Archive for the ‘Shopping’ Category

Life would be so much easier

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

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?

Hard work

Monday, December 5th, 2011

Thanks for the guest post by Susan Dorman

When my husband decided to surprise me with the birthday gift of one of those upright style commercial vacuum cleaners I exclaimed that it was the best birthday gift I had ever received, he looked at me quite skeptically. “It is?” he queried. “Well, yes of course it is” I replied. “When you give me a tool for floor care it means that you are going to take on the chore, and I can’t think of a better gift than for you to take on the carpet cleaning chore.

Well, what could the poor man say after that? He said “well, I wasn’t planning on taking on the vacuuming.” My reply was “then you should not have bought me a vacuum cleaner! I was perfectly happy with the cannister style vacuum that I have owned since before we met and the upright styles are too hard for me to push back and forth, so if you expect our carpets to be vacuumed with that, then YOU are going to be the one to do the vacuuming.”

Well he hemmed and he hawed and said that it was easy to use the upright vacuum, much easier than using the cannister style. So I told him that was great news because HE was going to be the one using it. Well, he tried to put on his best game face and he DID use it to vacuum the floors for about a month. Then he declared that it was, in fact, harder to use than the cannister style vacuum and he put in out in the garage, never to be used again. Until, of course, we broke up and I kept the cannister style vacuum!  And when it came time that my cannister style vacuum broke down I ended up buying another cannister style vacuum. The upright ones are just too hard to use!

Spray on snow

Monday, December 5th, 2011

Yesterday I was reading an article about dying Christmas traditions. One of the traditions mentioned was the use of the spray-on-snow. Did you know that the snow used to be made from asbestos? I wonder how many people now are suffering from mesothelioma as a result of the spray-on-snow that they used to decorate their houses with? I can remember when I was a child my parents used it to spray on the Christmas tree!

Changing the closet for winter season

Sunday, December 4th, 2011

One of the things that I dread about the changing seasons is the chore of changing out the closet. My closet is small, so every season I have to rotate clothing in/out of the closet and in/out of the cedar chest that is at the foot of my bed.

Part of the chore is to check all of the clothes for repairs that need to be mended, and also to make sure that the clothes still fit. As I mentioned in an earlier post I’ve recently lost weight so I will be having to take a hard look at all of the plus size clothing and determine if any of it can be altered or if I should pack it away in case I gain the weight back, or if I should donate it to a thrift store. I hate making decisions like that! I don’t want to be a packrat, but I don’t want to be a spendthrift either!

Supermarkets of the future

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

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!