WAL-MART REJECTS 5,700+ JOB SEEKERS IN CLEVELAND…
November 26th, 2007[Update -- 1354 -- My Writing On The Wal co-blogger Jonathan offers a further fisking of the Plain Dealer's love fest.]
In what can only be seen as a condemnation of the mayoral stewardships of Jane Campbell and Frank Jackson, and the total absence of leadership from its city council members past and present, Cleveland’s only Wal-Mart turned away more than 5,700 job applicants. [Molly called at 6:40 a.m. to alert me to this page 1 story, I couldn't wait.]
From Cleveland’s Plain Dealer:
When thousands of people compete for a few hundred ordinary jobs, trend watchers say it’s an indication not only of a less-than-stellar economy but also of a workforce short on marketable skills.
The huge number of applicants wouldn’t have caught anyone’s eye had these been skilled, high-paying jobs, the types of positions that thousands of people always seek.
But these were regular retail jobs with low-to-average wages and benefits, not the sort of positions typically in high demand. Target wouldn’t disclose the number of people who applied to work at its Steelyard Commons store.
I love that mention of average wages and benefits. If Wal-Mart has become even close to the average then the economy is in much deeper doo-doo than I previously thought.
Amy Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio, said she finds these ratios “deeply troubling,” reminiscent of bread lines in times of great poverty. She said the figures paint a bleak portrait of the regional job market and underscore the need for more and better employment opportunities.
“That’s Depression-era kind of imagery,” she said. “. . . You can’t have an economy that works that way. It speaks to the need to generate a different kind of employment in Cleveland.”
Last evening I watched On The Waterfront, and the image that leapt to my eye was that of the stevedores lined up in hopes of finding a day’s worth of back-breaking labor.
…Wal-Mart is a large, established company, and a job there represents stability, perhaps more than at other retailers.
“It’s security,” he said. “Wal-Mart is going to be around… and people just want to make ends meet.”
Yes, Wal-Mart will be around, until it isn’t and with an annual employee turn-over rate hovering near 50 percent, the 300 people who did find jobs shouldn’t feel all that secure.
And there there’s the tale of how Wal-Mart is not the place where people make their dreams happen, but rather where they go when their dreams have faded.
Daniel Sherman, 49, of Cleveland, is an “instock supervisor” at the Steelyard Wal-Mart. As such, he’s in charge of about 12 people on the dock.
“I own the back room,” he said. “It’s probably one of the tougher jobs in the store.”
He enjoys the job, he said, citing a 401(k) and the employee discount as benefits. Furthermore, the Wal-Mart of 2007 is more “enlightened” [Thanks to a $34 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Labor. JH] than it used to be when it comes to making sure employees are on the clock when working.
“It isn’t like the old days,” he said, when Wal-Mart was accused of requiring some employees to continue working after they had clocked out.
Still, Wal-Mart was not his dream. His goal was to be an attorney.
Sherman said he used to work at Ford’s Lorain Assembly Plant but lost that job when it closed. After that, he said, he enrolled at Cleveland State University and spent four years earning a law degree.
But after failing to pass the bar exam, he found himself not only out of the legal field, but out of work, period. Then he heard about the new store. Now he’s in a supervisory role from which he said he could see himself retiring.
“After four years of law school, you, too, can work at Wal-Mart,” Sherman said with a laugh. “Life’s a funny thing. . . . You may actually be Mr. Wal-Mart until it’s time for the old rocking chair.”
Shame, shame, shame on every man and woman who has the audacity to call themselves a leader in Cleveland.
[...] Wal-Flacks bantered about for the number of jobs at the Wal-Mart Supercenter at Cleveland’s Steelyard Commons. Heres the problem: Wal-Mart seems to shrinking staff without shrinking store [...]
I interviewed for a white-collar, skilled job last month that had over 250 applicants. Maybe I should feel lucky that I was one of the 8-10 that they picked to interview, but a) I didn’t get the job, so I don’t feel particularly lucky and b) I’ve concluded that the liberal arts degree is worthless here, and I need to move on, get a different type of education that I *can* make it work in Cleveland (I’m NOT letting this place chase me off again!) Just have to figure out what that magic skill is….
Shalom Christine,
I don’t know what the solution is for Cleveland. But I do know that the solution is not more of the same.
Best of luck on your quest.
