One thing that I really loved about working for Nationwide Insurance so many years ago was all of the training that they provided us. Most of it took place at the Regional Office which was over fours away, so that meant that we were usually put up in a hotel and were provided with an expense account which was always such a blast for me and the other employees that I drove down with. I just loved the idea of spending a night away from home in a nice hotel and being able to eat out instead of having to do the cooking myself. A mini vacation for a working mother such as myself.

These days the Internet has made it possible to keep employees from having to travel so much by bringing a lot of training right to them, saving companies a good amount of money along the way. Now a days there are sites like securityawarenesstraining.com that have everything that you need for employees to learn about all kinds of awareness training. They even have sexual harassment videos through this site, and we all know how important sexual harassment training is in today’s work place.

But what they really need is to really take action on people that are still continuing to sexual harass others at work. My oldest daughter seems to find herself being harassed at every place she finds employment. Trying to prove this behavior isn’t easy and she always ends up leaving while the idiots still continue on making money and taking advantage of girls/women. Managers are crooked, video tapes get lost or erased and the abuse just keeps on keeping on, a sad state of affairs. If my daughter wasn’t legally an adult at this point you can bet I’d be sticking my nose into and lighting some fires under some hind ends.

On my truck I have two headlights on each side and last night at work not one headlight burned out but both on one side within ten minutes of each other. I have never had both lights on one side burn out within minutes of each other it was pretty amazing. My string of luck continues with my truck when one thing goes wrong enough things have to be wrong so the guys at the shop can charge me $800 that seems to be the magic total. Every time I have to take a vehicle to the shop it costs me $800. I guess they need that much to make a payment or something. The one exception was when I took the truck in for an oil change and an air filter and that cost me almost $100, I have not been back to Firestone and I never will go back there.

I appreciate the guest post, Kenneth Jefferson

I got a new satellite tv provider madisonwhen I moved here and thank goodness, is all I can say. I don’t know what in the world I would have done without my TV the last few months but you know, I’m just glad I’ve had some relief from how horribly boring it is here. Can you imagine being 28 years old and having to move to such a tiny town for a great job at a terribly small company? I’m still not sure if I made the right decision but I think I did – there’s something to be said for getting your productivity ducks in a row while you’re young and that’s what I’m trying to do now. I spend more time than I should watching TV and playing with the dog but you know, I guess it’s all about whatever gets you through the tough times. There’s something to be said for putting in your dues and that’s what I hope I’m doing right now – I don’t want to have to do this again!

After the holidays are all over and done with I am going to have to look for some handyman services in northern virginia in order to get some of the issues taken care of around the place that I just don’t have the time or the tools or the experience to tend to.

If you are a home owner you well know how much time, effort and money it takes to keep the house up and running in so many ways, it just isn’t possible to get it all done on my own so a good quality northern virginia handyman will come in “handy” for most of my needs.

There are a few friends and family members that can and do come over on occasions to lend a hand with some projects but it seems that people are getting busier and busier these days and it isn’t always possible to impose on their time and talents. And now with the holidays and then the cold winter months ahead of us it will be more of a challenge so I’m just going to go ahead and pay a professional and get things moving.

I have really enjoyed finally getting on and learning my way around FaceBook. There have so many benefits that I have found for having a FaceBook account that I can’t imagine not having this type of social media at my finger tips anymore. Not that I spend a whole lot of time on there but once a day I sign in and see what is going on with friends and family all over the country, and a few over seas. I still have a few things to learn that I am struggling with but with time I do believe I will have most of it under control.

Last night I spend some time online looking for folks that I used to work with at a large national insurance company back in the 90′s and I was surprised that I actually found a few that are on FaceBook as well. The one guy that I really wanted to find again has a very unique name, so only took a few minutes to locate him. When I worked with him he was going to college to study law, working full time as a claims rep and being a single dad to a pretty little 3 year old, who is now a drop dead gorgeous 20 year old, according to the pictures on his Wall. He is now a technology lawyer in Washington D.C. working for a large well known international e-commerce law firm and doing very well for himself. Still not married, but living the life of Riley I would imagine. Making good money, living in the big city, tall, dark and handsome, heck ya.

All of the other folks that I found have not responded to my friend request yet. But I’m hoping that over the weekend they will sign on and see that I’m waiting to hear from them. I hope that they recognize my name after all of these years. I wish FaceBook would let you send a comment along with their friend requests, that would save a lot of time, effort and possible trouble, if you know what I mean.

With so many uncertainties in today’s workforce it is becoming a challenge for many people who are trying to find their niche in a well established, well paying, and stable profession in a very unstable economy. The big trend towards going into one of the many medical fields is a well know one, but not everyone is cut out for any type of medical profession. My kid brother is one person who has decided to become a tax preparer, with the thought in mind that taxes are here to stay and there will always be a need for a good Registered Tax Return Preparer, which I have to agree with his train of thought this time around. We don’t generally agree on many things, so this is a nice change of pace for the both of us.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my kid brother and I have always tried to be there for him and support him in any way that I can, but we are just two totally different types of people and have never seen eye to eye from day one. I truly believe that there is hope for this guy, I just hope I live long enough to see him prosper and grow.

