Atrocious What!?

Bad customer experience. Stuff companies do bad. The crap that happens and makes you wonder how this is going on! My experiences & thoughts on it all here! You'd be surprised by how Atrocious things are getting!

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Government Shut Down

It's been 6 months since I've made a post! Granted I want to keep the blog relevant by only posting things that are so far out there, that they deserved to be called Atrocious. 

For 6 months I honestly haven't heard of anything that I felt was truly atrocious.(besides the way fast food workers have been treated and news relating to their strike). Forgive my biased opinion of what is atrocious and what isn't, but I finally think an event has finally risen to be worthy of being considered atrocious. Many of you would agree and as you've guessed by now based on the title, I am talking about the government shutting down!

Whether you are republican or democrat it doesn't really matter at this point. Both sides should be able to agree that having thousands of people out of work hurts the economy. That the U.S. government will default on October 17th to it's debts to countries such as China and will hurt the global economy, not to mention our country's once AAA rating. From just an economical standpoint it is fiscally irresponsible to cause unnecessary hardships on American citizens, and effect the global markets because a decision couldn't be made!?

I'm not here to make this a political blog. I will not point fingers to any particular person or party (that's up for you to decide on your own) but I am here to focus on the issue at hand and why it needs to be resolved. Besides it being just fiscal irresponsible, it comes down to a selfish, infantile way of running a government, when people in power can't make a decision by a given deadline. You know what happens if you are working for a company and need to make a critical decision on a project before the deadline and fail to do it? You get fired, because you cause a hardship for the company and your fellow coworkers. Unfortunately it isn't as simple as firing someone when it comes to politics although there has been talk about removing John Boehner but that's another matter.

The government shutting down is worthy of being called out as Atrocious!

All in all, I wanted to reach out to my readers. I will do some more digging and bring back popular posts such as the "Unemployed for the wrong reasons", by doing a follow up with them and see if anything has changed for the better or worse. 

I also understand that the fast food workers on strike and the way they are treated is certainly worthy of a post, but since I have no experience working in the fast food industry and the fact that it has been talked about so much by others as it is, I decided to not cover that topic at this time.

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Why hasn't Gay Marriage been legalized yet!?

Today Proposition 8 (A Piece of Legislation in California that defines marriage between ONLY a man and a woman is valid or recognized) still exists and I personally find this to be atrocious!  Today the supreme court will look into whether Proposition 8 is constitutional. To me it's very clear that Prop 8 needs to go and this ban on gay marriage needs to end.

For those who are against gay marriage or unsure whether it should be legalized, consider these top 10 reasons why it should be banned and this type of illogical thinking is put into perspective.

1) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester and air conditioning.

2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

4) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all like many of the principles on which this great country was founded; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of marriages like Tom and Katie would be destroyed.

6) The only valid marriages are those which produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

9) Children can never succeed without both a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy or longer life spans.

After seeing this list it's put into perspective that it's wrong and very anti equal rights to ban gay marriage.

For my readers, sorry I haven't blogged in several months! School at KU has been very busy with the Geography major/business minor this past semester. But all in all wear red today and support Gay Marriage and Equality for all Americans!

Thank you!

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BK Bacon Sundae & NYC Soda Ban!

Burger King's new Bacon Sundae comes with well bacon, vanilla ice cream, and chocolate syrup! This 400plus calorie goodie may seem Atrocious to some although considering the obesity issues in America I have to say that while the product itself isn't healthy so are a lot of other things. As a free American you can choose to buy or not buy the Bacon Sundae. No one is forcing you! So if you accrue too many calories and have health problems as a result of a poor diet that's your fault. As a healthy college student I chose to try it once...but never again.

So what's Atrocious here? I argue that New York City's mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposal is!

He proposes a ban on sugary drinks over 16 ounces in New York City as a way to fight obesity. I don't think this is how a democracy should work. Like many protesters up in NYC have mentioned "when do we say enough control is enough?" These types of actions like this ban on soda proposal, rears the governments ugly head around the corner. This is a step in the wrong direction and only showing how the government eventually wants to control everything. It's always done in small steps and never all in one big sweep otherwise it would be challenged and shot down. Basically we are like frogs in water that is slowly being heated up till boiling. By that point it will be too late to jump out and save ourselves. So when a proposal like this pops up it NEEDS to be shot down for infringing on people's rights. How so? It's a subtle way to corner people into a particular type of behavior the government finds favorable.

