Excuse me Mam I mean Miss... errr... Sir?

Okay; So it has been a few years since I last worked retail and now that I am back in retail, at the holiday season no less, I have noticed a few things.

1)When shopping the vast majority of individuals could care less what state they leave things in. Examples are: A woman wants a sweater that is at the bottom of a pile of smaller sizes, rather than lift the other ones up so she can take the one she wants out she will violently pull her selection out scattering the other sweaters everywhere (including the floor) and not think twice about it as she walks away. A mother will watch as her child walks through the intimates section pulling dozens of pairs of underwear off the racks and simply laugh and then tell her child to come back... will she care enough to pick up after her child? If you thought the answer was anything other than no, then you have too much faith in mankind. A third example, a customer will break a glass they are looking at and walk away as if nothing happened without saying a word to anyone of what just took place.

2)People are generally unreasonable when shopping. I work at Kohls and during the holiday season Kohls creates a system where all the registers at the front of the store feed off of one single line. The logic here is that rather than having the customers guessing at which register will open up soonest and then find themselves screwed because the customer in front of them decided to open a Kohls Card or needed something checked on they can go directly to the next open register with no guess work. This concept seems to be completely lost on customers however as they like to proclaim that the system is a poor one and they can not believe how long the line is. Some things that have been said about the line include: I can not stand in that line because I have Cancer, and I'm sorry I do not want these anymore because I will have to wait in line to buy them.

Another example of the unreasonable nature of consumers comes in the form of Senior Day. Kolhs offers a Senior discount every Wednesday which equates to 10% off all of their purchases for no other reason then their age. On select occasions the senior discount is 15% rather than 10%; this is a rarity however. Over the past 3 months Kohls has offered several of these 15% off days in lieu of the holiday season. Seniors have taken this to mean that their discount is a permanent 15% and when they find out that it is actually only 10% they will become irate and argumentative. One example of this comes from an elderly couple that proclaimed that their discount has always been 15% and if they did not get it then they would never shop at Kolhs again. Just answer me one question; how many retailers do you know that offer senior discounts? I bet you come up with none other than Kolhs; so what then gives anyone the nerve to make threats when they are getting a discount for no real reason?

3) People do not hesitate to think they know everything and can offer you pointers on how things should be done. For this third point I only wish to mention one short story. A woman when she managed to make it through the line (which at the time was rather short) asked me after I directed her to the fastest register why all 14 registers were not open (at the time only 7 were open) I told her that even though we have 14 registers we do not have enough people here at the moment to operate all of them. Her response was that "that is just poor customer service" and she asked me why we did not hire more people. Being in a rather frank mood I decided to be honest with her and tell her that for some strange reason there are not that many people who want to work in retail during the holiday season. Her response was that she would not be returning to Kohls again and then she asked me which register she could go to again.

Overall I would say most people are pretty much oblivious of the world around them and the work their laziness causes others. For example (I know I have been saying that a lot but I do not care to figure out a better way of transitioning into an example at the moment) Kolhs closes at 12 (midnight) during the holiday season and what most people do not really think about is that when the store closes at 12 it does not mean the employees can leave. Last Wednesday night we had a particularly high business day and the store was in pretty bad shape (see the reasons listed above) when the last customer left at 12:15AM (I am guessing that they did not hear the closing messages because they had to be "escorted" to the registers) we were still in the store working for another hour and a half; meaning I left at around 1:45 in the morning.

Okay; I have complained an awful lot about my job so far but do not get me wrong I like working retail for the most part and I do not mind being at Kohls at all; customers just seem to be worse then normal around the holiday season.

