His name is Patrick Schuster and the only thing I find more awesome than a pitcher throwing a fourth straight no-hitter is that the record is actually six straight no-hitters. Admittedly, high school baseball is like playground baseball in that sometimes you have serious mismatches. The kid is a left-hander and has major league velocity now. He'll go in the first round in June but I hope someone will tell him the story of David Clyde.
Amazing debate on hiring and firing in the comments to this MSNBC article. Part of it that caught my eye:
Because of the state of the economy, there are a lot of qualified people out there looking for jobs. Multiple guests have said on "Your Business" that this is the time to swap out people. If you have someone on your team who is not performing as well as you think he should, replace that person. People are available right now, and they're going cheap.
Wow. Mr Potter would be proud. Not sure hiring qualified people cheap makes for better employees, though. There's a lot of selling going on in the hiring interviews. The potential employees are selling themselves and the employer is selling the position. Best for everyone involved to be as honest as possible. If you claim to be a good worker, be one. If you claim there will be sugar plums if a person does a good job, let there be sugar plums.
Quote of the Day
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brendan McGuire said Muse initially told a Somali interpreter on April 12, when he was first detained, that he was 16, then that he was 19, then that he was 26.
USA Today
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "Prediction: there will be no significant newspapers printed on newsprint in the US by 2012. So, you've got two and a half years before the newspaper industry is going to be doing something else with the news and the ads, or not be there at all. Does that change what you do today if you work in this business?"
Gotta agree about the newspaper thing. Actually I see the same thing happening to broadcast TV and the cable channels. Oh, they'll still be there, but people will be getting all their information over the internet.
And by 2020 shopping malls will be a thing of the past. American society is presently undergoing a sea change no one is sure what the impact will ultimately be. But it's real, and it's coming.
Surprising to me that the internet is driving newspapers out of business. I always thought TV was going to do that. I disagree about TV and cable channels, though. I still think a sizable portion of the population will get a good bit of their information that way.
Don't know about shopping malls but strip malls seem to be popping up everywhere. I don't think the internet will ever totally replace bricks and mortar when it comes to purchasing goods and services but adjustments are surely being made due to its overwhelming presence.
Downturns can be a good time to hire on more good people if your competitors are shedding them, but the "swap out" aspect is pretty repulsive to me. I suppose if a company already has no loyalty to its workers it doesn't matter, as they will bail on that company the first chance they get anyway. Any company that does value loyalty would be wise to avoid that though, or forget about employee loyalty going forward.
Some companies treat loyalty as weakness, Dave, both in their treatment of customers and employees. They offer the moon to get a new account to switch while their loyal accounts continue to get business as usual. They make offers to employees to stay but only after they give notice that they're leaving.
Hopefully Schuster didn't throw out his arm trying to live up to the hype -- that can be a temptation for high schoolers especially