The Huffington Post and other media outlets cover the soda ban in more detail if you want to know more about it. My entry today is to point out that if people want to continue to have freedom then it comes with self accountability too! It's Atrocious what Mayor Bloomberg is trying to do!

Leave a comment:

Have you tried the Burger King Bacon Sundae?

Yay or Nay for the NYC Soda Ban?

Thanks again for reading everyone!

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Vector Marketing - A mixed Bag

I had a rather shady experience with Vector marketing! Keep reading for juicy details.

What is Vector Marketing? According to their corporate website "Vector Marketing Corporation™ is a single-level direct sales firm that markets Cutco Cutlery®, a line of kitchen cutlery, accessories and sporting knives of the highest quality. With its administrative headquarters in Olean, NY, Vector Marketing is a wholly owned subsidiary of Cutco Corporation, which has been manufacturing Cutco Cutlery since 1949."

They have a tendency to reach out to broke college students much like myself who are desperate for making money and a job (especially in this economy). 

So what I found Atrocious about Vector:

The "interview" process is me going with about 4-5 other people in a room to watch a presentation not an actual interview at all! This was done with a video, and a lecture by someone who works for the company that was there in person. Going over the history of Vector and their partner Cutco Cutlery that has the products Vector uses. We were asked to take notes, and were asked questions pertaining to the presentation to quiz us on what we learned. While this in of itself isn't bad to learn about who you are working for it certainly isn't an interview. Such an extensive stream of info about the company should be done only after the interview has taken place and the candidate has been offered the job and accepted. Vector didn't get to know me which is bad for them. How do they know I'm a fit? How do I know if the position is right for me when I got a one sided view (the benefits) of the sales position but no transparency about other requirements/costs associated with the position to get the job done (cons).

After the presentation each person was called back one by one to an office. When it was my turn, I met face to face with one of the heads that worked at this office location. This was done privately from other people that I had previously been sitting with for the presentation keep in mind. The head barely even looked at my resume and simply offered me the job. Basically they didn't want to have a good exchange of information it seemed. In response to the offer I said "I'd think about it." Then the head asked "well are you a hard working person?" and "are you a dedicating individual?" came up. Both I responded yes to, I mean who wouldn't? So because of that the head told me I'd be perfect for the job. Not intrigued I decided to pry anyways I didn't want to assume the worst. I went on to ask about training.

The training consisted of roughly 3 days of around 6-8hrs per day unpaid! They get away with this as you are not an employee of Vector but basically a individual contractor aka(1099 on taxes). 

Compensation was $15/appointment (45min-1hr for each) even if you didn't sell and if you did I recall correctly (I might be a little off on the percentage on this one) you get 3-5% of the sale. While this might sound fine the company isn't transparent about the costs associated with being a sales representative. This means the extra long hours of training you have to go through roughly every 3-4 months is not paid but can take 8-15 hrs of your time. Training is required to keep up to date on the products so no getting out of it once hired unless you quit.

I took into consideration at this point the gasoline! An appointment might make you $15 in 45min but if it's 20-25 miles away for 1 appointment you barely even out. You can easily get stuck making less than minimum wage. I didn't take the job needless to say! There's a reason why Vector Marketing is eager to hire you and just about anyone else!

Overall I can't say the company is a scam because it technically and legally isn't. However their shady practices of being very non-transparent with job candidates is Atrocious! 

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My Love/Hate Relationship with PayPal

I haven't posted in awhile mainly due to being a busy college student trying to sell stuff on eBay to pay for my bills!

It was while I've been selling my old golf clubs, unused soccer cleats and more on eBay that I really got a feel for PayPal from the sellers perspective. Typically I buy online and prefer to pay using the PayPal service. From a buyers perspective I think it's great due to it's ease of use, and more so it's security that gives me ease of mind that if a product goes wrong I can get my money back. So in that respect I love the PayPal service.

