Entries Tagged 'Awful Incidents' ↓

Parents in the suburban Los Angeles community of Woodland Hills were outraged when they discovered that teachers and staff at Woodlake Avenue School were not following the Los Angeles Unified School District’s guidelines for flushing campus drinking fountains. If the fountains are not properly flushed each day, students are subjected to high levels of lead in the drinking water, due to aging galvanized pipes that the district has failed to replace.

The 30-second flushing policy, required on each fountain head, has been in place for nearly 20 years, yet tracking of this important task only began six months ago across the nation’s second-largest school district.

A concerned parent (who also happens to work for the Los Angeles water board) tested water taken from one of the fountains at Woodlake Avenue Elementary, and found levels of lead at 110 parts per billion gallons - almost eight times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended limit!

Woodlake Avenue is not the only LAUSD school to fail a lead test. Visits to more than 150 campuses took place recently, and the district’s Office of Environmental Health and Safety reported that logs on whether flushing took place were incomplete at 26 schools.

Woodlake parents told the Los Angeles Daily News that they first became wary about the school’s water quality after their children were told by teachers not to drink from its fountains. However, the school has refused offers from parents to pay for a private company to provide drinking water for the students, and the school also prohibits students from bringing their own bottled water from home. If they are thirsty, they have no choice but to drink unsafe water. More zero-tolerance nonsense.

Think the school should allow students to bring bottled water to class until the pipes get fixed? Let them know:

Woodlake Avenue Elementary School
Phone: (818) 347-7097
Principal: Kenneth McGee

Here we go again - more zero-tolerance, no common sense madness - this time from Texas.

Brandon Hill is a sophomore at Copperas Cove High School in Copperas Cove, Texas. His dad, Morris, stationed in Iraq, placed a call to Brandon while he was in class at school. When Brandon answered his cell phone and stepped out of class to take the quick call from his dad on the battlefield, he was suspended for two days.

“He called me during class, because that’s the only time that he could,” said Brandon told Austin’s NBC affiliate, KXAN. “I answered the call as I was walking out of class. The teacher followed me out and said, ‘Oh what are you doing?’ I said my dad was calling from Iraq, and I know he needs to talk to me.”

Brandon’s mother, Pat Hill said that before her husband left for duty in Iraq, he made an arrangement with the assistant principal to ensure that if he called either of his sons while they were at school, that they would be allowed to take the call.

Pat was outraged that her son had been suspended, and arranging a meeting with the principal to discuss the issue took a full week. She told the station, “If this would have been the last phone call from my husband, and he’s in trouble for it and then has to deal with something happening to his dad that would be even harder.”

Brandon has returned to classes, but he still has the suspension listed on his record. His mother wants it removed, and wants to ensure that the school will take steps to recognize the special needs of military children.At this point, Pat says that the school will not address her request to have the suspension removed from Brandon’s record.

What do you think - should the school clear Brandon’s record and expunge the suspension? Let them know:

Copperas Cove High School
Phone: (254) 547-2534
E-Mail: Dr. Carol Saxenian, Principal - saxenianc@ccisd.com
E-Mail: Richard Fletcher, Assistant Principal - fletcherr@ccisd.com

It appears that we’re not the only ones in the world who hate (and don’t abide by) Wal-Mart’s policy of checking your receipt as you leave the store.

A website called “Can I See Your Receipt: Someone’s Stealing and it Could be You” has been launched to bring publicity to this awful practice. (standuptowalmart.com)

Visitors are encouraged to share their receipt-check horror stories, and the site provides links to articles on receipt-checking and the law.

The site’s owner has a goal of getting Wal-Mart to stop this practice by Christmas of this year… somehow, we just don’t think that is going to happen.

What is the best way for dealing with this annoyance? Well, we’ve been doing this for years and have tried every imaginable response. The best is really the most simple - slowly keep walking past the receipt-check employee, and calmly and politely say “no thank you” when asked.

A Comcast customer support technician went nuts as he tried to settle a personal score in an Xbox live DDoS attack.

