High School Students Ordered To Smile All The Time - Or ELSE

Bert from Sesame Street would not do well in the Northern Lebanon School
District in Pennsylvania. 

My nominee for the most Orwellian high school in the nation goes to the Northern Lebanon School District in Pennsylvania.

Students there are required to smile at all times while in the hallways between classes, or else they get in trouble. If they don't, they must go to the guidance counselor to discuss their "problems" or get detention.  

So you're not allowed in the school to show any normal emotion other than benign (fake) happiness.

No anxiety over an upcoming tough test. No thoughtful contemplation over which colleges to apply. No anger or grief over the latest school shooting elsewhere in the nation. No thoughts of regrets over the argument with  Dad this morning over smart phone use.

Any normal thing like that is grounds for counseling or detention. It's just bizarre.

Meanwhile, according to the Lebanon Daily News in Pennsylvania, some parents are complaining that bullying incidents are being ignored by administrators. My guess is because the school district has some obsession with turning the school into some Stepford Wives perfect world.

Several teachers told the Lebanon Daily News said the smiling thing isn't a written rule in the school, Assistant Principal Benjamin Wenger has been enforcing this smiling "regulation."  I guess the fake smiling is more important than dealing with the real bullying in this school district.

After the "forced smiles" article came out, North Lebanon School District Superintendent Erik Bentzel denied that there is a "must smile" rule, but I suspect that's PR in the wake of the embarrassing news coverage.

So, if you ever go to this school for a visit, smile! You're on Orwellian camera!

Warning: This Clear Bag of Nuts Contains Nuts!

In Britian, bags of nuts contained in a transparent plastic bag so you can see the product were recalled and pulled from shelves because the label did not say the bag contained nuts, according to the Telegraph.

Warning! There may be images of nuts
in this photograph.  

You've got to satisfy those bureaucrats!

It's true that nuts can be very dangerous, even fatal for people with certain allergies, so it's a very good idea to warn people that food in any package might contain nuts.

It's also true the package was labeled "Monkey Nuts" a Britishism for unshelled peanuts, but you can't be too careful! What if somebody didn't know what monkey nuts were, even though any one can see they were peanuts.  But rules are rules.

Britain can be famous for this weird kind of rule making. It's easy to find examples. In one case, a business moved into a new building and were told they must pay a gas bill. There was no gas connection to the building so there couldn't have been any gas usage.

The company was told the only way they could be let off the hook is if they made an emergency call to report a gas leak, which is the only way that would prompt a response and satisfy British Gas there was no gas there, according to DataLite.

In another case, according to the Daily Mail, an employment agency was initially told they couldn't say they were seeking "reliable" and "hard working" people in their ads because that would offend unreliable people.    (The worker who gave that edict was overruled by a supervisor, who said that of course people could seek reliable people to fill jobs)

Britain is certainly not alone in harboring nonsensical bureaucratic edicts. The Telegraph said the European Union tried to prevent bottled water producers from claiming that water prevents dehydration. 

So, watch out for those rules! You might be running afoul of the law by doing common sense things

Personality Test For Convenience Store Job Stinks and Is Bizarre

I was fascinated, in a horrified way, of a story in Gawker of the hoops people have to go through to get a job at a convenience store chain called Twice Daily. 

First of all, these aren't cushy, complicated jobs that could endanger a whole city if done incorrectly So why the extensive on line psychological examination?

The psychological exam involves statements and you have to say whether you agree or disagree with them. They're yes or no questions.  But when I checked the statements out, all my answers were "It depends."

Getting a job at this convenience store chain involves
surviving a too-complicated psychological test.

They all seem like trick questions. I guess I'll never get a job at Twice Daily. Oh well.

Let's unpack some of these psychological test questions, shall we?  If Gawker can put snarky comments next to the questions, I can go overboard doing the same.

"Too much planning on the job can get in the way of enjoying things."  What do you mean by "enjoying things?" You spend all your day planning so you don't get your work done so you have to work when you're supposed to be off for the day? I guess that would get in the way of enjoying things.

"I have never told a lie on purpose at work."  How else do you tell a lie, other than on purpose? If you say something that's not true, but you believe it to be true, you're not lying. Just wrong. And maybe stupid.

And isn't it OK to lie at work sometimes?  What if, for some odd reason, a woman came into the store and asked "Does this dress make me look fat?"  If it does make her look fat, are you supposed to say "Yeah, you look like a fricken' whale." I'd just say she looks fine. Would telling our insecure, sonewhat overweight woman she looks fine get me in trouble or fired if  I worked at Twice Daily?

"Trying new things at work is more important that following the rules." If trying a new thing means smashing all the beer bottles on the floor because you've never done it before, then yeah, it would be better to follow the rules instead. But if some guy comes in and drops from a heart attack, and you try to give him CPR even though you've never done it before, I think that's better than standing at the cash register like a dope, just following the rules.

"On the job, I am not a very creative person."  Well, shouldn't you be sometimes? And not creative at other times, depending upon the situation?  If somebody comes in to a Twice Daily and asks for help creating the ingredients for a dinner party just from the beer, potato chips, crackers and Diet Mountain Dew on sale there, and you come up with an ingenious plan worthy of a five star restaurant, then maybe creativity is a good thing.

But if you make up numbers when adding up the day's receipts, creativity pocketing some extra money, maybe creativity isn't such a good idea.