B’shalom,
Jeff
Jeff…I’m afraid I don’t understand your indictment of Cleveland’s political leadership. What should they have done…hold out for a Wal-Mart store that would employ 6000 people, so that everyone who wanted a job there could have one? Or is it that they should have just created jobs by attracting…you know…real companies with real jobs.
I’m afraid that we’re dealing with a State of Ohio issue there. We are a state that is profoundly anti-business with our tax and regulation (workers comp. etc.) climate. Why in the world companies would choose to open an operation in Ohio is a mystery to me, and it’s a problem Cleveland politicians are not able to overcome, even if they were so inclined.
Anyhow, I sense some indignation on your part that those 6000 people actually wanted to work for your Public Enemy No. 1, not that they were “turned away”. In what sense were they turned away? Were they prohibited from applying for employment? (Or is it the story of the guy who couldn’t pass the bar exam, and who admits that he likes his job, that tugs at your heartstrings.)
Why is it surprising that new jobs paying 21,000 a year, in a convenient (on the bus line) location, with good working conditions (it ain’t digging ditches) would attract a large number of applicants?
I’m trying to understand where the outrage comes from.
Is it the 50% turnover rate? Do you get it that this is unskilled labor, and entry-level labor, and (largely) part-time labor? That a great many people who work at Wal-Mart are doing so on a (intentionally) short term basis. That this job is not the be all end all of their working lives, but instead a place to start working their way up the employment ladder, either within W-M or without?
Do you get it that employment at this level is by nature transient…that many new employees who are working either for the first time, or for the first time in a while, are often not the most reliable or dependable or competent folks, and they often lose their jobs within the first year for reasons of their own making…or they get bored or tired of the job…or just stop showing up?
Or do you suppose that the company really wants to have 50% turnover rate, and creates it on purpose by running around terminating good, hard-working, reliable employees out of a sheer abundance of bad faith and meanness?
Your contempt for both the employees and the customers (and of course the evil management) of Wal-Mart is at least consistent.
Shalom Dan,
Since I moved to Cleveland in 1984 I’ve watched as politicians threw money away on big flashy projects like The Galleria, The Avenue, Gateway and the Brown’s Stadium, which taken together alone have to account for nearly $1 billion in public monies. These projects have benefited a very select few and not the broader population. Steelyard Commons is just one more example of the trend.
No. Cleveland should not have held out for a Wal-Mart that could employ 6,000. Cleveland should have shepherded its resources to attract or create industries with a future. I don’t know if you’ve been following Wal-Mart’s financials for the last few years, but the company is no longer the darling of Wall Street that it once was.
Cleveland does not need more retail. It needs businesses and industries that pay living wages to people so that they can patronize the retail we have.
As to my opinion of the people who shop at Wal-Mart and the hourly employees who stock the shelves and ring up the purchases, I have nothing but respect for any man or woman who, within the bounds of the law and morality, does what they have to to care for them self and their family. But I have no respect for a predatory corporation that has systematically worked to degrade the economy of a country that I love very much.
On the matter of Wal-Mart wanting a high turn-over rate, there have been memes leaked from the company that indicate just that. Wal-Mart knows that it can train a worker very quickly and that the longer a person stays in its employ, the more that person is going to cost the company in salary and what few benefits may be offered.
B’shalom,
Jeff
Jeff,
A couple of things come to mind based on your response.
How is it that you define those businesses or industries “with a future”? How is a manufacturing company with, say 350 employees, most of whom may well be low-skill to unskilled laborers, any more secure, or any more worth having in a city than a large retailer. Don’t employees of large retailers patronize the same retailers, and pay the same taxes, and buy homes, just likes employees of manufacturers, large or small?
How is the future necessarily any brighter for an employee (or for his city) if he is employed by ABC Industries in a laborer position instead of at Wal-Mart?
We can lament the transition in our economy from manufacturing to other sectors all we want (I don’t), but it is a worldwide phenomenon. Even China, the supposed beneficiary of U.S. manufacturing job losses has 25 million fewer manufacturing jobs than it had 10 years ago.
Also, for the record, Gateway was built mostly with “sin taxes” on cigarettes and alcohol, in other words, optional, not mandatory taxes, assessed on behaviors that society is supposedly trying to discourage…and not taxes on income, property or other sales. Browns Stadium had some public money involved, but was largely financed by luxury box sales and season ticket holder “private seat licenses”, in other words, it is paid for mostly by the people who use the facility, which is as it should be.
