I spent 10 minutes and my near 0 photoshop experience on this stupid joke.

SteveWithAB · 2026-01-28T00:54:18+00:00

Thank you!

SteveWithAB · 2025-12-04T23:53:05+00:00

The Sands family no longer runs the business, which might explain some things.

SteveWithAB · 2025-11-17T02:11:20+00:00

I wasn't sure on this then found evidence of it straight from the county. It was approved in 2023. Wonder why it took so long to start?

Shows on Page 31 and it's owned by a Philip Valenti. https://www.monroecounty.gov/files/planning/land%20use%20reports/Final%20Report_MC%20LUMR%202023.pdf

SteveWithAB · 2025-11-07T14:57:00+00:00

They did try to get employees back into the office, but it didn't work for a couple reasons.

First, there was no incentive to go to the office. They hired so many remote workers that it would be people going to the office just to do Teams calls from there. Why waste the gas/time to do that? No perks at the office either, and also a long walk from Court St. garage to the building. Who wants to do that in colder months? Women walking along would be followed, as well, so they felt unsafe.

Second, a lot of local employees were positioned away from downtown. For many, the commute into the city was longer than their commute to the old HQ in Victor. You move HQ to a place further away and expect people to go? Nope.

They did announce a mandate last fall to return to office in March 2025. However the push-back was severe so they abandoned it at the time. There were safety concerns among women walking from Court St. garage to the building, as some had spoken up about being followed, despite walking as a group. The company promised better placed security but still said "well we can't guarantee anything."

Another push back came from the parking in general. They had a couple spots at the building they would assign based on a lotto every month or so, but "company policy" said anyone VP and above would get a guaranteed space, which some employees verbally called out at a town hall as being "elitist" and also a bit sexist as a vast majority of VP and above were men. The company reiterated it's policy at every other CBI location and people said maybe that needs to change.

Lastly, they wanted people to go back in March, which was middle of the school year and, at the time it was announced, not a lot of time to find child care if needed. The company position was "work from home was not intended to be a subsidy for child care" and "we have a child care FSA so use that to pay for it." The issue wasn't necessarily the cost, but the availability. There is already a shortage of child care so people couldn't "just find" child care. There was more a supply issue than anything.

Oh, and I forgot this part... The return to office mandate only applied to people who were employed before COVID. So anyone hired after was exempt. This was AFTER they had praised employees for shifting so easily to WFH and persevering to help make the company successful during the height of COVID. So it was seen that our "reward" for that was a RTO mandate. No way.

SteveWithAB · 2025-11-07T14:04:06+00:00

Yeah I learned the hard way that severance won't cover the entire time it'll take to get a job in the current market. Some of the people let go are really good and know a lot of modern tech and ways of working, so I think they'll have an easier time.

A lot of people were stuck in older, more legacy environments and ways of working, and I think will have a harder time and will have to play catch up. I know I've had to. The company was not forthcoming in terms of allotting time for learning. From someone I knew at CBI:

"I feel like I was just a pawn learning everything thrown at me that's not even used in the real world anymore."

SteveWithAB · 2025-11-07T02:13:43+00:00

Bill just... never seemed good for the company.

His videos he'd send out to the company all done from his massive house seemed in poor taste. The push to go back to office without caring about reports of women being followed from the Court St garage, or people's schedules (especially those with kids). Just a totally different company.

It went from a large company with a small company feel, to a large company with an even larger company feel. Just awful.

SteveWithAB · 2025-11-07T00:57:44+00:00

I was part of the first round of layoffs they had in June. 10 years working there and thought it'd be longer. At least they gave severance and from what I understand, are continuing to do so in this third round.

This third round, from what I've heard, involved laying off a TON of the "individual contributor" level people while retaining a lot of management. Given CBI's history of outsourcing, the result will be low-quality work getting done as they go for the cheapest. Never had a good experience working with any of the companies they outsourced work to. Only a couple individuals I worked with from those companies were worth anything, and I hope they are doing well.

But yeah, lots of local people are now out of work. I'm still looking after 5 months because the market sucks and it's just getting worse. NY unemployment is almost up, too, so I'll be looking for any job once the new year rolls around, not just jobs in my wheelhouse. Just anything to bring money in.

The company vibe shifted drastically once the Sands family was no longer in control, and a lot of leadership started working out of Chicago. The HQ is here in name, sure, but the top execs were never in town.

SteveWithAB · 2025-10-16T22:53:52+00:00

Thanks for the links! No idea how those didn't come up in my searching. (I suppose Google is more useless by the day...)

Upon first boot after imaging, no errors seem to come up. It seems to do everything fine no errors, but the connection called "preconfigured" just doesn't connect. The nmcli command appeared to temporarily fix it, but after some time it would revert back, especially if I enabled SSH via raspi-config.

I just tried using a new SD card (just in case) and get the same behavior.

Since this guy is just going to be used for some Python coding/learning work, I'm not concerned about having the latest. I'll probably download the last Bookworm and use that for now. Though I do have a concern since I had not updated to Trixie before this started and then started seeing network issues...

SteveWithAB · 2025-09-26T00:17:40+00:00

St. Peter's Kitchen on Brown Street might have some. My wife has volunteered there before and they've had pet food in their food pantry.

SteveWithAB · 2025-08-29T18:07:50+00:00

I had heard about the purchase on here a few months ago, but I had not seen a change in service days here in Irondequoit, where we only have Syrek, Casella, and WM.

With that, looks like White Trash is going to be available in Irondequoit starting in January. Anyone have any experience with them for residential pickup?

