Asha Anujeeva

I was shopping at my local Wal-Mart and heard some of the employees talking about how pretty soon Wal-Mart will be requiring their customers to bring their own bags!  I wonder how well the customers are going to be taking that!  Personally, I’m glad – I have several canvas shopping tote bags that I bought a long time ago that I would like to use for my weekly groceries.  Even though I bring most of my empty Wal-Mart shopping bags back to the Wal-Mart for recycling, I really would prefer to not have to deal with them.  Although they DO make good little trash can liners!

According to an article dated May 29, 2008 in the LA Times, there is a company that is planning to use algae to start producing a crude oil that can be used to make gasoline and diesel fuel.  The production of the fuel uses carbon dioxide, which would help to clean up our greenhouse gases problem.  It can be refined in existing refineries and be used by the existing cars and trucks on the road.  It plans to reach full commercial scale in five years.  The company that is planning to do this is called Sapphire Energy.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful, getting oil from algae instead of fossil fuels!

Many companies are sending their employees to enrichment programs and seminars, in the hopes that the employees will become more satisfied with their jobs and more productive.

More employers are using personality profiles now to help their employees develop their career path.  One such personality profile program is called DiSC, which is sold by Resources Unlimited.  They are an authorized Inscape Publishing Distributor of the Online Disc Classic 2.0 Profile.  This program consists of 28 questions and only takes about ten to fifteen minutes to complete, and the results are delivered immediately.  This program can be used to help build team work, improve salesmanship, and improve management skills.

Have you ever wished that your employer would provide a company uniform for employees to wear at the companies expense? And by that I don’t mean a vest to wear, I mean an entire outfit, shirt, shoes, pants, the whole nine yards. Life would be so much easier if I could simply obtain a work outfit from http://www.blueskyscrubs.com/categories/Scrubs/Scrubs-for-Women/ and have the company reimburse for the expense. Scrubs are both modest and comfortable to wear. If everyone wore a uniform to work, you would never be having to suffer the bad taste of the person who wears their skirts or shorts way too short and their shirts way too low in the neck.

I know that a lot of people would object, saying that they want the freedom to choose what they wear, to be able to express their individuality, but I think it would be a great benefit for people to not have to spend a lot of money on work clothes. It would be even better if the company had a uniform laundry service. My uncle used to work as an automobile mechanic in a well known shop and his company provided the mechanics with work clothes and even had them laundered. I think that would be a wonderful benefit to have, don’t you?

My cousin sent me the link to a BBC website that was talking about a new store in Germany called “The Future Store.”  He included the note “I thought you might get a kick out of this.”  So I clicked on the link and watched a video made for a tv news show where the reporter was going around the store and explaining how new technology was being used at this store.

It really was very interesting; the customers use their cell phones to scan the bar code of the product they are buying when they take it off of the shelf before they put it in their cart.  The meat counter has microchips in the meat packages to advise the store that the meat package has been removed, so the store can keep track of when they need to re-stock.  When the customer is finished shopping, they press a button on their phone, which produces a “master bar code” which they use to scan at a self-service checkout counter.  Really all quite interesting.  The biggest question I have about the process is regarding how the store expects to keep the customers “honest” and reduce the risk of shop-lifting?  I’d be curious to learn about that part of the equation!