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takingitseriously
takingitseriously
Long-Running Mouse Infestation May Shut Down N.Y. Walmart
By Laura Northrup on May 25, 2012 11:30 AM
43 Comments
Recent state inspections of a Monticello, N.Y. Walmart have the mundane violations you'd see in any food facility's inspection: dusty fans, lettuce cross-contamination, and coolers slightly warmer than they should be. Then there's all of the food and other merchandise they've had to throw out after it was "defiled by rodents." The state keeps coming back and reporting "thousands" of mouse droppings and evidence of rodents all over the store...and a few decaying corpses while they're at it. The reports of mice go back to September 2011. More »
Child Seized After Fainting Mother Forgot To Pay For Sandwich
By Ben Popken on October 31, 2011 1:00 PM
215 Comments
A Hawaii couple was tossed in jail and their child taken by protective services for 18 hours after the mother forgot to pay for her sandwich at Safeway. More »
(shlala)
PETA Sends Case Of Soy Milk To PR CEO Who Threatened To Fire Next Person Who Doesn't Replace The Milk
By Ben Popken on October 3, 2011 2:00 PM
114 Comments
Today PETA sent a case of soy milk to Beckerman Public Relations CEO Keith Zakheim, who last week generated buzz for sending around an email that threatened to fire the next person in the office who finishes the milk in the staff refrigerator without replacing it. I don't care what kind of milk people choose to drink, but tweaking aggro CEOs is funny. More »
PR Firm CEO Threatens To Fire Next Person Who Doesn't Replace The Milk
By Ben Popken on September 30, 2011 4:00 PM
158 Comments
In a company email that reads like a rejected new column for the Onion, the CEO of a PR company threatened this week to fire the next person who neglects to replace the empty milk carton in the refrigerator. More »
Outback Steakhouse Gives 4-Year Old Free Vodka Slushie
By Ben Popken on September 8, 2011 3:00 PM
78 Comments
Another chain casual dining establishment is in trouble for accidentally serving alcohol to a child. This time the place is Outback Steakhouse and the child is a 4-year old girl. If the event had been memorialized with a scrapbook photo, the caption would read, "Gracie's first peach schnapps and vodka." More »
Parent Wages Internet Campaign Against Disgusting McDonald's Play Area
By Laura Northrup on June 9, 2011 11:37 AM
136 Comments
If you noticed that the play area at your local fast-food restaurant was unacceptably filthy, what would you do? Sure, you might keep your children off the equipment and stop visiting that restaurant, and tell your friends and neighbors to do the same. But when one Arizona mom repeatedly complained about the conditions at her local McDonald's and still nothing changed, she went further. She paid for testing by an independent lab to see exactly what was crawling around in that playground. She also climbed through the playland tubes herself, filming the graffiti, discarded food, and filth her children had been romping around in. More »
Samsung Investigates Report Of Keyloggers On Its Laptops
UPDATE: Threatpost reports that Samsung says there's no keylogger, the results were a false positive when an antivirus program mistakenly identified Microsoft's Live Application multi-language support folder, "SL" folder, as StarLogger. More »
By Ben Popken on March 31, 2011 10:00 AM
27 Comments
Samsung is investigating after an IT consultant reported in Network World that he had found installed in two different brand new Samsung R series laptops he bought a keylogging program that could be used by someone remotely to capture his every keystroke. In response, a Samsung spokesman said, "We take these claims very, very seriously."UPDATE: Threatpost reports that Samsung says there's no keylogger, the results were a false positive when an antivirus program mistakenly identified Microsoft's Live Application multi-language support folder, "SL" folder, as StarLogger. More »
AT&T Demands UVerse Upgrade To Remove Dead Father's Name From Account
By Laura Northrup on March 2, 2011 12:00 PM
37 Comments
It can be very useful to be grandfathered into an old plan that isn't available anymore. What one Reddit poster and his mother have discovered, though, is that it creates some problems. Like when someone dies, and AT&T insists that they can't make any changes to your DSL and landline account unless you upgrade to UVerse. More »
(KLTV)
Woman Bites Into Razor In Walmart Brand Ice Cream
By Ben Popken on February 9, 2011 10:00 AM
101 Comments
A woman has cut her lip on a razor that was at the bottom of her cup of Walmart brand Peanut Butter Stars. When she called to complain, the customer service rep told her, "I'm sorry, I hope your day gets better." More »
Groupon CEO Responds To Super Bowl Ad Fracas
By Ben Popken on February 8, 2011 9:22 AM
77 Comments
