Thinking Out Loud

Well, my last blog post reflected my intentions and need to quit smoking. I figured an update is at hand.. I failed, but I have managed to cut myself back big time, as much as 50–60%, by banning myself from smoking in the house, hence not even when I am using the computer..

I fully intend to try again but have not set a date for when I will try again.

The day after Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the Christmas Season, but it is a special day in which retailers swing open their doors at obscenely early hours with deals and bargains for shoppers to snap up as Christmas Gifts. The day is known as Black Friday, known as such because it is the day retailers hope to turn their balance sheets from a negative red to a positive black.

Some stores will even open on Thanksgiving Day, while others will open at Midnight but usually no later than 6am on Black Friday.

We go from a day to give thanks into a season in which we give. However if one ever has worked in the retail business on a Black Friday, the retail worker is the Gazelle and the customers are a pack of Hyenas in a feeding frenzy.

I work in retail and have done so for almost 30 years, I can remember when Black Friday was a very busy day, but nothing like it has become, over the course of my retail career. I am lucky this year, I get to sleep in and come in during the afternoon hours when most of the frenzy and frothing has subsided.

The problem with Black Friday is that customers do not comprehend the fact that quantities of whatever special are limited and that the entire planets inventory of whatever item was not shipped to their town to their intended store. Camping outside the store in a sleeping bag for untold hours prior to opening does not immediately guarantee one the item they sought, depending on ones place in line and how many other fellow customers want the same item versus how many of said item the store actually has in stock.

Unfortunately by the time this black Friday has passed, I expect to hear the same horror stories in the news that have been pervasive in past years. These will include:

1. Customers trampling other customers or store associates.
2. Customer on Customer/Sales Associate assaults.
3. Customers snatching sale items out of the hands or buggies of other customers.
4. Snatch and grab shoplifting.
5. Check and Credit fraud.

I guess I paint customers, the life blood of the business I am in, in a bad light, but first hand experience on this day teaches one to be wary. On this day, each year, customers seem to leave their humanity and civility behind, after having given thanks the prior day as they prepare to give. It give a new meaning to the saying ”every man for himself”. The sad part of all of this is, these customers on this day in particular don’t realize they are behaving badly, everyone else is..

Not too many movies catch my eye anymore, they simply dont make them like they used to. I am not much of a theatre goer, instead I simply wait for movies to come out on the cable movie channels such as HBO, CINEMAX, SHOWTIME et al. I caught a movie on Cable last night that caught my attention and riveted me to both that channel and my seat. GRACE IS GONE, starring John Cusack, Cusack plays the husband of a female army Sgt, with whom he has two daughters with, 8 and 12 years old respectively. He learns that his wife died in combat while in Iraq, and struggles with the emotions of the loss and has not broke the news to his daughters yet. He takes time off work, takes his daughters out of school and they go on a road trip. Their final destination is an amusement park in Florida his youngest daughter has always wanted to go visit, the oldest daughter is confused and slightly suspicious of her fathers unusual behavior and reasons to go on a trip, in the middle of a school year. The impression is given that the father has always been aloof in dealing with the two children without the help of his wife and their mother, but throughout the road trip, you can clearly see that he is truly on his own bonding with his two girls. He maintains the ruse that their mother is still alive throughout the whole road trip, up til the time they are driving back home from the amusement park. If you like this sort of movie, tear jerking and all, see this movie.

There is a story of a 7th Grade Social Studies teacher in New York State, using visual and physical aids to teach her students about the slave trade that plagued the history of the USA. Seems that the teacher was white and she used duct tape to bind the hands and feet of two of her black female students, then told them to lay down under their desks, so that she could get her students to visualize what it must have been like for the real slaves aboard slave ships as they crossed the Atlantic.

When the two female students got home that day, they cried and complained to their parents about the incident.

Follow This Link to read the story.

There is no doubt in my mind that there was no malicious intent behind this incident, but perhaps poor judgement.

I do suppose that this teacher could have imparted her lesson by narrating it to her class and asking each student to picture themselves lieing down on the floor being bound by rope and chains?

Barring the above, she should have asked if anyone wanted to volunteer, or perhaps went to her peers and asked what they thought of it as a teaching aid?

Oh well shouda, couda wouda..

You got the mother of one of the children screaming bloody murder and the G-D NAACP in the act now.

I wonder if artists and actors being asked to portray horrible things get emotionally scarred everytime they do something?

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What is described in the below story disgusts the living hell out of me!!

Link

This might be an incident that is isolated to its severity, but it is by far not unique regarding the behavior and mentality.

Those responsible should be hung.

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