Attack of the coupon fairies

What's a "coupon fairy?" Coupon fairies are people who leave unneeded coupons in the store for others to find. Do you do this? As it turns out, some of my readers do.

Dear Jill,

I read your column often, and I have a strange story about what I do with coupons. After I cut out coupons from the newspaper that I will use, I cut out about 200 more. Then, I will go to our local store and head up and down the aisles leaving these coupons on empty spots on the shelves. I will see people picking up the coupons that I leave, going through them.

I don't know if this is against the store policy, but the "coupon police" never arrested me. They never told me that I couldn't do this but then again I never told them I was doing it! They may be wondering, "Who is doing this?"

Thanks,

Ron H.

Dear Jill,

At the end of the month when many of my unused coupons are expiring, I will cut them and take them to the store and put the cereal coupons on the shelf in the cereal aisle, juice coupons in the juice aisle and so on. I put stacks of them on the shelf and leave them for people who need them. I feel like I am helping others save money being their coupon fairy!

Amanda M.

Here's my take on "coupon fairies." While I believe that everyone who's cutting coupons and leaving them in the store has the best intentions, there are several reasons this isn't the best idea. First, stores may not wish to have stacks of cut coupons placed on the shelves for aesthetic reasons. If there are many coupons spread around the shelves, they'll also be in the way when the store's employees restock and face products, which they do daily. It's highly likely that if there are still coupons on the shelves when it's time to stock, the employees will simply clean up the coupons and throw them away.

Another reason not to play "coupon fairy?" Most coupons contain verbiage stating that they are void if transferred. Many brands believe that a coupon is void at the moment it changes hands from one person to another. Now, this certainly isn't something that is enforced heavily - coupon clubs and swaps abound. But it is technically a violation of the terms of some coupons. If you're sharing Online Deals, you personally can get in trouble for transferring your coupon to another person. Consider that each printable coupon is unique and contains markers traceable to the computer that printed it. If someone picks up a printable coupon that you leave in the store, and that person takes it home, makes dozens of photocopies of it and then uses the photocopies at the store - guess who's liable? You.

I'll leave you with one more email with a store manager's perspective.

Dear Jill,

I'm manager at a large supermarket, and I would like you to share a message with your readers. Please tell them to stop bringing coupons to the store and leaving them on the shelves. I'm sure they think they are helping other shoppers, but they don't realize what a mess the coupons make. I have had coupons get pushed to the back of the shelf by stockers, and then people find them long after they've expired and insist they should be able to use them as they found them "in your store." Shoppers leave coupons on the edge of the shelves in the refrigerated and freezer cases. These coupons have blown into the refrigeration vents and burned up more than one compressor. A very expensive repair caused by a piece of paper that doesn't belong there.

Nicholas G.

Smart Living Tip: Don't leave unused coupons in the store. While you may feel you're helping other shoppers, you're also creating extra work for your store's employees, who must clean them up.

© CTW Features

Jill Cataldo, a coupon workshop instructor, writer and mother of three, never passes up a good deal. Learn more about Super-Couponing at her website, www.jillcataldo.com. Email your own couponing victories and questions to jill@ctwfeatures.com.

Weather Radar

<weather radarp>Firefighters had largely tamed a tower of flame and smoke that obscured the sun and drove thousands from their homes in the foothill suburbs northeast of Los Angeles, but a week of dangerously windy wildfire...

A destructive wildfire above foothill suburbs northeast of Los Angeles was reduced to smoke and scattered flames Friday, and residents of all but one of the remaining evacuated neighborhoods were told they could go home.

Whiskey Merger Monday: Suntory and Beam Ink $13.6 Billion Deal

It's merger Monday with a kick. Japanese drinks maker Suntory agreed to purchase Beam, the maker of Jim Beam and other alcoholic beverages, for $13.6 billion - the biggest of 2014.

The combined company will control a host of whiskey bands: Beam's Jim Beam, Maker's Mark, and Knob Creek bourbons, and Suntory's Yamazaki, Hakushu, Hibiki, and Kakubin. The companies had a pre-existing relationship as distribution partners. Suntory had distributed Beam products in Japan, and Beam distributed Suntory's products in Singapore and around Asia.

Big winners from the Coupon:

Beam: The company's shares are up 24% Monday morning, trading just below the 25% premium to the beverage maker's closing price Friday offered by Suntory. The Japanese beverage maker agreed to pay an outsize multiple of more than 20X the company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization

Beam's management will stay in place and operate the company as a subsidiary of Suntory from Beam's headquarters outside of Chicago. Beam was s pun out of Fortune Brands in 2011. Since then, it's been considered a key takeover candidate.

Bill Ackman: Pershing Square pushed for the breakup of Fortune Brands. According to FactSet, Mr. Ackman's hedge fund owns the largest stake in Beam at roughly 13%.