At this point you might be wondering how my subject relates to my post and the truth is that it does not at all till now. As you might have gathered my job for most of the day is to monitor and direct traffic in that single line that I had mentioned. While directing people too and fro I have begun to wonder how and why I choose certain words to gain the attention of the next customer. The general vocab selection includes sir, mam, miss, and whoever is next. Mam and miss I use pretty interchangeably with one another which sometimes causes rude looks in my direction; this only seems to be a problem with the 30something women who are trying to look particularly young when I call them mam instead of miss. Ideally I would address everyone accurately; but sometimes I just end up picking a title based on a whim. For example I said mam to that 30something on purpose knowing full well what would happen. Just so you do not think poorly of me I will share that I have also addressed the slightly older woman as miss to brighten her day a little; if you are reading this thinking that it does not really matter that much what they are called I would just like to let you know that to some people it really does matter and they really do care quite a bit. Sir has no particularly negative connections associated with it except that I have been told once or twice not to call someone sir because they work for a living. The fall back, whom ever is next or next customer, only comes out when I am not really sure. You might be asking right now, what do you mean you are not really sure, but you would be surprised at how many people are really that ambiguous or in many cases just transgendered and you don't really feel comfortable saying one or the other.

Well there it is; the holidays at Kohls. Have a Merry Christmas!

I work hard for my money, so hard for my money.

Well summer is in full swing more or less and I am working. For the most part it is not too bad, except due to a conflict between res life and payroll I do not get to receive a raise this year... which means the same old rate as last year. On the same line as money I am a bit worried about it, strange I know, that’s normally Emily’s forte. I am just concerned that I am not going to be able to make car payments, get the one credit card I have paid off (I do not really have that much on there, just enough to be a pain in the butt), and money put away for new car insurance/rent payments for the first few months of school. Plus I am becoming increasingly stressed out about finding work for the school year; I am not returning to any of my prior jobs which means I need to find all new employment that will pay the bills for Emily and I... Needless to say I am a bit concerned.

Off of that note and onto happier things the wedding is getting closer and closer now. Emily and I are starting to get more things done for it and I am really looking forward to August 18th and the wedding quite a bit. We got the appartment that we wanted as well, which is a really good thing because both Emily and I really wanted it. It is cool to think that we have a place that is "ours".

Anyway that is life mostly for me right now; I am sure I have left some things out, but for the most part it is just work during the week and see Emily on weekends. Life is busy but it’s moving along.

Gosh darn apartment!

So Emily and I applied to an apartment and we are hoping to hear back about whether or not our application was accepted. We were hoping to know today so we could sign a lease today as well because Em is moving home today. Well I called the guy and he said that he would not know till tonight, but he was leaving his office soon because he was going out of town for the weekend; meaning we will not know till Monday, and then we will both be working and need to try and figure out when we can both go sign a lease... AHHH such a head ache! I will deal with signing a lease next week but I just want to know if we got it or not.

Also I am done with finals, so that is good I guess.

The end is near.

So the year is wrapping up and soon it will be time to move into my summer housing; that is going to be a TON of work with the mess I have made of my room in Cretin this year... there are holes galore in the walls, and all of the original furniture is missing... yeah... that day is going to suck. Emily and I went and looked at a few apartments today, most of them nice, each with their own charms and each with their draw backs. One of them we need to decide about almost this minute because another young person is also interested in it and if they leap on it then we will have missed our chance, but we need to decide if we even want to leap in the first place. I think this process has caused me more stress today than I have had all semester up till now combined... I just want to pick one and get it over with.

Our [my] only concern with getting an apartment is the "proof" of employment that these places want you to have... I can prove that I work, but that does not mean it is going to show me making a whole heck of a lot; I just hope they understand that we are paying for the apartment with student loans and not our nearly non-existent income.

6 days till the "start" of summer, 2 tests till I am done with classes, 25 residents till I am done being an RA, 96 days till my wedding, 1 big headache till we find an apartment.

Really...? part 2

Bulletin update

For faculty, staff and students

Allina, St. Thomas boards authorize feasibility study of new medical school

The executive committee of Allina Hospitals & Clinics and the Board of Trustees of the University of St. Thomas have authorized the two institutions to study the feasibility of creating a new medical school to train primary care physicians for Minnesota.