And how responsible would it be for the political leadership of a city to ignore the need to have modern, attractive retail facilities (how attractive and modern they are is of course debatable) to try to draw people downtown to shop instead of staying at their suburban malls? Don’t retailers pay rents, employ citizens, generate tax revenues, and bring people into the city in a way that manufacturers cannot?
I also have little doubt that if the city government went about spending some of those millions that you didn’t want spent on retail projects by attracting industry in the conventional way, via tax abatements and other financial incentives, there would be a chorus of people from your side of the political spectrum, as there always are, who would rant on about giveaways to corporate “fat cats”, etc. We can’t even build a downtown office building without hearing this kind of whining from the usual suspects.
How is a manufacturing (or service) company benefiting society as a whole more than a retail organization, assuming they employ a similar number of people? Or would you like to dictate to manufacturing companies what level of wages and benefits they should be paying to their employees as well? Are they “predatory” if they pay less than say, what YOU might accept to take a job there?
And if making a profit, selling thousands of products that people want to buy, and functioning as one of our country’s largest employers of low-skilled and entry-level workers is predatory and degrading to our economy, imagine how degraded our economy would be if they didn’t exist.
Thanks for the forum and the dialogue. I have no doubt you care deeply about our city. I just think sometimes you allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.
Peace, DW
Shalom Dan,
Ask yourself this question: would you rather have been the son of a retail sales clerk bringing home the equivalent of say $15,000/year with minimum if any benefits or the son (as I am) of a non-union draftsman working for a plastics manufacturing company bringing home twice that with health benefits and a pension that enabled him to retire comfortably before age 65?
The idea that somehow retail sales jobs are just temporary, a stepping stone until something better comes along, is a fantasy in our America. The something better has moved out of the country where workers accept a fraction of what the jobs paid here.
As to the idea that somehow the $300 million plus in tax monies that paid for the Brown’s stadium is somehow different from any other tax dollar, that is a bit of smoke and mirrors that the tiny minority who benefit from such corporate welfare trot out anyone stops to look at the numbers.
It doesn’t matter if a tax dollar comes from a property tax, a sales tax, an income tax or a sin tax. It’s a dollar removed from the local economy for a purpose deemed appropriate by elected officials. The effect is the same on the local economy.
That is not to suggest that I oppose taxation, I don’t. But I do think that all tax dollars should be spent first to provide for the general health, protection and welfare of the population and then to promote the general good; not to line the pockets of a select few.
B’shalom,
Jeff
“would you rather have been the son of a retail sales clerk bringing home the equivalent of say $15,000/year with minimum if any benefits or the son (as I am) of a non-union draftsman working for a plastics manufacturing company bringing home twice that with health benefits and a pension”
Apples vs. oranges…one job resulted from having a very marketable skill owing to education (or self-education on-the-job, as many draftsmen do)…the other the employment of an unskilled or minimally skilled individual.
It’s like asking if I’d rather be the son of a brain surgeon or a busboy. It’s an easy answer, but what does it have to do with the issue at hand? There are still lots of plastics companies around employing draftsmen (albeit CAD)in reasonably well-paying jobs. My question to you was a challenge to make your case that manufacturing (or some other non-retail) jobs are inherently more secure, or desirable, or future oriented than retail jobs are…for the same unskilled or low-skilled labor pool.
Sorry you don’t see the moral difference between a mandatory tax on property or income and a sin tax, which is entirely optional, and is levied on items that are not necessary for subsistence. Or…don’t like the sin tax? Buy your smokes when you’re in Lake, Lorain, Medina, Geauga or Summit County.
Shalom Dan,
No, it’s quite apples and apples. Both jobs were obtainable at one time in our America with a high school education. The sales job was essentially dead-end. The drafting job was not.
There used to be lots of jobs like that, jobs with a future that you could get after high school with the education you could get in high school.
But those were the first jobs we shipped overseas.
The reaction of the Libertarians was: I don’t have that kind of job, it sucks to be the people who lost their jobs. They should have planned better. Let them work at Wal-Mart.
And we began to create an unemployed and often unemployable underclass.
Jeremy Rifkin wrote nearly 20 years ago that there is nothing more dangerous to a free society than masses of un- or under-employed young males because they are most likely to turn to crime and violence out of frustration (think Germany in 1932 or present-day Saudi Arabia).
