This site is officially closed, but the story continues at my other site.

Please go to louisbrowntruths.wordpress.com.

Thank you for your continued support.

The Best Hacking to Date?

It was rumored this week that the latest company to be hacked into was Staples.

Honestly, I am not surprised as I mentioned that this would happen back a few months ago.

Apparently, the company has the authorities looking into this hacking, but has not made any official announcement regarding any hack on its credit card system.

The word is that the affected area was the northeastern part of the U.S.  This would mean possibly that the areas would include New England and possibly New York and further.

Since no other details have been given, I am not going to speculate on the scope of the hack, but I expect that Staples will release that information soon hopefully,

However, it should be noted that Staples has been the only company that has not formally come out and admit to being hacked after it was announced publically by a third party security blogger.  This leads to a couple of questions:

·         Why is Staples reluctant to admit to the hack? 

·         Are they afraid of losing sales?

·         Are they afraid that their stock price will plummet on the formal news as other companies have already have happen?

·         And most importantly, are they afraid it will be over for their company?

While I can’t answer any of these questions, it should be of no surprise to readers of this blog that Staples is in denial of any hack to their company.  After all, Staples is known for their underhanded ways of doing business and of course all of their lies.

I expect to report back in some future post when more is known about this hack, but until then we are all left sitting on our hands.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:

To those of you who follow this blog through the Blogger service, this message pertains to you.  This site is at http://louisbrowntruths.blogspot.com/.

For those who go to the above mentioned site, this will be the LAST post to that site.  I have been thinking about ending support for this site since the WordPress version has caught fire.  However, my answer was made much easier over the last few weeks for the following reasons:

·         Microsoft has discontinued support for Microsoft Live Writer, which was the main program that I used to post to Blogger.  Many of the add-ons haven’t worked for months so the posts got no exposure through Facebook or Twitter.   

·         There were only 2 known followers to that blog site.  Supporting 2 followers is impractical given the time it takes to make a version for Blogger.  If I had more followers, I may have continued to post to that site.  It just is not practical.

·         Finally, Google search only shows my WordPress entries and not the Blogger posts.  It is ironic for an application owned by Google doesn’t even show up in their own search results. 

So overall unless you stumbled upon the blog, you would not even know it existed.  I feel that the time saved in transferring the blog over will allow me to spend more quality time in the WordPress version.  Hopefully, no readers feel slighted by this elimination.  All of the posts will remain on this site until either Blogger is closed down or they decide to close my site down due to inactivity.

In a way, I feel sad about ending that site as this is where it all began but I believe it is the best for everyone.

More Hacking for Your Enjoyment (Part 2)

WARNING: The following blog post contains adult content that may be offensive to some readers. Discretion is highly advised.

This is a story that I was once told by one of the Staples techs never to tell but I feel now is a good time to tell it.

Back about 6 years ago (approximately 9 months before I was forced out of the company), a father came in with his teenage daughter (probably 15 years old) to have some technical work done on her computer. At first this seemed just like every other repair request that is done in our store.

Later that day when the technician started to check out the system integrity, he came across the pictures folder. Interestingly enough, the teenage girl had the setting to show all the pictures in the folder set to large icons.

At this point, the technician clicked on the first picture to enlarge it and discovered something shocking. Here was a picture of that teenage girl displayed in all her naked glory. Yes, she either took a picture of herself or somebody else took a picture of her. The technician and I looked at each other in complete disbelief in what we were seeing and quickly went to the next picture. The next picture was even more disturbing. It was a picture of a teenage guy in his fully exposed birthday suit. At this point the technician looked at no further pictures and decided to quickly continue on with the rest of system integrity investigation.

Disclaimer: I honestly don’t know what the policy of Staples is/was at the time regarding child porn, but I know that it should not be acceptable under any circumstances. Whether the technician should have notified management on what he saw on this machine is debatable, but there was no question of its legality. I also don’t know if the proper authorities should have been contacted over what was on the computer in question. Let me say that I don’t know if this had ever happened before this but if it had, it was never brought up in any discussion. I would also say that I don’t know what the policy of any other retail repair company’s policy is regarding this matter.

The next day when the father and daughter came back in to pick up the laptop, it was obvious from the girl’s expression on her face that she might have realized that something was very wrong with what she had been doing on her computer. Something inside of me was almost tempted to blurt out to the father to say something like “we saw your daughter and a guy naked on her computer”. However my better instincts told me not to say anything like that as I would presume that the girl would never see her next birthday.

Of course this story leads me into the topic of all the celebrity hacking of naked pictures from Apple iCloud services. While some celebrities have denied that the pictures are real, others have said that they are, while a third group has remained on the fence neither confirming nor denying the truth of the pictures.

Like the teenage girl mentioned above, these celebrities certainly should have known better than having pictures of them floating around in the internet despite the fact that they should have been protected in a cloud environment. With so much hacking going on, it was only time before somebody would start hacking cloud services.

While celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence have come out to say that anybody who looks at the pictures are creating a “sex crime”, this is nothing but hypocritical behavior especially since she is the one who posted the pictures online in the first place. To have anybody think otherwise would be stupid.

A week after the first group of celebrity hacked pictures were released; Apple Computer CEO Tim Cook introduced the world to Apple Pay. This new system is supposed to create a sort of virtual wallet for your credit cards on your smartphone so that it would be easier to pay for purchases at retail stores. From what I have read is that this system uses a fingerprint password system on the smartphone to activate the wallet then the customer waves his phone over or around the retailer’s cash register’s pin pad.

While this sounds great in concept, there are 2 major problems that I would like to bring up. The first is that the fingerprint doesn’t have to be a “live” fingerprint meaning that anybody who has access to that fingerprint could use it to access a possibly stolen phone. Of course given the recent problems with the most recent iOS upgrade regarding fingerprint technology, this doesn’t seem as foolproof as it possibly could be or maybe ever be. I expect somebody to be able to hack and workaround that system very soon.

The second problem is the waving of the smartphone over another unit. Anybody who might be nearby could possibly pick up the signal as it is being transmitted from phone to pin pad thereby capturing the credit card information before it is processed. Since many companies have unsecured Wi-Fi access, it probably is the same system that is used to transmit credit card information meaning that a thief may not even have to be close by to steal somebody’s information.

Which finally leads me to this point: Staples is one of the first companies to want to adopt this new Apple Pay system. Given all of the problems with Staples in the past, do we dare trust them to have a secure payment system with this idea? My thought is that no way they can be trusted given their wretched past.

Overall, Apple Pay sounds as safe to use as iCloud. Why not combine the 2 and do full body scanning in the store that way nobody could steal your personal information? On second thought, there would be no more privacy to give up. I really don’t think Staples would really go for that no matter what stupid things they do.

More Hacking for Your Enjoyment (Part 1)

 

Over the last couple of weeks, there have been a couple of new security hacks.

One is the celebrity hack of the Apple iCloud system, which I will discuss next time and how Apple will be bad for Staples. Along with that I will discuss the Apple hack itself and the whole privacy thing relating to images. I will say right now that that post will have a reader warning because of the content of the post. I am just preparing the readers now for what could be a possibly offensive post.

Anyway, the subject of this post is the hacking of Home Depot.

As someone who once worked at the late competitor Horny Quarters. Oops, I mean Home Quarters. I will discuss in a future post why I call it Horny Quarters, but for now on with the comparison.

Like Home Depot, Home Quarters was a home improvement store that specialized in virtually everything you need to build, remodel, and maintain a home or other structure. These types of stores carry everything from nails to lumber to appliances. Of course, if you did not know that already, you probably live in a box.

It has been reported that Home Depot was hacked back in April of this year and was not discovered until a couple of weeks ago. This means that several months had passed where this hack took place. It has just been reported up to 56 million cards could have been put at risk, which possibly makes it larger than the attack on Target last year.

As a 7 week employee of Home Quarters as a cashier, I noticed that transactions varied in size from just a couple of dollars for a person buying a hammer and nails to someone buying what seemed to be endless amounts of lumber and other assorted products that added up costing thousands of dollars at the checkout.

Cash was a rarity for form of payment, however, as well as checks both personal and business. Most of the transactions were made by credit card. The majority of the cards were business cards, but about a quartet of the transactions was made by personal credit cards.

Any way you look at it, the hacking of credit cards at a home improvement store could be a boon to anybody who successfully hacks the system. It was not uncommon to have sales in excess of nearly $50,000 in transactions after a 5 or 6 hour day. Of course a longer day would bring that number up by another few thousand dollars.

