Category: Work

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Opportunities in a Bad Economy

A wise woman once told me, “for every door that closes, God opens another door.” I’m pretty sure there is a paraphrase to that somewhere in the Bible, but I’m not even close to an expert on that. The point is, that for everything bad that happens you should have faith that someone good will come from it.

The economy is struggling now and people are losing their houses, their jobs, and their health insurance. Yet all of these bad things that are happening will result in new opportunities for them and for others.

One of the industries that is still growing and actually benefitting from the bad economy is the health care sector. Perhaps some people who would not have otherwise considered a career in health care may now pursue the medical fields. We have had a shortage of good nurses for years. Perhaps that will now change and the people who need medical help in the future will have better health care available to them.

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Watch Out for the Latest Worm Attack

The IT guys just told us about a new worm called Downandup, Downadup, Kido!, or Conficker (all the same worm). It seems to be be delivered using infected USB drives. The worm hijacked the autorun program and shows a default selection on a fake download screen that looks just like the Windows download screen. The problem is that it shows installing it’s own virus as the default choice on the screen. So of course most people are going to click on it and then it is too late.

I use USB drives all the time but I only transfer specific files from the jump drive to the PC in use. I never use USB drives to install programs and although it is not foolproof, I think that is a good policy for others to follow. But if you have been infected, a site called F-Secure has a removal tool that should get rid of it.

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Party Decorations

My secretary came back with a list of party supplies and decorations that she wants to buy for the baby shower next month. It’s not all that elaborate, but we do want it to be festive. I read over the list and told her to spend up to $200 at the party store and the bakery to buy everything they need for the party.

If there is any money left from the $200, she can use it to buy a gift card for our receptionist at a “Babies R Us” if there is such a place, or a children’s clothing store or outfitters. I can’t even think of the name of any of those stores. They just aren’t on my radar and I’ve probably never even been inside one. That’s just not something I have to deal with in my life. But I know they exist. They might even be at the mall and I’ve just never noticed. But my secretary can deal with that.

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Baby Shower

Our receptionist is going to have a baby in March, so the women in the office approached me yesterday about hosting a baby shower for her. They want to take over the big conference room and decorate it with balloons and streamers, have cake and ice cream, and ask each employee to bring a small baby gift. This is obviously a female thing, as the thought of doing something like that at work had never occurred to me. My secretary explained that the women are so fond of our receptionist that they really want to do something nice for her, and they hope that after the maternity leave runs out that the receptionist will want to come back to work here.

I agreed to book the conference room for the afternoon in February and for them to put the word out that it is a surprise and that gifts should be bought. My secretary offered to buy the baby gift for me, which is a big help because I know nothing about baby shower gifts. She suggested a moby wrap baby sling, which is a popular accessory for today’s new mothers.

Baby slings evidently wrap the baby and keep it close to the mother’s body without the mother straining to hold the weight of the baby in her arms. The baby slings redistribute the weight and pressure, which is a really good idea for women with a tendency for shoulder or back pain, especially when the child gets older and puts on some weight.

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Business Bumps

The big story last month when the talking heads were trying so earnestly to convince Americans that the big money bailout was necessary was that the bailout money would increase the credit available to businesses. After all, businesses need credit to survive and to grow. The common example given of why businesses need credit was to make payroll, but it can also be to buy new equipment.

That logic of needing to borrow to make payroll really bothered me. If a business routinely needs to borrow money to make payroll, then in my opinion it is not a viable business.

However, having been in business for a long time, I recognize that all businesses have ups and downs throughout their life cycle, and it can be really tough to make ends meet when you have even a small series of setbacks. That is why I think most businesses need to have at least one good source for raising emergency cash, such as www.onlinecheck.com, and that second only to paying taxes, a business needs to make sure that it’s employees get paid. That is why arranging for a Merchant Cash Advance makes a lot of sense. You go online to make the arrangements – it is fast and easy.

Sometimes a customer goes bankrupt or has a big problem where they cannot pay the bill owed to your company. If you were planning to use that money to pay your own bills, it can be the domino effect of your business not paying its own bills, and then your suppliers or vendors cannot pay their own bills, and so on. But a responsible business owner will at least make sure that the employees are paid.

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Labor Day Celebration

Everyone at the radio station wanted to do something to celebrate Labor Day, so we planned a group picnic at the Lake. We reserved a paviliion at the state park and the radio station agreed to ante up for everyone’s parking fee, which surprised the hell out of all of us. The Station Manager’s secretary passed around a sign up sheet for the potluck food. We think about 20 people from the station will show up at some point during the day, along with spouses, girlfriends, and a few kids. So we are planning on feeding 50-60 people altogether.

For some reason, Tony and I got volunteered to cook the hamburgers and hotdogs, so we have to get there a little early and fire up the big grill. That’s fine by me – I can cook anything on a grill and have a secret seasoning mix to put in the hamburger meat that will give it a little kick and extra flavor. So I went to Food Lion last night and bought 20 pounds of ground chuck and made up the burgers. Tony’s dealing with the hot dogs and the charcoal.

I’m concerned that my snow white legs sticking out from my bathing suit trunks are going to scare small children. I haven’t been to the beach even once this whole summer and have absolutely no tan. But that’s what happens when you work the night shift – you get so pale you practically glow in the dark. But then again, my skinny white legs won’t be the only ones in the crowd.

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Y Mail

I see that Yahoo has introduced two new email service extensions to their free emails: @rocketmail and @ymail. I guess the @ymail is a slam on Google for their @gmail accounts.

I got my very first email account at MSN about 20 years ago. I had one at AOL for a while but didn’t like the AOL service and gave it up, although I have to admit that a few other times over the years I would get suckered into signing up with AOL again for accessibility issues or some reason. But AOL just never did it for me.

I can’t get past the fact that I was invited to go to work for them when they first opened offices back in the 80’s. When I went for the interview and took a tour of their offices, I was struck by how stressed out and anxious everyone seemed. There was absolutely no laughter or happiness evident in any of the cubicles or offices.
I knew after that tour that I didn’t want to work in an office environment like that. Quality of life is more important to me than the paycheck. So I turned them down and have had a bad taste for AOL ever since.