UPS driver returns to double boots


United Par­cel Ser­vice de­liv­ery driv­er James Riley pulled his brown box truck in front of the “No Parking Any Time” sign late Thursday morning, hurried into downtown’s Raleigh Building and took an el­evator up to de­liv­er some packages.

As he stepped off the el­evator back at street lev­el, a woman sounded the alarm.


“Sir! Sir!” the woman cried. “They’re booting your vehicle!”

This could be a problem

“They” were City of Raleigh Park Link employees who ticket – or in this in­stance, clamp the dreaded boot – on the vehicles il­legally parked downtown.


Riley, who has been with UPS for 30 years, says he was in the building at 5 Har­gett St. no more than a couple of minutes.


Dustin Winkler, a downtown employee, said soon af­ter Riley went in the Raleigh Building, a City of Raleigh ParkLink car pulled behind the UPS truck. An employee got out of the car and attached two yel­low boots to the vehicle.


“Why did they put two on?” asked the hap­less Riley.


“Pede­s­trians (who had gath­ered) were talking about how ridiculous it was that this had to be done,” Winkler wrote in an email message to The News & Observ­er. “A co-worker and I were discuss­ing how Park Link now seems to be almost as bad as the predatory towing was a few years back and how inef­ficient the system is. Ev­ery week at least one or two people stop me on the street to ask for as­sistance us­ing the me­ters.”


Tina Overton, a spokeswoman with ParkLink, which han­dles downtown parking enforce­ment, would not say why the UPS truck was booted.


“I can’t talk about UPS, but generally, if you have three or more parking tickets that have not been paid for over 90 days you can get booted,” she said.


Riley said a ticket in October and the one he got Thursday are the only two he has ev­er received since de­liv­ering packages to downtown for the past 15 years.


His UPS truck was booted in October, too.


“They put one on and came back in 10 or 15 minutes to take it off,” he said.


The city took over downtown parking enforce­ment last June from Raleigh Park, a private compa­ny.


“The city be­lieved they could pro­vide a better ser­vice,” Overton said.


But more than a few downtown employees and res­idents think the city’s def­i­nition of pro­viding a better ser­vice has resulted in aggressive, over-the-top enforce­ment. It’s common to see parking employees in the Oakwood neighbor­hood, blocks from downtown, writing parking ci­tations.


“I wouldn’t use the word aggressive,” Overton said “But they were hired to do their job for the city.”

Raleigh News & Observer

Old Butch

Old Butch

John was in the fertilized egg business.

He had several hundred young layers (hens), called ‘pullets,’ and ten
roosters to fertilize the eggs.

He kept records, and any rooster not performing went into the soup pot
and was replaced.

This took a lot of time, so he bought some tiny bells and attached
them to his roosters.

Each bell had a different tone, so he could tell from a distance,
which rooster was performing.

Now, he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by
just listening to the bells.

John’s favorite rooster, old Butch, was a very fine specimen, but this
morning he noticed old Butch’s bell hadn’t rung at all!

When he went to investigate, he saw the other roosters were busy
chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets, hearing the
roosters coming, would run for cover.

To John’s amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn’t ring.

He’d sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.

John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County
Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.

The result was the judges not only awarded old Butch the “No Bell
Piece Prize,” but they also awarded him the “Pulletsurprise” as well.

Clearly old Butch was a Republican in the making. Who else but a
Republican could figure out how to win two of the most coveted awards on
our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the unsuspecting
populace and screwing them when they weren’t paying attention.


VOTE CAREFULLY IN 2012, THE BELLS ARE NOT ALWAYS AUDIBLE!!!

Mentoring

We are the answer

I drift back to the early 60s to a small boy and his father on a shopping trip to Charpiot’s Hardware store in West Unity. My father, as he was checking out, realizes he had forgotten to get a new set of pliers and tells me to go get one. I go to the pliers and bring back the cheapest pair. I was being taught to shop with price in mind to make my allowance (which I earned) last longer. Upon my return to the counter my father looked to see where the pliers were made. He immediately returned them to their place and brought back a pair that was slightly more expensive, which he paid for with the other item we had.

Once outside in the car he could tell that I was confused as to why he bought the more expensive pliers. He asked me if I liked getting my allowance. I said yes. He then said that in order for him to be able to pay me an allowance he had to work and that some where in this country another boy’s father had the job of making the pliers he bought so that he could afford to pay his son an allowance. He then explained that the pliers I picked were made overseas and the ones he bought were made in the USA and were worth more because they keep our nation strong. A simple lesson as valuable today as it was back then!

Michael Frybarger

West Unity, Oh 

How would you fair in a job interview?