The biggest problem that I saw as a bad trend with most of the business transactions was that most people didn’t care how much they were spending and really never cared how much they were being charged for any of their items. This presents the scary situation that these same people never check their credit card statements for any possible fraudulent usage.

I believe that is this type of ignorance that creates a hack attack like this to last as long as it did. Add to this the fact that most companies don’t have antivirus software on their machines nor do they update the software on a regular basis and you have the perfect recipe for the type of disaster that has plagued Home Depot, Target and others.

Overall, the hacking will never end as long as systems go unprotected and I still believe that Staples will get hacked eventually if not sooner.

Unless of course it has happened already and they are too ignorant to realize it.

Future Mergers?

A couple of weeks ago, Staples announced their quarterly earnings.

Most of the transcript that I read sounded more like the type of gloom and doom that was expected from the company.

Sales are not as good as they have been.

The company wants to shut about 140 stores by year’s end.

The company is shrinking the floor space of their stores as they try to downsize their footprint in the retail world.

And finally, the company is not using weather as an excuse this last quarter for its dismal performance.

So with so much bad news, isn’t it funny that a little bit of sarcasm was injected into the last quarter’s report conference call?

Simply put, one caller wanted to see if putting a Starbucks into Staples stores might help improve traffic and make people want to shop there.

Certainly such an idea should and was laughed off as some sort of joke but truth be told that the company has to do something to help it try to survive in the future.

After this report came out, the company’s stock took a smaller hit than normal, but was still down. However over the last couple of days the stock has gone up to nearly $13/share. So what is happening with the company?

It seems as though Credit Suisse thinks that a Staples/Office Depot would be great for both companies. They assume that the stock would go up to $30/share and that the remaining 2 companies would work great together.

However, I don’t believe this for one moment. The truth is that a merger was denied by the federal regulators last time and I don’t think it would happen now either, so all these people are going on false pretenses of something that could never happen. I expect that the bubble will burst soon in this stock sending it plunging below $10/share very soon.

It may come as late as next earnings report as it seems that the back to school season looks more like bust than a boom.

Why do I say that you ask? Here are some of my observations locally (of course without stepping into a Staples store):

· The Staples ads have been awful this BTS season. People dancing and jumping around just made me nauseous. Nothing was memorable in any of the ads. Target and Walmart ads were no better and quite forgettable.

· Plenty of knapsacks and lunch bags still available at Target and Walmart. This is a sure sign that kids will be using last year’s gear for another year. Unfortunately, this year it seemed that licensed products were quite limited and seems to be a repeat of merchandise of years past.

· Plenty of general school supplies like pens, pencils and paper. Again, it seems parents over bought last year so they have plenty.

· One stop shopping. Forget the ads as everyone seems to be price matching everybody else.

· It seems that from the ads that Staples got rid of that horrible shopping pass that they had the last couple of years. Who really would pay to get a discount? Hopefully that never comes back again.

I don’t believe that any of the stores will have a great back to school season as it seems even this late in the season there is still more than plenty of product on the shelf.

Maybe a Starbucks/Staples/Office Depot merger might be a better idea.

Or maybe not.

Update on Market Basket:

Last time I said that Arthur T. Demoulas wanted to buy the company. Well, since then, he bought the company for $1.5 billion and it seemed almost immediately that the company came back to life.

Our family visited the local store this week and found the store about 70% restocked, but there were many products on the shelves that were at or near their expiration dates. I believe that it will be about another couple of weeks to get new products on all their shelves. However, it seemed nice to shop at a store where employees actually like to work unlike companies like Staples. Market Basket is a model company where the employees are actually happy on their job and it definitely shows.

Market Basketcase

Welcome to the Family Feud Retail Edition!

On one side we have Arthur T. Demoulas (ATD), former CEO of grocery store chain Market Basket.

On the other side we have Arthur S. Demoulas (ASD) who terminated his cousin ATD and has taken over the company.

Well, all would be all good if ASD didn’t want to make some major changes to the company.

First off, let me say that up to about six weeks ago, our family would make the 20 mile trip to the Market Basket grocery store in Biddeford Maine. The trip was well worth every time as the savings were significant. Along with the 4% discount that the company offers on most items, their prices were lower than any of the competitors.

The store was always extremely busy and always had about 2/3 of their registers open during the day.

That was until hell broke loose.

About six weeks ago, the employees started picketing the store about how the company was being operated.

They wanted customers to sign their petitions to give to the board of directors.

I was tempted to sign their petition as they were telling me their gripes.

Amongst their gripes was reduction of hours, change of benefits, and pay cuts.

However it was the last thing they said was the deal breaker and that was that the company had intended to close the Biddeford Maine store.

At that point, I walked inside to start my shopping with my family.

So what was wrong that made me not want to sign: at no point has anybody EVER said that the Biddeford Maine store would ever be closed especially since this store was one of the largest and more profitable stores in the chain. It was also the only one in Maine and has only been open for about a year and occupied the former Lowe’s location.

So my thought was this employee was embellishing his gripes by a falsehood, therefore he wanted to make his story seem even more sad.

However, walking through the store, it was obvious with many empty shelves especially in the dairy and produce sections that fresh products were not going to be available. Overall, we spent about 20 minutes in the store getting a few items and waited nearly that long at the one cashier that was open. Our family decided not to return until everything is settled with the company. And of course, shelves restocked again.

Of course, in that time nothing has been settled and at the time of this writing the following things have happened:

· ATD has offered to buy the company but the board has rejected the offer.

· Part time employees have been eliminated in the local stores and full time employees have reduced hours to compensate for the loss of business.

· Rallies at the home office in Massachusetts by both employees and customers have fallen on deaf ears.

· Employees have been told to get back to work or they would be fired.

· Job fairs were set up to hire new replacement employees.

Overall, this is a very troubled company with employees and customers both fighting against ATD and the board of directors. It seems that neither side is giving in and no end is in sight.

Now, you are probably asking yourself, why am I talking about this company on a anti-Staples blog?

The answer is very simple.

During the last 3 years of my existence with Staples, while the management didn’t change, much of how the company was run did.

Most of the effects applied to full-timers like myself were, but also many applied to the part-timers as well. Amongst the changes were (as of 5 years ago):

· Full time hours were cut from 40 hours per week down to 37 ½ per week. (no notice given)

· How vacation time was allocated and accrued despite agreement at time of hire (again no notice given to the change).

· Benefits reduced at slightly higher cost, not including that when I went on COBRA the benefits went up by a percentage greater than 3000% (not a typo). Of course there was warning about this which is why I cancelled.

· Raises during the last 3 years amounted to less than 25 cents total for the entire time. This was when the company was still expanding and managers were still making sizable bonuses while hourly employees got crap.

There is however one major difference between Market Basket employees and Staples employees and that is that Staples employees could not under any circumstances picket or rally at the stores or at the home office. Doing so would lead to immediate termination.

Since neither company has union employees, it appears that Market Basket is heading in the same direction that Staples is heading in. The big difference is that the management at Staples has not changed whereas the management at Market Basket has. Also customers did not rally in support of the losses that Staples employees were getting because the Staples employees never spoke up because they knew if they did they would get terminated.

Unfortunately, for both companies, it is the management that holds the employees hostage. They can either live with it or they can leave at their own free will.

Fortunately, or unfortunately for me, I had the choice made for me.

What the Hobby Lobby Case REALLY Means

A couple of weeks ago, the Supreme Court made a ruling in favor of the company Hobby Lobby regarding birth control. In essence, the court decided that the company can prevent women in having 4 types of birth control medications based upon the company’s religious beliefs.

Now I have never been to a Hobby Lobby store nor do I ever plan to. The nearest one to where I live is over 75 miles away and the one in state is nearly 100 miles away. Like the company Chick-fil-A, they are not open on Sundays based upon their religious beliefs.

The big problem that I have with the Hobby Lobby case and one that really can’t be ignored is that this case could be interpreted as giving companies (any company whatsoever) to establish what type of healthcare that any of its employees can receive regardless of what type of care that the employee wants or needs.

Let me reiterate this: your employer will be able to determine what kind of healthcare you can receive and if they don’t like it, well tough luck.

This was exactly what happened to me back when I worked at Staples. I was out of work for nearly 3 weeks when I had a work-related (yes, I said WORK-RELATED) illness. During the time I was out, I received a letter from Staples stating that if I didn’t follow their rules regarding my healthcare, I would be terminated even though those “rules” were never made explicit in any paperwork that I had ever received during my employment with the company. When I brought the letter to the management, they just laughed at the letter as if it didn’t matter at all.

