THE PRE EMPLOYMENT DRUG SCREEN

or....ODE TO A PISS TEST!

OK BIG COMPANIES LISTEN UP, I CAN SAVE YOU MILLIONS!!

Within the past year, I have taken 4 pre employment drug screens, and if you haven't taken one of these lately or never, let me fill you in on the wonderful experience....

First of all, you head to some random office building on some random floor, and for the most part these offices are poorly noticeable and I can only wonder why that is, then the fun begins, when you walk in no one is at the window (if there is a window) and usually there are several people sitting around who look at you like you're from another planet, now seeing I have done this 4 times, I know you SIGN IN and then wait for your name to be called, it's fairly easy and pretty intuitive to figure this kind of thing out, yet 95 percent of people that walk in don't get it, and God forbid anyone sitting around help you out on this fact, it's like they want to laugh at you for the same thing they just went through, apparently it's an unwritten rule, so on my last trip to piss test control, there was a line just to get in the door, basically because I guy was standing at the sign in counter waiting for someone to acknowledge him .... too funny.

It took exactly one hour to sign in and have my named called, of course from here the woman has the lines down pat on what to say, empty the contents of your pockets into this lock box, lock the box, take the key, no you keep the key, take this cup and pee in it, do NOT flush the toilet if you flush the toilet we start over (like I can pee on command that quickly) - it's at this point I should note that someone came out from the back and started pounding a ton of water and staring out the window, I was thinking he might have had stage fright, but now I wonder if the village idiot flushed - you can't blame the guy it's embedded in our brains to flush, heck I almost did it too ... I did say almost ....

OK, so of course I was pounding water all morning so I had no issue filling the cup, to which the woman said I only had to go to the line and ended up dumping most of it out ... hey I was proud of that come on !!! I should have peed everywhere in that damn bathroom, ladies I have no clue how you do it, you have to get it all over your hands, really how do you hold that cup in the right place and aim??? hold that thought.

At this point you get to wash your hands, initial the vials that in fact you just peed in, and get out.

This is when I asked the woman "I bet at night you say these lines in your sleep" which to she replied "GOD YES" and that really broke the ice, she was a machine until then, at that point we started to BS for about 5 minutes until I finally said "well I better get going" - damn I might still be there talking to her if I didn't cut it off .... poor woman. I wonder if these folks even have medical backgrounds ...

So here is where my "idea" on saving companies millions comes into place.

Do you ever wonder how there is probably a couple of people where you work that you swear has to be either stoned while they work or a stoner when they are not, it's not hard to spot, hey Joe what did you do this weekend? "oh man I don't even remember, woo hoo!!!" yeah OK have another joint, but hey we had to take a pee test to work here, well it's pretty much a breeze to pass a piss test these days, just go to "potspace" .com - yes like myspace but for stoners, there are several articles out there on how to pass a piss test amongst other things, so basically that test is worthless.

So there are two types of folks out there, those who will beat the test and those of us who are nice and clean, SO WHY DO COMPANIES SPEND MILLIONS ON THESE TESTS? I mean think about it, these med tox type labs must charge at least $100-200 bucks a pop to initiate these tests, times all of the folks tested, this can add up, HERE"S WHAT COMPANIES SHOULD DO....

Instead of having a pre employment test, what you should do is just talk of a random test at work, and let's say you REALLY screw something up, you know miss a comma and cost your company a few hundred grand, or you take a company car for a swim, whatever it might be, HEY THEN you might be required to go get tested within 24 hours or you're fired, period, make them sign that release before they start ... you put the fear of GOD in them, and you save millions in pre employment crap that is ineffective in what you are trying to do anyway. Is the whole random testing or testing if we think you're stoned policy legal? You're damn right it is, think about a job you've had where you SWEAR some of your co workers are tweaking ... you only wish you could test them. My current job that involves going in to airplanes and cockpits and not driving vehicles into the sides of airplanes ... if they think you are stoned or drunk or whatever, they can call security over and you go right to the pisser .... and yes we have fired folks on the spot for coming to work wacked out, I haven't seen it but I wish I had .....

So there you go big companies, stop the madness, it costs all of us wasted time and money, I can never get that hour back and I can't charge you for it either.

OK kids, stay clean, have a good night! :0)

HOW CLEAN IS YOUR AIRPLANE?

October 4 2010

And now for something completely different.

Ever wonder how clean is the airplane that you are traveling on is? Well, let me tell you what one company does every night to clean their planes.

At Sun Country Airlines, every evening of the week a group of cleaners that ranges from 10-20 people clean, vacuum, disinfect and deodorize every airplane they own. From the front to the back, they clean the following;

Cockpits

Bathrooms

Galleys

Overhead Bins

Seats

Seat Pockets

Floors

They change out the blankets, clean the gum off the floors, change the head rest cloths and pillow blankets, every night.

