Wayfarer's Tavern

Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by Cogito, Apr 26, 2010.

  1. Lavarian

    Lavarian Contributor Contributor

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    Fixed that for you.
     
  2. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Haha :-D Long ago and far away I was an RM for a little clothing place called Old Slavie and after that I moved to Banana SnobPublic. Necessary milestones to earn my platinum LGBT access card. ;)
     
  3. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    NEIN!! X-Box One is SUPERIOR CONSOLE!! >:[ *lets loose his dogs of war*
     
  4. The Freshmaker

    The Freshmaker <insert obscure pop culture reference> Contributor

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    Ohhhh, I'm kind of addicted to the Banana Republic outlet near me. Their petites section is the foundation my professional wardrobe is built on. Gone are the days of going to work looking like a twelve year old!

    Needless to say, though, I do not miss the days of cleaning out fitting rooms and trying to get customers to sign up for credit cards. I bet you have some great horror stories, Wrey.
     
  5. The Freshmaker

    The Freshmaker <insert obscure pop culture reference> Contributor

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    Oh snap! Gauntlet status: thrown down.
     
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  6. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    This is what I tell everyone... The Gap Inc. (which includes Old Navy and Banana Republic for those not in the know) pays its management staff quite well given the complexity of the job. But... you earn every penny of it. Behind that chic exterior of the typical Banana Republic manager is a person working 100 hour work-weeks and having nightmares about UPT's (units per transaction). The Gap is one of the easiest jobs to get fired from - in flagrant disgrace - as a manager. It was part of the culture. You learned through the grapevine, weekly, of this manager and that manager who had been walked off of the premises by visiting DM's and told never to come back. Humanity at it's best-dressed ugliest. :bigconfused:
     
  7. Lavarian

    Lavarian Contributor Contributor

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    That's like a kid walking up to a fully armored knight and tossing down his mitten.

    Beyond the obvious hardware/graphics advantage to PC over console (pricing aside), there's also the modding community. I find that I cannot play an unmodded bethesda game after using so many great mods that enhance gameplay.
     
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  8. The Freshmaker

    The Freshmaker <insert obscure pop culture reference> Contributor

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    Jesus. What kind of stuff were they getting fired for?

    I at least had job security where I worked for most of my retail career. I saw one manager get fired while I was there, and it was for drug-related reasons. It was basically impossible to get fired, which was sometimes good and sometimes bad (because some people really should have been fired).
     
  9. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    They did give kick-ass prizes though for sales awards and such. This little Tiffany & Co. star is how I got the job over at Banana.

    [​IMG]
     
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  10. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Mostly for loss after inventory. There is no security staff at all in most Gap stores and their related franchises. It's all about the sales staff "staying on top of the customer", which, as regards loss, very often meant an internal culture of profiling, which is just the worst, of course. So, instead of simply adding security and letting the sales staff sell, they fire managers when loss is large.

    BTW, that award came with a trip to Hawaii. Seriously. No lie. I got to meet Mickey Drexler.
     
  11. The Freshmaker

    The Freshmaker <insert obscure pop culture reference> Contributor

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    Damn, that doesn't seem very cost-effective. Wouldn't it cost less to just hire security than to keep training new managers?

    Also, that's amazing about the Hawaii trip! I guess they appreciate the people who actually make it through the hell of being employed by Old Navy. Shit, we never even got holiday bonuses. If I was lucky, the visual manager (one guy for all the stores) would see that I did a good job on something and take credit for my work. That guy was a jackass.
     
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  12. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Yep. And when I asked for the transfer to Banana using my new-found clout, all the managers who were in it for the long haul were like, "What are you doing? Why would you move from high volume to lower volume?", because as I am sure you know, in the world of retail dicks are measured by how much sales volume you've handled. I was like, "Sorry, this is just for while I'm in school and I want to meet hot gay guys, and they all shop over at Banana." ;)
     
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  13. Jack Asher

    Jack Asher Banned Contributor

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    Back from a family reunion in Wamego Kansas. Got to see some of the family I liked and pretty much ignored everyone else. Wrangled my grandma so she didn't do any of the driving, and got to meet my Uncle Tony, who died at 13. He's kinda quiet.

    Turns out some of my Family lives in Dallas though. @No-Name Slob, do you know Joey Muckenthaler?
     