The bad thing is that apparently it DID matter as I was terminated less than 9 months later after my health did not improve and they got tired of dealing with me.

So now you are probably asking yourself, why didn’t I sue the company?

The truth is that I went through the proper channels to get a resolution despite the fact that I didn’t have a lawyer and had to represent myself in a very bad case. What was worse was that neither the state nor federal government did their job properly, which forced my case to be ultimately dismissed and having Staples get away with all the lies that they had built up against me over the years. I will be explaining all of this in further detail in future blog posts.

So, overall, my belief is that Staples along with any company now basically has free rein to allow/disallow anything regarding healthcare that they want. As long as you are under an employee’s health plan, they can do what they want and like with Staples, they don’t even have to tell you ahead of time.

Certainly this is not a result that any employee should be happy about especially those at Hobby Lobby and Staples.

Half-Year Reflection

Please note: This week’s writing is being posted in all my blogs as it is important to all of my published blogs.

You may have noticed that there has not been a blog post in any of my blogs for the last couple of weeks. There are a few reasons for that.

Among the most important reasons are the following:

· Weather plays havoc with my equipment so I remain offline and disconnected when the heat is high.

· My brain had run out of ideas to write about for a while.

· I was evaluating the stats to determine the future of my blogs.

Certainly anybody who has been reading my blogs recently will realize that I have had a difficult last couple of months. While I tried to put as much of a positive spin on what was happening around me, it seemed that I failed with that attempt. I don’t feel that I really did anything wrong, I was just misinterpreted.

As I mentioned in the past, I am always open to topic ideas in any of my blogs. So far, I have received only 1 idea which I plan on discussing in the next month or so. I am also open to guest bloggers who want to step up and write articles for any of my blogs. Since this has been a one-person operation, sometimes my quality seems to have waned at times. If anybody is interested in submitting ideas or wants to be a guest writer, feel free to email me at the address at the right. Please note that I accept both anonymous and named submissions, if you want the credit for it.

My other thing I have been doing is reevaluating how frequently I post to my blogs. Usually, my writings have been on Wednesdays allowing me to judge the acceptance on Thursdays. Lately, it seems that the numbers have been fairly light and the lack of “likes” and comments make me wonder what the public really want and what they don’t.

So, effective immediately, I have decided that I will be publishing a lot less in the foreseeable future. My plan is to update my blogs approximately twice a month per blog. However, this number could go up or down depending on desire of topics and anything that I come across that I deem to be important to discuss. I also plan on staggering the posting of my blogs so that both are not posted in the same week, but that could change as well. This choice was not easy, but I felt that it was in everybody’s best interest including my own sanity.

Overall, I expect that both the “Staples” blog and the “Rants” blog will continue for a long time as long as I take it a little slower. Hopefully, everyone will agree on that.

Bad or Worse

Writer’s note: This week’s post is being presented in all my blogs as I feel that the information is important enough to be told to all audiences.

All right class.

This week’s word is bad.

It is such a simple 3 letter word.

However its meaning is quite vast.

It could mean defective. It could mean evil. It could mean awful. It could mean any number of things.

Back in the 1980’s Michael Jackson sang about “being bad”.

Back then, Jessica Rabbit stated that “she wasn’t bad, she was drawn that way”.

Last weekend on Facebook, a friend of mine stated that they thought they were a “bad person” because they had no father figure in her life and she was going to spend Father’s Day with her daughter.

To me, this is certainly not the making of a “bad person”, but to some people they like to jump to conclusions with little or no evidence. I will get back to that in a bit.

But first, let me rewind time back to last Wednesday, June 11. That day everything seemed normal as I had just put my weekly blog posts online and was done for the day. I decided to do my normal checking in on my ex Tanya on Facebook as I normally do. Granted I had never friended her nor did really ever intend to, but I am still curious about her post-wedding life. For those who read my open letter to her a couple of weeks ago would realize that she still holds a special place with me despite being married to someone else. There seemed to be nothing new on her page or her husband’s, as I regularly checked his too after they got engaged.

So I closed down and called it a day.

Then came Thursday June 12 and well let’s just say something was very wrong.

My first thing that I normally do is check my Twitter account. I usually check to see if I have any new followers or lost any old ones. I had noticed that a couple of people that I had followed seemed to have disappeared.

So just for the heck of it, I checked Tanya's profile and noticed that she had 1 less followers. Granted, she has never tweeted anything so following her may seem counterproductive. When I checked her list of followers, I noticed that I (yes, me) was no longer a follower of hers.

I had wondered what happened.

So I decided to try and re-follow her.

Apparently that was NOT going to happen as she appeared to have blocked me on Twitter. I, then decided to check her husband’s account as well. Even though I never followed him, I was blocked there as well when I tried to follow him.

Ok, this is not good. Not good at all.

So then I decided to go to my Facebook account.

I did a search on her and her page did not come up. I tried typing in the URL that would lead directly to her page and got a “page not found” message. I then repeated the same thing with her husband and received the same result.

At this point, I decided to log into my alternative Facebook account where I am not under my name, and low and behold BOTH of their Facebook accounts were there in all their glory.

So now it was quite apparent.

I was blocked not only by her, but by her husband as well, somebody who has never met me, seen me, or know anything about me at all.

So here I was blocked on both Facebook and Twitter by both of them with no real justification.

At this point, I was shocked and wrote a quick post on Facebook stating that feeling.

Before I get into the response to that, let me just say that I really don’t know what made Tanya to block me. The only thing I would think is that somehow she might have gotten wind of my open letter and somehow might have been offended or angered by it. While I don’t believe that I said anything offensive, she decided that it was best to slam the door on me on as much social media as possible. To add her husband to this blocking made me think that she must be angrier at me for reasons unknown to me. In some ways, I really wish I could turn back the clock and apologize to her for everything that went wrong even though it wasn’t totally my fault.

Now for the response on Facebook I received.

First I am going to call this female responder Janie as to protect her identity.

Janie and I had gone to high school together and really were never that close, however like many others from high school she friended me on Facebook about a year or so ago.

Janie usually spoke her mind and while sometimes mean-spirited, she was rarely ever offensive. That was until this most current posting, which did bother me somewhat.

While her remarks are only 5 lines long, they speak volumes on feelings that really should not exist at all. In one recent message to me, she stated that she “was not my enemy”. I will leave it up to you, dear readers to decide the fate of that statement.

So here we go:

Her first sentence is “I’m sorry to know how depressed you are”. I see nothing wrong with that statement at all.

Sentence 2 is “No one deserves to feel that way”. So far nothing wrong with that statement either.

Sentence 3 is “I’m sure you are a bad person.” Just as the train was rolling smoothly down the tracks we now have this huge derailment. Honestly, where does this sentence follow the first 2 especially when she said just a few weeks earlier that she was “not my enemy”? This sounds like a HUGE contradiction to me. What does she mean by a bad person? Maybe the next sentence might give us a clue.

Sentence 4 is “After just having read some of your last blogs, I think your view of the world is rather narrow.” Ok, you have read only SOME of my blogs and you think I am a bad person because of it? Of course, Janie doesn’t say which blogs she finds me narrow-minded on, therefore her theory falls flat with zero proof.

Sentence 5 is “Have you had a thorough medical check up?” Now unless Janie has a medical degree, this statement is way out of place and certainly uncalled for. However, let me set the record straight, mentally I am absolutely fine, physically walking and standing is an issue and has been since before I lost my job over 5 years ago. Beyond that nothing about my health should even be discussed.

Sentence 6 is “Are you (sic) parents aware of how you’re feeling?” Is she serious? I am well over 21 and this just goes beyond absurd. Again this statement holds no value as Janie doesn’t hold a medical degree so it is not her place to make type of diagnosis.

Finally, sentence 7 is “I believe there are ways to hear (sic) yourself so that you can feel better.” What does this even mean? It makes no sense whatsoever.

Overall, I was quite offended by Janie’s posting. However, I decided not to either unfriend or block her as I feel that would really be the wrong thing to do. I feel that I have a lot to say that would benefit her as would fellow readers. Unfortunately, none of the sentences that Janie stated followed any of the others. No proof of any problems were given, which presented a non-existent case on her behalf.