And a tax is a tax is a tax. It is always money removed from the private sector to fuel the public sector and has a negative influence on the economy. What we do is balance that negative influence with what we determine to be the greater public good.
When that equation is ill-weighted, as it is in Cuyahoga County, we end up with 6,000+ people desperate for dead-end jobs.
That is not a healthy economy.
B’shalom,
Jeff
p.s. and i really do enjoy this conversation. it’s not often i get intelligent questions that force me to evaluate my thoughts.
Careful Jeff, you’re talking like a conservative here. (Don’t worry, I won’t let it get around.) You’re at least admitting that taxes…or “money removed from the private sector to fuel the public sector”…has a negative effect on our economy. Yes, Keynesian economics is dead. Keep spreading the word.
Leftists are turning themselves inside out to find the black cloud behind the silver lining of a steady, five year economic expansion, featuring high growth, low unemployment, declining deficits and low inflation. Federal tax revenues are at record levels, BECAUSE OF, not despite the Bush tax cuts, especially capital gains rates. (Someday, Democrats will admit that this is a cause-effect relationship.) All this despite huge spending outlays due to the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. Millions of new jobs have been created due to the pro-growth policies we have undertaken in the Bush years.
The job market is changing, and education is the key to success in the transition. IMO, our schools, both HS and colleges, are not turning out the kinds of graduates that our economy is seeking. Until we address that shift, the “creative destruction” that has always been a feature of the American economy, will have its victims (think buggy whip manufacturers and their employees)
One of the biggest myths about the changing labor picture is that the millions of (net) new jobs created outside of the manufacturing sector are lower paying than the manufacturing sector jobs that they are (more than) replacing. They’re not.
On the other point: Draftsmen were among the first jobs we shipped overseas? Really?
I work in the professional recruiting business. I recruited and placed many draftsmen/designers early in my career. I know many of those people who considered their jobs to be “dead-ends”. They weren’t degreed engineers, and so could never ascend to the top of the department ladder in engineering, and their skills could be (and in many cases eventually were) eliminated through technology.
And despite what you say, people who went into drafting work directly from high school DID have a marketable skill that they were trained for in special HS vocational programs. And it may have been the norm to make that jump in our fathers’ day, but it hasn’t been the case in the last 30 years during my time in the technical recruiting business in NE Ohio. Most companies require at least an Associates Degree for entry level drafting (CAD) positions today.
There are lots of statistics showing that the efficiencies resulting from outsourcing jobs has had a net positive effect on job creation and the overall US economy. I’ll look some of that stuff up and send it your way.
Thanks, as always, for the conversation.
DW
Shalom Dan,
I’m sure my cred as a left-wing, liberal lunatic is safe. But just to make sure, remember I said that:
What we do is balance that negative influence with what we determine to be the greater public good.
Unless we’re willing to truly go off the grid, it’s hard to present an argument that taxes for the common good don’t benefit us all in some part of our life.
I did not mean to imply that drafting jobs are going overseas (although I’m sure some have) but rather that they were an example of a job with a future that a reasonably intelligent person could get with only a high school education.
I haven’t touched CAD/CAM for more than 20 years, but even in the early days it wasn’t all that difficult to learn.
I have to wonder if the two-year/associates degree requirement is a factor of the dumbing down of a high school diploma or the increased complextity of the program.
B’shalom,
Jeff
p.s. and on that whole wondeful economy thing? Robert Reich offers a good explanation for the smoke and mirrors. And then there was this in today’s USAToday:
“That light at the end of the housing-meltdown tunnel appears to be an oncoming train,” says Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors. “With so many choices and so few buyers, the median sales price is cratering.”
Hi there!
Waaaay back in comment #5, you stated that Cleveland doesn’t need any more retail. I disagree. As a Tremont homeowner for the past 13 years, it’s a little ridiculous to live one minute from downtown, yet have to drive to Brookpark or Lakewood to buy a garden hose. I’m no fan of Wal-Mart, and it’s a shame that Steelyard Commons was built as the world’s longest strip mall, but it’s nice to not have to get on the highway to buy a bucket of joint compound, a flat of flowers or a pair of blue jeans.
Kris
Shalom Kristine,
First, thank you for stopping in, for reading and, most importantly,for taking the time to write a comment. Community is all about the conversation.
I appreciate your situation in Tremont.
When I said that Cleveland doesn’t need any more retail I was speaking broadly. I don’t disagree that there are under-served areas, but the solution is not Big Boxes that deplete existing local retail.
