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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Wow!  For the first time in a very long time, I’m actually getting a REFUND from Uncle Sam to the tune of over $4,000.   And all it took was for me to lose my job for six months and the government to lose about 75k in income tax revenue from me.   I feel like Uncle Sam is saying, “Sorry we gouged you for so long for so much, here’s $4,000!”

Actually this is the first year I didn’t exercise options, cash out stock, or rake in huge bonuses during the past year.   The only “earned income” I had was unemployment insurance from the state.    What really helped were all the freaking tax deductions:  my entire MBA tuition saved me a cool $2200,  student loan interest saved me some money, etc.   The only regret is that I didn’t wait a little longer to buy a car.  I purchased a new car in 2008 and if I had waited another year, I could have saved another a few k in taxes.  Wow, what a great tax return that would have been!   If I had bought a new house that might have been another 8k.  Sometimes, timing is everything!

Oh well, I’m expecting to be back in the higher tax bracket this year so I’m sure I’ll owe Uncle Sam a few thousand this time next year but at least I can buy a new LCD TV finally

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Remember the housing boom and the rallying cry, “this time it’s different” and of course smart people knew the bubble was just about to burst because the world via media was saturated with pure real estate mania but a funny thing has happened.  We’ve now reached “doom and gloom” mania all over the place.  Almost every website I visit has some sort of doom and gloom “Survivalist” newsletter, book, article or link to “surviving” the next apocalyptic depression.

Let me be clear about a few things:

1. There are some huge fundamental structural problems with the US economy which still need to be solved.

2. There are huge liabilities that need to be dealt with such as pensions, social security, medicaid/medicare, et al.

As bad as things are, they are going to be obviously worse in Europe, Asia, South America and anywhere in Africa.   Let’s take a look at just a few articles that have come out this week.

First up, this article in the Chicago Sun Times with the headline,

‘Doomsday is here for the state of Illinois’

How does that headline grab you?  Oh no!  Doom and Gloom!  The article reads,

To become solvent, the state must enact the largest tax-increase package in Illinois history, whack another $2 billion from already starved government programs and wrest major financial concessions from the state’s unionized work force, a nonpartisan government watchdog contends.

Next up, we have this article from the UK’s Observer, it starts with this headline,

“Americans stock up to be ready for end of the world”

The article reads,

Tess Pennington, 33, is a mother of three children, and lives in the sprawling outskirts of Houston, Texas. But she is not taking the happy safety of her suburban existence lightly.

Like a growing army of fellow Americans, Pennington is learning how to grow her own food, has stored emergency rations in her home and is taking courses on treating sickness with medicinal herbs.

There are tons of articles pointing out bankruptcies, commercial real estate problems, sovereign defaults and other rigmarole.   Check out this article on the “gloom and doom” in breakfast sales:

Fast-food breakfast sales decline as fewer head to work

The nation’s high unemployment rate has thrown millions of people out of work, scared shoppers away from stores and threatened the economic recovery. Now it’s taking a bite out of breakfast.

Breakfast sales had grown at a ravenous pace during the boom years as busy workers scarfed down sausage biscuits on the way to the office, fueling a $57 billion business and accounting for as much as a quarter of sales at some fast-food chains. Chains opened earlier and expanded their morning menus to accommodate the traffic as lunch and dinner sales flatlined.

Do you remember this classic bubble top?

2005

Life, like bubbles, is a pendulum that swings BOTH ways.   I’ve been looking for this moment since this post in October 2008 and it’s almost here.   The more the media pumps gloom and doom articles the more I know we’re close to the absolute bottom.   Given the 20% inflation pricing in the energy markets, I’d say we’re gearing up for the roaring teen’s  and roaring twenties (2013 – 2025) and this teenage economy has raging hormones!    Don’t be a fool and jump the gun, cautious optimism is now warranted!

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If there’s one good thing about the recession and millions of people being unemployed it is the fact that people who do have a job are desperate to keep it and as such are going out of their way to help people out.    I went in to Home Depot this weekend to look at grills since my old one has essentially rusted away after 10 years of use.   I saw a couple of models that I liked and didn’t go there to actually buy one but just to compare models and research prices on the net.