Been spending some of my extra time (and there isn’t a whole lot of that to go around these days) online with a buddy who is considering relocating to the big state of Texas. Now this guy isn’t the most computer literate person in the world, so I help him out when and if I can. He is highly qualified in the cleaning and restoration business, with years of experience in this field. His wife’s family lives in the Austin area and they are needed down there to help out with aging parents issues in a very quarreling and totally dysfunctional extended family. No one has a lot of money to throw around to help them with all that goes along with up and moving, thank goodness they don’t have any children that can throw many other issues into the whole mess.

I have spent the evening utilizing Google with phrases like “fire odor removal austin” and “fire damage services austin” and just for grins and giggles I even tried “fish odor removal austin” to see what is going on in that line of business down there and got some names and numbers for him to follow up on. I really like what I saw at http://www.thesteamteam.com/. I’ve sent a few emails out and am using my email to respond to if needed. Hopefully we will get through this and get them up and running as soon as possible. These are good people and I hate to see them leave the area.

One of the pure joys that I have with my job is training new drivers, some do not show up the first night. I understand that 2 am is a tough time to start working, but if someone says they want the job you think they would at least show up and try it. Some do not come back the second night, delivering newspapers is not as easy as it seems. I would guess we hire 10 people to fill each position that we have come open, and this week I had 3 open not a lot of fun. In fact it makes for a very frustrating week.

It is sad I work nights so sometimes the days get a bit jumbled up. I know that today is Thursday since I just put the trash cans down at the curb to be picked up. Friday I make my deposit for the business, Monday I sleep, all day sometimes it seems. Sunday is our busy day so it is not confused with any other days but the rest seem to run together and unless I look I have no idea what day of the week it is. I think I need a real daytime job so I will at least know what day of the week it is.

In our small office we have to have enough room for six work stations, a good Computer Station is very important to each employee. We have tried to form good working stations to help keep our employees happy and productive, we have been using Formaspace to create our work stations and we are very happy with the product and the expense is reasonable. These great work stations are exactly what we need to keep our small company flowing and being productive.

In our business it is very important to be able to communicate with our partners at all times, and the very best way to do this that I have found is use videoconference and the best of these products we have used is the Life Size Video conference tools.

Life Size has over 100 partners located in 30 countries so any where in the world I need to have a video conference it is a piece of cake to set up and to use. View the products that Life Size has to offer at http://www.lifesize.com/products and see if your business can use this fine tool to set up business video conferences for you.

With five vehicles in our fleet of delivery work vehicles, it is very important that all five look their very best at all times and it is pretty much a full time job to keep all five of the delivery vehicles looking good everyday at work. I have started to use Lane’s Professional Car Products on my fleet when we clean them up. In addition to the best wash and wax products on the market we also use car buffers to make them shine. We get a lot of rain here in Nashville and it is important to me that our vans look their best everyday.

I really like the way Lane’s Professional Car Products make my delivery vehicles look and shine, and I feel that adds to their resale value, and also and more important makes our delivery company look good while we are out on the streets. Giving our small delivery company a good name just on sight, we strive to work as hard as our delivery vehicles look.
Lane’s Professional Car Products has a 100% satisfaction guarantee, and have stood behind their top quality products since they began offering their products online in 2001. These are the same fine car care products that professional detailing companies use to get cars to sparkle and shine. I am very happy with the results on my small fleet since we started using these great car care products.

Running a small business is not a lot of fun right now, with the economic conditions that we are facing at any time a small business could go toes up. What I have found to assist me in running my small business is Website Office, they have information resources and I have been using it steady and have seen an increase in the productivity of my staff and my whole business.

Website Office offers search marketing, search engine optimization, online marketing, and website resources. I am very happy with the results and would recommend this service to any small business operator.

We recently had a coworker pass away and I was the person who got the sympathy card to pass around to give to his family. He had worked for the company since moving here in 1998, and apparently suffered a heart attack Wednesday night. His wife called to tell us yesterday morning and we are all in shock – this was so unexpected and he will be missed by all of us here.

Our Human Resources Manager is out on vacation, so I shopped for the card and decided that we might as well order some nice sympathy cards to keep on hand for future use. One of the sad aspects of working for a large company is that yo share a lot of life’s tragedies with your fellow workers as well as the good times like birthdays, new babies, and other reasons to celebrate. If we are going to keep a selection of birthday cards on hand then we might as well be prepared with cards for the less happy occasions, too.

In a time of sorrow the need to say something comforting to the survivors is a very human response. We need to express our caring for the person who passed and offer comfort to the loved ones left behind. Something that I like to include in a sympathy card is a little story or memory to share with the family.

My mother had wonderful social skills and I have to admit that the little I know I got from her good example. At my grandfather’s funeral, I listened to what the people said to my grandmother and to my mother as they were greeted at the funeral home. I decided that the best thing to say to someone’s spouse or parent is to just say, “This is a sad day.” or “We are all going to miss him very much.” Just saying something simple and heartfelt is good for me to express my feelings without getting choked up or mumbling or saying something stupid, and it is good for the family to hear. That’s what I write on the sympathy cards, too – just a simple one or two sentences that let them know that I care.

Every June our company sends me to Chicago to a trade show where we put up a booth to display our wares to the convention of Magazine vendors. We use portable trade show displays that we purchase for the Godfrey Group. These displays work for our functions and are very affordable. The Godfrey Group provides everything needed in the way of display solution. From trade show displays to show room displays for your business.