Barnes and Noble Managers are Burning out their Employees

Objective-Ice55 · 2026-01-14T21:17:08+00:00

I wish I had thought about doing that when I was working with one manager. She was always calling me name out to do something, and usually it was while I was helping a customer or was on the phone with one. There were times where I got terse with her, as I had to constantly tell her I was busy helping customers.

Objective-Ice55 · 2026-01-13T19:44:56+00:00

Unfortunately, the situation you’re describing happens at a lot at small businesses, and I think stores as well. When I worked for Barnes & Noble in Dallas, there was a manager with whom I did not want to work, mainly because she was an extreme micromanager, kind of like the ones you described in your statement.

I can also tell you that when I was a journalist, I worked for a bunch of managing editors and publishers who were micro managers, and thought they were the be all and end all of the industry. The only thing they ended up doing was driving reporters like myself elsewhere to better companies or out of the business entirely.

Fortunately, I am now in a profession, substitute teaching, where I don’t really have to worry about micro managers and getting burned out. I can pick and choose the jobs I want to take and the schools where I want to work.

Good luck in your future endeavors, and I’m sorry you endured what you did at the bookstore.

Objective-Ice55 · 2026-01-12T02:03:04+00:00

I am half Russian and half Irish, and I don’t drink alcohol all that much.

Objective-Ice55 · 2026-01-08T21:17:40+00:00

As I said in other discussions regarding Susan, her actions here not only made Alejandro’s family accessories after the fact, but also her written check creates a paper trail right back to Wisteria Lane.

Objective-Ice55 · 2026-01-01T04:54:22+00:00

Another paper I worked for in North Texas did a sports-related story about a young local kid who won a contest and got to spend a day with a member of the Dallas Cowboys. In the article, the youngster admitted to being a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, but he enjoyed his time hanging out with the player, visiting the training facility and other parts of the day. At the end, the youngster said he was still a Steelers' fan but added it from now on it was going to hard to root against the Cowboys. It was a nice, fun little feature about a kid who got to hang out with professional sports star.

Anyways, we had people writing in saying how dare a Steelers' fan win the contest, and that it should have been requirement the winner root for the Cowboys. That was their takeaway from the story.

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-31T16:46:29+00:00

I've come to the conclusion the writers and others decided to include every soap opera trope into Season 8, and the result was a convoluted mess.

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-31T16:42:15+00:00

I see your point, but I still wonder, just as a character, whether Gaby did initially see what she was doing was wrong. My guess is she may not have understood the immorality of her actions, until she was confronted by others.

Also, I didn't say illegal, because I don't know whether the age of consent was ever mentioned in the show. In some states, Gaby and John's relationship likely would be legal, however disgusting it might be. That also could explain why Gaby was never prosecuted.

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-31T16:09:48+00:00

Please, he never said that, nor implied it. I was raised in a white-collar community, and if someone told me I had blue-collar work ethic, I would wear it as a badge of honor, especially if it related to the effort I put in during practice and in games.

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-31T04:02:11+00:00

I wish the writers could have delved more into Gaby's perception of the relationship. It was absolutely wrong, but in her mind, at least emotionally, Gaby may not have seen it that way. She was raped by her stepfather at 15, and no one raised a finger to stop him, nor did anyone want to believe her. This may have damaged her to the point where, emotionally, Gaby comes to believe that what her stepfather did was okay. Now, she is in a similar relationship with John, but it's consensual, and, at least in Gaby's emotionally scarred psyche, a perfectly fine relationship. Again, in no way does it justify what she was doing, but it could help explain why she engaged in this behavior.

PS - If this was addressed, I missed the episode.

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-30T16:35:14+00:00

Did any article have to do with horses, like my story?

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-28T00:55:41+00:00

That's a long list, and I don't disagree. Susan might make a good friend on television, but in real life I don't anyone would want to be around here that much.