It is ironic that some of the same things that Janie brought up were some of the same conversations that I used to have with Tanya during her employment with me. However, in Tanya's case, she talked more of her own problems and how we had similar problems and how we could solve our problems together.

Yet, in the end, Tanya ended up blocking me from her existence and turned her back on me. Hopefully, Janie doesn’t end up the same way. I think she is smarter than that.

Walmart–Not Safe Anywhere

It has been a very bad week for Walmart.

First we had the tragic accident in New Jersey by a Walmart tractor trailer that critically injured comic Tracy Morgan and killed another passenger. It was reported that the truck driver hadn’t slept in about 24 hours, much longer than allowed by law. It has been reported that Walmart will stand behind the driver in any charges brought against him.

However, and this is a big however, the driver has gone on a Twitter rampage making outlandish statements that this was all blown out of proportion by the media and their cameras. One of the worst was that his profile said “Move or Get Hit #Walmart”. It seems to me that anybody who would ever write something like this should never be employed as a truck driver especially with a company like Walmart. My best advice for Walmart is for them to fire this guy once and for all and distance themselves from this criminal.

Meanwhile, a couple of days later on the west coast of Las Vegas, a couple shot 2 cops at a restaurant then went to the Walmart nearby where they shot a customer and then went to the back of the store and committed suicide after making a statement that this was the “start of the revolution”. Now while the authorities are trying to figure out, what this was all about, it brings up another concern about safety and Walmart, from a totally different perspective.

First let us take a look at the truck accident. Certainly, this could have happened with any company’s truck and any employee who fakes their logs to drive longer than legally allowed. However, being an employee of Walmart, the driver is the company. He must act in responsible manner at all times. Apparently, he either chose not to or just enjoys breaking the law anyway. Given his Twitter feed, I believe the latter is more of the answer.

What really bothers me about all this is that more and more trucks seem to be going much faster than the posted speed limits on the highways. Not only that but many of the companies no longer have the notice on the back of their trucks of “How’s My Driving? Call.”. Maybe they have had too many calls reporting too many bad drivers. I believe that there should be more of a crackdown on drivers and have more weigh stations open that would check driver’s logs and get these potentially dangerous drivers off the road.

Now as far as the store incident in Las Vegas is concerned, it is difficult to tell if this really could have been avoided. However, stores like Walmart really should have better security with people who are armed just in case such incidents like this occur. Of course, this would create a possible unsafe environment for everybody with the thought that someone is walking around a store who is armed even though they are protecting the store.

Unfortunately, I know of no store that has armed security people in them to protect the customers and other employees. Given the number of incidents in recent years, certainly the need for better security is a necessity. In future posts, I will discuss safety in much deeper detail and how bad it really is.

Overall, it is not known yet what kind of damage these 2 incidents will have on the Walmart name. Given the type of customer that Walmart attracts, I would not be surprised if they never notice the difference at all. However, to customers like me, it does give a bad impression of the company.

In the end, it may be time to bring back the commercials that Walmart had praising their employees and their company. They certainly need damage control now like never before the next tragic event happens.

Why Staples is Sliding in its Stocks

In my last post, I discussed the giving of huge bonuses to the top executives of Staples.

Since then, the stock has dropped to below $11/share, making it to one of the lowest points in the company’s history.

Five years ago, when I left the company, the stock was valued at over $21/share and now it is worth about half that much.

So what is really happening here?

Bad weather has been the excuse used most of the time as the reason for the company’s failure to make the company’s sales goals. Even with the closure of companies like Circuit City, Staples still can’t improve and continued to fall when they should be gaining ground.

I feel that the real reason for their ongoing problems can be broken down to a couple of different things.

The first is that most all the items that Staples sells can be purchased elsewhere sometimes at a considerably cheaper price. This is has been especially beneficial to companies like Walmart as it has been a one-stop for just about everything.

But even Walmart has been hurt by such things as dollar stores and smaller retailers. So companies like Walmart can’t be blamed totally for the decline of Staples despite them causing a major hit against them, although Staples uses them as an easy target for their own decline.

The other problem is with the store’s management.

Anybody who has ever shopped or worked at Staples knows that the management seems to change almost as much as the staff that it employs. The reason is that if a manager sucks, they are shown the door.

Unfortunately, no manager is safe with Staples. Whether it is the store manager or sales manager or another manager, the company is notorious for eliminating managers on a regular basis.

During my nearly 10 years at Woolworth, we had only 2 store managers and 1 interim manager. During my nearly 13 years at Staples, we had at least 5 store managers and countless sales managers.

This regular changeover of management never made Staples an enjoyable place to work as each manager brought in their own rules and policies, basically undoing the policies of the manager before them.

So are the managers that bad?

Not at all but Staples would rather fire managers and put someone new in rather than staying the course and having some consistency within the company.

Overall, I feel that Staples should stop swapping out managers so frequently and learn to accept managers’ flaws. However, Staples is either unable or unwilling to suck it up and accept their managers.

So this whole scenario creates the instability that is unloved by those on Wall Street, therefore the stock continues its downward slide.

In some ways, I am thankful that I am no longer with the company as they continue their own slow death.

Sometimes liars do benefit others.

Earnings Slips Again, But the Money is Free Flowing

Well, here we are at the end of another quarter and yet another big disappoint from Staples.

Is anybody surprised that the company continues to miss the sales estimates quarter after quarter?

I certainly am not the least bit surprised.

Of course, as they have done for past quarters, they blame the weather.

How long are they going to continue to blame something that never changes?

Seriously, it is time to admit the truth.

YOUR SALES SUCK AND NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE THAT!!

Do I make myself clear on that one?

What really irritates me on this is that other companies use the same lame excuse as well.

Certainly, places like Home Depot and Lowe's can blame the weather in places where a lot of building takes place. It is understandable in that regards.

Target and Sears can’t really blame the weather either as they also continue to have suffering sales.

So what is really wrong here?

The answer is that Staples is clueless about their future.

When I read the transcript to their last earnings report, they stated that they didn’t have the information about the back-to-school season yet.

Ok, if this is not the most obvious lie in the world than I don’t know what is. They claim that they won’t know the plans until early July. To make matters worse, they say that no company is ready for back-to-school this soon.

Excuse me.

I remember back in the Woolworth days, we started getting all the back-to-school merchandise in before the old school year was over. In fact, we even started having some of the flyers start trickling in as well for the season.

In fact, when I worked for Staples, the same thing was happening there as well. To say that they don’t know is either providing that Chairman/CEO Ronald Sargent is either an idiot or just blind to see what his company is really doing. Of course he must take his lead from Obama as he is clueless as well on what is going on in the world around him.

Now on another front, Staples is handing out bonuses to their executives for “trying to turn around the company”.

Of course, this is dumb as well as sales continue to drop and slump to lower levels every quarter.

As an example of the payouts, pinhead Sargent got a $300,000 bonus for a total compensation of $10.8 million, a 40% increase over the past year. This is at a time when the employees get fewer and fewer, while the fat cats at the top get more than plenty to live on.

So overall, Staples continues to slip all around, while freely handing out its profits to the top brass.

This all leads me to think that this company is definitely on the road to failure.

What will they blame next quarter, Godzilla, anyone?

An Open Letter to Tanya Lee H.

Writer’s note: I am writing this week’s post to all my blogs as I feel that it is important not only to me, but also to those who have those long unanswered questions about me. Some of the information presented here may be offensive to some people. Reader discretion is advised.

Dear Tanya Lee H.:

In 11 days on May 25, 2014, you will be getting married in some place called Diamond Bar, California.

The bad news is that it is not to me.

The worse news is that I feel that it is a HUGE mistake.

Of course, you could say that I am jealous that it is not me that you are marrying.

However, after stalking your future husband’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, it appears that this guy is nothing but a self-centered jerk. I am basing this solely on what I have read and seen online of this guy. I feel that this wedding is more of a matter of social convenience rather than the true love that we (yes, us) could and should have had.

Let me now rewind the story back a few years ago when we first met.

I had been working with your brother Rob for a few years when you started working as a cashier at Staples. During your employment with Staples, we talked all the time when we weren’t busy.

We learned a lot about each other. So much so that I felt like we belonged together. I thought that possibly that you felt the same way.

But something bothered me.

There were some things that you said to me that disturbed me. While I don’t want to mention them here, I internally questioned your social stability.

After having been through other toxic relationships in the past, I was personally scared of what life would be like if we were alone together on a date or something like that. I really wanted to be with you, but felt that working together would violate company policy and I think you felt the same way.

