Seriously. Sit down with a copy of The Message and read all the way through Ecclesiastes. It's.....indescribable.

     I’ve always blamed myself for my problems. Seeing knowingly guilty people point the finger at anything, everything, anyone and everyone that offers a plausible alternative to their own their own failures greatly upsets me. My problems stem from choices I’ve made in the past that were based either on impatience or naivety. Simply put, I am too quick to trust the wrong people, and when I do I live with it as if it’s no big deal, often as if I did it on purpose or with good intentions. Each of the hundreds of terrible decisions I’ve made over the years, however, are like fifty pound weights I carry on my back. The burden of this weight has driven me straight into the ground, but that hasn’t stopped me from adding to it. I need to dump the weight and remove myself from this pit of despair, but I’ve lived in it’s disgusting mire for so long I call it home. I’ve decorated the walls with excuses to make it livable, and I’ve shut myself out of the real world to avoid hearing people tell me I’m in a bad place. I don’t want to leave; this is my home, this is my life, and it always will be unless I make some painful but necessary changes starting now.

Please continue to pray for me, I really need and sincerely appreciate your support. I’ve been on my knees begging the LORD for guidance since my last post, and let me assure you miracles have become of it.

     In recent years I’ve learned a tremendous amount about the responsibilities and financial obligations of family life. When I got my first real job I was living with my parents, my bills totaled a whopping sixty dollars a month, and I was making more money than I knew what to do with. While I may not of known how to make use of it, I was good at getting rid of it quickly. I find it odd that at one point I actually wondered how my bank account could possibly be so far overdrawn given what I was making. It was then that I realized I needed to get a handle on my spending. A fire had been lit under me and the passionate determination I had lasted a week. I got my next paycheck and it was back on the town for a night of food, bowling, pool, and aimless driving for me and all of my friends. On me, of course. But when my fast paced lifestyle came into the view of the people I had been hiding it from, I became terribly ashamed. The weight of my irresponsible lifestyle came crashing down on me, and I ran. Not from the guilt, or the shame, but from the consequences. I figured if I could just put myself into a situation that required, neigh demanded responsibility and self-control, any problems I had caused for myself would eventually fix themselves out of necessity. I’ve spent the last few years running from, avoiding, delaying, procrastinating responsibility, and I have become absolutely exhausted inside and out. Well I’m tired of running. Change happens now.

Pray for me. The decisions I make in the coming years will tremendously affect the rest of my life, and I will need the LORD’s guidance more than anything.

I was the light
I was the quiet heart
I was the place we used to dwell
And when the cold would tear your life apart,
I was the warmth that you had felt
What have I become?
Thoughts like shadows swelling through my mind
What have I become?
Something else inside...
Is driving nails into my soul
Angels from my door
Driving nails into my soul
Something inside...
I was the blood inside your broken heart
I was the stone that you had held
I close my eyes
Search for you
Retracing every step

©2010 Demon Hunter (Myspace)

Any thoughts? I like it.

     I’ve worked for several companies over the years, mostly part-time, and all but two of them have survived the test of time. The first company I had the opportunity to work at was McDonald’s. Although one might not consider a statement such as “Welcome to McDonald’s, can I take your order please?” as one of profession, McDonald’s is a huge corporation that has been around for many, many years. My second job, which I started after my first year of college, had been a worldwide leader in the plastics manufacturing business for almost 40 years by the time I started. Working at a company that has been around through good times and bad and has withstood the test of time is a truly wonderful experience. Age-old companies can afford better wages, salaries and benefits packages, and generally have the right people in the right places with the right amount of specific work experience to solve almost any problems that may arise.

     Although young companies express a great deal of positivity and enthusiasm, they really don’t have the overall experience needed to handle unusual or unpredictable challenges that may arise, and most often have yet to hire the right people to fill any important positions they may have. The effectiveness of a company’s employees determines the company’s success. Hiring the wrong people into the positions that most affect the company as a whole is a recipe for disaster. A younger company usually doesn’t have the money to hire someone who fit’s the requirements exactly right off the bat, but a good business starts off by hiring the most positive and most enthusiastic people for their most influential positions. These people are respectable, fun to work with, quick and eager to learn and have the qualities necessary to keep moral and work ethic among the laborers high enough to keep the company moving in the right direction.

     As an current employee of a younger, smaller company, I get to experience the disastrous effects of both having the wrong people working in the wrong places and of all the new and unforeseen problems and challenges that arise. When questions arise, it takes a research and development team a few weeks to formulate an answer. When an employee shows complete incompetence and disregard toward his or her duties and toward company policy, even over an extended period of time, they continue to waste their money paying him/her. When the sales orders stop coming they keep production running “full speed ahead.” I could go on and on about how my employer is setting itself up for disaster, but I digress.

