The majority of Cyber Monday shopping is done from work. And it can take a lot of time. So to save some time, experts are saying start your shopping at key aggregate sites dedicated to bringing you Cyber Monday sales.
Ashley Payne used to be a teacher in Barrows County, Georgia. That was before someone mailed an anonymous email to the superintendent of schools saying that Payne had pictures showing her drinking beer and wine as well as an update saying she was going to play, "Crazy Bitch Bingo."
The superintendent allegedly forced her to resign. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that the superintendent told Payne that a parent complained about the photos. But that would be impossible because Payne didn't allow students or parents to "friend her."
According to the paper the email sent to the superintendent was actually sent by another teacher who allegedly didn't like Payne. That email was sent from a fake email address. Here is the email sent to the superintendent of schools.
To: Dr. Ron Saunders; Ken Greene
Sent: Aug. 27
Subject: Disappointed and worried about my daughter’s teacher
To whom it may concern,
My daughter is a pupil in one of Ms. Payne’s literature classes and friend of hers on the social networking site “Facebook.”
Tonight, my daughter says to me casually, “Mom, I’m going to hang out with my bitches.” Shell shocked, I told her not to use profane language in my house ever again.
To make matters worse, my daughter laughs in my face, trying to comfort me by saying, “Mom, it’s ok! Ms. Payne calls her friends bitches! Then she comforts me more by proving to me via “Facebook” and sure enough, it is similar to what Ms. Payne had said in her status update, except hers exclaims: “Ashley Payne is at Bitch Bingo with her bitches.”
I’m standing over my daughter as she scrolls down the page thinking to myself, yes, Ms. Payne what an excellent way to teach my daughter the concept of alliteration!
Ms. Payne also has an unacceptable picture of herself smiling with alcohol for all her online friends to view
. See attached.
I am repulsed by Ms. Payne’s profane use of language and how she conducts herself as an example to my teenage daughter. Her behavior is intolerable. I have a question to the Barrow County School System. Is it too hard for our educators to lack discipline online and offline?
I have chosen to remain anonymous regarding this matter for the sake of my daughter.
Retail Therapy has never been one of my past times' In fact spending too much time in retail establishments makes me feel like I need therapy. But that could be changing. I am what is known as an Entertainment Shopping Enthusiast. As an avid eBayer - someone who has bought and sold on eBay-- I didn't realize that what I was doing was Entertainment Shopping. I thought I was bargain hunting.
Turns out that eBay and the new crop of penny auction sites are part of a retail genre called Entertainment Shopping. There are two key elements to entertainment.: there has to be a bargain and you have to "bet" against other people who want to win item for a ridiculously low price.
To some these sites are no more than a scam. I spent a week recently entertaining myself at the Penny Auction site DFWBid.com where gift cards are auctioned off for a fraction of their value.
6:50 p.m. CST. The bid for the $50 Visa Card stands at $2.96. I join the auction at DFWbid.com, sit back and watch, deciding what my strategy for the evening will be. For the past week I have bid on a variety of gift cards at this penny auction site, winning three for a total value of $150. My financial investment including bidding and shipping costs: approximately $42.00.
7:01 p.m. CST. The bidding is relaxed. At this particular penny auction site the clock runs for 1:15. If the clock runs out, you win the gift card. Two of my three wins occurred because I was the last bidder standing. Both bids were under $7.00. Both times I was completely shocked that I won. This particular evening the bidders are letting the clock run down to about 30 seconds before upping the bid one penny at a time. It's not always that relaxing.
7:28 p.m. CST. Dubcop, Jose 1950, dyce, slumpey326, spicey, fxinsit, louhud, bsnnurse, mrnoodles, fari, and koecoover have all placed bids. Fari seems to be bidding most consistently. I have two windows open on my computer. While I answer some emails, I keep a watchful eye on the bidding, making sure that the clock doesn't run out while I'm multitasking. My strategy for this evening: never let the clock run down to 29 seconds.
7:34 p.m. CST. The auction is up to $4.00. At this particular penny auction site you pay a flat fee of $2.99 to participate in the auction. You can place as many bids as you want. That's not how it works at many of the other penny auction sites that charge a fee per bid. This may be why The Times Online, by way of the Business Exchange, describes penny auctions as "the crack cocaine of online auctions."
8:00 p.m. CST.. The auction will end in two hours. I've made a strategic decision that the penny auction feature will not come into play this evening because the bidding is going at such a slow pace. At this rate it won't get above $7.00 by the time the auction closes for the night, at 10:00 p.m. CST. If the penny auction feature goes live one of the bidders could possibly "outbid" all of us and win the $50 card for a penny. I won one of my $50 Visa gift cards this way
Ignoring the penny auction is a calculated risk based on my own assumptions about how the auction works. I decide for this particular auction someone is either going to blink, decide they have better things to do on a Friday evening than sit in front of a computer screen watching an auction progress one penny at a time, or there will be no winner and the auction will resume at 9:00 a.m. CST.
In an interview about the site, owner Sanj Raj challenged my bidding logic and assured me the penny auction feature is based on a complicated algorithm that is not based on time or the amount of the bid.