Mitsubishi UFJ, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Centerview Partners: Mitsubishi and Morgan Stanley advised Suntory, while Credit Suisse and Centerview worked for Beam on this deal. This is sure to give all of these banks a boost in the league tables.

Golden Globes 2014, TV review

<Best Offerp>Praise be eternally to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. But mainly for last year. In their debut stint hosting the Golden Globes, they showed everyone how awards compering should be done. They managed to be irreverent and funny without resorting to Ricky Gervais-style sneering. They succeeded in spoofing the industry, and the Globes themselves, from the inside, while never making the wider audience feel left out of the fun.

It's faintly surprising that the Oscars haven't snapped them up: if anything could remove the sour taste of That Ceremony last year, it would be these two, with their patented blend of deadpan duetting and wacky shout-outs. Their good material at this year's Globes, which was bittier, cheekier, and mainly confined to the first half, propelled a hefty show forward and gave us a safe landing pad after every slightly awkward acceptance speech. Even when their material seemed stale or a bit feeble, their reliably chipper delivery kept it in a reassuring safe zone: they're a Teflon-coated double act by now, incapable of being embarrassing.

Give a bonus to whichever writer fed Poehler her line about Gravity, aka, "the story of how George Clooney would rather float into space and die than spend one more minute with a woman his own age". Quips like that are the lifeblood of awards nights, and we're sure George (who wasn't actually present) can take it. Woody Allen wasn't present either, which meant he was spared the peculiar, a cappella Girl Scout song Diane Keaton sang in his honour. What a reaction shot that might have afforded. Instead, the best comment fell to Mia Farrow on Twitter: "Time to grab some ice cream and switch over to #GIRLS".

Fey and Poehler may not have sustained last year's form overall, but they passed the test of seeming funnier and madder than almost anyone else on stage, with two exceptions. Emma Thompson came up to present Best Screenplay (won by Spike Jonze) with her high-heeled pumps in one hand and a full martini glass in the other, making the best of being several sheets to the wind (it's a Globes tradition) by also being a riot, and tossing her shoes insouciantly over her shoulder.

Emma Thompson GETTY IMAGES

Jacqueline Bisset, meanwhile, overcome at the relatively minor coup of an award for Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries, went rather in the other direction. Long after the organisers started trying to shoo her off with music, she was still hanging around on stage delivering some kind of oration of forgiveness centred around her mother. As such, her speech began to resemble an impromptu audition tape for future productions of August: Osage County - and made for easily the weirdest spectacle of a droll, unpredictable, and bumpy night.

Follow @TelegraphFilm

How to Deal With a Snow Day?

<Best Offerimg src="http://0.tqn.com/d/humanresources/1/0/k/H/iStock_000015499819XSmallwoman-coffee-home-fireplace.jpg">

Ready for a big storm? It's time to talk about pay for inclement weather days. Winter is here and companies need to be prepared for upcoming storms with a bad weather procedure.

In fact, looking at the weather map this morning, snow is predicted starting tonight through Sunday night with a currently projected 14" of snow where I live. And, in other parts of the country, the wind chill is -35 and over 18" of snow is predicted. We may be the lucky ones.

The prospect for bad weather in the winter sparked a discussion in my company about whether we should close the offices for the day, when a major snow storm is predicted, so that employees don't try to make it into work in dangerous driving conditions.

The discussion gave me pause for the telecommuting policy that I am writing, too. The policy needs a clause that deals with bad weather days. We encourage employees to work from home when weather makes commuting too dangerous.

For some employees, this is impossible though, because closed childcare facilities make working at home a challenge. Some jobs, such as shipping, are not conducive to working from home. You can consider asking these employees to use PTO time, but this approach is definitely dependent on the honor system. You absolutely want to avoid policing and other actions that tell employees that you don't trust them.

But, fortunately, most jobs have, at least a few components, that can be accomplished in the technology-rich wonderland that we all now inhabit. Our final word to employees is that if hazardous conditions beyond the normal appear, the office is closed. They are to work at home and do something that is beneficial for our company.

What do you do for employees during hazardous weather? Here are my new recommendations: Employee Pay for Snow Days, Rain Days, and Emergencies.

Classes on the HR Site

This might be a good week to take a look at one or more of the classes I offer on the site: Conduct Powerful Job Interviews consolidates my most comprehensive material about interviewing. How to Recruit and Hire the Best, updated with new recruiting tools such as LinkedIn and Facebook, might also meet your needs. Perennially popular, Powerful Performance Management will prepare you to work successfully within or transform your current performance review system.

Image Copyright StockLib

Something Better Than Coal in Your Stocking?

Legend says that naughty kids get a lump of coal in their Christmas xo so kien thiet, so do nice kids get clean energy in theirs, at least metaphorically speaking? It all depends on who plays Santa Claus with your investments or in your nation's capital.

