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While we’ve certainly seen more dramatic heists before, this particular run-in with the law melds cleverness and ignorance in perfect harmony.

After conjuring up grandiose thoughts of subversion, a less-than-reasonable fellow managed to snag a 42-inch Sanyo plasma, replace the $984 pricetag with a slightly less burdensome $4.88 sticker, and carry it to the front where he utilized a self-checkout register to all but steal a brand new PDP.

Presumably grinning from ear to ear just basking in the glory of his brilliance, we imagine the mood went south quite quickly after store officers approached the man and demanded a receipt. Of course, he attempted to sweet talk his way out of the predicament, but the end result landed him in handcuffs at the Ouachita Correctional Center. Can’t blame a guy for tryin’, eh?

BoyGeniusReport

Many of us swap CompUSA service horror stories, but here’s an especially horrifying one. My AR&D partner Terry Heaton purchased a digital camera for $269 at a CompUSA liquidation sale. Terry bought the camera for his step-daughter amid a $3,500 purchase. One problem: they sold him an empty box.

There was no camera inside. When Terry went to a nearby CompUSA, the manager there told him that, since a liquidation company technically sold him the camera, CompUSA wouldn’t give him a refund. So, Terry wrote a note to Roman Ross, CompUSA president and CEO. Ross passed it along to a staffer who had the nerve to blame Terry: “The return policy for all merchandise, as printed on your receipt and posted throughout the store, clearly stated ALL SALES FINAL…. if the camera you purchased was a clearance item, you should have inspected its content prior to purchase.”

And there you have it. Terry is to blame for not inspecting the box to make sure he wasn’t being defrauded. All sales of empty boxes are, apparently, final. It doesn’t matter the technicality - in CompUSA’s name, on a CompUSA receipt, $269 was stolen from Terry and CompUSA won’t give it back. It’s not just “buyer beware,” it’s “don’t be a buyer.”

Lost Remote

Think you need to fire your boss for being an idiot yet?

A health inspector noticed rodent droppings Monday. A contractor laid out glue traps and caught six by Tuesday morning. An employee called the health department to report the mice and says her bosses fired her.

Health inspectors closed a Pizza Hut restaurant in east Raleigh after a worker found live mice inside it. The employee who notified the health department about the mice says she was fired for reporting the problem.

The restaurant scored a 90 during an inspection on Monday, but the inspector noted rodent droppings behind an ice machine. The inspector says the droppings weren’t enough to close the restaurant because she didn’t see any live animals inside during the inspection.

A contractor laid out glue-covered boards Monday night to get rid of the rodents, and an employee found six live mice stuck to the boards Tuesday morning.

That employee called the Wake County Health Department, and an inspector ordered the Pizza Hut closed. The inspector also pulled the restaurant’s permit so it can’t operate until the rodent problem is corrected.

A spokesman at Pizza Hut’s corporate office says he expects the restaurant to reopen Wednesday.

WfMyNews

You too can achieve great success by applying sales and marketing techniques of strippers. Here are the 10 sales and marketing techniques I have learned from strippers:

Sales Technique #1 - Give them something for nothing
One of the first things a stripper will do is come up to you and flirt with you. She will likely sit on your lap or do something to raise your excitement level. For this, you have to do nothing. But you do get a sample of the service and if it is a good one, your chances of buying the service increases. This also applies to the dances they do on the stage.

Sales Technique #2 - Understand your customers
Strippers get to know their customers by asking questions. This allows them to develop a rapport and tailor the sales pitch…

Sales Technique #3 - Tailor the Sales Pitch
Strippers will try different sales pitches to different people based on what she thinks they like. “I like to get dirty” or “Have you seen my great ass?” or “My tits are real”. Each pitch may be the one thing that converts the potential customer into a buyer. (Pointing out a tight ass works well for me). And she revises her pitch based on experience.

Sales Technique #4 - Make sure you are selling a great product/service
She knows she has to have a great product. If she put on 30 pounds or hadn’t showered for the past 4 days, she would likely not get as many customers. Regardless of how great of a Continue reading →

There is a little known technique combines both marketing and public relations in such a way as to greatly increase the visibility and branding of a company while also creating demand for product and increasing sales. This technique is known as ‘Marketing Articles’.

The invention of the Marketing Article is a fairly recent creation. The motivation for creating this kind
of article is primarily due to the incredible popularity of the Google search engine. Google has had phenomenal success with their domination of the Internet.

‘Some experts have estimated that over 60% of all searches are done using Google-, said Julie Taing a spokesperson for Caracom. ‘Yahoo is generally ranked 2nd, and MSN 3rd, but Google is the real target when we’re talking about making an impact on the Internet. Continue reading →

Craig Newmark started craigslist in early 1995 as a way of staying on top of San Francisco’s busy arts and technology scene.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the site’s determined non-commercialism, craigslist survived and even thrived in the post-dot-com days.

Now 20 million people visit the site each month, viewing and self-publishing more than 17 million ads and forum posts. With characteristic modesty, Newmark continues to refer himself not as a founder but as a “customer service representative.”

In this podcast, Newmark and David Weinberger, author of Everything Is Miscellaneous, discuss craigslist’s unstructured approach to managing the site’s growth and its features, and what that might mean for planning and strategizing in other areas of business. The old structures of control just don’t work. Given the steady success of craigslist, what does?

This podcast interview is the sixth in a series of interviews by Weinberger, sponsored by Wired News and the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society. You can use the player below to listen to the interview. Or, for a downloadable MP3 file and full transcript, continue reading.

Download the MP3 file Interview With Craig Newmark Of Craigslist

Bob Evans, 89, died around 12:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Clinic as a result of complications from a stroke he suffered in February, according to Columbus-based Bob Evans Farms Inc. He was at the hospital recovering from pneumonia.

The roots of Bob Evans Farms stretch to 1946, when Evans opened a truck-stop restaurant in Gallipolis - a 12-stool operation that stayed open around the clock. Faithful to the adage that “when you want something done right, do it yourself,” he took to making sausage from the hogs on his Gallia County farm to serve at the restaurant.

The products caught on and Evans decided to make the sausage business his full-time pursuit. By 1953, the Evans family and some friends partnered to establish Bob Evans Farms.

The business grew over the decades, finding success as a restaurant chain and as a food products supplier.

Evans retired as Bob Evans Farms president in 1986.

Evans, who was born in 1918 to Stanley Evans and Elizabeth Lewis in Sugar Ridge, is survived by his wife, Jewell, and six children.

The company said funeral arrangements are undetermined.

BizJournals