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.