Authorization to proceed with the feasibility study came this morning at St. Thomas and on Wednesday at Allina.

“Our board realized that, while complex, this could be an extraordinary opportunity to forge a bold and innovative new model of medical education,” said Dick Pettingill, president and chief executive officer of Allina. “Few health care leaders dispute that there is a looming physician shortage, and Allina and St. Thomas are uniquely positioned to address this dire need.”

“St. Thomas has always been a leader in developing ground-breaking programs to meet the needs of our students and our communities,” said the Rev. Dennis Dease, president of St. Thomas. “Our board understands the need for more primary care physicians to serve Minnesota and has authorized this study to better understand whether St. Thomas can play a meaningful role in addressing it.”

Penny Wheeler, M.D., Allina’s chief clinical officer, said the vision for a new medical school is to complement – and not compete with – existing programs at the University of Minnesota and Mayo Health System.

“We have exceptional programs in Minnesota that emphasize research and specialty care. We’re not envisioning trying to replicate that expertise but, rather, to build a new educational model that emphasizes clinical practice,” said Wheeler.

The number of medical school students in Minnesota has remained steady for the past decade. Only about half of medical school graduates establish practices in the state.

Shortages in primary care are particularly acute. From 2000 to 2004 the number of primary care physicians in Minnesota grew by only 20, while the supply of other specialty care physicians rose by 129. Currently, Minnesota graduates cannot fill the existing primary care residency slots in the Twin Cities. Two-thirds of primary care residents in the Twin Cities are from other states, and that is why many do not stay in Minnesota to practice.

Wheeler says a new model of medical school could help address this problem through both its selection process and creating financial or other incentives to practice in Minnesota.

“We’d envision focusing on admitting students with a close connection to Minnesota – those who want to stay here and serve this community,” she said. While we would recruit the best and brightest, we also would seek to admit students who have a strong commitment to primary care practice in this state. Selection, combined with other incentives, could dramatically increase the number of students staying to practice in Minnesota.”

The feasibility study is expected to take three to four months. It will analyze key issues such as the market need, finances, governance, staging, facility needs and potential philanthropic and community support for a new medical school. When the study is completed, it will be shared with the respective boards at Allina and St. Thomas. At that time, next steps will be identified.

Allina, a not-for-profit system, owns and operates 11 hospitals, 65 clinics, hospice services, pharmacies and emergency medical transportation services in Minnesota and western Wisconsin, with more than 2.5 million patient visits a year. For more information, see www.allina.com.

Just ask yourself... Really?

Bulletin update

For faculty, staff and students

Discussions under way regarding feasibility of medical school

From Father Dennis Dease, president

I want to bring to the attention of the St. Thomas community an evolving discussion between Allina Hospitals & Clinics and the University of St. Thomas about the feasibility of collaborating in the creation of a new medical school to educate and train primary care physicians for Minnesota.

Allina and St. Thomas have been discussing for several months the challenges facing the health care industry, including the looming physician workforce shortage. Those discussions ultimately converged around the concept of a new model for a medical school, and Allina is interested in further exploring a partnership with St. Thomas.

I will discuss this issue at the annual meeting of the St. Thomas faculty at noon tomorrow (Tuesday) in O’Shaughnessy Educational Center auditorium.

On Thursday, the Board of Trustees at St. Thomas will have its first discussion regarding these issues and will decide whether to authorize a feasibility study with Allina. The executive committee of the Allina board also will discuss a feasibility study at its meeting on Wednesday.

Allina, one of the region’s largest and most-respected health care providers, believes the medical schools at the University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic are not producing enough primary care physicians to meet the growing demand. Allina also believes the situation will grow more acute because of population growth in this region and the increasing number of retirees who will need health care in the years ahead.

A St. Thomas-Allina collaboration in the establishment of a new medical school would be unique in Minnesota and could be similar in some respects to the medical school partnership between Cleveland Clinics and Case Western Reserve University.

