Back in October of 2009, I wrote about my dismay that Costco would start accepting food stamps and what that possibly might mean and a couple of weeks ago it has finally started to happen.   As a refresher here’s what I thought would happen:

1. Dirty filthy isles.

2. Dirty filthy parking lots as people change their kids diapers (and car motor oil) and leave all the garbage behind.  Along with open bottles, wrappers and a variety of other garbage.

3. A bunch of opened, half-eaten packages of whatever.

4. Lots of arguing at the checkout lane with the cashiers.

5. Lots of time wasted at the check out lane as frustrated shoppers roll their eyes while they wait for the drama to be over.

6. Lots of left over items sitting at the check out lane as shoppers run out of food stamp money.

7. Eventually, crime will come to the parking lot and that will be the straw that breaks the Costco prestige and descent into the abyss.

While #1 and #2 haven’t happened yet I can tell you that I personally witnessed  #4, #5, #6 definitely did happen while I was at the store.   I have a family member that works in security and was told that there have been increasing amounts of break-ins of vehicles so much so that this family member stays away from this particular location.   So #7 is finally here.

I took some flack for writing that post and as usual someone somewhere on the planet was offended, well guess what, I’m now offended that one of my favorite shopping places is becoming infested with crime and wasted time at the check out as people can’t perform simple math to understand what it is they can afford to buy and what they can’t.   But all is not lost however because this is valuable learning material as we now know that it takes approximately 12 months for a retailer to go from heaven to hell once they begin to accept foodstamps.

Oh and before anyone writes a comment that they are offended and unsubscribing, save yourself the digital ink and don’t waste your time or mine, I’m sure someone somewhere isn’t going to like this post and that just comes with the territory of the internet.

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I’ve waited a while before writing this post because I didn’t want to make any unjust comments until I had thoroughly vetted my experiences with airlines recently and I can honestly say that they’ve all gone to the dogs!   Not too many years ago, air travel was a nice luxury but it’s gone down hill and there seems to be no reprieve in sight.

Over the past twelve weeks I’ve been traveling consistently all over the place and here are a few distilled observations:

Big jets – Gone.  Almost every flight I get on now is in a small regional type jet.  I’m assuming big jets are only for overseas flights now.

Food – Gone.  This has been gone every since 9/11 but you can’t even buy a meal now, just simple over priced Doritos bags.

Service – Gone.  Service is non existent as you have to mostly rely on automated kiosks to do most of the heavy lifting.  God forbid your flight gets canceled because you’ll be left in limbo.   The only saving grace I’ve had is reliance on corporate travel service for emergencies.

Blankets – Gone.   I didn’t notice it until the lady a row over asked for a blanket and was told by the attendant that they were discontinued for “sanitary” reasons.

Sanitation – Gone.  Speaking of unsanitary blankets, sanitation seems to be gone with bathroom periodically not functioning, soap and paper towels frequently missing from airplanes!

Frequent Flyer Perks – Nearly Gone!  With airlines merging what instantly happens when one buys another out is all existing “privileged” members immediately compete with the other airlines members.   So if Airline A had 100 Platinum Members which got upgraded to first class and Airline B had 100 Platinum members then A + B = 200.   So instead of being 1 in 100, you are now 1 in 200.  Brilliant?

Fees – Plenty available.   Fees for snacks, fees for bags, fees for seat selection, fees for changing your mind.

Frequent flier miles – Plenty!   If there’s one thing that keeps being printed/created faster out of thin air than US Dollars it is frequent flier miles.   These miles are worthless as it’s nearly impossible to ever book a ticket on a flight and if you do, there’s a great chance you’ll be bumped off anyway!

There are a few workarounds to the misery but that’s another post for another day.

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I almost reached a breaking point a few weeks ago. I had multiple pointless projects at school due, multiple high consequence projects at work due and a multitude of activities with the family. I recently received a curt e-mail asking why I hadn’t volunteered at some school activity my kids are supposed to be participating in and the honest answer is that the same school has pinged us for MULTIPLE tasks at the same event.

In an era with high unemployment you would think there would be plenty of volunteers to do something but the same dually employed families are asked to do the volunteer work over and over again. So I’ve been busting my butt at school and at work and getting curt e-mails from my third and fourth non-paying jobs and keep reading about people living it up mortgage free in homes they couldn’t afford living off the government dime.

Seriously, I’m thinking of becoming a tea bagger…or whatever those tea people call themselves these days. Better yet, I might become a loafer and just live off the government dime myself. All I need to do is pay off my mortgage (which would be easy), quit my job and just hang out waiting for volunteers, tax payers and everyone else to take care of me and not have a worry in the world.

