dulynoted (aka duttycalls)

Recently in the Cleveland area there was a huge job fair held at the
Independence Ohio Holiday Inn. It was sponsored by the "Unemployement
Guide" in our area and they had over 100 businesses represented.
However the problem arose when the stopped the pre-registration and
told people they could just "show up" without prio registration.
I work around this area and from what I heard from the businesses in
that immediate area it was a nightmare.
People started arriving at 4am the morning of and the hotel was
overbooked on reservations from others who figured that being a hotel
guest they would have first choice in line.
There were over 5,000 persons who showed up. People were late for work
because the freeways were totally blocked up with traffic and when
they did finally get to their work place there were no parking spaces
because the people who atteneded this job fair parked wherever there
was an empty space for a mile around the hotel. They even parked on
the shoulder of the interstates (480 & 77).
It was the most un-organized event anyone had seen.

My nephew attened as the HR rep for his company. Ironically his
company has had their 4 jobs for couriers posted for over 3 months in
every local paper, on the internet and in the "Unemployment Guide" but
they had not one application before the job fair. At the job fair he
had over 250 applicants for these 4 jobs and so far has 30 that he can
confirm have the qualifications needed for the job such as vehicular
insurance and a valid drivers license.
When he asked a few of them why they never put an application in
before that day they said they never read the paper nor knew about
them. (Huh???)

I see these job fairs as being a sign of the times and if they just
would have held them at about 4 other hotels at each of the areas of
town...south, north, east, west this could have been avoided.

Has anyone else seen this happen in their area lately?

It amazed me to see on MSN a complete listing of the corporations and
businesses that have either closed or laid off employees to the tune
of 245,000 + persons.

And this is going to continue to be a domino effect because once
unemployement funds run out, peoples savings and retirement accounts
are used up what is left for these people to do but go on welfare.
And unlike the great depression of before we have more
assistance/welfare programs in place but these will eventually dry up
also.
So where does that leave us?

I understand that we need to jump start the economy but giving help in
the form of bale outs would work better if these monies were more
closely monitored.
I mean Las Vegas trips, Arizona Spa trips, purchasing of private
jets...these were stopped for the most part, but then these financial
institutes will find a way to use this bale out money to keep their
own salaries from declining.
Obama has the right idea by capping salaries for the
CEO/Presidents/owners of these companies helped out by the bale
out...but how will this help to make these busineese more viable and
sturdy? These people already have their retirement packages put aside
and its probably more than what we can even imagine.

I shudder to even imagine what is going to happen when more large
corporations and even smaller businesses continue to close

I would love nothing more than to see NO more issues regarding
Target's return/exchange policy. I can remember letters in PFB before
it went to Intelliseek regarding the change of this policy and how
angry people were. I can admit the first time I was angry also, but
then the more I thought about it the more I realized that if you havea
receipt, then there is no question regarding if the item was purchased
there or not.

And while there will always be thieves and criminals who think its
easier to steal from others than to work to obtain their own
money/necessities, then we need to have some sort of policy/procedure
in place to protect those of us who do work hard for what we have.

As many people who complain about Targets policies and procedures for
returns/echanges...why hasn't Target come up with an easier way of
accomodating their loyal customers and insert an electronic tracking
device in all their merchandise. It can be something smaller than a
grain of rice and not able to be seen but when something is brought
back it can be tracked on their computer and will read whether the
item was purchased or not.
I know its a far fetched idea but one would think in this age of
electronics someone could come up with some sort of device to do this
at a reasonable price so that the customer only has a barely noticable
increase in prices.

Again...just a thought.