Your tale seems way over-told to me. When you exaggerate to an extreme degree and make wild and specific claims about the internal workings of the business, where the focus is on an individual that works there, then I have to think that you're probably disgruntled for entirely other reasons that having gotten slow service at the tool counter.
I bought a router set there, and there was no "tool counter," just a customer service island in the tool department, and there is either somebody there, or there isn't. If nobody is at that register, you have to walk to a different register. I understand that is too difficult for some people, and if they can't afford concierge then it is frustrating for them.
Sears has serious problems, but they also have a lot of sales and a lot of revenue, in addition to real estate.
Also, if you go into a Sears to shop, you get normal customer service that is the same uniform customer service you would expect from other stores. They're not driving people away, they don't have empty stores.
Long-term they might be doomed, simply because there are too many box stores for them all to survive in a mail order age. But they also might be the one that survives. Their customers are generally happy shopping there.
I stopped shopping at Radio Shack in the late `90s, back when Amazon was only a bookstore.
The thing is, people who are buying loose parts often have to browse and look at the parts, and compare them, and stand there thinking about which one will work in some project.
And as soon as I walk in the door, they want to "help" me, and after I tell them, "No thanks, I'm just browsing," a second employee, who was in the room when the first one tried, walks up and tries to "help" me, and I respond, "NO thanks" in an irritated voice. Of course I'm irritated, you just freakin' heard me say I don't need "help" and then you walked up and lied to my face by asking a question you already heard me answer. It is offensive to be treated that way. And then a third person walks out of the back, triggered by the door chime, who also asks if I need help. And there is nobody else in the store, so they already know that if nobody is "helping" me, the other two people already asked. At this point, I haven't even found the part I was considering yet, but I'm already angry and leaving.
Stores that don't believe in customer service will die, even when their customers grew up liking them and really really want to give them another chance. I popped back in a few times over the years since, and I always had the same awful experience, and I always walked out without buying anything.
Even when I was still shopping there, they were the first store in town to start trying to demand personal information like name and phone numbers. Once I even had to talk to the manager to make an anonymous cash purchase, because the person at the register hadn't even been trained on what to do when somebody says, "No thank you, cash only." They actually thought they weren't allowed to make the sale!
The only other store I had that sort of experience at was that national woodworking chain store. That was only 2 years ago, and when they said there was no manager available I made them call their regional office to find out that yes, in fact they are allowed to make a cash sale to the general public. They don't seem to be aware that they don't have a cornered market, even if they're the only brick-and-mortar selling some of their items.
Stores should realize, if retail workers are doing something other than assisting the customer with what the customer wants assistance with, they'll get replaced. And the means of replacing them is to not shop at your store.
When your bank decides to rip you off, you lose everything, not just $10.
That said, I'd trust my bank to refund my $10. But I wouldn't trust them to choose my bank account. They want me to "upgrade" to whatever is at the top of their list, they don't care that the options and benefits and risks are different. I trust them to guard my money, but I don't trust them to make good decisions. Any robot they program to make decisions is just going to pass that decision-making through to their programmer.
Whereas the medical team for a surgery, I'm already trusting them with decision-making.
The problem is that you're wrong, the casual form has been in continuous use for over 2000 years in numerous languages, and the medical use for barely over 100. Nobody is redefining anything, they simply have larger vocabularies than you.
from Greek -phobia, from phobos "fear, panic fear, terror, outward show of fear; object of fear or terror," originally "flight" (still the only sense in Homer), but it became the common word for "fear" via the notion of "panic, fright" (cf. phobein "put to flight, frighten"), from PIE root *bhegw- "to run" (cf. Lithuanian begu "to flee;" Old Church Slavonic begu "flight," bezati "to flee, run;" Old Norse bekkr "a stream"). Psychological sense attested by 1895.
Furthermore, when we say homophobic, we do mean that you literally have a deep and irrational pathos that relates to your sexual identity.
Naw, they complained when the got to see Janet Jackson's nipple shield, too. They complained about George Carlin all the time. In 1969, the night after their woodstock show, Jefferson Airplane was on the Dick Cavett show and sang the word fuck (and motherfucker, too). People complained. In the studio version of the song they just mixed those words too low to hear, so that it could be played on the radio.
Conservatives wearing bunched panties and complaining to Big Brother whenever they accidentally get aroused is not some new thing. It has nothing at all to do with the green frog, the orange lizard, or the squirrel riding them.
If you believe somebody to be heterosexual and you use "fag" as a pejorative, of course it means you're being homophobic; but it is the use of the term "fag" as a pejorative that does it, not the part where you're insinuating that a straight guy is gay. That part isn't being hobophobic, it is just being an asshole.
Sex isn't a pejorative. That's the difference between showing them in a sex act, and calling somebody a "fag" as an insult.
You "can" say whatever you want, and you probably are a homophobic asshole. Hopefully that clears it up for you.
