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.