Who's the victim here?

A YouTube clip that is causing controversy across the UK. You may have seen it, I hadn't. Until we landed yesterday I'd no idea it even existed. A student on a train in Scotland with the wrong ticket is ordered off by a conductor who is old enough to be his grandfather. Said student verbally abuses both the conductor and the other passengers in that carriage until a big chap steps in asks the conductor if he needs help with the problem and when the conductor says yes puts the kid off the train. After he does this he gets a round of applause from the other commuters. You cannot see the student's face and what should've happened is that the unnamed student learned a valuable lesson and the public got to realize that we can stand up for ourselves and others. What actually happened is this. The student revealed himself to be 19 year old Sam Main (remember that HR departments this little charmer will be looking for a job once he's graduated) and has been photographed looking like an angel with a scuffed face, I'm betting he isn't giving the money he gets from the interviews to any good causes. He loftily admits that he was out of order with the verbal abuse but says that he shouldn't have been thrown off the train especially by a member of the public. Seeing as the conductor couldn't have lifted a bag of sugar let alone an abusive 19 year old kid methinks he doth protest too much. And the have a go commuter? He has been charged with assault. Oh and the conductor is now under investigation. So here's the message loud and clear, don't interfere, standing up for your fellow man will get you a criminal record.

Who threatens Santa Claus?

A British teenager instead of writing a letter to Santa, has sent him an ultimatum. Give me the presents or Santa gets it (and I'll cook his reindeer). The little charmer (I'm being sarcastic here spoilt little brat would be far more appropriate) has a long list including the real Justin Bieber she is quoted as saying 'I don't see any problem with the letter, I want all of these things and I don't see why I shouldn't get them.'

 

Her mother says that she's going to try and get most of the things on her spoilt little kid's list. I don't know about you but I have two huge problems with this.

Firstly, she's thirteen! and still thinks that Santa exists and second and worst of all, her mother is indulging behaviour that will carry on into adulthood. What the kid needs is a good slap and no Christmas presents, instead she gets publicity in a national newspaper. If I could be a fly on the wall at their house on Christmas morning the meltdown when she doesn't get what she wants is going to be spectacular!

Here's the link to the article.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073907/Christmas-list-Spoilt-girl-13-demands-presents-says-Santa-Claus-die.html

Your bargain or your life?

Ah Black Friday. Every year I think to myself, should I do it. I mean get up at 3am and queue in the freezing cold. Think of the money I'll save. But here's the truth, I am a lazy shopper and I shop local not big box and at 3am the only place I'm going to be is in bed. Looking at what happened over the weekend my opinion of 'the running of the bargaineers' still hasn't changed. The woman who pepper-sprayed a crowd to get her greedy little paws on an Xbox, the grandfather who may - or may not have been shoplifting but was brought to the ground by a zealot police officer who tackled him as if he was a suicide bomber and slammed him face first into the concrete floor. And the poor guy who had a heart attack and died, people just stepped over him. Also when they put up those lists of the worlds deadliest jobs, you would think the poor sap who has to open the doors of any store on Black Friday would get a mention. Bargains are material possessions, I prefer to enjoy Christmas with my family not in an emergency room.

What do the 99% and the Arab spring have in common?

My what short memories we have.  Arab Spring - peaceful sit-in protests in the middle east that led to a lot of changes, people died, some dictators were removed, the sheer will of the people did this.  Now cut to Occupy Wall Street, peaceful (mostly) protests all around the US (Salt Lake has an 'occupy' protest down in Pioneer Park) and in many cities around the world.  Our citizens saying that they've had enough of the culture of corruption that the banks have been getting away with for years.  Even after we bailed them out (remember that - your tax dollars paid for it) they're back to their old ways.  And when we try and do something about it - the police are ordered to break up these camps using force.  Laws are rushed through local government to rid us of this public nuisance.  These 'occupiers' are from every walk of life and they are expressing their discontent in the only public way they can.  They can't bring down these banks or large investment houses only the super rich can dismantle their little eyrie and why would they want to do that?

