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.