Then the day came.

You decided to quit the company. I dreaded this day ever since I learned it was going to happen. I was bothered that I was losing my best friend and confidant.

It was on that last night together that you hugged me and gave me your telephone number.

This was actually 2 firsts. Nobody had ever hugged me before. Don’t laugh – it is true. The funny thing was I finally felt loved for the first time in my life.

The second first was that Tanya gave me her telephone number. Again nobody has ever given me their number before much less a female.

However, and it was a big however, was she said to me “call me if you want”. These words became etched in my head like as if she really was interested, but may not be interested.

To say I was confused by this would be an understatement. I was actually set back as if she was pushing me away while at the same time wanting me.

Then the worse thing happened. I lost her phone number. Make that I misplaced it and it got cleanly washed away.

So I could not call her. The phone number was not in the book and I had no way of reaching her. All of a sudden my life turned to crap.

For weeks, I was hoping that you would return back to Staples so that we could talk about getting together.

But it didn’t happen.

Disappointment was mounting.

Then one Tuesday, while at the mall, I saw you at the late Waldenbooks store sitting on one of the benches looking at a book with a female friend. I tried hard not to be seen by you as I did not want to embarrass you or your friend.

Luckily, I was able to leave the store without being seen.

About a half-hour later, my luck ran out. I was at Best Buy with my mother shopping and you were alone and noticed me. I remember I was looking at “The Mummy” DVDs and you focused your radar on me.

This is where everything went wrong. You asked me why I didn’t call you. I tried to be diplomatic in my conversation with you especially since I had my mother with me and she did not know about you. I tried to tell you that I wanted to talk later someplace alone. It appeared that you wanted none of that.

Then you stormed off out of the store.

At this point, I had a choice. I could leave my mother in the store alone (mistake) or I could chase after you and talk to you right then and there (possibly a bigger mistake). I decided to choose the former.

Sadly, at this point, I never saw you ever again. Over the next couple of weeks, I continued to spindle downward with no bottom in site.

Then it happened.

I was driving home one night from work and I was listening to the radio. This song came on the radio that struck me like lightning.

The song was “So Yesterday” by a girl named Hilary Duff. Suddenly, this song related to what happened between me and Tanya. This song wedged in my head so much that I could not shake it. The more I heard it over the next couple of days, the more I related to it.

At this point, I decided to learn more about this Hilary Duff girl. I found out that she was the star of a popular Disney Channel show “Lizzie McGuire”. I decided to watch an episode just to get a feeling for what this girl was really like.

Then it happened.

I was hooked on Hilary. Like a druggie, I could not get enough Duff. I bought CDs, DVDs, magazines, books and anything else with her in it.

I was obsessed. It became so bad that I asked Best Buy if I could have a large poster of her when they were finished using it. I did the same at f.y.e. with a poster they had as well. I also asked there if I could have the “Lizzie McGuire Movie” video display when they were done with it. They allowed me to have it.

At this point, it seemed that I was completely obsessed with Hilary, even going to the point of carrying the lyrics of “So Yesterday” in my pocket and reading them when I was depressed.

I was also joining as many online groups as I could from Yahoo to feed my desire for pictures, comments or anything else related to Hilary.

It would be obvious at this point I was not only obsessed, but crazy about her. Some online groups shunned people like me for being “too old” for being a fan. I told them that real fans came in all ages. Certainly, I was not alone in my beliefs.

Then the big one happened.

Lizzie McGuire was done, but my obsession was not.

I had to find a new outlet for social relief.

So I started watching other Disney shows at the time such as “Suite Life of Zack and Cody”, “Hannah Montana” and “Wizards of Waverly Place” among others. I quickly became obsessed with these shows as well.

I would buy as many of the teen magazines as I possibly could every month even though I was really too old for them. It became apparent that I needed an intervention.

Before that would happen, I started watching shows on Nickelodeon as the shows on Disney Channel became stale. Once again, my obsession with kid and teen shows grew.

At this point, much of my thoughts had turned away from Tanya. However, one day while on the old MySpace, I decided to friend her out of the blue. It appeared she either rejected me or ignored me. At this point, I also noticed that she was living somewhere in the Midwest. This bothered me as it seemed she wanted nothing to with me at all anymore.

So with no future with Tanya and no intervention, I was further encouraged with my admiration for people like Hilary over the remainder of time that I remained employed at Staples.

After leaving Staples, I decided that I was finally going to join the new social media revolution. I signed up for Facebook and Twitter. Quickly some of my old work colleagues friended me on Facebook and soon I would be using Twitter extensively as well.

Then I decided one day to look up Tanya on Facebook and Twitter. I noticed on Facebook that she had since moved to Sherman Oaks California. On Twitter, she had an account, but she has never tweeted. I am only one of four of her followers. I wonder if she knows that I am following her there even though she has never tweeted anything. I also noticed that another one of her followers was a guy named Dave V.

So I decided to investigate him. What I saw I didn’t like. Then I did more and more reading about him, the less I liked.

This brings us up to the last couple of months. I decided to Google Tanya’s name and I found out that she was engaged to this Dave guy. Imagine the fact that I was completely heartbroken beyond belief.

So she moved 3,000 miles away to get away from me and then get engaged to someone else. It appeared that my chances with her were over.

However, I still needed an output for my emotions. So, a few months after starting my anti-Staples blog, I decided to start a new blog discussing virtually any other topic. Ironically, many of those postings have been about teen shows just to help me cope with my social loss. I know that many people have always been confused why I discuss these types of shows more than adult shows, but now I hopefully have cleared up the method behind my madness. It is just my way of producing my own intervention or something like it.

Overall, Tanya’s wedding will not have my blessing under any circumstances. I feel that I was shortchanged in this relationship as she refused to listen to me that I really wanted her, but I could not contact her because she was not found in the phonebook or any other method. I don’t feel that I was to be to blame for this relationship failure, but a huge misunderstanding between 2 people.

Lastly, I still have those posters of Hilary on my living room wall and the “Lizzie McGuire” is still in my bedroom filled with all those teen books and video tapes from back in the day.

Tanya, you may be so yesterday, but I still wish that you would be really part of my tomorrow.

I am hoping someday you will get to read this and know that I still really care about you despite being so far away. I wish I could right the wrongs of the past.

Sincerely,

Louis Brown

(your best friend from Staples)

End of Stores and Career

This week featured 2 interesting news stories.

The first one was the stepping down of Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel in the wake of the data breach during the holiday season last year. For someone who has been with the company for over 30 years, this departure seems rather odd.

According to reports, Steinhafel claims that he is personally responsible for what happened at the company.

Seriously.

The people who are really responsible for this nightmare are the people who ignored the fact that the breach even occurred and did nothing about it.

Not only should these people be fired, but should be held accountable for what happened.

Maybe the CEO resigned because there is a bigger problem that has yet to be uncovered and wants to run away fast before everything collapses around him and the company.

Certainly he may be playing damage control, but leaving suddenly just adds suspicion to any future damage that could happen.

I expect that we have not heard the end of the data breach and I still believe that there will be others that have yet revealed themselves.

The second story of the week was the closure of at least to 400 stores of Office Depot.

While it is not surprising of the store closures since the merger of Office Depot and OfficeMax, it is surprising by the number of stores to be closed. What is interesting is that the companies seem to be doing better as one, the massive number of closings leads suspicion of the health of the company.

Let me point out that Office Depot said “at least” 400 stores in the next 2 years (150 this year alone), which means that this could be a low number possibly a severely low number. While the 2 companies probably want to close stores in areas where they compete against themselves, it seems that the company may also want to close low performing stores just like Staples and RadioShack have announced in the past months.

So this leads me to this question: why do these companies announce how many stores they plan on closing in their earnings report?

Is it because they want to impress/depress their shareholders into what their future is whether it is good or bad? Or is it that they want to warn other retailers of their failings?

Either way, I don’t know why companies can’t just quietly closing stores a few at a time without making such a big deal of it.

I remember back when Woolworth announced that it was closing half of their stores, we got endless phone calls from the media asking if our location was one to close. Our response was “no, but further details can be obtained by calling our home office”. It took about 3 days for the attention to go away, but our store’s future was still questioned until the company finally went out of business.

So while Staples, RadioShack, and Office Depot announce massive store closings, the real question on everybody’s mind is which ones will be affected and what the future of the employees at that location is.

I believe that Mr. Steinhafel will have plenty of company on the unemployment line very soon.