Twenty-year-old Mark Ribeiro, a Canadian working for a Comcast vendor, was getting packet flooded by some fellow gamers on the Microsoft Xbox Live! service. He used his position and access to Comcast’s customer service records to enact revenge on the perpetrator, the child of a Comcast customer.

He even went to far as to brag about his exploits on a Halo3 Internet forum, under the screen name of “Sir Lagzalot.”

The forum has deleted the original messages, but here is what he said:

I work for Comcast as a tier 2.5 support agent, which essentially means im one of the top 1% elitest agents.

I proceeded to input his ip address into a program we have called SERVICE VISIBILITY PORTAL — SVP for short — and it brought up his account, address phone number, daddy’s credit card info — the whole nine yards…I decided that since this kid was indeed involved in illegal activity I’d give his daddy a call.

Well the father was furious, not at me however he assured me he would take care of the problem… the father began to yell at his son, i then heard a loud smack, and then sobbing, and then cracking noise as if something was breaking..it then occured to me that the father had just beat the sh.t out of his kid, and the cracking noise was the sound of a hammer on an xbox , i decided that being the self indulgent bastard i am, i wanted more…the father put the son on the phone, still sobbing i might add..and i said to him..”do you know who this is??” he answered “no”..i said “remember that guy u cheated some 20-30 minutes ago and i said u would pay??, well guess what son…u just did.”

As evidence of his power as a Comcast rep, he also posted two screenshots of the internal Comcast tools that he used to do the customer research necessary to find his Xbox live attacker. He then went on to brag about being able to terminate customer accounts at any time:

i basically added these two pics for the non believers…and YES I can powercycle “shut off your modem” and lag you out of matchmaking as well…let this stupid little boy be a lesson to u all, dont flood my ip, or anyone elses…because if you plan on doing so i will cancel your service and you WILL have to find an new isp which can mean up to 500$ in installation charges, and for many of you comcast is the ONLY isp in your area…so let me rephrase this..IS IT WORTH IT????

While he may have had luck in tracking down his on-line nemesis, he wasn’t too smart when it came to covering his own tracks. He used his real name on those forum posts.

Comcast - a company not known for its stellar customer service agents in the first place, is really in an awful place here. They have a vendor employee who has access to many sensitive databases who is using this knowledge for his own personal gain - and bragging about it on a public message board!

Comcast issued the following statement:

“We’ve contacted Convergys to demand that he be immediately removed from performing any work for Comcast and that they conduct a thorough investigation and take appropriate disciplinary action.”

Well good, at least they’re getting rid of the scumbag. Now let’s hope he doesn’t take home a printout of customer credit card numbers with him when he gets fired…

36-year-old Matt Budge is dying from a rare form of cancer, and is trying to move his family from their rented apartment in McKinney, Texas to live with relatives in Utah before he passes away.

When he contacted the management at his apartment complex, The Mansions at Stonebridge Ranch, he was told that he would not be allowed out of the lease contract early, no matter what the issue.

If he were to break the contract and leave early, his family would be responsible for roughly $9000 in rent and fees - including the reimbursement of a $75 credit that was applied to his rent to cover the damages from a water leak.

Spokespeople for the apartment complex have said that while they sympathize with his plight, there is “nothing they can do” to help the family out.

Sure there is.

They could obtain proper medical proof that Budge is terminally ill, and upon verification, they could allow his lease to end when he moves out, and waive any future charges or fees, minus the security deposit, etc.

But no, that would make for too nice of a headline in the paper.

They’d rather endure the PR firestorm that will most likely occur when this hits the mainstream media and the blogosphere.

Think that The Mansions at Stonebridge Ranch should do the right thing and let the Budge family out of their lease early? Let them know:

Call the rental office: (972) 562-8887
Send them an e-mail: leasing@mansionsatstonebridge.com
Use the contact form on their site: Contact the Mansions at Stonebridge.
Contact the corporate office: Western Rim Property Services