As I looked around, a HD rep came over and asked if I needed any help.   I asked a few questions and ultimately ended up buying the grill that I liked since it was supposedly on “sale” for the Super Bowl weekend.   The HD rep actually help me get the grill down from the shelves and load it into a flat-bed trolley.  He also helped pick out a cover for it by measuring the grill and making sure I had the right one so that I wouldn’t have to return it.

It has been a long while since I got that level of service at Home Depot and it was a pleasant surprise.

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On 1/1/2010 I started the Atkins diet again as a New Year’s resolution to lose weight this year.   I weighed myself and have lost 11 lbs since starting the diet so I’ve been losing a pound per day.   It’s not just the diet though as I go to the gym four to five times per week.    The sinister plan to lose weight has some financial incentives for me.   I’m currently in the process of purchasing a new life insurance policy this year and it is often cheaper to be fit during the examination process as premiums will be lower than if I were just over weight.

It is absolutely amazing to me how the years have just flown by, we purchased a 20 year life insurance policy over 11 years ago when we first got married to protect our kids and there are now less years on that policy ahead than past so I figured it’s time to lock in another new 20 year policy which should carry us till the kids are out of college at which point we really won’t need the policy anymore.

I am hoping this economic mess has made life policies cheaper since no one has any cash to be buying them but that may ultimately end up hurting me since the pool may be smaller.  In any event, I want to maximize the value of the policy by being fit.   I hope to buy that new policy sometime in the summer so I have a few more months to lose some more pounds.

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My wife happened to arrive at Wal-mart on the 31st to pick up some last minute items for a party (New Years) and she reported to me that it was a total mad house.  She was waiting in line getting a bit frustrated when another cashier opened another check out line and signaled her to come over.   My wife asked why it was so busy that day and inquired if it was due to the fact that it was New Years eve and people were buying stuff and the cashier said no that it was always like that on the 15th or 31st (or 1st) of the month because that’s either when people got paid or when the state released funds to the public on public assistance.

“Don’t ever come here on the 15th or 31st if you don’t have to” is what the cashier’s advice was for a more enjoyable store visit.   The story sounded eeriely similar to my own experience of many years ago so I searched my archives and lo and behold!  As soon as my wife told me this story I wondered if they’ve finally taken my advice from TWO YEARS AGO!

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Yeah I’m a bit early but it’s going to be a long weekend and I may not be online the next few days so have a great 2010!

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Merry Christmas!

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As I stated a few days ago, my first MBA semester is over and I’m still contemplating what I will do next.   This semester I had a mixed bag of professors: one really great one and one marginally deficient on so many levels.   I do plan on taking two more classes next semester and was trying to figure out which professors to take for my classes.   I asked some of my classmates and they said the choice was fairly limited but most of them had choice words about who NOT to take for a particular class.

I thought I had read a story a few years ago about a new startup that would rate professors so I googled it and came upon www.RateMyProfessors.com and lo and behold I found almost every professor for my university listed in that website.    I checked my current two professors and lo and behold, the EXACT sentiments I had about the two professors were listed on the site:  One a complete bonehead loser, the other an undisputed diamond!

So considering the website reviews were perfectly in line with mine, I searched for next semesters professors and it looks like I will have a repeat of this semester: one golden professor and one less than stellar professor.   As you may be aware, at the end of each semester students are asked to fill out a survey form on what they thought of the class and professor.  What you may not know is that almost no universities release these surveys to the students and I couldn’t figure out why but then it all made sense.   Universities have little incentive to provide good professors because they cost more money!

Fortunately, the free market comes to the rescue, as in most instances, and RateMyProfessor is a god send.   While my choices are extremely limited for next semester, I plan on using it as a guide from now on and I encourage any college student out there that wants to get some value for their money check out the website!

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Good grief….I’m done with the first semester of my MBA program and it was relatively uneventful.   I seriously underestimated the time commitment going back to school would be and I’m going to go one more semester before I make a final decision about finishing.   The key problem is that I am wasting a great deal of time on pointless papers, “group” projects  and tired academic rhetoric from quasi-intellectual-never-worked-in-a-real-job professors!

The group projects probably bother me the most because there is ALWAYS a lazy ass person that doesn’t do their part for the project so everyone else picks up the slack.  The problem with academic projects is that you can NEVER fire someone for their laziness or incompetence!

I hope to return to writing a few posts over the next few days and concentrate on a couple of other projects while I’m on school-vacation but I’ve already started reading the texts for next semester class because of my heavy workload.

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