Why I Hate the PayPal service. From a seller's standpoint it screws you over in many ways:

1. PayPal Holds Funds Way Too Long! Everything I sold the buyer was happy with. However because I don't normally have payments over $100 coming into my PayPal account the service decides to make the funds unavailable longer. How much longer? Well I sold a really nice golf club set for $110 and having printed my eBay shipping labels for faster payment I should have gotten the funds available within 2-3 business days. But instead once the payment was made PayPal held the money in "la la land" aka not available to me for a whole week on top of the normal 2-3 day window. 

2. Long Transfer Times! Once PayPal makes the funds "available" to you (such as my case with the $110) it takes 3-4 business days for them to transfer money into your bank account. Yet when I send money from my bank account to PayPal it's done almost instantly. By point 2 alone this is getting to be near an Atrocious situation if you ask me.

3. PayPal will yank out funds without notice! This is the kicker which luckily I didn't personally experience since no buyer of mine had any problems, but if they reported any problem at all PayPal would yank back out the funds without warning. I find this Atrocious at the least! They will do this to sellers before even investigating to see if the "problem" a buyer makes is even valid. A scammer could do this to get a decent product for free and by the time it is investigated it is many times too late and the seller gets screwed since PayPal yanks the funds and then does the investigation not the other way around.

In several cases what PayPal does on the sellers end is just Atrocious to me! Especially considering so many people are turning to and relying on selling unused items in their house to pay for bills due to the recession, this now pertains to a wider range of average people now, not just small vendors.

Any thoughts about PayPal or experiences you've had with them, please leave in the comments. Thanks for reading!

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Birth Control Mandate!?

"And by making pills free but not condoms, the government may inadvertently be contributing to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases." -The Wall Street Journal by Mr. Cochrane, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

Whether you want to look at it from an economic, religious, or freedom/rights standpoint, the mandate for birth control raises some serious questions. I've provided a link to an article that can logically lay out in reality what changes will actually happen within the American healthcare system due to this passing.

Now of course comes my opinion, disagree or agree as you will, I believe it imposes on the rights of people who have religious beliefs against contraception. I also believe that economically it will not help with the rise in healthcare costs. Granted this is a brief opinion but I want people to rather read the article, be informed and formulate their own opinions on this controversial matter. 

Atrocious? Yes I think the mandate is!

Link to Wall Street Journal Article where I pulled the quote from above:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204136404577210730406555906.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

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Worthless Health Insurance

I’m 23 years old, healthy, and have no medical preconditions, yet I cost a fortune for my baby boomer parents to put me on their health insurance. This is a brief story of how I broke my nose and how even my parents Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance even as expensive as it is couldn’t cover something at all!

I dove off a diving board into a friend’s pool in August and accidentally slipped and dove sideways causing my knee to fly up and bash my nose hard enough to break it. My nose was barely ajar and it was able to heal on it’s own just fine. Out of fear from the high cost of surgery my family and I did without.

Unfortunately next time I got sick my nose became stopped up which isn’t a big deal since that’s normal when you have a cold. However what isn’t normal is your nose still being horribly blocked up with a sinus infection even three to four months after being over a mild cold. I went on antibiotics. Nose cleared up for two weeks then returned back to it’s usual stopped up self. My condition hindered my ability to breath, causing tiredness almost everyday, and I completely lost my ability to smell which led to all my foods tasting very bland. Needless to say I was miserable. A stronger second round of antibiotics were prescribed by my doctor in attempt to clear up my nose. I’m waiting as of now to see if my nose will revert back or be recovered once my antibiotics run out here in a week.

“A simple CAT scan would help”, my doctor said. Basically the scan would tell them whether or not my nose is having severe long lasting sinus infections due to it being broken or not. More than likely that is the case. You can do a walk-in CAT scan at a clinic in Olathe, KS (in my area) cheaper. The cost still ran $500! My parents’ health insurance doesn’t cover a dime. I’m not seeking nose surgery for cosmetic reasons but health. Regardless of where I tried to go the insurance simply won’t cover the scan despite my doctor saying I need one.