  14. No-Name Slob

    No-Name Slob Member Supporter Contributor

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    Lol. You do realize that Dallas is the 4th largest city in the U.S., right? No, sorry ... the name doesn't ring a bell. :(
     
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2015
  15. Stacy C

    Stacy C Banned

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  16. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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  17. Aled James Taylor

    Aled James Taylor Contributor Contributor

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    This is entertaining. Apologies if it's been presented here before.

     
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  18. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    In a very round-about way that reminded me of a meme I got honestly angry at recently. It was a picture some woman holding up a copy of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and with a tag saying 'I challenge you to read something other than dead, white, straight canonical men'. As if the canon is only dead, white, straight men.

    I mean, ok, yeah, dead, ok, fine. But white? Straight? Men? Fuck sake, we don't know who Homer (the birth of European literature) was, he could have easily been a North African woman for all we know. Sappho, the greatest lyric poet of Ancient Greece was a bisexual woman. Sophocles, we know from records of the symposia, enjoyed sex far more with men more than women, Theognis - ok he's not exactly well known now, but he was only interested in men. There is some evidence to suggest Virgil was gay - and moving purely into the English canon: Shakespeare was clearly bisexual if the sonnets are anything to go off, as was Lord Byron. Alphra Brehn was a woman, as was Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, Mary Wolsencraft, Marianne Moore (apparently asexual), Elizabeth Bishop (also gay), Jane Austin, The Bronte sisters, H.D., Joyce Carol Oats (even though I personally think she's rubbish), Shirley Jackson, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson (who was also gay) and Sylvia Plath to name only a few. For gay male writers you have Walt Whitman, E.M Foster, Allan Ginsberg among the names not already mentioned. Non-white: Chinua Achebe? Salman Rushdie? de Bois? Langston Hughs? Maya Angelou too seems to be the newest addition to the 'great works' list too.

    I mean, where do people get off saying stuff like this?
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2015
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  19. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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    Maybe the statement is ambiguous, but I don't see it that way. I just see it as saying read something besides the lit that gets all the attention in academia -- "canonical" sounds like another descriptor of "established" authority. Why focus on the one adjective and not "dead," "straight" or "white?" I enjoyed the lowdown on Ancient Greece though :)
     
  20. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    I really wouldn't care very much (read: at all) about what gets attention in academia these days, honestly. The classics are rarely touched upon in most modern universities, and the 'canon' is a word only used by stuffy idiots like me. To give one example, we have looked at the Pastoral and Urban Pastoral during my MA, and during the two hour lecture/seminar we didn't mention work earlier than Walt Whitman. Urm - what?

    In my old uni they had a module on vampire fiction, Dracula to Twilight and Buffy. And there are modules on Harry Potter.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2015
  21. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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    Incredible. I signed up for Narrative 100 thinking that we'd do more modern stuff, like Afrika Road, and the prof basically tore up the calendar description on the first day, saying we'd do the real canon. Hesiod, Chaucer, Bible (which he insisted was KJV, not the robotic NIV, The Aeneid, Sir Gawain, all the landmarks. "Recapitulations of the fall. Oh, you don't know about the seasons and the tree of life? What do you read, Paris Hilton?" He had a good sense of humour.
     
  22. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    A class on narrative and he had you reading Hesiod? Serious? That's pretty weird actually. Outside of Oxbridge (at least here in the UK) the unis have been moving toward saleable courses the students want to learn rather than becoming antiquated with Literature as an aesthetic and critical discipline.
     
  23. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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  24. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    Sounds, and looks given those comments, like he was a good teacher who challenged people's views and made them appreciate classic writing.

    From that link I like the sound of him, honestly - I do think it's the case that if you have a good teacher interested in writers like Chaucer and Sir Gawain, and can maybe even criticize Chaucer and Sir Gawain too, you'll do well. You can then learn a critical mindset you can use in reading more modern contemporary writers while also being made aware of older works and ensuring you are not trapped within modern literary styles and conventions. This is what (I think) education should be about - giving students a high standard of critical attention that they can use elsewhere.

    Good to know there are teachers like that still out there, teachers who know Hesiod enough to teach (honestly, I'm still surprised at that, haha).
     
  25. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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    Oh, are they conventions? No, but really, you'd love him. Kindred spirits, you two in my mind. :)
     

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