Bill Callahan did an excellent job earlier this year of explaining the situation in: Beacon-Journal: Ohio retail “a zero-sum game.”
Here in Cleveland Heights we have a Wal-Mart, but we also have a number of high-quality local retailers who have learned that service trumps prices if you do it right.
There are options.
B’shalom,
Jeff
This may be the single most interesting and insightful CIC (conversation in comments) I’ve ever seen here, which is saying a lot. I think Dan makes some excellent points and raises the right questions, many of which I’d have to agree with. We simply have to somehow get past this refrain of how lower-wage jobs were “shipped overseas.” There are a million and one structural economic reasons why that has occurred and will continue to occur, and they’re mostly beyond the ability of any particular economic players to stop.
As a mature, high-cost economy, we have to focus on the kinds of enterprises that add high intellectual value while letting the lower-value tasks be performed elsewhere. The classic example is the I-Pod, born, designed and engineered here, but assembledc elsewhere. Our sustainable competive advantage in the world economy is in these kinds of innovations. Our education, relative open systems (to immigration, finance, etc.) and stable currency and intellectual property systems make it hard to impossible for places like China to compete with us in that area, at least presently and perhaps for the foreseeable future. We’re simply not going back to a time when millions of people could find good, stable, high-paying career-type jobs with only a high school education. The sooner we deal with that reality, the better we’ll be.
Shalom John,
I see two pieces of information missing from the equation:
First, as energy costs continue to rise, shipping — even by giant container ships burning low-grade bunker oil — will increasingly become a cost factor at the retail level. Factor in the detrimental environmental effects that that shipping an iPod 7,000 miles and you begin to see why letting the lower-value tasks be performed elsewhere is not a sustainable policy.
Second, we remain a nation of more than 300 million individuals with a wide range of educational attainments and capabilities. Allow me to be generous and suggest that even if 100 percent of those with at least average intelligence are able to obtain the education to find work in a mature, high-cost economy… of enterprises that add high intellectual value, a very sizable (25 million? 30 million?) part of our population is not intellectually equipped.
How do we ensure that our economy is not swamped by masses of young, disaffected Americans unable to find work that provides hope and a future? Do we ship them overseas as well?
As energy costs climb, the close we are to our source of manufacture, the better our economy will be.
Resources are resources and must be shipped to the place of manufacture or substitutes must be found to eliminate that shipping cost. But finished/end product goods can, indeed in the future, must, be procured as close to the consumer as possible.
B’shalom,
Jeff
Jeff,
Good point about energy costs. But let’s hope this incredible price spike is temporary, because if I have to keep spending $50 to fill up my modest Honda Accord, I’m going to be in a mood pretty shortly to storm the capital with a pitchfork.
And you’re of course completely right that we can’t have all 300 million Americans (well, let’s put it at maybe closer to 180-200 million who are of an age to be fulltime workers) working as what Robert Reich would call symbolic analysts. That’s of course why there’s so much attention lately on immigration, and why shameless demagogues such as Lou Dobbs are finding such an eager audience. We probably can’t continue to have open borders as we have while also paying proper attention to the career development of this slice of our own population. Something is going to have to give there. But remember also that employers have said time and time again that the reason we need to allow immigrants is that there are too many low-wage jobs that Americans simply refuse to do. Of course some of them are simply interested in setting up a race to the bottom in wage rates, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some truth in that contention.
Shalom John,
I’m going to make what must seem like a totally counter-intuitive suggestion: President George Bush’s energy policy (or lack there of) may be the best thing that has happened to the industrial nations since the birth of the labor movement.
By creating a global financial climate where economists now talk about $300/barrel crude with a straight face, we are entering a future where we cannot continue business as usual.
We must accomplish two things simultaneously. First we must drastically reduce our consumption of non-renewable energy sources. Second, we must globally invest in stop-gap energy technologies until we can get fusion reactors going.
Your Accord and my Camry aren’t going to cut it.
B’shalom,
Jeff
John, thanks for your words of encouragement…and you’re right…great comment thread.
I’m a bit troubled at your suggestion that, if energy costs remain high, that “storming the capital with a pitchfork” is the thing to do. I understand of course that you are speaking metaphorically, but “the capital” is not the place where the price of gasoline is determined or effectively remedied.