The school would be small, with up to 40 students in the first year’s class, and education and training would occur at Allina facilities, utilizing Allina physicians and other personnel. St. Thomas would not have to construct a new building on one of its campuses or find space in an existing campus building for this project, as we have done for every other new educational program that we have established. The medical school would be another option for St. Thomas pre-med students who want to pursue a medical career.

I want to emphasize here that St. Thomas has no interest in or intention of competing with the University of Minnesota in providing medical education. Allina has been clear, as well, that it greatly values its relationship with the University of Minnesota and that it believes any new medical school would complement – not compete with – what the university offers.

Allina would bring much strength to a collaboration. A not-for-profit system, Allina owns and operates 11 hospitals, 65 clinics, hospice services, pharmacies and emergency medical transportation services in Minnesota and western Wisconsin, with more than 2.5 million patient visits a year. For more information about Allina, see www.alina.com.

Allina is impressed with St. Thomas’ academic strengths in health care education, including basic science and pre-med programs at the undergraduate level and three programs in our Opus College of Business – a Health Care MBA; the Center for Health and Medical Affairs, which offers continuing education programs for medical professionals; and the National Institute of Health Policy, which offers a neutral forum for stakeholder collaborations on health care policy issues.

Many, many questions remain about the project, including what a business plan would look like and how much money might need to be raised. Those are the kinds of questions that would best be answered in a feasibility study that St. Thomas and Allina would conduct jointly.

In the meantime, I welcome your comments.

Mic Check... test test.... test

Yea, and God said to Abraham, "You will kill your son Isaac. 'And Abraham said: "I can't hear you. You'll have to speak into the microphone." And God said, "I'm sorry. Is this better? Check, check, check. Jerry, pull the high end out, I'm getting some hiss back here."

Summer Time, Living... you get it.

In my last post I told you all what I was going to be up to this summer, now its you all get to tell me, and everyone else, what you are going to be up to this summer. Remember nothing is too dull to post.

Summer Time... Living Easy

So I got the same summer job that I had last year again this year... not too bad I guess, pay is not horrible and I can stay on campus (much to my fiancés dismay) for free. I guess this year res life has dumped some of its loyalty to those that have worked for them in the past... looking over the list of employees I see some people who deserve to be on there, and some who don’t, as well as many missing names. Over all I am glad I am done with res life after this year, I had fun while I was here, but I am ready to go my own way; however I do want to have a meeting with Cari (assistant director of res life) at the end of the summer to give her a piece of my mind, respectfully of course.

It is going to be a long summer, with work, going home as often as I can to see Emily and work on wedding plans. Not to mention having to deal with finding a second part time job... Should be good times, and at the end of the summer is the wedding, so at least there is something bright at the end of the road to look forward to. Anyway that’s my update.

Back to Back to Back

Sorry for the delay... I have been less then focused on my blog over the last week, but now that I am back at work I have some time to post again.

So I think I have some idea of where I am going to go from this point, at least with my education. Well the plan before was education with an emphasis in political science and at this point I am going to keep going on that route. For the entire next year I need to take poli sci anyway so I am going to keep plugging away on that and during fall semester I am going to try this teaching program that Josh (Emily's brother-in-law) recommended to me to try and figure out for sure if teaching is what I want to do. If after the program I decide for sure that teaching is out I will just finish up the poli sci and change it from an emphasis to a major. If I follow that route I will be out a semester and a half early too.

So with this plan I am going to be in a lot of poli sci classes over the next year and if I plan to major in it then it does not leave me much time to try and get some internships or volunteer experience, but I am hoping with elections coming around again that I will be ok in that respect.

Although I will admit that I am not all that happy about having three classes on Tuesday/Thursday that are back to back to back (it is the only way I could take the 3 that I need next semester). For a splash of flavor I also get to add Spanish into the mix at some time... which I have not taken since high school.

