Is your waiter a thief?

I was browsing on the net and found this article on identity theft, it kinda caught me off-guard because I never would have thought people were doing things like this as I used to be a server and never in a thousand years would I think of something like this...but this also the reason I hooked up with PPL as one of their reps, because there are crooks out there lurking for the right opportunity to knock...you should def. check out Pre-Paid Legal...I did, I joined the sales crew and I signed for the membership as well just to protect myself legal crazies...here is my Pre-paid Legal web page...maybe I can help you and/or go into business with you!
www.prepaidlegal.com/idt/ryanthodge
it cost me like 12 bucks for the indentity shield and $49 bucks to go in business with them!
Here is the story...Ryan Hodge


Is your waiter a thief?
Crooks with portable bank-card readers are getting away with $60 million a year. Your credit or debit card could be 'skimmed' at a store, a restaurant, even an ATM.
By U.S. News & World Report
Brad Lipman's dinner out with his family turned out to be much more expensive than he expected, at least temporarily.
When he paid for the meal last summer with his debit card, someone in the restaurant -- he still doesn't know who -- swiped it through a portable card reader, which copied the account information. Within a few weeks, thousands of dollars had been stolen from his bank account.
Lipman, who lives in Thousand Oaks, Calif., is one of thousands of people affected by "skimming," criminals stealing credit card information when cards are used at ATMs, restaurants or other retail locations. Skimmers siphon about $60 million a year from bank accounts, according to the Electronic Funds Transfer Association.
"We're seeing more of it," says Todd Davis, the chief executive of the security company LifeLock in Tempe, Ariz. One common technique, he says, is placing a skimming device over the card slot of an ATM. The skimmer looks like a piece of plastic to guide cards into the slot, but it picks up bank information as the card slides through.
More ATM use means more incidents People can purchase skimming machines, which are also called portable magnetic credit card readers, through online sites such as eBay for around $200. The devices, which are about the size of a small stapler and contain a slot for card swiping, electronically read cards' magnetic strips and store the data. The data are then transferred to a computer and used to make copycat cards, which can make purchases.
The devices are also used for legal purposes, such as registering conference attendees or making sales at small retail stores. An eBay spokeswoman said that the company allows the sale of the devices because they are legal, but that sellers are prohibited from marketing the devices for fraudulent use under the company's policy against encouraging illegal activity.
Kurt Helwig, the president of the Electronic Funds Transfer Association, which promotes electronic commerce, says that though the number of skimming incidents as a percentage of overall ATM use hasn't grown, the increase in ATM use overall means that skimming is happening more often. Although it's still a rare occurrence and there's no need to avoid ATMs, he says, consumers should be wary.
"If you see something that looks funny or doesn't look right, with wires hanging out or a stupid sign (directing consumers to a different card slot), don't use that ATM, and let someone know," Helwig says.
Video on MSN Money

Recovering from ID theftHere are tips for restoring your credit after you've been victimized.
Banks must reimburse Many banks have added security measures, such as monitoring ATMs with physical inspections as well as electronically during off hours, when skimming is most likely to occur. Margie Green, a spokeswoman for Wachovia, says the bank's ATMs are under watch 24 hours a day. Like most banks, Wachovia reimburses customers for any losses they incur from a skimming scam. By law, banks must reimburse customers for all but $50 of their losses, as long as they report the problem in a timely fashion.
Still, falling victim to skimming is not pleasant. Even though his money was refunded, "I felt absolutely as violated as can be," says Lipman, who has since started a company, TablePay Solutions, to help prevent skimming. The company distributes a machine to retailers that allows customers to swipe their own card, never allowing it out of their sight.
This article was reported and written by Kimberly Palmer for U.S. News & World Report.
Published Aug. 7, 2007

Resumes...Why???

I am sitting here trying to put my Resume together for the 1st time in I don't know how long and having the worse time...this is one of those things that I don't care to do...Resumes are the worse...I know that we need them as they need to speak the the hiring agent before we get a a chance to...what happened to the days when you just walked in the door of the company and just applied...The last job I had that just went through a downsizing...I remember the interview like it was yesterday...the lady said, "did you bring your resume today?" I said nope, don't have one, she said you came to an interview without a resume and I said yes and besides what do you need with it anyway...a resume is simply to get the interview and most people lie on them anyway...so you have me here sitting right in front of you, why don't you ask me anything that might be on my resume and she did and I started about 1 week later!!!

Who needs a RESUME?