     My point is that I will never voluntarily work for a smaller/younger company again, unless the situation demands it. I’m at my current job because I was laid off from my last job when the economy tanked, and this job was the first to fall into my lap. I am grateful I have a job, and I do my best at it with what I have, but my loyalty will always be with companies who can afford good employee pay and benefits, and who know what their doing and how to do it in any given circumstance.

Do you work for a big company or a small one? Do you like your job or hate it? Why?

     On May 22nd of 2009, President Obama signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (Credit CARD) Act of 2009. It wasn’t until a few days ago that I heard about it, and as a part of the 40% of Americans who carry a balance on at least one credit card the Credit CARD Act affects me directly. I found out about it when last week I received an email from Newegg.com Preferred Account which stated that changes had been made both to my statement and to their account management website. It was a bunch of legal jargon, but glancing through it peaked my interest (no pun intended).

     In a statement, President Obama said “With this new law, consumers will have the strong and reliable protections they deserve.  We will continue to press for reform that is built on transparency, accountability, and mutual responsibility.” But what is the Credit CARD Act exactly, and how does it affect us card carrying debtors? No worries, the effects of the act on consumers are as good as they are plentiful. I’ll outline a few of the benefits I find pleasing, and I’ll provide a link to the full text of the act, if you’re still interested.

The Best Parts of the Act (If you ask me):

1. It’s the end of late fee traps – Institutions will have to give card holders a reasonable time to pay the monthly bill – at least 21 calendar days from time of mailing. There’s nothing I hate more than a Sunday due date. Come on people, the bank’s not open and the mail doesn’t come on Sundays! A Sunday due date means I have to send my payment out the preceding Thursday. I get paid via direct deposit on Thursdays, and my bills always go through before my paycheck, which means any amounts due on Sunday could potentially take my account into the red for a solid 4 hours (costing me $32) before my paycheck goes through when the bank opens.
2. Requires Opt-In to Over-Limit Fees – Brilliant. Now if my credit card is $30 short of the limit and I run it for $30.01, the card will be declined rather than charged an additional $40!
3. Plain Sight /Plain Language Disclosures – Credit card companies are now required to put on their statements how long it would take for the card holder to pay off the balance should the minimum payment be made each month, and how much in interest it would cost them. It also requires that the statement show how much per month, how much in interest, and how much total would be paid should the balance be covered in 36 months. This would’ve been helpful two years ago, although I should’ve taken the initiative to sit down and do the math. I paid the minimum payment every month for two years on one of my credit cards, and the balance went nowhere. $70 being the minimum payment, well, you do the math. That’s a lot of money wasted, and the 21.99% APY interest rate makes the amount wasted even higher. With this law I saw that to pay off my current balance paying only the minimum balance would take me 26 years and would cost me more than my credit limit in interest alone! Wow! I’m really hoping that this feature of the act will help a lot of people realize the problem they’re creating for themselves by paying only the minimum payment.

Here’s the link to the full text: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Fact-Sheet-Reforms-to-Protect-American-Credit-Card-Holders/

I’m excited to see how this will effect the American public, but from my point of view I think it’ll be nothing but good. What do you think?

     Tracy's behavior is widely disliked by every employee working under him. As an illustration of the effect his behavior has on the people around him, I will tell you the stories of Daniel and David. Daniel and I started as full time employees on February 2nd, 2009. While I was hired for having warehouse and SAP experience, Daniel had a vast amount of work related work experience, and was very knowledgeable on the subjects of working processes, procedures, and management skills. He worked very closely with Tracy from the day he started and over about a month’s time he started to question Tracy’s work ethic, and eventually became so perturbed (a word he loved to use) at how Tracy said one thing and did another, told him to complete a task one way and later chastised him for doing it wrong, and never provided him the training necessary to do his job well. Daniel and I spent time together few times a week after and outside of work, and it was during this time that Daniel painted an elaborate picture of Tracy’s behavior and lack of work ethic which astounded me. After hearing and understanding everything Daniel had to say, I did my best to avoid Tracy by taking my questions and concerns directly to the people from which they arose. Unfortunately Tracy’s lack of work ethic didn’t show any signs of improvement over the course of Daniel’s first six months as an employee, and he made the decision to move on to bigger and better things.