So yeah, that’s next year, and school. Feel free to let me know what you think.

The reluctant teacher.

So I have had this problem for a while now; what the heck do I want to do with the rest of my life?

Right now as most of you know I am on the Secondary Education/Social Studies path. I have almost 3 years down and still 2 to go. Once or twice I have mused about whether or not I want to be a teacher, at first the question was should I be a history teacher? Which sparked a blog post quite a while back and after it was said and done I decided maybe I would be an economics teacher, then it changed to what it is at right now, political science. The problem however is that I am still having these questions about my future which makes me think maybe it is not what I am going to teach that I have a problem with, but rather teaching itself. This leaves me with a big problem with registration for next semester only 2 weeks away; what do I do with the rest of my life?

The problem is not helped by my not having any idea what I want to do, I look around and so many people have passion for one thing or another (biology, chemistry, theology, engineering) and I just... don't. So yeah that is my problem and with time ticking away I do not really have a solution.

On a side not I am an now a kinda-uncle; congrats to Gina and Josh on their little boy!

New Post! Big Government!

So I have not written a blog in a long time and I did rather like the short debate that took place on my old post between Ryan and Matt, but I guess since they both did agree on me making a new post I will do just that.

Please bear with me as this train of thought has not fully been run through yet on my part, and I am writing this mostly as a way of getting my thoughts out there and working though them.

So I have been reading UST's paper, The Aquin, for quite some time now and most of the time its interesting to read about what is going on and all the "controversies" that may be arising at any given time; but I have never considered them a "liberal" news source. Well yesterday I found a paper on my dorm room doorstep, this paper proclaimed itself to be the "conservative" UST paper, which made me wonder if my Aquin was indeed liberal. I digress though, the point is that I was looking over this "conservative" student newspaper and reading some article about big government not being the goal of the constitution when it was written. More or less it just talked about the big government versus small government stuff that most of us have heard several times before and this got me thinking about government "size".

Today in my poli sci class the topic was political economies, nothing really to do with big government or little government, and port control was mentioned which harkened my memory back to the whole government size issue, and it seems that the Republican Party has found themselves in a kind of contradiction when government size is concerned.

So try and follow me here as I attempt to stumble through this; the Republican Party (hereafter RP) criticizes the Democratic Party (hereafter DP) for their attempted involvement in everything, claiming that it is not the role of government to be that involved in what people should be able to handle themselves. So the RP is for smaller less involved government, and along with that lower tax, due to a lack or required funding. Knowing this basic premises it seems odd to me that the RP of this current administration is taking on such a high number of DP big government ideas; that is not to say the RP is for social programs and increased taxes, but rather for "safety" and increased prices.

One good example that is a current issue has to do with the Dubai Port Company and their buy out of a British company who was in charge of many of our large container ports. So with a large amount of our shipping ports being controlled by and Arab country, never mind that they are one of our most friendly Arab countries in that whole region, our president and the RP want to say that they (Dubai) can not have that type of foothold in our country. The proposed solution is to make large container shipping ports directly under government control in the interest of "safety". The same solution has been proposed, and is still being proposed by many RP members, for airport security.

I am not entirely sure I have given you enough to see what I am thinking, but in short the anti big government RP is attempting to increase the governments relative size dramatically by taking control of something that has been a private industry for the last 250 years. Would the RP increase taxes to cover these new costs? Probably not, that money would just go into our national debt (kind of ironic if you really think about what that debt is) but at the same time the US Government is not equipped to deal with the shipping industry and would not be able to manage our ports at the same low costs as the current outside companies can; what does that mean for you and me? The handbag that came from China that cost $15 jumps up in price to $20 to cover the increased port fees. So no we are not being taxed more but we sure as heck are paying more.

I guess my overall point is that the RP for all of their small government aims, for their mantra of "is it really the governments job to handle that?" has taken some pretty big steps in increasing the size of government under the ruse of "safety".