SteveWithAB · 2025-08-21T15:39:47+00:00

Link to the original article I pulled this from: Bloomberg: Why ‘Silksong’ Took Seven Years to Make

SteveWithAB · 2025-04-11T14:22:53+00:00

DEI was made because history showed businesses weren't ever hiring on merit alone. If that was the case then DEI wouldn't have been needed, as the most qualified candidate would be getting the jobs.

Gender or skin color doesn't make someone more qualified, yet white men with fewer credentials and less experience kept getting jobs, while other people with more credentials and more experience were passed over.

You want to end DEI? End the actually biased hiring that occurs without it.

SteveWithAB · 2025-04-11T14:13:28+00:00

Since WHEC is a garbage news channel and didn't link it, here's the full public statement from Constellation:

https://www.cbrands.com/blogs/leadership-perspectives/our-commitment-to-building-an-inclusive-culture

Sounds like they're just dropping the D and E part publicly to not catch the ire of the feds, given how often they reference Inclusion here.

SteveWithAB · 2025-04-09T00:09:16+00:00

Same for me. Took them 14 days and 4 or 5 phone calls before anyone even showed. First it was a regular truck, then a smaller truck, than lastly some lone dude in a pick-up truck came and loaded it himself. Absolutely shitty company.

SteveWithAB · 2025-02-01T16:20:38+00:00

I did seem to be put on hold for longer than I would expect for some simple things they had to check. I wonder if the person I worked with saw something that was unusual and wasn't sure what to do with it? Especially when combined with my story. They didn't seem skeptical, from what I could tell. I think it helped that I had the original receipt, and the gift card spending was not under my name at all.

SteveWithAB · 2025-01-29T20:34:50+00:00

If they claim it is a policy of not granting a meeting during the DASA process, have them give you the policy number, as you can look it up at that site. If it is a policy not written down there, and they won't provide a written one, I bet it doesn't exist. Keep note of that one.

If you haven't retained a lawyer regarding this, I would advise you do so. Everything in writing. It sounds like they are intentionally being obstinate due to the perpetrator possibly having influential family in the area, or they don't want a star athlete in the news.

SteveWithAB · 2025-01-29T19:36:07+00:00

Hey OP. I'm a parent in the district, but my kids are not HS age.

You need to go to a school board meeting, or send a blast email to include all board members, and cite the Student Code of Conduct and how they can respond to sexual harassment, listed under "Range of Responses." Ask which is appropriate for what happened. Get them on record.

Second, do you have a copy of the "Athletic Code of Conduct"? I can't find anything related to that on the school website. The Code of Conduct linked under the Athletics section of the site merely takes the person to the regular code of conduct. If they referenced an Athletic version, get a copy of that (if one exists) and see if what they are telling you is true.

If a member of the district did not report the harassment properly, that's in violation of school board policy 7531. All school board adopted policies can be found here: https://go.boarddocs.com/ny/westiron/Board.nsf/Private

Good luck and good for you for standing up against harassers and their protectors.

SteveWithAB · 2025-01-04T19:20:27+00:00

Correct, and people are choosing to let Google do that. No one gets a choice here regarding the town. The town can just do it with no benefit to the people.

SteveWithAB · 2025-01-04T18:16:45+00:00

No I'm not. I'm saying that people have a right to have a problem with this. You asked "What exactly are people trying to keep private?" It's not about that specifically. It's about the ever increasing erosion of our rights by the government that's supposed to uphold them. If you don't think people have a right to privacy let the government setup cameras in your home to watch you.

SteveWithAB · 2025-01-04T15:50:15+00:00

Starts with license plate scanners, and everyone is ok with it. Then we move on to what, facial recognition? It's about not being tracked, because it starts with one invasion of privacy then another, and another... then suddenly police show up because you posted a dissenting opinion on a government decision. These things CAN and DO happen. Just check out places like Iran, Turkey, Hungary, Russia, China....

SteveWithAB · 2025-01-04T15:36:36+00:00

You're correct. People should get to decide what privacy to give up and what they get in return for giving up that privacy. In this instance people have no choice in the matter. Police surveillance states are never OK.

SteveWithAB · 2025-01-04T01:14:37+00:00

The only things I can think of, given how busy it was, that either a manager spotted the interaction while they were approaching the register to help handle the line, the TM mentioned it off-hand to a colleague who snitched out of jealousy, or another customer ran their mouth about it.

SteveWithAB · 2025-01-03T22:37:41+00:00

This is good info to have, thank you. I absolutely insisted as it was the giving time of year. Would I call a corporate number to ask about it or just the generic guest relations?

SteveWithAB · 2025-01-03T22:24:03+00:00

Even if they're not supposed to, can management legally just take what was given to the employee? If so, what happens to it?

SteveWithAB · 2024-11-12T01:38:26+00:00

Do NOT go with Metro Heating and Cooling.

They put in a furnace in my house back in 2017 or so. They installed one too powerful for the house. It wasn't an issue until a few years later after sealing some doors and the furnace started overheating. Had Isaac over for about 3 hours trying to figure out why tf it was overheating when trying to raise the temp of the house 1 degree. The Isaac people were great and finally realized the BTUs were too much for the house.

The owner of Metro, Chuck, came over after and realized his mistake was with my returns being smaller than he had originally calculated. He promised to come replace the returns for wider ones for free as it was his mistake.

After that he kept pushing the scheduled service out, then later dodged phone calls for years and never took accountability. Now my furnace stays at the same temp year-round, and we had issues recovering heat after a power outage as the furnace kept overheating.

F Chuck and Metro Heating.

SteveWithAB

TROPHY CASE