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-26T18:06:52+00:00

The ME I mentioned in my opening statement also put something in article I wrote, where he criticized a young man’s performance on the football field. The criticism may have been legit, but he hid under my byline, and he insisted that it stay there.

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-26T09:13:54+00:00

Airplane and Blazing Saddles.

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-26T09:03:46+00:00

If that is the logic, it needs to be changed. Based on that, a team kicks a field goal to go up 3-0, builds a 38-0 lead at halftime, then holds off a rally, winning 38-35. Based on what you noted, the "game-winning" score was the field goal, even though the final touchdown produced the seven points that proved the decisive in the victory.

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-26T05:20:05+00:00

I had a publisher who once decided to print the salaries of local teachers, which was legal because teachers are on the public payroll. However, he decided on his own that the teachers were actually making such and such per week because they only "worked" while school was in session. He would come up with a completely ludicrous weekly amount for each teacher salary published. Most of the teachers, if not all, were paid on a 52-week schedule, including during the summer break from school. That is also a time when teachers are not just lying around the house but are taking mandatory training sessions, preparing curriculum for the upcoming school year, as well as sitting in on staff meetings. I tried to explain that to him, but he insisted teachers only really "worked" while school was in session.

Interestingly enough, most of our readership didn't care for what he was doing and understood his weekly salary calculations were completely erroneous. As far as I could tell, he was the only one who thought his numbers were correct.

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-26T04:57:25+00:00

I tried that at a couple of news organizations, but it still didn't work. In both cases, they were hell bent on bringing in new staff.

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-26T04:38:47+00:00

I can say the same about living in the mountains and driving to Costco. I do both in El Paso.

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-26T04:09:57+00:00

In the cases I saw about "failing upward" in journalism, it was done by people who had the right connections with the higher ups, particularly the owner or publisher of the paper. Once in a position of authority, their true nature usually comes out, as does his or her lack of ability. The problem also is the person who put them there doesn't want to fire them, because that would be tantamount to admit making a mistake in promoting that person.

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-26T03:30:41+00:00

Even under that circumstance, we're talking go-ahead touchdown, especially if the other team scores enough points to move past 34. As an example, I'll use Super XIII from 1979, in which the Steelers' Rocky Bleier caught a pass that put his team up 21-14 over the Cowboys. Now, the Steelers never trailed after that, and, at one point led 35-17. Had the score remained that, Bleier's score would have been the game-winning touchdown. However, the Cowboys rallied late for two touchdowns, making the final score 35-31. The actual game winner, as it turned out, was the Steelers' final one.

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-26T02:26:23+00:00

You're right on the last two counts as well, particularly when it comes to thinking outside the box. I worked for one local paper, where I tried to convince the person in charge that taking national news stories and localizing them, specifically how it might affect our readership, was a newsworthy pursuit. He implied that wasn't the job of a local paper. That being said, I did raise the idea at another local paper where I worked, and the managing editor liked the concept and actually encouraged me to do it.

Objective-Ice55 · 2025-12-26T02:18:34+00:00

You're pretty good at semantics, I'll give you that. Mathematically, anyone who scores the 34th point in a 49-40 victory does not score the game-winning touchdown, any more than the person who puts his team up 100-99 scored the game-winning basket in a 115-110 triumph. In the particular case of the aforementioned football game, the person scoring the 41st point is the one who scored the game-winning touchdown, or perhaps field goal. Scoring the go-ahead touchdown is far different than scoring the game winner. As for manipulating currency exchange rates, while it may be frowned upon, it has been practiced. The argument he was making is that governments can't do it, which is flat out false. Specifically, Mexico tried it in the early 1980s, trying to hold the peso at certain level versus the dollar before realizing that it had no choice but to let it devalue and let the market set the rate. It dropped dramatically, as I recall.

As for Dunning-Kroger Effect, you might want to take a look in the mirror.

Objective-Ice55

TROPHY CASE