Category: Technology


One of the rules of the store is “no cell phones allowed at work.” Every couple of days one of the managers will come back behind the counter and catch one of us using our cell phone and he will scold us that we are not supposed to have our cell phones with us. Whenever he does that I always reply that when the company provides us with cell phone lockers then that won’t be an issue anymore.

We are not supposed to bring our coats, or purses, or bags of any kind – not even lunch bags! But the company gives us no place to hang our coats or store our purses or bags or cell phones. This is the first place that I’ve ever worked that didn’t have at least small phone lockers in the back room for people to be able to put their wallet, keys, and phone in!

To be honest, the only time I use my cell phone at work is to call across town to the other store to see if they have an item in stock that a customer needs. And the other girls use their cell phones to look up work related subjects on the Internet. I think even if we had a cell phone storage locker system I don’t think we would use it. But we’re not going to tell the boss that. No, that will be our little secret. Shhhhh……

One of the things that can get quite aggravating at work is when several people want to use the inventory barcode scanners (they call them “guns”) at the same time. There are only two in the store, and inevitably one of them has a dead battery and needs to be plugged in to recharge for several hours. Personally I think the store should order at least two more of those things – the store is almost always in an uproar over the durn things!

This evening I had an appointment up in the Broadlands. I used my GPS to get there, and it took me along a short stretch of a toll road that cost me four dollars that I was not expecting to have to pay. I was quite annoyed because my GPS usually advises me at the begining of a trip that there will be toll charges and offering to take me a different route.  Well, I wanted to save money as much as possible so on the way home when I directed the GPS to take me home I directed it to avoide the toll road (this time it advised me that a toll road was part of the route.) Anyway I was taken down a lot of winding country roads that were very narrow, and I started to wonder if maybe a hacker had gotten onto the satellites and having a good time getting me lost! Eventually I ended up on a main road that I recognized and I made my way home, none the worse for wear.

Staples had a telephone system for sale last week for half price. The phone system is a cordless one, with five handsets. Since the older system was no longer being reliable, cutting off in the middle of a call for no apparent reason, I decided to go ahead and buy the one that was on sale. The old set (which I really liked) was made by Panasonic. The new set is made by Uniden.

To be perfectly honest, I like the Panasonic better. I like the feature where the call waiting announces who is calling. The Uniden does not do that. The Panasonic handsets fit nicely on my shoulder if I have to prop the phone between my ear and shoulder. The Uniden just slides right off of my shoulder. I REALLY don’t like that – I like being able to talk with my hands free. And the Panasonic has an intercom feature; the Uniden does not. I wish my Panasonic phones worked better!

Did you ever wonder how it works out that when you use a search engine to find a product or service, how the order of presentation is determined? Well, it turns out there is a whole behind the scenes process called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that determines that. And there is a big money business behind that process!

A business that wants to be one of the top companies listed for a search like that certainly has its work cut out for it! Some of the most technologically savvy businesses would be quick to obtain guaranteed seo services with a company whose sole business is making sure that their client’s web page is near the top of the search. Doing that maximizes the efficiency of the effort; hiring a professional that guarantees results seems to me to be a no-brainer. Why waste valuable time re-inventing the wheel?