8:30 p.m. CST. Seems that most of the bidders have taken a break and the high bidder is going back and forth between fari and mrnoodles. I keep my watchful eye hoping both of them decide to take a bathroom break at the same time and I can slip in and "steal" the gift card out from under them.
The proliferation of penny auctions has spurred the watchdog site, Penny Auction Watch which describes itself as a site "created by bidders for bidders." The site lists which of the Penny Auctions are legit and which are scams. There are a lot of scams. I'm relieved that DFWbid is legit.
We developed Penny Auction Watch to be a watchdog to let people know which penny auctions are legitimate; auctions where one has a chance at winning, as opposed to sites that don’t deliver what they advertise and are set up to scam people. As well as provide those curious about penny auctions with valuable information.
9:22 p.m. CST. The auction is up to $6.07. Mrnoodles, slumpy, dubcop, and I continue to bid at a cordial pace. If you are a novice to penny auctions and decide to do some online research before joining an online auction, you are going to read quite a few negative reviews. Techdirt calls penny auctions," borderline evil business models." The New York Times offers,
With all the possible ways of losing money, it’s no wonder that online auction fraud was ranked as the 13th biggest concern of consumers in the 2008 Consumer Sentinel, which is compiled by the Federal Trade Commission from a variety of sources.
With Google Ads for penny auctions prominently displayed right above the headline,"Swoopo- great auctiondeals or great scams?", Wisebread's Xin Lu pans these sites because the "house" appears to be making a nice profit.
"...they will be raking in cash, and they can do that countless times before the final end time."
10:00 p.m. CST. The auction is suspended for the night at $6.84. For the past thirty minutes I have stopped multi-tasking and decided to launch my penny auction strategy. Every six seconds you can check to see if the penny auction is live. When it is live, you have 15 seconds to answer two relatively easy math questions. If you are the first person to answer the questions correctly you win the gift card for a penny. I have made it to the math questions three times and twice someone else answered faster than me.
The decision to launch my penny auction strategy requires constant clicking back and forth between the live auction and the penny auction page -- every six seconds. It's a mind-numbing process but like the true believers on LOST who had the responsibility of resetting the Dharma Initiative countdown clock every 108 minutes, I convince myself that if I abandon my six second strategy, I will face catastrophic consequences and lose the auction.
At this point I have spent nearly three hours monitoring this auction and feel very invested in winning. I absolutely do not want any of the bidders like mrnoodles, slumpy326, and dubcop who have returned for the final minutes to outbid me.
So I continue the six minute click. At 9:58 I'm convinced that the penny auction will not be activated but despite this, I continue clicking, just in case. At 10:00 p.m. the auction mercifully ends for the evening with the late- to-the- auction partithing listed as the high bidder.
At 9:00 a.m. CST the auction will resume. Will I be there? Oh yeah.
It was supposed to be an interview to promote Google's new music search service that launched at the end of October. At least that's what Marissa Mayer thought she was going to talk about when her PR department booked her on a local drive time radio program.
Mayer, who is Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google thought the purpose of the interview was to get a little publicity for the new service and generate some buzz.
The DJs had another idea. Their first question was, " How can we find naked pictures of you on the internet?" It is being reported that Mayer was less than pleased and the DJs unapologetic.
And hey, if the goal was to generate awareness of the new music search engine, the DJ's insipid line of questioning worked.
Somehow I don't think Mayer is saying thank you, at least not out loud.
to BlogHer's Jory Des Jardins for sharing this story.
Christopher Mendoza could be one of the worst bosses ever. Mendoza, now the former general manager for Ruby Tuesday's in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania was once accused of following a hostess around a restaurant with a vibrating sex toy in
his pocket, buzzing his genitals and singing to himself. That accusation occurred in 1999 when Mendoza was working at a Denny's.
After that episode he still managed to land a job at a Ruby Tuesday's and he might still be working there if weren't for Michelle Gydosh, a waitress who went through all the proper channels to try to get Mendoza to stop his behavior. As a last resort, Gydosh went to the EEOC who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Gydosh and several other female employees. For some inexplicable reason, Ruby Tuesday's decided not to settle out of court.
Not sure which part of this story is more incredible- the fact that a general manager of a restaurant was allowed to behave this way for such a long time or that the restaurant had such hubris that they allowed the case to go to court. What were they thinking?
Looking at a pregnant customer, Mendoza allegedly said: "She must be really horny. My wife was always horny. I am surprised my kids don't have problems with all the times we've had sex," the complaint states.
According to the complaint, Mendoza constantly told Gydosh that she was "hot" and that he wanted to "make a porn video" with her.
Mendoza propositioned Gydosh, telling her he "wanted to throw her over the counter and (expletive) her," and repeatedly told her what he would do to her sexually if he were not a married man.
In what feels like the modern day version of a Scarlet Letter, the restaurant must post the settlement decree in the restaurant for the next three years and write a new policy and procedure for sexual harassment complaints.
So, what do you think are the chances that the restaurant will still be open in three years? Two Years? By June 2010?
to BlogHer's Jory Des Jardins for sharing this story.
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