The whole claim that it is "homophobic" is silly, because the clear purpose of the joke was to offend Putin because Putin is believed to be homophobic.
If Putin isn't homophobic, then the homosexual nature of it is irrelevant anyways. There is no "phobia" there at all, it just becomes an accusation that they're too close, even personally close.
If somebody wants it to be phobic, it is merely homophobaphobic.
The "thing" was a complaint, which they have to investigate. They got the complaint, they investigated, and they didn't find anything worthy of a fine.
Some people are simply confused about why they were investigating. But if you get the details, it is hard to claim it is bad for the government to investigate complaints about rule violations. They didn't even get it wrong!
The "professional services" have been severely lacking too in last years in dealing with them.
I'd be lacking in the skills to assist you, too. WTF did you even say? Did you say they didn't offer to deal with your TPS reports last year, or did you mean something else?
What environment variable is needed to get DB2 working on Crufty UNIX Flavor 7 version WTF is the same from one year to the next, so it probably wasn't that.
So we've established already that the workplace is hostile depending solely on if you walk in the door, and now you're starting to judge people's looks and call people names. I'm thinking it gets more hostile per minute that you're on-site.
Right, professional services is who the IT guys call when they can't figure it out. They employees you're paying to have look at your problem are engineers, not IT drones.
Professional services, both people are engineers, the one calling for help and the one giving the help.
One teacher was concerned when the software I wrote had Batman-style "POW!" "BANG!" "ZAP!" overlays instead of explosions or blood, or something Normal.
To which I say... "duh ne nu ne nu ne nu ne duh ne nu ne nu ne nu ne BATMAN!"
When my local BBS connected to Fidonet and offered FREE international email, it totally blew my mind! I mean, I could write an email today, and in less than 24 hours it would be in Japan. Like magic.
I don't think you can sue for less than the filing fee, and since you won't have to pay it again you can't claim you'll be harmed by enough to meet the threshold.
A class action could sweep in people who were harmed at the $5 level, but you still need an original plaintiff who was harmed enough to have standing.
The easiest route to a refund would be to stand in front of the FAA for a few months with a sign. If you have a few hundred other people with you, maybe you'll get noticed!
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Your tale seems way over-told to me. When you exaggerate to an extreme degree and make wild and specific claims about the internal workings of the business, where the focus is on an individual that works there, then I have to think that you're probably disgruntled for entirely other reasons that having gotten slow service at the tool counter.
I bought a router set there, and there was no "tool counter," just a customer service island in the tool department, and there is either somebody there, or there isn't. If nobody is at that register, you have to walk to a different register. I understand that is too difficult for some people, and if they can't afford concierge then it is frustrating for them.
Sears has serious problems, but they also have a lot of sales and a lot of revenue, in addition to real estate.
Also, if you go into a Sears to shop, you get normal customer service that is the same uniform customer service you would expect from other stores. They're not driving people away, they don't have empty stores.
Long-term they might be doomed, simply because there are too many box stores for them all to survive in a mail order age. But they also might be the one that survives. Their customers are generally happy shopping there.
I stopped shopping at Radio Shack in the late `90s, back when Amazon was only a bookstore.
The thing is, people who are buying loose parts often have to browse and look at the parts, and compare them, and stand there thinking about which one will work in some project.
And as soon as I walk in the door, they want to "help" me, and after I tell them, "No thanks, I'm just browsing," a second employee, who was in the room when the first one tried, walks up and tries to "help" me, and I respond, "NO thanks" in an irritated voice. Of course I'm irritated, you just freakin' heard me say I don't need "help" and then you walked up and lied to my face by asking a question you already heard me answer. It is offensive to be treated that way. And then a third person walks out of the back, triggered by the door chime, who also asks if I need help. And there is nobody else in the store, so they already know that if nobody is "helping" me, the other two people already asked. At this point, I haven't even found the part I was considering yet, but I'm already angry and leaving.
Stores that don't believe in customer service will die, even when their customers grew up liking them and really really want to give them another chance. I popped back in a few times over the years since, and I always had the same awful experience, and I always walked out without buying anything.
Even when I was still shopping there, they were the first store in town to start trying to demand personal information like name and phone numbers. Once I even had to talk to the manager to make an anonymous cash purchase, because the person at the register hadn't even been trained on what to do when somebody says, "No thank you, cash only." They actually thought they weren't allowed to make the sale!
The only other store I had that sort of experience at was that national woodworking chain store. That was only 2 years ago, and when they said there was no manager available I made them call their regional office to find out that yes, in fact they are allowed to make a cash sale to the general public. They don't seem to be aware that they don't have a cornered market, even if they're the only brick-and-mortar selling some of their items.
Stores should realize, if retail workers are doing something other than assisting the customer with what the customer wants assistance with, they'll get replaced. And the means of replacing them is to not shop at your store.
