Took Time Off

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

The Other Woolworth Positions

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

Restaurant Cashier 

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

Women’s Department

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

Men’s Department

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

Jewelry Department

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

Domestics Department

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

Sporting Goods Department

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

Music Department

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

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

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

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

Conclusion:

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

Up Next:  Oh the Merchandise We Carried!

James Holmes–My Take on Him

James Holmes (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WMTW restored to Time Warner Cable

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

Catching a Breather Sort of…

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

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

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

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

Thanks to all and hopefully be back next week.

TV Blackouts = No Solution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holiday for Me–Not By Choice

Because of some technical difficulties in the program that I use, there will be no posting this week as much as I would love there to be.  Apparently, the program I use just decided not to work properly and I spent some time to get it working again to some extent.  It is always wonderful when things don’t go as planned, but that is life no matter how bad it gets at times.  However, my Wordpress blog has a new post because I write directly in that program.  So join me again next week for a new post (hopefully—internet willing)!  Thanks for your continued support as I work through the issues that I have with this f#&^$ program.