Escalation

t's easy to see how these things escalate. If a guard asks you to leave the store for any reason and you don't, then you are in a conflict with the guard. Now, the guard has to admit that he is just a rent-a-cop meant to deter shoplifters or he can call the cops.

This particular post is in regards to a Target security guard threatening a customer for breastfeeding and telling her to leave as a result.

Further evidence that minimum wage security guards will not give you what you desire.

If you want REAL security, pay for it. Not these Winco minimum wage Neanderthals who think that because they are fatter than your 130 pound kid they will triumph.

Uh, no. Ever hear of a court of law? Tanya Harding's "security" didn't either and thought they were free to assault anyone who stood in the way of their goal.

And in the meantime, I wage a hearty "salute you" to the Winco losers (yes, I know. The few hundred bucks you lose every month from no longer having my patronage is minimal). The symbol remains. Cute how you paid employees to tell me I'm "peice of shit." That is pretty KLASS-AY Winco -- and nothing more than what I might have expected from you.

At any rate, I say just don't buy any more baby stuff from Target, ever. If you believe in it, you'll do it. I made my son's diaper covers out of cotton and rip-stop nylon. He never complained and I spent a hell of a lot less than I would buying same from any big retailer.

Your baby wants your love more than he wants Chinese-produced junk from department stores.

Winco Foods: Hazardous to Your Children

Ironically enough, it was my son who convinced me to shop at WinCo in the first place. He knew I hated crowds and big parking lots but showed me that prices were lower than the Safeway I usually went to. Now, with hindsight, I think it's better to spend a little more and retain one's dignity and sense of what is right.

An open letter to Winco Foods CEO Steven L. Goddard...

Steven L. Goddard
CEO, Winco Foods LLC
650 N. Armstrong Pl.
Boise ID 83705-0456

Re: Incident #0079833

Dear Mr. Goddard:

I have been a Winco/Cub Foods customer for many years as I enjoyed the prices, selection and what I have apparently in error considered to be friendly, courteous staff despite the somewhat cumbersome nature of shopping at such a large facility. However, a troubling incident involving my son and a security employee and events afterward have disabused me of that perception.

It was with no small degree of astonishment yesterday that I received a letter from your security department. I say astonishment because I personally find it shocking that your employee, a person apparently much larger than my son, saw fit to assault him in order to retrieve $4.53 worth of candy and in the process caused injuries that necessitated transport to the emergency room and medical bills no doubt adding up to thousands of dollars.

While I do not condone my son's actions, he is legally still a child, while one assumes that your employee is an adult and presumably trained to defuse rather than escalate such situations. Perhaps it is Winco policy to consider any action justified, despite how completely irrational, illogical, overzealous and harmful that action might be to others. Your employees are perhaps not fully informed of all the Washington statues, particularly RCW 9A.36.011, which states in part:

Assault in the first degree.

(1)A person is guilty of assault in the first degree if he or she, with intent to inflict great bodily harm:
(c) Assaults another and inflicts great bodily harm.
(2) Assault in the first degree is a class A felony.

Problematic as it seems that your employees feel justified in sending a 130-pound boy to the emergency room, even more so is the obvious scurrying by store management and security personnel to disguise the nature of the event. Particularly galling is the fact that in the letter I received from your headquarters in Boise you demand not only payment for the candy, which my son neither consumed nor left the premises with, but also an additional charge of $150.

To quite literally add insult to injury, when I visited the store on 13 September to request a copy of the security report of the incident, the store manager rather mendaciously stated that no such report had been filed. Since your letter to me cites a number for a report obviously it does exist. I then asked to view whatever video had been captured of the event and was again told that no such video existed. Conversations with local police in the meantime have put the lie to that statement as well.

In summary, I would like a copy of the report that was filed and the contact information for your liability insurance carrier. As for the charge of $154.53, you are welcome to deduct that from the payment you make to me to cover my son's torn clothing, ambulance, emergency, hospital admission and ongoing treatment by an orthopedic surgeon. I have not ruled out the possibility of a civil remedy and until I am satisfied by your efforts to redress this situation I will not hesitate to use whatever means necessary to make others aware of the inherent danger and hazard that Winco poses to children. As I am fully conversant in Web 2.0 networking technologies, this will be a simple thing to accomplish.

Until yesterday I spent in any given month several hundred dollars at Winco. In the future I am happy to instead spend those dollars with retailers such as Safeway, Grocery Outlet, Fred Meyer, Gateway Produce and the like.



Very truly yours,

Facebook Reconsidered

I've been hearing a lot lately about Facebook and its possible use by employers as a way to find information on a candidate that would be a deal breaker in hiring that person. On one hand, it's a given that as part of the screening process employers would dig up whatever they could as long as the search is cost effective. By the same token, candidates should do likewise to the employer. Come on, it's not a good idea, no matter how desperate the economy seems, to take a job with an organization that is clearly a bad fit. Personally I'd want to know everything I could before I accepted an offer.

Some make the counter argument that a person has control over their profile and the information posted in it and employers could only see what was there if they had specific approval to do so. However a recent news article about a teenage girl in the UK lost her job for posting a status update saying that her job was boring leads me to think that Facebook may very well make otherwise private information available to employers for a fee. Considering that until very recently they also claimed copyright to posted content, it doesn't seem all that farfetched.

However, were I the employer, I would be wary of information gleaned through such sources. There is no control over such sites that ensures the accuracy of the information contained therein. At least with a job application there are enough permissions and authorizations granted that if he lies on the application that is sufficient grounds even years in the future to warrant termination. I have accounts on social networking sites MySpace and Facebook, but not under my actual name, and the email address associated with them has nothing to do with the email address I use for professional purposes. Add to that the fact that there are several other people with my actual name on Facebook and Google -- but they aren't me. Sure you can pull up a name, but if it isn't the person you're considering, what good is the information? It just means that much loss of productivity by the HR department.

Another angle to consider is a candidate's right to have a social life examined. While it's certainly possible to post pictures of legal activities such as gun ownership and consumption of alcohol, these are still things that might cause an employer to look askance at you as an employee. And really, isn't the competition stiff enough already? Why give an employer the ammo to shoot you with?

I guess it boils down to a matter of discretion and awareness of online security. I would recommend that people use online email addresses and aliases that do not reflect their name or geographic location. Have a separate email address that is used exclusively for job searches. Have a social life but be smart about what you post. Realize that information can be retrieved even after you think you've deleted it. Be aware that even though we feel anonymous and omnipotent behind our monitors, the fact of the matter is that everything can be retrieved. Do what you can to make sure it doesn't come back to haunt you.

And don't, for God's sake, log in and post at work. Assume that your employer can see anything on your screen. is there really stuff so compelling on FB that it can't wait until you get home?

I still plan to use Facebook because it's been rather fun to connect with old friends, classmates and coworkers and to find people with similar interests. But even with my precautions, I plan to use a high degree of discretion.

Facebook gives employers clues to intelligence, personality
Why employers should reconsider Facebook fishing
How employers look at MySpace and Facebook pages
Employers leverage cloud computing to invade your Facebook privacy
Can Your Myspace Or Facebook Page Cost You A Job?