I’ve finally caught a bit of a break and am almost done with my second semester at MBA school and as I write this, I have serious doubts I will return in the fall. It simply isn’t worth it anymore since the program is fairly uninspiring, boring, pointless and trivial yet consumes so much of my time.

The consequences of all of the other bullshit though are going to hit like a Niagara water fall over the next few years when 80 million boomers become loafers and won’t or can’t work. I can hardly wait….

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I find myself using credit cards less and less now that even the simplest purchases at some retail outlets are requiring ID.  It is just a hassle to reach in and produce ID every single time I want to charge something.   Worse yet, because of the financial crisis, banks cut some of my credit lines and I opted to close the accounts altogether and not deal with them at all.    And now, the rewards programs for remaining cards continue to get worse since not too long ago I used to get 3% cash back, I’m now down to a paltry 1% on almost all cards.

Combine all of this with my great newly found disdain for large banks and I may soon eliminate credit cards from my payment method portfolio altogether.  What am I using now?   Ever since I opened a couple of credit union accounts nearby my office, I find myself going over and withdrawing a few hundred bucks of cash and paying in cash for almost everything.    The lone exception is gas station terminals and what I can’t figure out is why gas stations aren’t asking for ID?  After all, you could easily slide your drivers license into that same slot that you slide the credit card into so what gives?  Generally, I need to enter my zip code whenever I use a credit card at a gas station so why can’t I do that at a retail outlet?

I guess it’s just one of those paradoxes………

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We just got back from a spring break skiing trip and I had the unfortunate circumstance of having to fly Delta on the trip.   On the way up there, Delta’s flight was overbooked and nearly half my party got bumped off the flight.   What really sucked though is getting hit for $25 “baggage” fee at the airport that I had to pay separately.    Imagine going to the grocery store, getting a gallon of milk priced at $3.99 and then having the grocery store tack on a $0.75 “bagging” fee at the checkout.  You’d think that was ridiculous right but few people seem to complain about airlines.

Worse yet, on the way back the flight was overbooked again and some people got bumped off the flight and you guessed it, we had to pay another $25 fee per bag.   We won’t be flying Delta anytime soon again until they change this stupid policy.   Ironically, Southwest Airlines is becoming my airline of choice because of their “bags fly free policy” but they do have a major drawback.  For some reason, Southwest airlines almost always has a stop somewhere and don’t seem to offer any direct flights.  Worse yet, Southwest doesn’t fly internationally so that limits us to domestic locations but they still have better pricing and service than most airlines.

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So during my lunch break I head over to Lowe’s to buy some gardening tools and I’m now wondering if Lowe’s is hiring people for the Post Office because of the horrible service.  I have about $60 worth of tools and am at the quick self check out nearly completing my transaction when the attendant comes up to me and says she needs to see my ID.  I say, “sure” and reach into my wallet, open it up and my drivers license is gone.   At this point I’m not sure where it is but I’m guessing my wife or kids “borrowed” it for some reason so I tell the Lowe’s employee that I don’t seem to have it.    She gets into a panic and doesn’t know what to do, “I’ll have to check with my supervisor.”  So she leaves for a few minutes and comes back with someone (guessing it’s the supervisor).   “Sorry sir, it’s policy that we need to see id.”

I tell the lady that I don’t have my ID but my Corporate Badge is hanging from my belt (with my name AND picture on it) but says the store policy is to see drivers license.   I say, “Oh well, it’s not my loss it’s yours” and I walk out.

Frustrated, I head over to Costco to buy a compact flash card for my digital camera for my upcoming vacation trip.  I pickup the placard for the item I want and head over the checkout.  It dawns on me that I still don’t have my drivers license but I can’t remember if Costco checks or not so I proceed.   She scans my credit card, charges the items then asks for my ID!   I tell her that I don’t have it with me and she says, “do you have anything with your picture on it?”

I show her my corporate badge with my name, employer, and picture on it and she says, “that’s good enough.”

Now I understand fraud at retail outlets is pretty bad but to apply blanket policies without thinking the process through is pretty stupid.   I guess it is possible that a ring of fraudsters are dressing up like executives and heading over to retail outlets like Lowes and loading up on $60 in garden tools with stolen credit cards to make out like bandits but the premise of the story is fairly implausible.    The difference between the brain dead Lowe’s employees with poor training and the Genius Costco employees is fairly obvious in this example.   Perhaps the Costco employee violated a policy but I am more inclined to believe that she is allowed to make a judgment call and made the determination that someone dressing up in a business attire, heading to the shop during lunch hours for a single item wasn’t out to rip the company off.

I also know how these policies get implemented because I’ve sat in board rooms with idiot Vice Presidents of Risk Management and their like where they come up with these inane blanket policies that irritate and drive customers away.    This is how it goes:

CEO: “We’re losing revenue to fraud, we need to do something about it!”

