misoranomegami

Gah I went to a casino for the first time with a friend earlier this year to try out the penny slots he was a big fan of. I took $40 but decided to leave with $20. After I lost $20 I decided that was enough for me. I played a few games, had a couple of free drinks and considered it a learning experience. He took $40 and had another $50 on his card and walked out with $0.

We were there about 11am on a weekday morning and there were clearly people who had been there all night. There were people putting in eye drops so they could keep playing and every time I went past an ATM there was a line. I thought it was incredibly depressing. I felt bad enough for my friend who used the trip up to tell me about how bad his financial problems were and he was hoping he could win a couple of hundred to help smooth things over. I ended up buying him lunch on the way back to delay him having to tell his fiance that he could have walked out the door with $90 but blew it all.

Actually that's my question. I worked at a company that engaged in what I considered to be unethical business practices. At quarter end we would offer deep discounts and cover shipping both ways for companies to take products even though sometimes the orders would come in noted that they were going to be returned next quarter when the customer knew what they really wanted. We would also bill consignment inventory and then credit it back the next month. Now this wasn't all the time or all the orders. Just enough to hit our sales number for the quarter.

But it reminded me what I read about Sunbeam and Bristol Myers Squibb so I asked my supervisor and was told to drop it. I questioned my manager and was told to drop it. I asked the VP about it and was told it wasn't really happening I just thought it was and it wouldn't be material anyway even though I had printed copies of the emails. I gave copies of the emails to internal audit and SOX compliance (neither of which were CPAs) and was told they'd make sure that the sales men didn't get over paid if the stuff was returned. I gave it to our external auditor and they gave it back to internal audit who called me up 'just to check on how I was doing randomly' and to once again assure me everything was completely above board.

I didn't know what else to do so I ended up giving a copy of everything to the SEC since we were a publicly traded company. The only thing is I only gave them things that I had physical proof of so the total dollar amount was relatively low (about a million a quarter just from my division) and they told me that it was below the dollar threshold for them to investigate right now. I've since left the company primarily because of the work environment but also because I feel did face some retaliation but I still wonder if I should have done more to report their wrong doings?

What's your favorite sport to watch live in Dallas? Doesn't have to be pro. What ever you think has the best atmosphere.

Some of the recent changes to gymnastics scoring have really changed the make up of top level gymnastic teams and resulted in more physically demanding and technically difficult programs. Do you feel that recent or future changes to skating scores will have a similar impact on skating?