stepstomarrow
When granddaughter, Jada, was born with leukemia, a donor-match was located and Jada made a miraculous recovery. In honor of her grandaughter's health, Jeanna has decided to walk across the country (in the dead of winter) to raise awareness and build support for the bone marrow registry (all that's required is a cheek swab). Follow Jeanna's remarkable journey as she travels the United States by foot.

taste_buds
Holidays provide a built-in excuse for indulgent entertaining. This all-purpose foodie community covers everything from homemade hangover cures to dinner party menus. Need quick advice? Get five-minute snack suggestions, low-fat ingredient substitutes, and even measurement conversions. Delicious recipes garnished with humorous advice. Yum.

Tags: taste_buds

naturesbeauty
Always on the lookout for compelling images, we were delighted to discover this flourishing community of artists who share a love of nature. Honoring the subject with photographs, paintings, sketches, prose, poetry, and other creative works, you'll be simultaneously riveted to your monitor and inspired to run helter skelter towards the nearest wooded dale.

Tags: naturesbeauty

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/12/11/

I'm new to this board and need some advice. First off, we have a new assistant manager at our store. For the whole six weeks he's worked here, his live-in girlfriend has been tagging along with him to work and hanging around the store for the whole of his shifts. She's a substitute teacher and they share a car, so she always came to work with him and just hung out all day waiting for a sub call. The problem is, she wasn't getting any sub calls. So, he hired her! Last week she just showed up at the customer service desk with a nametag on, and those of us who were working that day simply could not believe it. Everyone in the store knows she's the ASM's "domestic partner" because she hangs out here with him every single day he's worked, and they are very open about it (public displays of affection included). She gets to hang out in the manager's office with him and so forth.

What's worse is that he writes the schedules, and the first two days she worked we were slow due to bad weather and he starting sending people home. He asked a bunch of people to leave early, but not his girlfriend of course, since they share rent and car expenses, etc. How can this not be a conflict of interest? When a guy and his girlfriend live together and share expenses, and he hires her and gives her 40 hours while telling other booksellers that he has no hours for them, and is actively sending them home, how can that possibly be fair? I always thought it was expressly prohibited for a BN manager to hire a relative. domestic partner, or someone with whom he has a "close personal relationship." This has been super bad for store morale over the last few days, and it's rapidly getting worse, because a few other unwise people in management and supervisory roles now want their relatives to be hired, and the horse is out of the barn, apparently. One of the head cashiers just got her son hired--who will be cashiering along with her. Several of us, including a couple of the managers, have wanted to complain, but the store manager is known to be a blabbermouth who will go right back to the ASM in question and let him know who complained. Is "We Listen" even worth the trouble? Many of us are standing around wondering how they can even think about doing stuff like this if they don't have permission from higher up, and will we get in trouble for bringing it up to someone (people have brought complaints about things before at this store and been subject to subtle reprisals, so most people here--even managers--don't complain). Do I even want to work for a company where assistant manager's are allowed to do stuff like this?

We have a demo nook bolted to our customer service desk. It has been out there for 3 days. It's currently non-functioning. The touch screen has a crack and is just black. This does not speak well to the durability of the thing, if you ask me! The worst part is that management decided to leave it out there "so customers can at least see it!" Yes, and we get to tell them, "Here it is! The nook! But, sorry, it broke, so you can't really check out any of its fantabulous features!" I really don't know which is worse: that it broke so quickly, or that we're just going to leave it out there!

backpacking
Want to embrace your wanderlust on the cheap? If you're tall on adventurous spirit, but short on funds, this community can help you plan a trip to anywhere. Offering plentiful tips on how to travel light, you can post about bargain hotels and hostels if you're into urban exploration or discuss camping gear and mosquito netting for the great outdoors. Hitch your backpack, pitch your tent, and carpe diem!

Tags: backpacking

I made this lj account just for this community, I've worked for B&N for over a year and a half now and recently I tore a muscle. The only place it could've happened is at work, I work in the cafe and anyone here knows how much heavy lifting you do in the cafe, especially on order days. I don't think I have to explain more about what you do in the cafe, but my doctor said to take time off work, so we got in contact with hr for short term disability, they decided they wanted to try workers comp which was just plain stupid to me and my store manager.

So we tried workers comp, got denied which is fine cause there wasn't one moment that we knew it had happened at work, not an exact time or place; it was just a suspicion that it happened there. It took two weeks to get denied on worker's comp and then another week to fill out all the paper work for short term disability. And now I've been calling and calling my hr lady, no one else in the hr department will talk to me they just have me leave another message for the certain lady. It's been over a month now, I've been working half my shifts and its just frustrating all around. I'm so thankful that I have family that I can rely on, because otherwise my husband and I would be on our butts in the street by now.

There's nothing I haven't done to try and get this worked out, everyone at my store is just as frustrated as me and I even have my store manager trying to call her up as well.
My worries now are that nothing will happen, am I going to just have to deal being injured? I'm fine on the most part to go back to work, but what about that last month? If we hadn't had tried worker's comp where would I be right now?

Can you understand my frustrations? Any advice?

Tags: advice, hr

Whats the worst mangled title request you've ever gotten at info? My two best ones are:
Do you have that book "the Stranger". I think its by Shamu.
I need a CD by some guy named Felonious Monk.

Dumbasses