CMS Rock Star

As I stated in a previous post, “X”-Mart is a bad place to work.  I have the stories of three relatives that worked there that I wanted to share with you. 

The first relative (I’ll call him “C”) worked in the bakery of a Super “X”-Mart. He asked his boss to give him part time hours because he was looking for a different job in a different line of work, and was going to be taking college courses. His boss kept on giving him full-time hours anyway. After about six weeks of asking repeatedly to go onto part time hours, and being promised part time hours, and continuing to being assigned full-time hours, “C” finally quit in desperation after seeing ANOTHER week scheduled of full time hours.

This is a classic example of bad management.

I have had three relatives working at different “X”-Marts in the past couple of years.  (Note:  I am saying “X”-Mart but that is not the “real name” of the store - I don’t need any lawsuits so I’m changing the name to protect myself!  Let’s just all say it’s a big company that most people know about.

I keep in close touch with them, and I have heard many horror stories from all three of them about their problems working there.  I am going to explain this in three different posts to follow, so each one will get the proper “treatment” in my blog.  I want to impress on you all how awful this company is to work for!

My folks were telling me that when they were younger, if they wanted to buy tickets to a sports event, or to a music concert, they had to physically go to the box office of the sports arena, or to the theatre where the concert was going to be held, to buy the tickets.  This was a major inconvenience for them because they lived quite a distance away from where the event was, and this meant that they had to make two long distance trips to get to the event that they wanted to go to see.

For example, my mother said that she wanted to go see the Rolling Stones in concert on the July 4, 1972 concert in Washington DC, but she lived over an hour away from arena.  She had to go to the arena a month before the concert (she got lost trying to get there and ended up getting lost in “the bad section of town” and was scared witless) to buy the tickets.  This was before the subway train (now in existence called Metro) had been built and she was forced to try to find it by driving.  So driving there and parking was a big issue.

It’s hard to imagine how hard it was back then to buy tickets to an event because now it is so easy to buy tickets over the phone and over the Internet.

One of the most convenient Internet sites to buy sports tickets is the Viagogo website.  My British uncle says that he used to have a hard time find a way to buy the tickets he really wants, such as ICC World Twenty20 Tickets, The Ashes Tickets, and the RBS Six Nations Tickets.  He says his best friend told him a few months ago about the Viagogo website, and now he uses it to buy all of the tickets he needs, for concerts as well as the Twenty20 Tickets, The Ashes Crickets Tickets, and 6 Nations Tickets.  He told me that he loves that site because he can also sell his tickets through them if for some reason he ends up not being able to go to the events.

Out of curiosity I went to the website to check it out, and was pleased to see that they also have a website that serves the United States of America, so the service is not just limited to the United Kingdom.  It’s always really good to find a company that other people recommend that you can use, too!

Over the years I’ve learned some interesting things about tricks restaurants use on their customers.  A long time ago I read some literature about how different colors effect different moods.  For example, red, yellow and orange are “high energy” colors and are often used in fast food restaurants because the restaurants know that those colors will encourage the customers to eat quickly and leave (making room for more customers) and the “high end” restaurants will often use “calming” colors such as blues and greens to encourage their customers to linger longer (perhaps order more alcohol which is their big money maker) and order dessert, relaxing and enjoying their meal and the company they are keeping.

I was just reading an article on the Time.com website about “what makes you eat more food” and was surprised to read that one of the things that makes you eat more food in restaurants is that most restaurants turn their thermometers to cooler temperatures.  When the body is cold, a natural reaction to warm up is to eat more food.  So the restaurants are trying to get you to eat more food by making their customers cold!

Hummingbird T-shirt

This past weekend I went to a fair with my folks.  As part of the fair, they had vendors selling their wares.  That’s my favorite part of going to a fair; going to all of the vendors booths and seeing what kinds of cool things they are selling.

I especially like the handmade articles of clothing, the leather belts and purses and wallets and such.  I also really like hand made jewelry, and decorated articles of clothing.

I went to one booth where a lady was selling things that she had painted by hand.  I fell in love with a hand-painted T-shirt that she was selling, so I bought it.  The hummingbird is glittery, which I think is really cool! 

I’m including a picture of it to show to you.  I hope you like it too!  I really love it!  She only had the one in my size; if she had a second one I would have bought it too, so that when this one wore out I would have another one to wear!