And every night one or two planes get something called an "extensive" which is just what it sounds like, they break out the heavy duty carpet steamers, or steam cleaners and they get down and dirty. Maybe you are asking yourself why they take such pride in what they do? Well first of all they are actual employees of Sun Country, a lot of these other airlines contract cleaning out, does that make a difference? Well it's pride if you ask me, some of these folks have been through a lot with the airline being in bankruptcy and as of this posting I think they are finally in the clear, everyone I have met at Sun Country has been friendly and courteous.

I think if people knew what they did every night to every plane you would should feel way more comfortable about how clean the plane you're flying in is. They should really advertise this, except I don't think they really do a lot of advertising.

So hats off to Sun Country! By the way you might be asking yourself how I know all of this? Well I know all of this because I clean planes at Sun Country :0)

THE RECESSION IS OVER???? WHO ARE WE KIDDING!!

SEPTEMBER 28TH 2010

Well I've been doing this blog for 6 months now, or at least close enough to 6 months so happy anniversary to me.

Let's review what I have done in 6 months .....

Job Interviews - 5

Jobs - 2 (see Car Salesman Entry)

Currently - working part time with no benefits for $10 an hour overnights, barely making my mortgage, car payment and insurance, selling stuff to help pay for the aforementioned, does anyone need a Wii? Why I didn't land those other jobs? Well I wish I knew, just got the whole, we are moving forward with other candidates with more experience, and that could be entirely true, it's still a buyers market out there, if I have 6 years of experience in something there is probably 3 guys with 10-15 years experience in that same area.

Still looking for that next career move, still hitting the job sites, the social networking avenue and all that good stuff.

So now that we got all that stuff out of the way, let's talk about the recession.

According to National Bureau of Economic Research or Idiots for short, the recession is over and it's been over for about a year, I am not sure what they are smoking but OK let's run with this.

Their factors are GDP, UNEMPLOYMENT and personal income figures and probably the fact that the government hasn't had to bail a company or a whole industry out for a few months now. And they are correct, unemployment has lowered in the last few months albeit at a snails pace, and we are talking tenths of a percent, and GDP has gone up, again slightly. Domestic output is up, rail and trucking is up, and it's all good.

Now let's get into the nuts and bolts here, yes many factors are up, but big companies are just doing more with less workers and bleeding their people for all of they are worth, how many of us know someone who is actually happy with what they are doing? I know of one, maybe two tops out of the hundreds of people I know. Companies have stopped paying bonuses and giving raises and if you don't like it you can leave because they have a hundred people lined up to do your job. Sure some companies are hiring, but they are hiring on a "temp to hire" basis or "part time" even if you work 40 hours that's how they get away without paying you benefits, trust me it's out there.

At one of my job interviews, the HR rep told me they had over a 100 applications for this position, I was honored just to get an interview. That's 100 people either not happy with what they are doing now or unemployed .... so there.

I read in the local paper this weekend that all of these companies are hoarding their cash, Best Buy my lovely past employer apparently has 845 million bucks in the bank, yet they've laid off thousands of people in the past few years, I am not sure what they plan on doing with that money, I can probably find out :0)

An interesting excerpt from Sunday's Star Tribune "Holding on to their money" article ....

• Minnesota's Roughly 100 significant public companies are sitting on $139 Billion in cash.....that's enough to pay more than 772,000 Minnesotans $60,000 a year for 3 years.

Currently the unemployment rate in MN is 7% according to Bureau of Labor, and that equates to about 370,000 people unemployed, makes the above number look even more interesting doesn't it?

PS - the new employment numbers come out tomorrow, so we shall see if the stock market reacts favorable or negatively to those numbers, and if the idiots still think the recession is over.

On the housing front, foreclosures are ugly, homelessness and child homelessness in MN is alarming, folks who have jobs but can't afford their mortgages as at an alarming rate.

The new census data that came out today*

• Of households that earn 75,000 a year or less, 48% of them are what are considered "cost burdened" meaning they can't really afford their house, and paying more than 30% of their wage monthly to live where they are (mortgage, insurance, utilities, rent, etc).

*America Community Service Data

Wow, almost HALF of Minnesotans, yikes! And I'd kill to make 75K right now ... no don't send me hit man contracts ... that's was a figure of speech.

Last quarter there were 6,300 foreclosures in Minnesota, according the Sheriff's offices, that's one quarter and that's just in Minnesota.

Should we even go into education? I think "Waiting for Superman" is taking care of that for me thank you.

I know someone who is a teacher, a single mother, getting barely any child support, who just had to quit her job because she didn't even make enough money to pay for day care, wow, maybe I'm glad I don't have kids.

I hate to post the doom and gloom here, but when I hear idiots who obviously have jobs on TV saying the recession is over, I'd like to personally invite them into my life for a week or two.

