass is that they may look like colored plastic toys and not dangerous weapons. I could imagine if a child got a hold of one of these and decided to play with it.

This all leads to my point of responsible technology. I believe that the printer companies should have some sort of registration program to upload anything to the manufacturer’s secured website before it is printed on the user’s printer. If the printer company finds something wrong with what it is about to be printed, the item won’t be printed. Of course, somebody would find a way around this, but if the printer would only work when “approved” items are to be printed then the threat of possible weaponry would be greatly reduced.

It should be the responsibility of the printer companies to have proper registration of the units, but stores like Staples should also act responsibly if they hear anybody wanting to use these printers in any way that could be dangerous or malicious. Given Staples past ability to act responsibly means that they may sell a lot of printers just for the purpose of weapons manufacturing. Staples probably would not care how many deaths could come from somebody creating something that they shouldn’t.

All we can hope for is that Staples won’t sell many of these printers just for the sake of safety.