However, all of them will have to get behind me as I am still there.

Going Postal at Staples

Last week I mailed back a catalog that was delivered.

It was the second time I sent this same catalog back.

Not only was the name on the catalog not mine, but neither was the street mine either.

The only thing that I had in common with the delivered address was the house number only.

How could the postal service make this dumbass move twice?

Since there was no postal bar code on the catalog somebody actually had to read the address on the actual catalog and prepare it for the right address.

But to get it wrong twice?

I really expect that the postal service to do better than this as far delivering my mail. It is bad enough that most magazines I receive come in a less than readable condition, but to make a move like this is just stupidity.

Now enter Staples.

Staples apparently is testing a pilot program to handle “traditional mail services”. What exactly this entails is not detailed to any degree that I could find, but given that the postal workers are protesting it, the services must be interfering with the core business of the postal service.

To me, this sounds like a great way to save the millions of dollars that the postal service have lost over the years and in years to come.

On the other hand, having Staples deal with the mail is much scarier than the postal service themselves. After all, does anybody really want a company known for scamming and lying to handle their day-to-day mail services?

Of course, Staples has been selling stamps for years and sending out packages by UPS since back before I started with the company. But this in no way gives them the path to handling and taking over the postal service.

I see this as a huge mistake as the hourly employees of Staples won’t care at all about the services and like their other endeavors will be a failure.

Unless, of course that Staples wants to go millions of dollars in debt like the postal service.

But then again maybe that may not be a bad thing.

Equal Opportunity Employer?

Writer’s warning: The following blog post may contain material that may be offensive to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.

Last week, I wrote that most Staples stores would be closed Easter Sunday. I never heard from any of my former colleagues or from any other Staples employee so I assumed that Staples in Maine was closed.

To find out for myself, I decided to call the local store that I used to work at. The phone message didn’t say that the store was closed and when I went to get transferred all I got was “all associates are with other customers”. I stayed on the line for about 3 minutes and assumed that the store was closed and someone didn’t fix the phone to say the store would be closed.

I would really hate to have been a real customer who thought the store was really busy and decided to go the store to go shopping for the day. Even if the store was really open, I would probably be part of very small minority of Caucasian people in the store.

In other words, the store would probably be filled with non-Christian customers.

Now, I know that I am opening a real can of worms here by saying that, but seriously any Christian person would probably spend the day with their family as opposed to going shopping. Even the big box stores like Target know better than to being open on one of the biggest religious holidays of the year.

As I pointed out in my last post, I was forced to use a personal day to offset the lost Sunday. I believe that this certainly violates not only freedom of religion rights but also their status as an equal opportunity employer.

Even if the company asked even one employee or if a Christian employee volunteered to work on Easter Sunday, it would be a true violation of the above mentioned rights.

So why would the company want to be open during a Christian holiday?

My thought points to the fact that 3 of the top people at Staples are non-Christian people (or at least that is what their names points). The most prominent one is Demos Pameros, President of the U.S. Staples stores. While I could not find an origin of this last name, my thought is that it is close to a Muslim based name. Again, this is an assumption which may or may not be true.

However, my point is that if Mr. Pameros is of non-Christian faith, it would not surprise me in the least to want to have stores open on one of the most religious holidays of the Christian calendar. His belief is probably that there would be enough non-Christian people out there to make it practical to be open.

Unfortunately, there is a big problem with this philosophy.

They need employees to work Easter/

I don’t believe that Staples have enough non-Christian employees to allow all Christian employees to have had the day off. Therefore, Staples violates freedom of religion and also is violating their “equal opportunity employer” status.

When I worked at Staples, the most number of employees that I believe that were non-Christian was 4. This is certainly not enough to cover all the hours on Easter even if they were still employed with the company. I don’t think that there is any store in the company that has enough non-Christian employees to even be open for even 1 hour much less a full day.

So why does Staples enjoy violating people’s rights?

The simple answer is that they lie.

Are you surprised about that?

How about discriminate as well?

Yes, they do that to as I am the perfect example of that.

Briefly put, when I became disabled during my final year at the company, I was constantly harassed by the management as to when I would be able to stop using a stool that was allowed by my doctor. In fact, my doctor was harassed by having to fill out what seemed to be endless paperwork stating my disability. In the end, I was terminated because of my disability whether Staples believes that or not. I will have much more to say about that in future posts.

So if Staples can discriminate to me because of a disability and can make employees work on a religious holiday are they really an “Equal Opportunity Employer” or as what I have been writing about in this blog as a bunch of liars?

I will leave that for you, the reader to decide. I already know my answer.

Easter and Ink

First off, let me say “Happy Easter” to all of you readers out there.

Now for the bad news: most of the Staples stores will be open on Easter Sunday with limited hours of 12noon to 5pm. On average, this is about 4 hours shorter than a normal Sunday.

The keyword here is “most” as I believe that the stores here in Maine will NOT be open as the state has a form of blue laws that would prevent it from opening on that holiday. I may be wrong about that, but I expect to hear from one of my local friends to correct me on that if this is true or not.

My point to all of this is that I believe that this year is the first year that they have tried being open on the holiday. I feel that this is a huge mistake for both religious and non-religious people alike.

When I was employed with the company, they were insistent that I either work one of my regular days off or else I would have to use one of my personal days so that I would maintain my fulltime status. The management would not allow me to just lose the time because I normally worked every Sunday and I preferred to keep my normal days off intact.

Certainly this would be great for me now if I was still employed with the company, but I feel sorry for those who don’t want or for religious reasons refuse to work on that day. I wonder how many employees will be forced that day against their beliefs. Given Staples past record of how to treat employees and how they celebrate the holidays, I bet there will be much friction between employees and managers, including threats of termination that were even used against me.

This is just more proof of a company that is desperate for business.

Speaking of desperation, the dreaded Ink & Toner Savings Pass is back.

The last time I wrote about this card last year, I garnished the most comments of any blog post I had ever written. Some of them were critical, some pointed to the same conflicting information, and a couple of people had decided to insult me.

So here are the details as I know them (from their most current flyer):

· The cost of the card is $20 this year up from the $15 of last year making it even less of a bargain than last year.

· All (yes ALL) brands of ink are included unlike last year that seemed to exclude HP inks, but was eventually included that brand.

· The discount is still 10%. However, that amount is actually less if you consider sales tax that reduces the actual discount offset. Here in Maine that means that the REAL discount is approximately 4.5%.

· The card is good through May 31, 2015.

Overall, this card is NOT a good deal at all especially since the card is now $20. This mean that you must buy at least $200 worth of ink (more if your state has a sales tax) before you break even. I believe that anytime you have to pay for a discount it is a bad deal no matter what.

My advice: stay away from this card.

However, this doesn’t mean that bargains can’t be found at other retailers.

For example, this week Target is offering 5% off HP multipacks on its cartwheel website. While this may not be a huge savings, you don’t need to spend $20 to get the discount. I highly recommend the cartwheel website as they always have specials ranging from 5% up to 50% off certain items every week. I have used the site many times to save quite a bit of money at Target.

At Best Buy, if you buy multiple cartridges at the same time, you can save as much as 15% off the entire purchase of cartridges. Again, no special card is necessary to get the savings, not even their rewards card. Most importantly, you don’t spend $20 unnecessarily.

Overall, better deals than Staples are out there. You just have to look for them.

And for those of you working on Easter, I expect that you will have a boring day since it is a family day.

Best Buy’s Stupid Check Policy

Last week, I had a very strange experience while shopping at the local Best Buy stores.

The elderly lady customer in front of me was writing out a check as would many customers in any store.

What surprised me was exactly how this check was being processed by the cashier.

He first put the check in facedown and the check was read by the register. He then did this a second time. Afterwards he turned the check to the reverse side and did it again twice more.

What the real surprise was that after all this scanning of the check; she was required to sign her name on the credit card pin pad. Now of course, if you are thinking like me, then this is raising a HUGE red flag!

Why in the world would anybody need to sign their name on an electronic device after they had signed their name on the check they just presented?

My thought is that Best Buy wishes to capture as much information about its customers in a transaction as possible whether legal or not.

When I got to have my transaction, I asked the cashier why the customer had to sign on the electronic pad when she signed her check. His response was that the check is electronically stored and that the signature was needed for processing the check.

Huh?!?

Since when is a double signature needed for any processing of any type of payment especially since credit card transactions under $50 require no signature at all?