Seven Steps That Can Shorten your job search

Seven Steps That Can Shorten Your Search
By TERENCE C. REILLY
4:13 p.m., Aug. 11, my office. They came, they saw, they conquered.
This isn't a plot from a science-fiction novel. This actually happened at my company when it downsized me and a lot of other employees. "They" were the executives who did the downsizing, and they "saw" or laid off many of us that day.
The date and place is etched in my mind because it was at that moment I was told that my job had been eliminated after 16 years. I had heard countless stories about other executives being downsized, but I never believed it would happen to me.
The good news is that I wasn't conquered. In fact, I'm stronger for having gone through this transition. My search took four months and taught me a lot about my inner resources. I developed tools that helped me land a new position more quickly than I expected and I learned what I really wanted to do professionally at this stage of my life. I'm sharing my story in hope that it will help others who may be going through a similar transition.
How Events Unfolded
Before my layoff I had been a senior account manager at a $2 billion privately owned marketing services company based in the Midwest. For most of my career there, I had held senior sales and field management positions. I had moved twice for the company and traveled enough miles to have a Northwest Airlines Gold Card for five years. My performance evaluations were excellent, and I had closed more than $3 million in new business during the first half of 1998. One was a minor automotive account that I expanded into a significant revenue stream with projects contracted into 2000. My life seemed stable and secure.
Bad assumption. For a guy who grew up in Brooklyn, I should have had more street smarts. Last July, the company's third president in two years arrived and it became known that we were awash in red ink. The focus immediately shifted to cost reduction. We assumed most of the reductions would occur at headquarters, not at regional field offices. And, since I was a prime revenue producer, why should I be worried?
As other downsizing victims would likely agree, logic and business strategies weren't part of the layoff equation.
A Sense of Urgency
The severance package I received made my termination more terrifying. My 50th birthday was three weeks away and I was given six weeks' pay, plus two weeks more for unused vacation -- a two-month cushion. There would be no transition period.
I also received 30 days of bare-bones assistance at an outplacement firm -- in essence, a desk with a phone and help revising my resume. Fortunately, the senior manager of the office realized the inequity of the situation and gave me full use of the outplacement firm's services, including extensive executive coaching, for as long as I needed it.
Nevertheless, due to the short severance period, I had a strong sense of urgency about my job hunt. I needed to put together a plan that would help me generate results quickly.
After some of my shock and anger subsided, I began to get organized for survival. My action plan helped me keep track of contacts and find a terrific new job in just four months. If you want to stay organized and productive, consider taking these steps.
1. Create a system for organizing your job search.
I developed several templates on my computer to track different elements of my search. They included a table for active companies, a table for interested companies with no current openings and a table for rejections (several pages). I also kept lists of "companies contacted but no response" (many pages), "companies applied to but no longer interested," and "offers" (short but sweet).
I printed these reports and stored them in a one-inch binder with additional sections for tracking networking contacts, recruiters, correspondence, job options (including written and revised descriptions of "my perfect job"), resumes, reference lists and letters. I also included a section for storing data sheets for each company I contacted. The data sheet included key names, phone numbers, contact dates and outcomes.
Organizing and tracking everything I did may have consumed a lot of time, but the positives outweighed the negatives:
I gained a sense of control over my new job of marketing myself to employers.
I captured details that I might have lost given the stress I was under.
When fielding return calls from potential employers, I could immediately locate information about the company and know when and who I last communicated with.
All key information was available on one page, and the tables could be easily updated depending on new information I received about various jobs.
2. Revise your resume by forming a focus group.
Take advantages of the resources and expertise available to you. For instance, ask professional coaches at the outplacement center, headhunters, friends and fellow job searchers for input about your resume. Most importantly, ask employers you contact for interviews what they like and find interesting about your resume.
3. Use multiple sources for job leads.
I was advised that networking was the only viable source of leads to good jobs. However, I recommend using all available channels for leads. My three best offers came from a recruiter, a local newspaper ad and a networking contact. In fact, the sources of my leads were fairly evenly distributed among these three channels.
4. Have a daily action plan.
Treat your job search as though it were a full-time job. I created a "to-do" list every night to accomplish the next day. Using these lists and my various charts, I quickly reviewed open items and action plans, then assigned a priority to each item. I rarely finished my lists, but as I checked things off at the end of the day, I regained a sense of control and developed a feeling of accomplishment about my search. By staying busy, I also never hit the wall of depression or despair that I had dreaded. Most of the time, I simply didn't have time to start worrying.
5. Pursue every job lead, even if it appears to have limited value.
By doing this from the start, I was invited to interview and became involved in follow-up discussions and job-offer negotiations early on. Although the initial offers didn't meet my job or compensation needs, I could practice for the real thing. More importantly, I knew I had more options to fall back on than flipping burgers. My feeling of desperation left because the marketplace had validated the fact that I was employable. I knew my resume and interview demeanor was working and that perhaps I could be selective and actually find my dream job. If not, at least I would be able to afford my son's college tuition, keep my house and still have retirement savings left.
6. Use all the resources offered by your outplacement company.
If you receive outplacement assistance as part of your severance package, take it. Two acquaintances who also were laid off declined this option and opted to receive the equivalent funds in cash. One of them, a former senior executive, was unemployed for 18 months. During this time, he did manual labor to pay his bills. He ended up accepting a job that pays considerably less than his former six-figure income. The other accepted a position quickly and now is underemployed and unhappy with the job and pay.
I received invaluable assistance, from re-writing my resume to negotiating multiple offers (to my surprise, this isn't fun) to executive-level coaching. This helped me beat the odds, and find a new job more quickly than the six-to-10-month norm for someone at my level.
7. Go for the big numbers.
To be successful at job hunting, I had to do three things: know my product (me), see as many people as possible and ask everyone to buy. The critical step is securing interviews. I calculated that for every 10 contacts I made, I would receive five interviews. Of the five interviews, I planned on being called back for second interviews at three of the companies and I hoped one offer would result. I also tried to be realistic and assumed that only one in five offers would be acceptable. These statistics meant that I needed to contact 50 companies to receive one good offer. Just in case my assumptions were false, I upped my initial goal to 100 first contacts.
My actual results were:
80 companies contacted
32 initial interviews
20 subsequent interviews
eight offers
three final offers.
The job I ultimately accepted was created for me: director of business development at the University of Michigan Business School's Executive Education Center. It's a unique position that capitalizes on my early career in education, advanced graduate work, experience with major corporations and sales and management success. The downsizing truly had a silver lining: I can now say that I'm happier with my job and life than I was at my former company. The journey was painful. I regret to say that if I had known how it would turn out, I might have enjoyed the process.
A final note: I was surprised that so many people were so willing to help. Perhaps the greatest benefit of this downsizing madness is the downsizing alumni who want to assist new members of the group. I'm ready to help, just e-mail me at treilly11@aol.com.
-- Mr. Reilly is director of business development at the University of Michigan's Business School Executive Education Center.