Over the past year, interview candidates just about everywhere shared some of the most difficult, or unexpected interview questions on Glassdoor, a jobs and career community. We’ve looked back on thousands of these questions, across a range of jobs, companies and industries. Here’s our take on the top 25 oddball interview questions of 2011:



1. “How many people are using Facebook in San Francisco at 2:30pm on a Friday?” – view answersAsked at Google. More Google interview questions.



2. “Just entertain me for five minutes, I’m not going to talk.” – view answersAsked at Acosta. More Acosta interview questions.



3. “If Germans were the tallest people in the world, how would you prove it?” – view answersAsked at Hewlett-Packard. More Hewlett-Packard interview questions.




4. “What do you think of garden gnomes?” – view answersAsked at Trader Joe’s. More Trader Joe’s interview questions.



5. “Is your college GPA reflective of your potential?” – view answersAsked at the Advisory Board. More Advisory Board interview questions.



6. “Would Mahatma Gandhi have made a good software engineer?” –view answersAsked at Deloitte. More Deloitte interview questions.



7. “If you could be #1 employee but have all your coworkers dislike you or you could be #15 employee and have all your coworkers like you, which would you choose?” – view answersAsked at ADP. More ADP interview questions.



8. “How would you cure world hunger?” – view answersAsked at Amazon.com. More Amazon.com interview questions.



9. “Room, desk and car – which do you clean first?” – view answersAsked at Pinkberry. More Pinkberry interview questions.



10. “Does life fascinate you?” – view answersAsked at Ernst & Young. More Ernst & Young interview questions.



11. “Given 20 ‘destructible’ light bulbs (which breaks at certain height), and a building with 100 floors, how do you determine the height that the light bulb breaks?” – view answersAsked at QUALCOMM. More QUALCOMM interview questions.



12. “Please spell ‘diverticulitis’.” – view answersAsked at EMSI Engineering. More EMSI Engineering interview questions.



13. “Name 5 uses of a stapler without staple pins.” – view answersAsked at EvaluServe. More EvaluServe interview questions



14. “How much money did residents of Dallas/Ft. Worth spend on gasoline in 2008?” – view answersAsked at American Airlines. More American Airlines interview questions.



15. “How would you get an elephant into a refrigerator?” – view answersAsked at Horizon Group Properties. More Horizon Group Properties interview questions.



16. “You have a bouquet of flowers. All but two are roses, all but two are daisies, and all but two are tulips. How many flowers do you have?” – view answersAsked at Epic Systems. More Epic Systems interview questions.



17. “How many planes are currently flying over Kansas?” – view answersAsked at Best Buy. More Best Buy interview questions.



18. “How many different ways can you get water from a lake at the foot of a mountain, up to the top of the mountain?” – view answersAsked at Disney Parks & Resorts. More Disney Parks & Resorts interview questions.



19. “What is 37 times 37?” –view answersAsked at Jane Street Capital. More Jane Street Capital interview questions.



20. “If you could be a superhero, what power would you possess?” – view answersAsked at Rain and Hail Insurance. More Rain and Hail Insurance interview questions.



21. “If you were a Microsoft Office program, which one would you be?” –view answersAsked at Summit Racing Equipment. More Summit Racing Equipment interview questions.



22. “Pepsi or Coke?” – view answersAsked at United Health Group. More United Health Group interview questions.



23. “Are you exhaling warm air?” – view answersAsked at Walker Marketing. More Walker Marketing interview questions.



24. “You’re in a row boat, which is in a large tank filled with water. You have an anchor on board, which you throw overboard (the chain is long enough so the anchor rests completely on the bottom of the tank). Does the water level in the tank rise or fall?” – view answersAsked at Tesla Motors. More Tesla Motors interview questions.



25. “How do you feel about those jokers at Congress?” – view answersAsked at Consolidated Electrical. More Consolidated Electrical interview questions.


These are just a handful of the 150,000+ interview questions Glassdoor has collected from job interview candidates through our Interview Reviews. Got a good response to any of these questions? Make sure to leave your attempt at the answers through the above links. Interviewed lately? We hope you’ll tell us about it!

Right to Work as Described by Daily Kos

But what is “right to work” and why are Republicans so determined to pass it? Briefly, these laws say that union members have to pay the costs of representing their coworkers who choose not to join a union. (Less briefly here.) Under federal law, no one can ever be made to join a union, but in states without so-called “right to work” laws, if there’s a union bargaining contracts for you and representing you in grievances, you have to pay a “fair share” or representation fee to cover those costs. What Indiana and New Hampshire Republicans want to do is to allow non-union members to be free riders, getting the representation their union coworkers pay for. Dean Baker bluntly describes this as an added tax on union membership.