OK, enough venting for one day, but can you really say the recession is over, or depression if you ask me.

Recession over? HARDLY.

Perception Vs Reality - or how my old job seems to be affecting my search for a new job....

WED SEPT 15TH 2010

Well folks, here it is, I've been wracking my brain on whether to "go there" with this next blog, but since my supposed past has now apparently affected my opportunity at future employment, let's go there.

It has been a whopping year and a half now since I have worked at the world's largest consumer electronics retailer (you know who you are), and as most of you know who have read this blog, I've had some hardships in trying to land that next career role, I've had a few interviews but nothing has landed yet, it's a buyers market out there right now and one of the roles I interviewed for received over a 100 resumes for that position, yep it's ugly out there.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an opportunity to land a position that was well within my skill set, and had a couple of other folks even forward me the job opportunity, it was a contracting role and that's fine with me, it would get me back in the game, I had high hopes.

I found out that I was not granted consideration for the role due to an apparent "perception" that someone at this company has about me and my performance at my previous role at my former company. Now the person that voiced this perception is no one I even know, and granted it's a small world and some people will travel from company to company and at this point I am sure that I know or know of people at many of the big companies around town, but to have someone actually bring this up who again doesn't even know me, doesn't know what I have been through, and obviously believes something he heard from someone else (hey maybe he doesn't even have the right person!) .... well let's just say it's been deflating.

Now I decided to go back through my notes at my previous employer, hmm let's see, my performance EVERY YEAR was at an "above expectations" level, and I also have a list of 100 people (yes that's not a typo) 100 people who have told me and will attest to the fact that I was a complete partner when working with them, not to mention I have had several folks come forward and offer letters of recommendation or post something on Linked IN (which frankly I don't think does anything but hey that's a whole different blog). Now I am not one to toot my own horn, which even makes the above 'perception' even more puzzling.

So if my issues were not performance related which I doubt they were, maybe to someone it was personal...

I think my success at my former employer possibly ticked some people off, I can't help that in the time I worked there the Home Theater department kept the lights on for the company, and the project I was the PM on was the company focus and I got a lot of the resources.
It was a real thrill to be working on something that made a real difference for the stores, giving them the environment they needed to be successful, and of course that afforded me some praise and accolades.

Sure I was talking to VP's, SVP's and the like on a weekly basis, but I never used that clout to my advantage, but my "perception" is that it made some people spiteful and jealous which is too bad, but would also explain some things.

Every project I ever worked on was by the book, in my 5+ years as a project/program manager, our process and how we got things done changed constantly, besides the green belt project (and then black belt project) that defined my role, I dealt with constant new merchandising initiatives, a new "pipeline" procedure (that even the champions of this procedure were not sure how it was supposed to work) and a giant work stoppage of implementation of all in store projects while folks figured out what was happening and why, while all the time we had merchants screaming at us to put in projects or they would lose funding, it became a "who barks the loudest gets their project done" environment. Sadly the management team had their own agendas so they did not do much to support, I can't really blame them they were miserable too (2 of the 3 senior managers in the department I was in have moved on, including over half of the team itself).
Sadly the only loser in this game was the stores and ultimately the customer, the retail stores have no faith in corporate and can't you blame them, I didn't.

So there you go, I went there, it is what it is, I did my tour of duty and now I am trying to move on with my life, it's sad that someone apparently still has a problem with MY life.

MY LIFE AS A CAR SALESMAN ....

TUESDAY SEPT 7TH 2010

Well we gave it a shot ....

For the last 3 weeks plus, I gave the world of car sales a shot, let me tell you everything you have heard about the business is in fact true. Sadly the job itself was fine, folks would come in and ask questions, and I would answer them, we would go for test drives and people would ask you the usual "do you have this in red?" or "do you have one with leather" and stuff like that, and then people would get something called sticker shock and freak out. What I can take away from this experience is 3 things ....

1. People are idiots - so a guy walks in and looks at a brand new Tahoe, this is a 40k plus vehicle, he wants to put no money down and wants to know what his monthly payments would be, well most of us can do the math, it's gonna be around 700 a month even if his credit is good which affects his interest rate, he just about has a heart attack, he was thinking it would be more like 400 a month, well that won't get him a new Tahoe ... I tried to put him in something more in his range which was more like 28k - but nothing tickled his fancy, frankly I think he was depressed after not being able to afford the new Tahoe, and so was I for wasting about 2 hours working with him for nothing.

Maybe this is where I stop to say I worked at a "one price" store, meaning no haggling or negotiations, what you see on the sticker is what your price is .... I can't believe how many people after I told them that would still ask me what the best price was or could I go lower .... this goes back to point number 1 above. We were also not on commission, so it didn't matter what I sold you I'd make the same money, but I still had to sell SOMETHING to make money, and I didn't sell a thing (OK I sold one car to a friend but that doesn't count).