A new beginning...a butterfly story

Today as I sit here at my desk, as I start my journey again as a self-employed person with no security blanket...I can't help but to wonder what took me so long to do it again. I was always trying to get up enough cash so that I wouldn't have to wonder where my next check was coming from...This time I needed a little help to make it happen...on the 1st of August my company that I put so much work into decided they didn't need our office or my services so w/o notice 1st NLC aka The Lending Center decided that they would just put 17 people out on the street with a petty 2 -4 weeks of severance. Ah yeah did I say that they also cut our healthcare benefits as of that day! what a crock of crap that was, what if I had a doctors appt later on that week...I guess no one cares or at least they didn't...I had heard about these type of things happening to other people from other companies, but never in a million years would I think this would ever happen to me...I have been through company mergers and buyouts, but never was I affected until now! I guess it was my time or was it God's way of saying I have been telling you that you needed to be out of there, so since you wouldn't listen to me, I went ahead and pulled the rug right from up under you...which makes me wonder?

Have you been a victim of a company downsizing? or know someone who has?

My Company quit on me...Not Good

It has been exactly 1 week since the company I worked for decided they didn't need our office or 19 others...so we walked to work on the 1st with thoughts of getting a great month started...and what do we know I sat down at my computer to log in and the damn thing won't accept my user name and password...I am thinking what the fuck is this!!! Oh well I go get a cup of coffee before I call the IT people and then I find out that others are having the same problems as I am...so what do you think I did at that point...what any loyal company man would do...I began taking everything that wasn't nailed down...nah just kidding but I did find the nearest garbage can and dumped all my files I was working into the can and took it out to my car...because for some reason I knew it was over!!! and I wasn't going to be assed out...having to start all over while some retard from another office was licking his chops closing my loans!!!
The Area Mgr came in and told us this spill that the company decided to downsize...what a bunch of BS...I thought that they would but never my office, hell we had always been in the top 5 in the company for my 2 years there, why would they shut us down...living so close to Chicago I was surprised they didn't even offer to have us relocate over there...and he said I got yall's last paycheck and severance pkg's...I was thinking oh good, this is ok...how about 2 weeks of pay and all my health benefits ended that day...so if I would have had doctors appt scheduled for the next day for my daughter or myself I was screwed...some ladies in the office had this situation.
What did I learn from this situation...you always have to look out for yourself, nothing is guaranteed...so you guys better start looking into your owning your own business, not working for anyone else...
...now stop crying before the day was out I had 5 job offers and I also met a guy while I was out and about that day that was with Pre-Paid Legal Services and I signed up...Why because it made since...here is a short video you should watch...and see what made me go this route!!!
www.prepaidlegal.com/go/ryanthodge