In Pakistan, the government recently announced plans to build a 2,200 megawatt nuclear power plant that will cost nearly $10 billion and take six years to construct. No word on whether Pakistanis will demand funds be set aside to deal with a Fukushima or Chernobyl-style disaster, each of which will end up costing taxpayers in Japan and Ukraine many billions more for generations to come.

By contrast, at the United Nations in New York last week, I attended a meeting of Sustainable Energy for All ("SE4ALL" as it's called) where the discussion centered around delivering clean energy directly to consumers at far less cost and risk. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim, and SE4ALL Director Kandeh Yumkella all spoke about the 1.5 billion people who have no access to electricity and are looking for ways to recharge cellphones, run computers, watch TV, and refrigerate food. These people tend to live in communities that are too remote to be connected to a grid or are not served by a utility to buy electricity in the conventional manner. But SE4ALL partners are lining up to invest in ways to power them anyway.

For example, the African Development Bank just launched the $200 million Africa Renewable Energy Fund, the first private equity fund designed to invest in 5-50 MW renewable energy projects across Sub-Saharan Africa such as wind, solar, small hydro, biomass, geothermal and stranded gas technologies. The bank and its allies (including US taxpayer backed funds) are betting that smaller scale projects using localized, renewable resources that are closer to the consumer will be profitable and can be built much faster than large power plants and massive new grids. The bank is also leading a $100 billion project finance initiative called the Africa 50 Fund to help nations on the continent scale up these initial equity investments.

The World Bank announced a $115 million Utility Scale Renewable Energy Program to support private sector geothermal development. And to learn more about where renewable resources exist, the bank created "ESMAP", a project to help countries find the exploitable wind, solar, biomass and geothermal resources.

Nor are these investments left to development banks and national governments alone. Petroleum giant Shell is investing in the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and its goal to convert 100 million homes to clean and efficient stoves and fuels by 2020. Bank of America is getting into the act too with a $500 million "Green Bond" product targeted at clean energy development as part of a ten year $50 billion environmental business commitment overall. In Brazil, Itaipu Binacional and Eletrobras kicked off a project to use biogas from agricultural and animal waste to generate electricity in small rural communities of Paraná state and replicate the model in San Jose state in neighboring Uruguay.

So what about that coal in the stocking? Well, a number of strange bedfellows will tell you to leave it there. The "Green Tea Coalition" is a Georgia-based group combining Tea Party conservatives with the Sierra Club to promote clean energy. The group helped pass a bill recently that requires Georgia Power to buy 525 megawatts of solar power by 2016, about 20 percent from residential and commercial rooftops.

Santa's sleigh may visit every home on the planet in one night powered by good wishes alone, but for electricity to light up all of those homes in the near future it will take a lot of distributed energy using local resources with innovative clean technology. As the examples at SE4ALL demonstrate, this approach will light up a lot of lives and put sustainable profits in the stockings of smart investors for many holiday seasons to come.

Follow Terry Tamminen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/terrytamminen

Source: Huffingtonpost

New And Exclusive Micro-Site Content

ePHOTOzine's Micro-Site Roundup - Find out what's been happening on our five Micro-Sites.

Posted:

Here's a roundup of the exclusive content we've got for you to have a read of on our five micro-sites this week:

On PENTAXPORTAL this week, you can take a look at some top tips for photographing seals with your Pentax camera, and check out some top Pentax sunset photos. Plus, the brand new K-3 DSLR has been reviewed on site this week, and there's news of new images from Ricoh Imaging brand ambassadors.

Over On EIZO ColorZone, you can learn how to perform a monitor viewing angle check and find out why ColorNavigator software is a great tool for aiding calibration. Plus, there's news of a new 3D CG colour management handbook that's now available.

Meanwhile, on Olympus Image Space this week, there are techniques on how to use blur creatively, and there's news on Olympus workshops taking place over the coming months with Damian McGillicuddy and Steve Gosling. Plus, news on the Olympus Impressions 'Fall' competition, and £100 accessory cashback when you buy an Olympus OM-D E-M1 camera have also gone live.

On Totally Tamron this week, you can learn some top tips for taking better photos of ice with your Tamron lens, plus there are some top Tamron portrait photos for you to take a look at. Don't forget to take a look at David Pritchard's blog the days zoom past, too, as he's been out-and-about with his newly acquired Tamron 24-70mm lens.

Last but not least, on Nikon Nation this week, you can check out some ideas and tips for on location portrait shoots, get creative with colour balance and lots more. Plus, don't miss the Nikon D5300 Buy Cheap DSLR review and news of ono-to one training with Nikon School in December.

Make sure you check back to the Micro-Sites regularly, as new and exclusive content is posted weekly!

Source: Ephotozine