I could tell you about 100 more stories but I won't, they are funny and yet depressing at the same time, let's just sum it up by saying most people WANT to own a new car, and WANT to buy a new car but frankly most people can't afford it and most leave depressed and tell me a line like "I have to go talk to my wife" or "I have to go to work but Ill be back after" so they leave and they don't come back, it is what it is.

2. Sleazy old school car salesman still exist - now don't get me wrong most of these morons are gone but there are some dinosaurs left and they basically survive by their client lists, we have one guy that probably makes 120k a year and he is our best and sleaziest salesman, but he has been doing this for 24 years and he has a customer database a mile long, and since I started with no database, I had to rely on "fresh ups" meaning new people to the lot for a sale. Even if a customer was there 4 years ago and bought a car from someone else, I would have to split that sale with that person, that's a bunch of crap, they didn't even remember the salespersons name. In the time that I was on the lot, I saw guys run past other guys to talk to customers, even running up to their car to open the door for them, madness! Where I worked they had WAY too many salespeople, there were always about 6 of us standing around playing pocket pool, and that's another reason why I left, I stood outside one day for 12 hours and talked to one person, this store has no foot traffic, and there it is, not to mention most of the old geezers there were down right rude, seriously it was everything you hear of and more ...

3. I forgot what 3 was, but I think you all get the idea.

So I am no longer a car salesman.

So what's next you may ask yourself? Well tonight I start a new gig, I am working overnights cleaning airplanes for a wonderful little airline called Sun Country based locally. Now I could write a whole other chapter in this blog on the story of this airline, their owner is in jail for a ponzi scheme, they are in bankruptcy, but they are the little engine that could, the folks that work there took huge pay cuts to stick around, and they are finally out of the deep end and everyone I have met at this company are some darn positive and happy it's unbelievable. They really like where they are and what they are doing, well I've drank the Kool Aid so sign me up! DId I mention that after 90 days I can fly anywhere they fly for nothing???

I start tonight, yes overnight, which is cool with me because I can still get things done in the day time if needed like projects or a job interview (yes I am still looking for something in my expertise), and so there you go.

I think we will cut it here for today, the blog is back and I hope you enjoy it!!!

MONDAY AUG 16TH

EPISODE 25 - A NEW HOPE

Well folks here we go. Last week I was pretty quiet because I was training for a new job. Now I am sure you are all going to yell HURRAY!! And yes I am excited, but it's a definite career change but I am going to give it a shot.

I am going to sell cars.

Now I am trying to go where several men have gone before, selling cars or as Jeremy Piven said in a recent movie "I move metal". Some have succeeded and some have failed, oddly enough most folks I have mentioned this to seem to think that I can do well at this "yeah man I can see you selling cars", well come on in and you can see it first hand.

You can make a fair amount of money, and you can make crap, it's up to you. The car dealership where I am working is a "one price" store, meaning there is no negotiation or haggling, which is a good thing, first I don't have to sell you something that makes me more money, so we are here to find you what's right for you, which is good. Secondly we are not paid on commission, which sucks for me but good for you, we get paid on cars sold, you sell cars you make money, you don't, you're out.

So we are going to give it a whirl, I am on a 90 day probationary period and I have a minimum amount of cars I will be required to sell to keep my job, according to management, the required amount can be achieved by any clown with half a clue, ahh great setting myself up for being worse than a no talent ass clown. OK I feel more confident than that but I just wanted to say ass clown in my blog.

So folks there you have it - is it what I want to be doing, no it's not, but hey I know a few people that don't like what they are doing but do it anyway, and hey this could be fun and the best thing I have ever done, the economy seems to be turning around and people usually buy new cars when they can and we are selling a lot of cars!

And so there we are, NOW what can those of you local and reading this can do for me is BUY A CAR FROM ME!! At least if you are looking for a new or pre owned vehicle (we don't say used) - well give me a call, I am working at a Chevy dealer but we have everything from Toyota, Nissan, and all the GM lines, and this store lives for trucks! The number one Chevy dealer in MN, so we got gobs of stuff. So if you're looking or know someone who is or whatever, just give me a shout you know where to find me.

So where does this leave the blog? I am still going to keep the blog going, probably putting weekly entries in here, or maybe excerpts if I have a really funny story about working at the dealership, so keep your eyes open for new blogs!!!

PEACE AND WISH ME LUCK!!

THUR AUG 5th

A quick update

Nothing is new, no news is bad news.

I've got a headache, going to a movie to see if that helps, a funny movie.

I may have a job offer in Phoenix, which is no where near where I live now, a lot of things to ponder ... do I move, do I get someone to live here? Is my girlfriend OK with it? Do I pack the Jeep and go? Do I pack a trailer too ... do I work out some plane tickets in the job offer???

Lots on my mind? I welcome you to share opinions ...