Friday, February 12, 2010

When employers already have someone in mind.

I saw this first hand, actually it was when I was hired back in 1993. I was an intern, and the boss wanted to hire me, but he told me he was legally obligated to advertise for the position anyway.

He placed an ad in the local newspaper. It kept me on my toes for a month, but my supervisor told me not to worry about it. That's why the newspaper classified employment ads are a complete waste of time.

Serious employers will advertise in more than just the newspaper, they will advertise on college campuses for internships, where there's no shortage of cheap or free labor.

With the Internet it's easy to research whether or not an employer is serious. Check the online job boards to see if the same advertisements are present. You will find that most of them are not present.

The employment classified section of the newspaper is most frequently used as cheap advertising if not used for the obligatory job ad for whom an employer already has someone in mind.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Legends of Lowes

When I first started working at Lowes in Mishawaka, Indiana, I met the Building Materials manager and he seemed okay.

About a month later he was gone, just wasn't there anymore. Well, it turned out that somehow, I don't know if this is just a legend or if it really happened, but I heard that he stole enough building materials to build an entire house from the ground up.

A few employees from the appliance department were caught selling appliances to themselves. I don't know how they could do this, but they would buy appliances on a credit card, then cart the appliances around the back and return them for cash. I'm not sure if they were really capable of doing this because Lowes has a policy of exchanging store credit for returns instead of straight cash.

I imagine the credit card companies could take steps to reverse charges on credit cards, but that would mean they wouldn't make a profit, so I assume they don't