It seems apparent to me that the cashier is completely clueless as far as how transactions are handled and given how Best Buy requires and stores personal information; it appears that this cashier falls in line with being the type of employee the company loves.

What really surprises me is that Best Buy’s privacy policy doesn’t guarantee that the personal information given is protected or that they will give it out to any third party that they wish to. To opt out of their stupid policy, you must either write an old fashioned letter to them or email them of your desires. I find these two approaches highly undesirable as neither gives the type of satisfaction of that gives immediate results.

I try not to make any transaction over $50 when I shop there (I always with a credit card). I try never to make a return as I wish not to give out my license to them. I also try to keep under the radar so that none of my personal information is tracked unlike what companies like Staples has done to me in the past.

What finally set me back at the end of the lady’s transaction was when she asked the cashier where Staples was located. When he couldn’t tell her, I almost felt like telling her, but I figured she already had her identity stolen once today, she didn’t need it stolen twice. And why in the world would I ever want to give Staples any business anymore anyway?

The Windows E-XP-losion

Writer’s Note: This week’s writing is being put into all my blogs as I feel it is important enough to be posted for all to read. Hopefully, you all agree with that.

We all survived the Y2K problem or so we hoped.

However, next week on April 8^th, a new threat is going to happen.

The threat is the end of support for Windows XP.

Now some of you are probably thinking that you haven’t used this operating system for years, but many of the things that we come in contact with everyday does.

If you go to your favorite store, chances are that their register system uses some form of it.

If you use an ATM, it probably has it as well.

If you go to a doctor, he/she probably uses it to keep track of your medical records or look up other information.

In other words, at some point, you will come in contact with a machine running WinXP.

So why is all this important?

The hackers are lining up to attack these systems because Microsoft is no longer releasing monthly security patches to this operating system. Nobody is safe.

Let me repeat that: NOBODY IS SAFE!

Of course, Microsoft offers solutions to the problem. You can upgrade your system to either Windows 7 or 8. That is if your system can handle it.

Case in point: I have a Windows XP machine that I use all the time which is hooked up to my network. However, my machine doesn’t anywhere near meet the system requirements of either Win 7 or 8. Of course, I have no intention on dumping my perfectly good machine just because Microsoft is ending its love for it.

Another alternative I have read is to install a form of Linux on the machine. If I don’t want any of my existing software to work again, this is a great suggestion. I would do this as much as I would perform open heart surgery on myself.

Finally, one could go out and buy themselves a new computer. This is almost as bad the previous suggestion as many older programs would not work under the new operating systems. I know this for a fact as I try to use some of my older programs on Win7 machine. No gratification for the amount of frustration, it is to port an older program to a newer OS.

So what about everyone else doing one of the things listed above to save themselves and others?

I don’t expect it to happen as any of these options would take years to implement. Yes, I said “years” as upgrading is not an option in most cases.

The biggest threat in all this is the protection of personal information. Any information that you give to anybody and they input into a computer is not safe whatsoever.

I know from firsthand experience that companies store your private information together. In other words, if you write a check at your local store and give them a driver’s license for it, the information about your check and driver’s license are stored on the store’s computers together. This is the perfect way of storage for a hacker to grab your identity.

As a victim of identity theft myself, I can attest to the fact that a company can and will let any information about you become freely available if they want.

And many of these companies will comply to hackers because they use outdated operating systems and unsecure connections.

So how can one save themselves from this nightmare?

Most importantly is to question why identification is needed for any reason like a return or a purchase. I recommend refusing giving this information out because most of the time it is not needed. If a person is determined for identification, ask them the following questions:

· How long is my information stored? Honestly, the answer should be “not at all”, but they would be lying if they said otherwise.

· Is my information encrypted? Again, they will lie and tell you it is, when most information is hardly ever encrypted.

· What information do you take from me? If they can’t detail what they take, just say no.

Overall, the end of Windows XP is less than a week away and nobody is safe.

Nobody at all.

The Death of the American Mall

Last Sunday morning, CBS News ran a story on the dying American mall.  In the story, it made the assumption that the main reason why malls are dying is that people are shopping online.

Seriously?

Are you kidding me?

In my opinion, the real reason for the collapse of the malls is 2 companies:  Walmart and Target.  These 2 companies have dominated the landscape where others once did.

Of course, both of these companies have had their share troubles over the last few years, but both have managed to survive all their problems with little affect for the most part.

Granted these 2 companies killed most all other retailers in the past few years:  Ames, Bradlees, Caldor, Ann & Hope, Woolworth, and many others.  Feel free to add your own dead retailer to the list. 

Certainly many of these stores were standalone stores and not connected to malls, but the trickle down happened where many of the mall stores were affected to the point of closure.  This led to a lot of empty spaces in many malls.

Translation, no stores means no mall.  In fact, the website deadmalls.com is a great resource to read about the past of many of the former malls.  I highly recommend this site for anybody wanting to research the dead past of malls and its associated stores.

So why did CBS make such a stupid oversight? 

The answer is simple:  MONEY.

Both Walmart and Target are both big advertisers with the CBS TV network.  It is almost certain that they did not want to offend their advertisers by blaming them for the decline of the mall.  After all, you would be smart not to bite the hand that feeds you. 

What I found most interesting about the story was the fact that they mentioned the Mall of America.  While this is technically a mall in all regards, it is in reality a tourist destination.  Consider it like a Disneyland with a roof.

I have visited this mall several times over the years and while it does have a wow factor, it has declined significantly over the years as many of the stores have disappeared been replaced with more local stores instead of national chains.  Unfortunately the prices in many of these stores are significantly higher priced than their national counterparts. 

So honestly, I have no intention of returning back to that mall anytime in the near future.  Ironically, when I was out there, many locals say they shop at another mall (smaller and more realistic one) not far away.  I guess the real people in the area know better than the tourists. 

So did CBS do a disservice to the public with this story?  That depends on your perspective.  Ironically, the pictures at the beginning of the video included pictures of both Kinney Shoes and Woolworth, both of which were owned by the Woolworth Company, the same one I worked at for nearly 9 years.

Of course, I really watched this Sunday morning news show for the story on Shakira.

After all, her hips don’t lie.  Unlike that company called Staples.

 

Celebrating 5 Years Later?

It is an amazing thing.

It has now been 5 years since my termination from Staples.

Depending on how you want to look at it, it is either a good thing or socially the worst thing could ever happen.

Yea, I lost a good full time job with full benefits. On the other hand, the company’s stock has plunged to nearly half the value of when I left the company. This would have meant that I might have lost about 50% of my retirement plan if I didn’t leave the company.

Unfortunately over the last 5 years, I have yet to get a new job. Some may say that I am lazy and don’t care. The truth is that Staples has ruined me so bad that I am a toxic employee, even to companies that I could have very easily gotten into.

I still fill out job applications with no success; however resources limit me in how far I can travel for any job possibilities.

Mind you that I have a college degree as well but unfortunately that is about as worthy as nothing as it is over 20 years old. Certainly times have changed since then and going back to school to update myself isn’t even an option now or ever.

So now the best that I can do is continue to punish Staples with this blog and spread my story of just how evil this company really is. For long time readers of this blog, you may have realized that I have been writing more about current events than me lately, but I plan to continue my own story in the weeks and months ahead.

So what is my expected future? Unfortunately, I do expect much than this at the current time. Combining my toxic past with Staples and my current health condition, I don’t expect to get hired anywhere anytime soon. Place the blame where you want, but I blame mostly reluctant companies not willing to hire or even take a chance with me.

On a completely different topic, I have made a serious change to this blog.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have had people comment on a posting from over 9 months ago. One of the comments was rude and promptly deleted; the other I allowed but explained that their comment was explained by comments expressed by others in that same blog.

It all made me wonder if some people are just ignorant or just want to read what they want and just stop there. In both cases, the commenters were wrong, but the rudeness of one is just not acceptable.

This brings me to my point. Any rude comments will be deleted, no questions asked. I also must approve all comments before they are posted as well. I am also closing the period of comments to 30 days. I feel that this is more than adequate time to respond to posts as the much of the information I write about quickly becomes outdated or amended. This is not meant to punish people, but to close the door on old topics without deleting old posts. Note, however, that these changes affect only the WordPress edition of this blog and not the Blogger version of this blog. Blogger doesn’t allow to make the type of changes to limit times on comments so for now, this will remain unchanged.

I really didn’t want to make these changes, but I had enough of moderating old posts that should have been put way behind us.

As always, thank you for your continued support.

Staples’ Turn

It was bound to happen.