The UK might not have ever had free speech that you're worried about them losing.
Also, marijuana is more accepted and people are more willing to report it.
When your bank decides to rip you off, you lose everything, not just $10.
That said, I'd trust my bank to refund my $10. But I wouldn't trust them to choose my bank account. They want me to "upgrade" to whatever is at the top of their list, they don't care that the options and benefits and risks are different. I trust them to guard my money, but I don't trust them to make good decisions. Any robot they program to make decisions is just going to pass that decision-making through to their programmer.
Whereas the medical team for a surgery, I'm already trusting them with decision-making.
The problem is that you're wrong, the casual form has been in continuous use for over 2000 years in numerous languages, and the medical use for barely over 100. Nobody is redefining anything, they simply have larger vocabularies than you.
Furthermore, when we say homophobic, we do mean that you literally have a deep and irrational pathos that relates to your sexual identity.
Naw, they complained when the got to see Janet Jackson's nipple shield, too. They complained about George Carlin all the time. In 1969, the night after their woodstock show, Jefferson Airplane was on the Dick Cavett show and sang the word fuck (and motherfucker, too). People complained. In the studio version of the song they just mixed those words too low to hear, so that it could be played on the radio.
Conservatives wearing bunched panties and complaining to Big Brother whenever they accidentally get aroused is not some new thing. It has nothing at all to do with the green frog, the orange lizard, or the squirrel riding them.
If you believe somebody to be heterosexual and you use "fag" as a pejorative, of course it means you're being homophobic; but it is the use of the term "fag" as a pejorative that does it, not the part where you're insinuating that a straight guy is gay. That part isn't being hobophobic, it is just being an asshole.
Sex isn't a pejorative. That's the difference between showing them in a sex act, and calling somebody a "fag" as an insult.
You "can" say whatever you want, and you probably are a homophobic asshole. Hopefully that clears it up for you.
The whole claim that it is "homophobic" is silly, because the clear purpose of the joke was to offend Putin because Putin is believed to be homophobic.
If Putin isn't homophobic, then the homosexual nature of it is irrelevant anyways. There is no "phobia" there at all, it just becomes an accusation that they're too close, even personally close.
If somebody wants it to be phobic, it is merely homophobaphobic.
The "thing" was a complaint, which they have to investigate. They got the complaint, they investigated, and they didn't find anything worthy of a fine.
Some people are simply confused about why they were investigating. But if you get the details, it is hard to claim it is bad for the government to investigate complaints about rule violations. They didn't even get it wrong!
The cock is my family crest, you insensitive clod!
The "professional services" have been severely lacking too in last years in dealing with them.
I'd be lacking in the skills to assist you, too. WTF did you even say? Did you say they didn't offer to deal with your TPS reports last year, or did you mean something else?
What environment variable is needed to get DB2 working on Crufty UNIX Flavor 7 version WTF is the same from one year to the next, so it probably wasn't that.
So we've established already that the workplace is hostile depending solely on if you walk in the door, and now you're starting to judge people's looks and call people names. I'm thinking it gets more hostile per minute that you're on-site.
Since when does a company like IBM that has many times more applicants than positions care about "these days?"
"These days" lots of people still don't care what some kids have to say about it.
If you assume that IBM has an average career length of a handful of years, that's entirely your own problem.
If the workplace is hostile or not depending only on if you enter the door, then we've already identified the source of the hostility.
Right, professional services is who the IT guys call when they can't figure it out. They employees you're paying to have look at your problem are engineers, not IT drones.
Professional services, both people are engineers, the one calling for help and the one giving the help.
One teacher was concerned when the software I wrote had Batman-style "POW!" "BANG!" "ZAP!" overlays instead of explosions or blood, or something Normal.
To which I say... "duh ne nu ne nu ne nu ne duh ne nu ne nu ne nu ne BATMAN!"
When my local BBS connected to Fidonet and offered FREE international email, it totally blew my mind! I mean, I could write an email today, and in less than 24 hours it would be in Japan. Like magic.
I'll have you know that my brain damage was caused by Applesoft BASIC, you insensitive clod!
No, we had three stories on IBM's work-from-home policy, and something-something about drones. All your base!
Watch out, that might be Canadian cheese you're grating!
The same was as MS, they make sure to make enough off of their rules violations to exceed the future cost of penalties.
1) Use Brandybrand(TM) ...
2)
3) Twice as fast!
Who knows what we signed away, but I feel so much more Branded now.
I don't think you can sue for less than the filing fee, and since you won't have to pay it again you can't claim you'll be harmed by enough to meet the threshold.
A class action could sweep in people who were harmed at the $5 level, but you still need an original plaintiff who was harmed enough to have standing.
The easiest route to a refund would be to stand in front of the FAA for a few months with a sign. If you have a few hundred other people with you, maybe you'll get noticed!