VP Risk: “I got a brilliant idea, we’ll make mandatory ID checks on all credit card purchases, that should do the trick!”

CEO: “Ok, it’s your call if you think that will help!”

And here’s the reality:

CEO: “We’re losing revenue to upset customers walking away from our stupid and inane policies!”

VP Risk: “Yeah but fraud is down….”

The absolute biggest irony here is that the Lowe’s clerk asked if I had a DEBIT card to pay for the purchases!   I can only surmise that if I were a thief and using a stolen debit card (along with the pin) that the loss would be on the customer not on Lowe’s because that’s the only way I can imagine this policy allows for presumably stolen debit card customers walk away with merchandise while the opposite is true for credit cards.

So the moral of the story is Lowe’s is now on my shitlist/blacklist of company’s I won’t do business with for a while and I only went there because it was nearby the office.   I’ll stop at Home Depot this evening and pick up the items there.    By the way, Home Depot always asks for ID too but I’ve been there so often the workers actually recognize me when I walk in and they don’t ask anymore.    The Home Depot I visit clearly doesn’t have brain dead employees either.

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Last night was one of those rare events where I decided to purchase fast food for dinner.   In an effort to be quasi-healthy I drove up to KFC and requested the family special.  As usual, the clerk asked if I wanted Original, Crispy or Grilled chicken.  As usual, I responded that I wanted Grilled chicken.    And then the exact same thing happened that happens every time I request Grilled chicken at KFC: “Uhhh….hold on, I gotta check to see if we have any grilled chicken left.”

Sometimes the answer is “yes, we have it” and sometimes it’s “no we’re all out of grilled chicken.”   So how does a business plan to be profitable on not having one of the key products they’re selling during the dinner hour.   I actually drove through at 5 p.m. so it’s not like I came in late into the dinner hour for them to have run out of chicken.   I don’t get it….can someone explain it to me please!

The clerk is always very nice and apologetic when they run out but it’s a 50/50 coin toss if they’re going to have the product I want when I drive there.  Unfortunately for KFC, there are about 5 other chicken places within a 3 mile radius that don’t ever run out of chicken.  Popeye’s, although only fried, seems to only run out on their crazy $4 specials (10 pieces for $4) on Tuesdays.    The other places are ethnic restaurants that grill chicken a variety of ways and most often taste better than KFC.

So I decided to check out the YUM stock chart and see if I could figure anything out and lo and behold, I found something interesting!

(click for larger image)

Anytime I drive by to buy grilled KFC chicken and they have none in stock, I don’t buy anything and drive away thus the stock plunge.   When they do have chicken in stock, I buy some and the stock climbs up!  EUREKA!    Someone give me a $5 million dollar salary and bonus please I’ve solved the sales problem!

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Did you see this headline?

US Banks Have $176B Exposure To Weak Euro Countries

That’s a news story from Bloomberg and it discusses the fact that US (Big Banks) have nearly $200 billion dollar exposure to the collapsing economies of the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain).  I love how they downplay the “it’s only $200 billion” bit.  It’s just one more reason to move your money out of these big banks and into small community banks.  I’ve started the process personally and although time consuming, it is well worth it knowing I’m not dealing with these jokers for much longer.

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I picked up TurboTax over at Costco.  The box clearly states that it will work on PC and MAC.   Unfortunately, my Mac won’t read the CD.  Here’s the crazy thing.  I can boot up a virtual machine running Windows XP on the mac and it reads the CD fine in Windows?   WTF?

I’m trying to load the damn thing in Windows XP and I have been waiting over 20 minutes for the damn “updates” to take place and nothing is happening.  What’s going to end up being my solution?  I’ll probably have to download a hacked version from the net despite the fact that I’ve already paid for this stupid product.

I’m wondering if this CD has some type of copy protection scheme or if there are no Mac files on it whatsoever.   When I read the CD in Windows I don’t see anything remotely looking like Mac files so perhaps I’m trying to squeeze blood out of a rock.

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Change you can believe in?  Well it’s turned out to be chump change and if that nincompoop Bernanke is re-confirmed I will close ALL of my big bank accounts which currently include Chase, Bank of America and HSBC.   I’ve already opened a new credit union account and plan on moving my money there as soon as this foolishness continues.  I’ve also applied for credit card through the credit union so I can dump my big bank accounts as well.    The only way we’re going to get any real reform here is to suffocate the system and I’m doing my part.

I’m still totally disgusted that Geithner hasn’t been fired for his role in the whole AIG 100% payout and everyday new revelations show the ridiculous activity of these idiots.

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