"Trusting others on the job can be dangerous."  If a masked man with a gun comes in and offers to staff the cash register while you go on break, maybe trusting isn't the best plan.   But refusing to stock the cans of Hormel Chili on the shelves because you don't trust the chili to stay in the cans, and you don't trust the manager because she might make you restock again is just plain weird.

"Variety is the spice of life."  Of course it is. There's a variety of junk food for sale at Twice Daily, no?

"I always complete a job, no matter what else is happening around me."  Yeah, I know the gas tanks just exploded outside, the roof is collapsing, the place is on fire, the nuclear plant next door just sprung a leak and I'm in the cross hairs of the most violent shootout since the Wild West, but I have to finish counting the change in the register before I leave. Rules are rules.

"Most modern art is not really art." Huh? So a miminum wage convenience store employee is supposed to have the expertise of an art critic on the MOMA beat?  Since when are convenience stores art galleries? How does an appreciation, or lack thereof, of art make a person better at making a Slurpee. Is a Slurpee modern art?

"I never run out of energy." Are you supposed to tell Twice Daily HR that you never run out of energy so you get the job? Then what happens if they schedule you to work 1,000 consecutive hours, and you do get tired by hour 900. Do you then get fired?

The bottom line is, the questions are too ambiguous, too hard for me.  Maybe I should feel bad that the questions Twice Daily asks are so complicated I don't even qualify for a job at a convenience store.

Or maybe I should thank my lucky stars I don't have a job in which a shrink had to psychoanalyze me before I set foot in the building.

Why Homeowner Associations Annoy (Ctd.)

In the latest salvo in how neighborhood associations hate it, hate it, when any hint of personality or quirks invade their streets, a family is in trouble out near Denver because a three year old girl has been using chalk to draw pictures on sidewalks.

This dog, which fell asleep on a sidewalk chalk drawing,
shows the danger HOAs are trying to protect us from.

Apparently, the chalk violates an edict againast "anything that offends, disturbs or interferes with the peaceful enjoyment" of the neighborhood, according to a subcommittee of the neighborhood association in the development, on what was the old Stapleton Airport property.

Because, as we know anything beyond the bland beiges of the neighborhoods and the most boring of landscaping violates the peaceful enjoyment of the neighborhood.  And chalk drawings of flowers and dogs and houses are really offensive, even if the drawings wash away in the next rainfall.

Could you imagine the heart attack the neighborhood association would have with my house?  Stone walls, made of found rocks from the side of the road, are scattered around my property. I haven't finished building some of them yet.

Flowers and plants are placed randomly around the yard, just because it just felt right to put particular plants where they are. And worst of all, I have a clothes line!

I get Homeowners' Associations, known also as HOA's. Done right, they help prevent one homeowner from having 12 derelict cars up on blocks amid weeds as tall as an NBA player. And who wants a neighbor who's driveway is littered with the beer cans and used Trojans accumulated from their nighttly parties that blast on until dawn?  

Supposedly, about 20 percent of all U.S. homes fall under HOA rules, and presumably, most of them are OK.

When they get out of control, I thank gawd I don't have an HOA harassing me. I found an old Gawker article detailing some of the worst abuses. Among them:

--A guy spent $200,000+ in legal fees to combat an HOA edict that he couldn't park his pickup truck in his own driveway. As the article points out, the guy won, but the HOA probably jacked up homeowners' fees to pay for the ruling against it, so now everybody who lives there hates the pickup truck guy.

---Another homeowner got in trouble with his HOA because he had Marine decals on his car, again parked in his own driveway.

--A Colorado homeowner got in trouble because she hung a Christmas wreath shaped like a peace sign. The wreath was "divisive," according to the HOA. Yeah, we know how many people hate, HATE peace, especially around Christmas.

--A Florida retiree went to jail because his HOA got a court to order him to resod his lawn, which had pretty much died. He couldn't afford to fix it, but too bad, he went to jail. Since people who don't take care of their lawns are worse than child molesters, right? Because green lawns are more important than God, right?

Eventually, friends and neighbors collected money to fix the God Almighty Lawn, and the retiree was sprung from the pokey.

I know this is more difficult than leaving it to an HOA, but if my neighbors do something obnoxious, I can start by going over and talking to them and working out a solution. If that doesn't work, there's always the zoning board.

And besides, who has time to worry if there's an extra car in the driveway, or they paint their house a color I don't like?  I can close the window shade, or plant a bush obscuring the view of the offending house. Problem solved.

But that's not the American way.  Messy lawsuits are, I guess.

Is This Kid a Terrorist?

There's a weird video making the rounds, of TSA agents in some airport really scrutinizing a six year old kid. The video is at the bottom of this post.

I have no idea what the circumstances are in the scene, but the girl really doens't look like a terrorist to me. And yes, I've been known to call kids little terrorists.

TSA searches of kids, while necessary, I
guess, give me the willies

I guess the kid was drug tested, too. Again, there could be things that I don't know about from this video, but is it possible this kid planned to blow up the airport, but was too addled on crack or oxycontine to pull it off? I kinda doubt it.

Or is it just a random search, where they pick every sixth person to be their search target and our six year old was the lucky winner?

You know how some people are afraid of flying? I'm not. I'm fine once I'm on the plane, but I'm afraid of airports. Too confusing, too much security, too many rules. That's why I don't fly much.

Here's the vid: