why god hates me

Re-stating the obvious!

According to the New York Times, a USC research project has confirmed that celebrities are more likely than the average Joe to have a bad case of self love.

With the help of Dr. Drew, a USC researcher was able to get 200 celebrities to take the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, a widely respected questionnaire that measures narcissistic tendencies and ranks individuals on a scale of 1 to 40, with 40 being “extremely narcissistic.”

The celeb survey takers were guests of Dr. Drew’s syndicated Love Line show.

Narcissists love sharing their ‘advice’ with us plebs!

The Times went on to report that on average, the research found that celebrities scored 17.84, which is 17 percent higher than the general public.

The ladies ranked significantly higher than the guys.

And, interestingly, celebs with the most skill (musicians) were the least narcissistic, but those with no skill (reality-show stars) were, “off the narcissism charts.”

OMG, we bet Danny Bonaduce would score “off the narcissism charts”!

[Image via WENN.]

Appalled by the events described in, “Bed, Bath & Beyond Will Not Let You Use The Phone To Call 911,” one reader sent a chastising email to their public relations division. In particular, he took aim at their statement that they were using it as a “training opportunity,” which sounds pretty antiseptic and corporate considering that a child’s life could have been in danger. Their VP of customer service responded. Their correspondence follows.

Reader email:

To whom it may concern,

When I read a headline online about Bed, Bath and Beyond not allowing a customer to call 911 I thought for sure it would be an exaggeration. When I saw it was not an exaggeration I thought for sure that your company would have issued a statement condemning the actions of your employee and manager who refused to allow a customer to call 911.

I have read the various statements made by Bed, Bath and Beyond and find them absolutely unacceptable. When did turning a blind eye to a crime in progress become acceptable exactly? I understand the basic idea of not wanting to become involved with incidents occurring in the parking lot in which your store is located; however employees and especially managers absolutely MUST be able to make a judgment call on when it is proper to override basic policy.

I understand privacy policies and so I know your company will never release a statement saying that the employee and or the manager have been reprimanded, but to say that you will be using it as a “training opportunity” is a sad and again, unacceptable alternative. I have worked in retail, and I have managed retail stores. I can tell you right now that if such an event had occurred in my store I would have immediately fired all employees involved and used THAT as a training opportunity.

If your company cannot be bothered to hire employees who cannot even make a rational moral decision regarding the life of a child a mere hundred yards away I will not be bothered to shop at your stores, and I will tell everyone I know about your companies total lack of responsibility and failure to adhere to even the most basic of moral codes.

I understand you don’t care about losing one customer, but I assure you there are hundreds and thousands of people who are absolutely unsatisfied with your response thus far and it would make your company millions to post a public announcement on your website condemning the actions of your employees and assuring people that such actions are not going to be tolerated by Bed, Bath and Beyond.

I hope whoever reads this has a better moral fiber and is able to see beyond a rule book and understand that as a society we are all bound together, we cannot turn a blind eye.

BB&B response:

First of all, I want you to know that I understand and appreciate your position. We are ashamed at how the situation was handled.

The most recent statement that we issued yesterday indicated that this situation was not handled the way we would have expected it to be handled. We have no policies that should have impeded our ability to respond in this case. And yes, we are using this unfortunate occurrence as an opportunity to re-train our associates nationwide. Like you, we do not want anything like this to happen again.

I hope that you’ll understand that I cannot comment on personnel issues.

Thanks for your feedback and I hope that, in light of this, you’ll reconsider. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me.

Hank Reinhart
Vice President, Customer Service
Bed Bath & Beyond

Nice to see a human response. More humanity like that from the associates nationwide will go a long way towards preventing future tragedies, and from them getting renamed Bed Bath and Dead Kids.

PREVIOUSLY: Bed, Bath & Beyond Will Not Let You Use The Phone To Call 911
(Photo: Morton Fox)

If you have a problem with Orbitz and regular customer service and escalating to a supervisor doesn’t help you, give this gal a call.

Kathy Voss
Director Of Customer Care
312-894-6755

Remember to be polite and professional, you catch more flies with honey…

Now that the magic accounting party is over, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are to be removed from the S&P 500 starting Wednesday. The minimum market cap a company needs to be allowed in the index is 5 billion. Freddie’s market cap is $614 million and Fannie’s $1.04 billion. [AP]

It’s scary times for investors, so Bankrate has “6 Deadly Investing Mistakes” to avoid, most of which involve you not freaking out.

1. Panicking over market fluctuations
2. Reacting to daily economic reports
3. Turning off your buying during a downturn
4. Trying to time the market
5. Not maintaining appropriate asset allocation
6. Abandoning your investment strategy

These days, sometimes putting my standard portion from every paycheck in my mutual funds feels like tossing coins down a wishing well, but I plug at it anyway, knowing someday we’ll pull up from this dive.

6 deadly investing mistakes [Bankrate] (Photo: Getty)

What semi-closeted celesbians have the nicknames “Yams” and “Yogurt” for each other??? And which is which????

It can be argued that the Jonas Brothers are Hanson (2.0).

But, instead of harboring any sort of spite for the ‘biters’, it looks like the Hansons have nothing but love for the new, wholesome, brotherly kings of pop.

The Hansons chatted with Access Hollywood about the Jonas phenoms.

The eldest Hanson, Issac told the entertainment chatter show:

“I wish them all the best in the world. It’s a hard job and they’re definitely packing a lot in.”

Taylor Hanson, the hottest one, said the following about the New Jersey trio’s music and their future:

“On the musical side, I think there’s very little similarity between us and the Jonas Brothers but I think they seem like really talented guys. They care about each other. [I] just really wish them a lot of luck. I hope they can translate what they’ve done into a career — a long career — in a similar way that we’ve been able to for many years. It’s a great privilege to be able to have this be your career… One clear thing the Jonas Brothers actually have going for them is they have written their own songs. I think what you see a lot of times, unfortunately people like Britney Spears or people that seem to go off the rails when they started out, it wasn’t really their deal. For us, people used to joke like, ‘We couldn’t stop you guys from doing it if we wanted to. When we were young, it was our songs, it was our show, it was our attitude, it was our vision for music videos… For better or worse it was always us. So instead of us waking up in a drunken stupor [years later] and realizing someone stole our money, we started off doing what we wanted and we continued.”

The Hanson’ bring up a good point.

For all you aspiring rockers out there, write your own music, y’all.

You’ll be in better shape, financially at least, when you’re not at the top any more!

But, we wonder what the Hansons really say about the Jonai in private.

[Images via WENN.]

Re-stating the obvious!

According to the New York Times, a USC research project has confirmed that celebrities are more likely than the average Joe to have a bad case of self love.

With the help of Dr. Drew, a USC researcher was able to get 200 celebrities to take the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, a widely respected questionnaire that measures narcissistic tendencies and ranks individuals on a scale of 1 to 40, with 40 being “extremely narcissistic.”

The celeb survey takers were guests of Dr. Drew’s syndicated Love Line show.

Narcissists love sharing their ‘advice’ with us plebs!

The Times went on to report that on average, the research found that celebrities scored 17.84, which is 17 percent higher than the general public.

The ladies ranked significantly higher than the guys.

And, interestingly, celebs with the most skill (musicians) were the least narcissistic, but those with no skill (reality-show stars) were, “off the narcissism charts.”

OMG, we bet LC would score “off the narcissism charts”!

[Image via WENN.]

What do you think of Bank of America’s “Keep The Change” program? How it works is every purchase you make with your BoA debit card you make gets rounded up to the next dollar. The difference between that and the actual price gets moved from your checking to your savings account. The idea is to help people save. Good idea, but there’s some potential downsides I can see:

1) It can unconsciously rationalize spending. Some part of your brain is going, “It’s ok, I’m saving.”

2) Personally, I only use my debit card to withdraw money from the ATM. I don’t want my account number getting stolen off some insecure store PIN pad, and paying only in cash encourages wiser spending.

3) If you’re going to do this program, at least once a month move the money from the savings to an online savings account. Interest rates at brick and mortar banks are like .0crap, online you can get upwards of 3% right now.

One neat thing is that for the first 3 months, they will match everything you save 100%. After that, 5% of your purchases up to $250.

The deal has been around for a while, we wrote about it in 2005, but a new smarmy ad campaign (the one that goes, “This is America. Do we let the sun just shine or the wind just blow? No, we put them to work.”) and recent events, made me think we could revisit it. What do you think? Is this a handy program, or the Diet Coke of savings plans? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Keep The Change [Bank of America] (Photo: atbartlett)

The downsized New Line Cinema has announced that it’s moving forward with a movie based on professional hockey player and Vogue summer intern Sean Avery’s experiences at the high fashion mag.

Lame!

It was a ‘glorified’ internship. He didn’t see the ‘real’ Vogue!

We’ll stick to Devil Wears Prada, thank you.

The romantic comedy will also highlight the “relationships he made there”.

So, we’ll get to see some cougar loving?

Rumor has it that 28-year old Sean was dating Calvin Klein’s 51-year old ex-wife, Kelly, over the summer.

We’re not sure about the whole cougar lovin’ on the big screen.

Well, it might be acceptable if Demi Moore is cast…

[Image via WENN.]