In a blog post responding to the furor over their Super Bowl ads, Groupon's CEO Andrew Mason says that "the last thing we wanted was to offend our customers." Hm, maybe you should have showed the ads to a few of them first. More »
Pepsico CEO Says "Doritos Are Not Bad For You"
(Fox Business News)
By Ben Popken on February 1, 2011 12:48 PM
93 Comments
"Doritos are not bad for you," PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi told Fox Business News moments ago. "Doritos are nothing more than corn mashed up, fried up in oil, and flavored in the most delectable way." More »
Frog Found In Frozen Veggies
By Ben Popken on October 19, 2010 2:00 PM
44 Comments
A Michigan couple is croaking about an unusual, tiny, hitchhiker they found in their bag of frozen vegetables they bought at the Meijer supermarket. More »
(cavale)
Giant Eagle Dispenses Antidepressants Instead Of Fertility Drugs, Now Taking It Very Seriously
By Laura Northrup on September 1, 2010 8:00 AM
95 Comments
The words "Clomiphene" and "Clomipramine" might look similar, but if you work in a pharmacy, you should know that they stand for very different things. Clomiphene is the generic version of the fertility drug Clomid. Clomipramine is a tricyclic antidepressant. A woman in Pittsburgh says that the pharmacy at a Giant Eagle grocery store gave her the antidepressant when she was prescribed the fertility drug. She had a severe allergic reaction and ended up in the emergency room. More »
Chili's Fires Employee Accused Of Placing Camera In Restroom
By Carey Alexander on July 10, 2010 11:45 AM
68 Comments
A former Chili's employee is set to answer charges that he stashed a cellphone camera aimed at the women's toilets in the Arroyo Grande restaurant. The camera was discovered after a 41-year-old patron noticed something suspicious concealed in a bucket of cleaning supplies. More »
(frofever)
Petsmart: Bad News Is Your Guinea Pig's Dead, Good News Is We're Taking It Seriously
By Phil Villarreal on July 2, 2010 3:30 PM
105 Comments
Katie bought a pair of guinea pigs from a Bay Area Petsmart and noticed one was having sneezing fits. She took the furballs into a vet, who recommended taking them back to the store, which could get them treatment for upper respiratory system treatment. The company refunded her money and told her it would keep her posted on how the pets were doing. More »
New Hampshire Grandmother Dies After National Grid Cuts Power
By Carey Alexander on June 27, 2010 3:00 PM
184 Comments
53-year-old New Hampshire grandmother Kay Phaneuf died this weekend after National Grid cut her power over an unpaid bill. Phaneuf suffered from a heart condition that required her to sleep in an oxygen tent and use a plug-in oxygen machine. The worker who disconnected the power after ringing Phaneuf's bell and waiting several minutes at the door apparently didn't notice a big red sign that warned people not to smoke because of the oxygen machine. National Grid is claiming they followed proper procedures, but that isn't stopping New Hampshire's Public Utilities Commission from opening an investigation. More »
Hackers Bite Apple, AT&T To Breach 114K iPad Owners
By Phil Villarreal on June 10, 2010 5:45 AM
78 Comments
Some early iPad adopters got a special bonus prize for buying a device that's sure to be replaced with a vastly superior model a year from now — a data breach in which hackers unearthed account info from 114,000 users, including newscaster Diane Sawyer, New York mayor Michael Bloomerg and movie kingpin Harvey Weinstein. More »
Discounts For Foursquare Mayors Causing Headaches For Starbucks?
By Meg Marco on June 8, 2010 7:59 PM
84 Comments
Starbucks' position on baristas taking up valuable "Mayor" spots on Foursquare has been made known to us. They're "taking it seriously," but, c'mon, they say, Foursquare is open to anyone. More »
Costumed Sea Creatures Occupy NYC BP Station
By Ben Popken on May 28, 2010 5:29 PM
57 Comments
A gaggle of costumed sea creatures plan to occupy the SoHo BP station in NYC tonight at 6pm to protest the company's response to the oil spill. However, while the threat of makeshift sea turtles descending on Houston and Lafeyette is wonderful to contemplate, because BP stations are independently-owned, only the local business owner will be harmed by the disruption in commerce. Media points against BP will be harder to score. This particular station is a mecca for taxi cab drivers in the area, who will most likely find any difficulties in getting gas on a busy holiday weekend night to be less than hilarious. UPDATE: Local news coverage: More »
(1suisse)
BP Oil Spill More Like 12,000-19,000 Barrels Per Day
By Ben Popken on May 28, 2010 11:00 AM
47 Comments
First BP told us 1,000, then 5,000, and now a joint federal and independent research task force estimates that 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil were spewing into the Gulf since the crisis began, NYT reports. If the numbers are right, then we're talking about as much as 30 million gallons. That would be more than 3x the amount from the Valdez disaster. More »