(that’s one reason why I have always scratched my head at the silly “assume the position” cartoon here at HCWW with the guy taking the gasoline hose in the end, and sarcastically thanking George Bush for screwing him over with high gas prices…it just doesn’t make any sense…unless of course the message is one proposing gasoline price controls by the government, and I hope we have learned our lesson well on that issue. Many greenies suggest that artificially raising the price is, in fact, the answer to our over-consumption issue.)
And I realize that the world oil price is what it is, even if it’s domestic oil. If we did more to explore, drill and refine more of our own domestic oil though, at least we could put downward pressure on the price by increasing the supply.
I happen to think that the U.S. will solve the oil issue within 30 years or so, because I think we’ll all be driving electric cars by then, fueled by electricity from clean, safe, non carbon-emitting nuclear power plants, and other non-polluting sources.
It will be time to take the environmental alarmists seriously when they start taking the development of domestic fossil fuels, and nuclear power seriously.
Shalom Dan,
The cartoon is posted to reflect what I think was a done deal in the early months of the Bush administration when Vice President Cheney met with undisclosed individuals to form the administration’s energy policy.
Do you know what was decided during those meetings? I sure don’t.
But I do know that anyone would be hard pressed to point to exactly what the energy policy has been over the past eight years.
All we have to go on is the reality that the populations of Europe and North America are now in serious competition with India and China for the remaining petroleum in the planet.
B’shalom,
Jeff
Dan, my reference to storming the capital re: gas prices is based on my belief (which in turn is based on plenty of evidence) that much of the price spike is due to Bush & Co.’s reckless war-mongering and threats in the Mideast. That figures greatly into the current prices, both the current disruptions in supply and the possibility of further disruptions if the conflict spreads to other places, particularly Iraq. Obviously there are other factors influencing prices, but this is a major one.
Jeff,
It sounds like your coffee cup is half empty rather than half full. The fact is; there are 300 more people that will have jobs this week, than last week,,,, and Jobs before Christmas is a good thing, isn’t?
As for Any Hanauer, what is troubling is that she doesn’t acknowledge that the Cleveland Public School System can only graduate 30% of their students. For Cleveland that’s almost $400,000.00 a graduate. It is also hard to believe that 70% of students don’t graduate and are grossly unprepared to do any thing but work at McDonalds or Burger King. Multiply those numbers by 10 years and what do you get; 5700 job seekers inline for 300 jobs. Insolently non high school graduates earn 17,300 annually. To them Wall-mart is a step up and looking pretty good.
On the water front is a great Movie and probably accurately depicts the early movement of organized labor.
And lastly, as for the turn over, this is not necessarily a bad thing, because what you don’t mention is how many people utilize their wall-mart training to catapult them into better jobs?
Well Jeff it have been fun and I hope that you have a Merry Christmas, and remember ½ full.
Shalom Randy,
First, thank you for stopping in, for reading and, most importantly, for taking the time to write a comment. Community is all about the conversation.
(And you get double points for signing your full name. I only wish more people were willing to stand behind what they say.)
Having said that, allow me to add: That’s true. You’re absolutely right. It is a good thing that 300 people have jobs they feel are a step up from what they had previously.
But I’m not willing to lower the bar. I don’t think that accepting the chasing of wages to the bottom is right.
As a community, as a state, as a nation we have the obligation to not settle, to continue to cajole and pressure our fellow citizens and elected representatives to make a difference.
I want us to sit at the table, not eat the table scraps.
B’shalom,
Jeff
p.s. as for on the waterfront, it represents a post ww ii new york. it was based on a 24-part series for the new yorker written by malcolm johnson, so it comes considerably after the beginnings of the labor movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Wow, Jeff, I never knew that about the origins of the movie. You learn something every day if you read the right blogs. You might even become a contender, as Brando’s character put it.
Shalom John,
This is why
Journalistsjournalists are so killer at Trivial Pursuit. Our heads are filled with libraries of worthless information.If there is one function any
Journalistjournalist ought to be able to perform, it is to put the story into context; hence our fascination with the obscure.B’shalom,
Jeff
Jeff, interesting that you’ve chosen to capitalize Journalist, and twice. Or am I reading too much into that.
Shalom John,
Yeah, I tend to overuse the shift key.
B’shalom,
Jeff
[...] WAL-MART REJECTS 5,700+ JOB SEEKERS IN CLEVELAND… “Shame, shame, shame on every man and woman who has the audacity to call themselves a leader in Cleveland.” – Jeff Hess [...]