Have you had a similar issue? Does your health insurance cover what your doctor deems you need to stay healthy?

I think my parent’s private insurance is atrocious in how they handled my situation. You can agree or not. I encourage people’s thoughts on the effectiveness of private healthcare in the United States. I know this has been a controversial issue for some time now. Thanks for reading!

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Unemployed for the wrong reasons

If people are unemployed then why not just collect unemployment and everything will be honky dory? I tell of my story of working for the large clothing retailer Macy’s and how my ending of work there would make it realistically IMPOSSIBLE to collect unemployment.

I began working for Macy’s in May of 2010 as a sales associate for the men’s department in one of their large signature stores at Oak Park Mall in a suburb of Kansas City. Hired at $8/hr it was better than minimum wage for Kansas but nothing so high to really brag about.

So what’s the big deal? Retail is retail, it’s not supposed to be glamorous or anything, right? Working part time at Macy’s first started out just fine, believe or not. Friendly managers, decent hours, and an attempt from upper management to get to know you coupled together for a pleasant working experience.

So this is where things went wrong.

The company four months after I started working there introduced a new employee evaluation system called Magic Selling, where you got points for meeting your sales goal, sales per hour, opening at least two Macy’s credit cards a week among a couple other metrics as they called it. The score system was implemented with only a few training sessions to prepare you for it and was explained poorly. Us associates thought we knew how it worked but later it began apparent that we didn’t really understand it when we saw how low we scored. You don’t know what you don’t know.  

The points system was horribly confusing and basically punished you even as a productive associate.  I only know this because the top sellers in the store who made their sales goal, had high customer service feedback, and opened many credit cards STILL only scored average.  Why did they score low? The working environment made it practically impossible to meet your items per transaction goal, average sale goal, and average sale per hour even when you made above your sales goal. To me who cares how many items per transaction are there as long as you gave great customer service and sold a lot of merchandise? If you made money for the company and made the customer happy this apparently wasn’t enough for your $8/hr. They also expected you to put merchandise away and clean out fitting rooms all while selling. This wouldn’t be a problem except you got 1 point for keeping your department clean and this took away a lot of time from selling.You scored low as it was an inaccurate indicator of how productive you really are.

 Long story short if you didn’t score high on the Magic Selling Score Card you got NO raise. You aren’t allowed to move into another department of the store with a low score. Every associate I spoke with had low Magic Selling Scores. Out of one hundred employees at this large store there were two or three tops that had good scores.  When hours were short they could have an excuse to fire you.

This was why after working there for over a year I received no raise, and when hours were severely cut in September of 2011 I was fired NOT laid off along with several other associates in the store. I feel I should have been laid off; no one could meet the unreasonable targets the company expected. But due to me technically being fired, collecting unemployment for a part time position is non-existent.  

 So every time you go shop at Macy’s keep in mind what those associates have to go through. It makes me wonder what other companies are doing the same thing. This sort of thing isn’t in the news, and the company I’m sure would love to downplay their new Magic Selling Score system as just a better way to evaluate employees. I say it’s to screw them! Let me know of any thoughts or if you know of anyone that has worked for Macy’s or another company that has faced this sort of problem.

This situation is atrocious! I’m unemployed for what I believe to be the wrong reasons.

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ROBOTS OR DINOSAURS?

Robots def

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Atrocious? That's an understatement

So many companies and individuals try to get away with the most atrocious things! It seems to be getting worse. On top of which there are so many things labeled wrong today with the economic recession, complicated global affairs, social issues in the US, among several others.

Maybe it's just the influx of available information because of the internet that brings to my attention how many things are wrong today or perhaps there really is a lot more ridiculous crap happening than there used to be.

I don't intend this to be a "cry" or "poor me" blog, but rather a blog that points out some of the crap going on, mostly my personal encounters with it and my personal opinions on it. My intention is to stick to the facts when regarding the issue before going into some of my own viewpoints.

This blog is an eyeopener! I hope my readers find my blog informative as many of the situations I discuss aren't in the media or are buried in the sea of information out there.