     When Daniel resigned, David took over his position temporarily while Tracy looked around for a full time replacement. A month and a half into David’s office time, he too began coming to me with the exact same stories and frustrations about Tracy that Daniel used to speak of. I found this rather interesting, and I offered my help in training David in on everything Daniel had shown me. David’s abilities vastly improved over the course of our time working together, but Tracy eventually frustrated him enough that David also resigned. I know this to be true because David and I talked about Tracy often, and at one point David mentioned that he was looking around for other jobs in hopes that he could “work under someone who gave a damn.” His resignation came on short notice when his previous employer (from which he’d been laid off) called him back into work. It was at this point that I took over the position Daniel and David once held, and began spending the day in close proximity to Tracy and the other warehouse supervisors and managers.

     After listening closely to everything Daniel and David had to say about Tracy for eight months, I felt I had some idea of what to expect from Tracy. Given the ridiculousness of the behavior they described, I was curious to find out if their stories were completely true through first hand experience. As much as I had curiously observed Tracy’s every move from the moment Daniel came forward and said something, I had done well avoiding him as much as possible and hadn’t had the opportunity for in-depth observation. After the first few weeks of my in-office experience, however, I saw everything I had been told come to life.

     Tracy is a very laid back person. His philosophies are “As human beings, we all make mistakes; there’s nothing we can do about it” and “It’s not about who made the mistake or pointing the finger, it’s about addressing the problems that occur as a team.” As true as these ideologies are, there is a difference between making common mistakes now and then and expressing total indifference toward company policies, procedures, and guidelines. Since the implementation of our current warehouse policies and procedures back on January 1st of 2009, a number of warehouse (and production) employees have crossed the line of making common and understandable mistakes into the bounds of pure indifference toward warehouse procedures. This has caused a great amount of stress on both the warehouse employees who follow through with the procedures in place and on the company itself because the indifference of one employee doubles the work load of another which leads to overtime that could have been avoided. These are not facts that take a great deal of knowledge or experience in business to know or understand, but they are fundamentally important.

     I’ve mentioned that Daniel, David and I have been outrageously frustrated by Tracy’s lack of work ethic and/or laziness, but I haven’t mentioned any specifics. The specifics are as high in diversity as they are in number so I won’t list everything, but I will touch on some of the more prominent concerns I have.

1. Private Phone Calls – Tracy spends at least 6 hours a day on the phone with his wife, or a customer service representative from a company who’s service has recently disappointed him. At one point I was in the office with Tracy and the shipping and receiving supervisors and for several hours we listened to him argue with Best Buy customer service about how they needed to fix and/or replace his TV. A few weeks ago True Green lawn care called him on his cell phone with a survey, and he complained for several hours about his disappointment with their poor service as well.

2. Forwarded Emails – When Tracy is not on the phone, he’s browsing through a wide variety of forwarded emails that are sent his work email address. Some are long and detailed, some are short, some include pictures, and some include videos. As close as I can estimate, Tracy spends around one to two hours a day reading forwarded emails, and maybe 10 or 15 minutes work related emails a day. Any labor these work related emails request always get’s passed on to me, or another employee, no matter how available or how busy the chosen employee may be.

3. Work Avoidance – As I mentioned in my last statement, any work Tracy receives over email get’s passed on to the people who work for him. If a bin stock appears incorrect, Tracy will print it off, and have 10 people (whether or not they’re busier with more important things) count it one at a time before he moves forward with whatever it is he’s doing when he could just count it himself once or twice, and save himself and everybody else the time and the trouble. On days when the work load is abnormally heavy Tracy always has an appointment, a sickness, or some sort of prior engagement that makes it necessary for him to leave early. On days with 12 or more production jobs, three or four jobs will be done by 12:30, and at 12:30 three or four jobs will be sitting on my desk, unissued. It is Tracy’s duty to issue the jobs until at least 12:30 at which point the closers take over the task, but he only issues jobs on days when the work load isn't overbearing. On busy days (12+ jobs) and on slow days (2-7 jobs) he doesn’t issue anything. A lot of his work avoidance, I believe, is about accountability. Each SAP user has a login, and virtually every movement a user makes is fully documented under their username in the system’s history. When something that will raise the attention of those working above Tracy’s head, he always, almost without fail, will have me do it instead.

     It is my firm belief, and the belief of many others, that Tracy is unfit for the position he currently holds. It is also my belief that the warehouse and it’s employees will not be able to progress with the rest of the company until this situation is properly addressed. Good work flow is about having the right people in the right places. Tracy is a nice guy, but in my humble opinion, he is not the right man for the job.