And what do we give these (mostly) peaceful demonstrators for their trouble?  Violence. Demonstrator Scott Olsen - an Iraq war veteran , 24 years old. He survives fighting for US freedom and he gets a fractured skull courtesy of a smoke grenade from the Oakland police force.  Using excessive force on your citizens here at home makes you look like a bunch of bullies. And unlike middle eastern countries where refusing to obey an order meant you could be shot, if the police refused to take these orders they would only lose their jobs not their lives and that would be a sign that the 1% were losing ground. Taking away the generators the NY protesters are using for warmth because they constitute a 'fire hazzard' also smacks of the 'the man' sticking it to us. Occupy Wall Street is a way for people to express their discontent with everything that's gone wrong in this country.  A safety valve if you will.  And neither negative media coverage, nor dismissive politicians have managed to put this upstart movement to bed - the protesters say they are in it for the long haul.  Six weeks in they've no clear message, they don't have an agenda, they're all ages, all races but they are still occupying.

There are those who read those post and will assume I'm a democrat.  Guess what I don't support any political party, the left is wet, the right is so far right that if we moved them back in time to Berlin in 1933 they'd fit right in.  Moderates are few and far between, if I could find one I would support them.  Oh and speaking of history, you might want to look up that time the French 99% turned on the 1%.  They skipped the peaceful protest - it wasn't pretty.

Why don't we notice small amounts going missing from our bank accounts?

You'd think with all the tools we have at our disposal to monitor our bank accounts that this wouldn't be allowed to happen.  I check my bank accounts regularly and I completely missed the $5.10 withdrawal by Witifile but my bank (thank goodness) didn't.  It's not a huge amount in fact its so small that lumped in with all the other transactions I just assumed it was meant to be there.

Once the bank had alerted me I started to look into Witifile and found I'm not the only one.  Somehow they've gotten hold of a bunch of card numbers and debited that small amount from each one.  If you times $5.10 by millions suddenly its not such a small amount any more.  The moral of this post is, check your bank account and if you don't recognize a transaction call the bank, they will be able to tell you more and dispute the charge if necessary and unlike me keep all your receipts until the bank has put them through which I will be doing from now on.

Now I'm stuck with a dead debit card until my new one arrives.

Since when is it okay to steal?

I know we are in a down economy, I know that people have to make ends meet but I cannot get my head around stealing books.  I mean why? Why would you do that.  Get in the queue at the library, don't come to a small business and steal the inventory.  Of course this person isn't going to steal from a chain, they have cameras everywhere and they prosecute shoplifters.  We are booksellers not store detectives I have no authority to challenge a customer even though I followed said customer to the cash desk and the book was still in evidence and suddenly it wasn't.  I even asked if that customer was ready to buy the book I'd seen in a hand only moments earlier. I was told that the book had already been put back.  Did I say 'liar' of course not.  The thing that gets me is that I can't prove anything was stolen, bookfairs mean our inventory is spread all over the valley at the moment.

Makes me mad.

Also makes me miss our manager at the local newsagents in Storrington.  She watched a kid thieving with such sleight of hand that we two at the counter knew he was taking stuff but couldn't catch him in the act.  She had the security camera footage and she had a temper. She came flying down from the upstairs flat, grabbed the kid by his ankles and shook and you would not believe how much stock fell out.  Then she righted him, told him he was 'barred' and his mother would be seeing the footage along with the local policeman if he dared set foot in the shop again.  He never did.

Of course that wouldn't work for the bookstore because we are welcoming in honest fellow bookworms...

Where are my manners?

You aren't born with manners, as a baby the first words are more likely to be mamma or go goo than 'please' or 'thank you' (If you're first words were please or thank you consider yourself a child prodigy)  Parents teach kids manners, if they don't their kids learn by copying the other kids in the playground.  To be honest I was dragged up pretty well but there was a stage where my manners were sadly lacking.  It is very rude to swear and when I worked for the civil service it was a way for staff to let off steam, I even learned to swear in Dutch - which ticked off my manager no end because she couldn't tell if I was swearing or not.  Since most of my jobs - except that one - involved a degree of interaction with the public I'm sensitive to bad manners and at the moment we're not doing the next generation any favours. 

Take this morning, standing in a queue at the post office.  Mothers on cell-phones ignoring their kids, people pushing into the queue to get forms for various things, in one case the guy was so keen he stood on the foot of the woman in front of me, a woman who was so interested in her cell-phone conversation that she was ignoring the questions of the clerk trying to serve her. With our busy and increasingly isolated lives we get less and less chances to talk to real people.  Good manners cost nothing so the next time you're out and about turn off your cell phone and turn on a smile, you might make someone's day.

(I'm always polite to our customers, I've come to know a lot of the regulars by name.  We do our best to make everyone who walks through the door feel welcome.)