It was announced last week that Staples plans on closing up to 225 stores in the next year.

Now let’s realize that they say “up to” which means that it could be significantly less than that, but chances are that it probably will be that number.

After all, being that odd of a number, they just didn’t pull that number out of thin air.

Or did they?

Personally I think this number will be much greater in the long term. The reason is simple: they are obsolete and there is nothing they sell that you can’t find someplace else.

And the new slogan doesn’t work either.

Make more happen. Make more what happen? It just doesn’t make any sense. But then again neither did “That was easy”. What really was “easy”?

Then there was the stupid “What the L?” ad. I say what the L are they talking about? Sadly they were trying to capitalize on Kmart’s “ship my pants” idea. It just doesn’t click at all. What is their point or do they even have one anymore?

It is quite apparent that the company is lost as far as their advertising is concerned. This does not help to bring in the customers at all.

Then there are the print ads. Pick up an ad from 5 years ago and it looks strangely similar to the same type of ad tactics used today. Maybe it is time to make a new approach to advertising.

All this helps create the problem leading up to the store closures.

So now the idea is why are these stores closing? As with RadioShack mentioned previously, Staples is planning on closing underperforming stores. Add to this, they want to close stores whose rent has come due and they wish not to renew in those areas.

Now I can understand all this. But, and it is a big but, in both companies’ cases, what about those overpaid executives?

Many of these companies are so overweight with high-paid executives; it makes Dolly Parton look flat-chested. Obviously, there is no need for so many of these companies especially given that many of those people who really make the company money are losing their jobs.

So while these executives spend their day playing Sugar Farm Bear Crush Casino, others are thrown to the street for no really good reason except that their store was an underperformer.

While no official list of store closings have been announced, I would not be surprised if the store that I was employed at would be on that list. The reasons I believe it would are as follows:

· It is an old store. The plaza it is located in is old and run down. Some of the walls in the store are cracked and the whole building structure never seemed safe to me.

· It is located too close to the airport. It may be convenient to the airport, but when a plane goes overhead, you definitely feel it.

· Too many intersections make it hard to get to. The only way I ever got there was to take the back road. Too much traffic to follow any other way. I always heard this as a major problem.

Overall, with the stock falling to just a little over $11/share, the company should consider getting rid of their far, not just those who actually do the work. But then again, Staples never did take the easy way out.

RadioShack and Sears Sufferings

Another possible hacking victim has been announced and it just so happens that it is Sears. As if this company didn’t need to be hurt anymore it now has been announced that it may have become the latest victim in this ongoing problem.

Of course, the keyword here is MAY be a victim as they are not really sure that they really are or not. Seriously here: why Sears is crying wolf when they may or may not be a victim? Certainly their customers should be kept more in the loop than just using the term “may be”.

No mention is given if Kmart, which is owned by Sears, is part of this possible attack. Since they both run similar register systems, I would say that they too are part of the attack.

It is sad when a company like Sears say that they may be a victim when companies like Neiman Marcus waited months to tell the world they were attacked. It seems that accountability is lacking in the retail industry.

I still believe that other retailers will announce attacks over the last few months including Staples. However, the longer companies wait, the more it will hurt their reputation and destroy their business. Hasn’t any retailer learned anything yet from the Target fiasco? Apparently not yet.

On another front, RadioShack announced this week that it plans on closing up to 1100 stores in the next few months. This would mean up to 20% of their stores would be gone. This is up significantly from the last round of closures announced a few months ago.

Apparently, sales to the retailer continues to slump to record levels causing the company to reevaluate itself. Why did they spend millions of dollars for a Super Bowl ad when they really couldn’t afford it in the first place?

So the real question is which stores will be closed and which ones may even be scaled back significantly.

My thought is that the stores that are going to be history already know who they are. It is just that the list has not been made public as they may not want to scare other retailers in the same areas to want to abandon the region as well. I also believe that many of the employees also know that their stores are closing as well. It is just that these employees are told not to talk to any media outlets as the company has not made any final announcements yet. Many of these stores have probably known for months that they were in line for termination and were warned that if sales didn’t pick up then they would close.

Unfortunately, nobody can make a customer buy anything at a certain store to try to save it from going out of business. What happens happens. Trying to force customers to make purchases will create a hostile environment that is bad for both the customer and the employee. However this is exactly what some companies do such as Staples.

What will be most interesting is to see whether most of the stores that will close are located in malls, strip malls, downtown centers, or standalone locations. My thought is that it might be an equal mix of all of these with more mall locations closing than anything else as malls are failing and many stores are starting to leave malls.

Speaking of company exits, the pizza location Sbarro seems to want to go bankrupt. They closed 155 locations in the last week including the one in the local mall. However, I feel that this company won’t be missed as most of their pizzas have been pretty bad in the last few years. I stopped eating at their locations about 4 years ago. Unfortunately, they are just the latest food court company closing up shop after declining food eaters in malls.

Overall the recent news of all 3 of these companies is more proof of an economy on the brink of collapse. Unfortunately, those who serve on stock boards are blinded by all the negative information and continue to push the stock market to record levels.

Certainly the 1% is winning while the rest of us are losing.

Am I Invisible?

This week a customer satisfaction survey was released naming the 10 worst retailers to shop at.

Amongst those that made the list were all 3 of the top drugstore chains. Not surprisingly that all 3 made the list simply because they are amongst the highest priced places to shop at and among the hardest places to find employees.

Also on the list is Macy’s. I am not surprised about this one as I have found most of their employees ignorant or just plain rude. Why are none of their employees ever look happy? Maybe they just hate their job because they are so overpriced.

Topping the list is the biggest retailer that everyone loves to hate and that is Walmart. Ever ask for help there? Good luck on finding anyone who is actually willing to help. I have found that if I don’t see it, they probably don’t have it. To make matters worse, a few weeks ago I was looking for new shoes in the store and it took me about a 1 ½ hours to find my desired size. The shoe department was a nightmare and last week I revisited the department to find a second pair and the area looked just as I had left it weeks before. It didn’t even looked like it was even touched for the last month. I have visited other Walmart stores and have had much better results. I blame the management for how disorganized and messy this store is. There is absolutely NO reason that a store cannot be kept up better than that.

One store not on the list but should have been is Books-A-Million. Try and get help at this store and you would be wasting your time. Sadly this store is no better than the Borders store it replaced. In fact, in the last couple of weeks, I have had complaints about the store and I filled out one of their online surveys to have management contact me regarding my issues with them. Unfortunately, it has been over a week since I took the survey and issued my complaint and still have not heard from any member of their management staff. I don’t expect to ever hear from them because they just don’t care and I am not the least bit surprised.

Finally, one store on that list is #7 and it is the dreaded Best Buy. Walk around the DVD/CD department and you will never find an employee. Same is true in the video game department as well. You may find an employee in the video department if you are lucky, but that is if you are lucky. However, go over to the computer department and there are employees all over the place.

That was until I had arrived looking for a new printer.

Usually I am bothered by at least one employee when I am in the store checking my email or checking on Facebook, but on this particular day while I was looking for a new printer nobody bothered me.

Why was I being ignored on this particular day? Do the employees not care about the printers unlike the computers? Or is it that they think that the printers are there to sell themselves?

Ironically, the one printer that I was looking at was missing the power cable so I had to disconnect the cable from the printer next to it and plug it into the printer that I wanted to try out. Still with everything I was doing, I was still ignored. After bouncing back and forth between a nearby computer to check reviews and trying out printers, I finally decided on one without any employee help and nearly 2 hours later. This is certainly an uncalled for approach to making a sale. It was a treat; however, to find out that by purchasing a printer and cartridges at the same time, there was a discount on the ink as well. In the end I felt somewhat satisfied despite my do it yourself sales approach.

The next day I checked the Target Cartwheel website to see what they had for weekly offers and surprisingly I found a better printer I was considering with a 25% discount making it cheaper than what Best Buy was selling it for.

Yesterday, I proceeded to Target and purchase that printer with no employee interaction in less than 15 minutes. I felt very satisfied compared to how I was treated at Best Buy. The printer from Best Buy will be returned back to them along with the cartridges unopened in the very near future.

One thing I did find interesting about the list of bad retailers was that Staples was not on the list. Could it be that they just don’t have enough customers to make the list in the first place? Certainly Staples as I have mentioned in previous posts do not have great customer service and seems to be dropping considerably in the last few years.

But then again, I am the invisible customer no matter where I go.