Thanks for the Grapes, Jimmy.

Photo: Steven, a cashier at Superstore

At Metrotown Mall, Superstore has lower food prices, but Save On Foods has better customer service. In fact, the customer service at Save On is amazing.

I was at Metrotown on Saturday doing some shopping, and I bought some grapes on sale for $1.78 a pound at Save on Foods.

When I got home, and looked through my shopping bags, I didn't have that bag. So the next day, I phoned Customer Service at Save On and asked if they'd found my bag. I said I was going out that way again so if they'd found the grapes, I'd pick them up. They hadn't. "It doesn't matter," I told the clerk, "they were only $1.78" -- I remembered the total because it had been been the same as the price per pound. The clerk told me to drop by and he'd replace them.

And he did.

Contrast that with Superstore at Metrotown. A former Downtown Eastsider was telling me in early November about her encounter with the cashier from hell at Superstore. His name was Steven. I told her that if she got his photo, I would write him up.

When the customer was going through the check-out, Steven treated her like a shoplifter. He wanted to check her shopping bag. Fair enough: she was carrying a Superstore bag with her lunch in it. When she didn't object to him checking it, he lost interest. "He didn't open it, he just squeezed my pita sandwich. And he made a face, like yuck."

With all this fuss, Steven forgot to ask the customer if she wanted a plastic bag for her groceries. So after she paid, she asked him for one, but by this time he was on to the next customer. "He said no," she exclaimed. "He wouldn't give me one," she said, shaking her head in amazement. I agree with her that this is odd, as I've had busy cashiers at Superstore forget to ask me if I want a plastic bag, so they just hand me one instead of getting bogged down over five cents.

Steven did eventually toss this customer a bag, reluctantly. "I was tired of him blaming me so I said, 'It was your mistake, you know.' "

After packing her groceries, she realized she needed a second bag. "I wanted to double-bag [the groceries]; they were heavy." Steven told her she couldn't have another bag, and he turned back to his customer. So she spotted a plastic bag lying on the floor. "It was dirty; people were trampling over it." She picked it up and was putting her other bag into it, when Steven turned around. "Soooo, you took one anyway," he said accusingly. "He was livid." She told him she had picked it up off the floor.

Steven demanded that she pay him five cents for that bag and another five for the other bag. "I pay for bags there all the time but I'm not going to pay for a filthy bag off the floor."

Steven called the supervisor. The supervisor defended Steven. She said all bags had to be paid for. "Not a dirty one off the floor", the customer recalled saying. "Yes," said the supervisor, even a dirty bag must be paid for. But the supervisor let it go, this time.

Samantha Nutt Lends Star Power to SFU as it Dodges Responsibility for Sexual Harassment Ring

Simon Fraser University is attempting to make a name for itself as a world class university, as it passes the 20 year mark of evading responsibility for operating a sexual harassment ring targeting female students. And Samantha Nutt is helping them.

Nutt, a globe-trotting doctor who accepts awards for working to improve human rights and social justice and was named one of Canada's top five activists by Time magazine, is bringing her star-power to SFU’s international conference on global health issues this weekend. Nutt told Canadian Press that these conferences “make a difference” because they allow people to “share their experiences”. It would make a difference if she would remind SFU's President Michael Stevenson to finally arrange an investigation into the sexual harassment ring and allow victims and witnesses to "share their experiences". After all, Nutt wrote the forward for the book,"The Young Activists".

Phrases like "gender inequality", "gender gap", and "poverty" are a mainstay of this conference. But such words ring a little hollow while SFU remains unapologetic about it's record of offering female students a fast track to poverty by reducing them to crotches, resulting in at least one to drop out without getting her degree.

Colleen Phung, a researcher in SFU's new Faculty of Health Sciences which this conference is intended to advertise, will deliver her “findings on gender inequality”. SFU has no findings to deliver though on the gender inequality created by allowing a sexual harassment ring to openly operate at SFU for years. That's because they've evaded investigating it. Even when a woman dropped out of SFU due to stress caused by the sexual harassment ring, they evaded investigating the harassment. In fact, they gave one of the members of the ring, Greg Snider who had been seeking sex with students behind his spouse's back, a promotion to department head.

One of Phung's conclusions to be delivered at the conference is, "It comes down to the issue of empowerment, women not having control over their own lives." SFU seems more comfortable with empowerment of women, if they're on another continent. It's difficult for a female student to feel that she has control over her own life when she goes for an interview for entry into an SFU program and discovers she's being assessed as a potential sex partner for Greg Snider, a professor with a spouse and at least one child.

And it's difficult to feel empowered when you have to deal with Jeff Wall's habit of staring at your crotch and then looking you directly in the eye. Or when Wall is looking down your black v-neck sweater at your breasts. This was allegedly occurring at the same time as Wall was bringing another student to sleep at his Pt. Grey house, a student who discovered he had no intention of divorcing his wife. Empowering is not a word that would apply.

The woman who dropped out of SFU when she lost her ability to concentrate after being targeted for years by the sexual harassment ring and now lives in poverty, has nothing against health conferences. But she believes that as SFU extends it's global reach, it has an obligation to extend it's reach at home and to finally investigate the relentless sexual harassment ring that strained the psychological and physical health of female students on campus.

Colin Hansen "Rewarding" History of Sexual Harassment at SFU

Colin Hansen is rewarding sexual harassment. That’s how a former SFU student views a visit by BC’s Minister of Economic Development two weeks ago to the Downtown Eastside, to deliver $13.3 million in cheques to the Simon Fraser University Center for the Contemporary Arts. The cheques delivered on March 28th are part of a promise by Premier Gordon Campbell last year to give $49.5-million in special funding to the School for Contemporary Arts on the Downtown Eastside.

When delivering this special funding -- over and above regular funding -- Hansen made no mention of the Center’s special history, twenty years of evading investigation into the alleged operation of a sexual harassment ring of male professors. It is a history that has been festering much like that of native residential schools abuse or pedophile priests festered for decades.

The sexual harassment ring that operated in the Center for the Contemporary Arts involved an element of fraud according to previous reports by the woman who dropped out of the Center for the Contempoary Arts when she lost her ability to concentrate after years of sexual harassment. She has also spoken previously about the persistent lesson taught by Visual Arts professors in the sexual harassment ring -- Jeff Wall, Greg Snider, and David McWilliam -- all of whom had spouses and children, about how to handle a female spouse: deception.

SFU President Michael Stevenson did not show up to accept the $13.3 million cheque from Hansen. Stevenson is well aware of the controversy surrounding his hustling of public dollars for the Center for the Contemporary Arts while concealing it’s alleged history of operating as a site for professors to “harvest” female sex partners. “It’s affecting his reputation, and well it should”, the woman says. “He should resign over the way he’s ducked this issue like it’s a game.” Stevenson sent Warren Gill, Vice President for University Relations, to pick up the cheque from Hansen. “A spin doctor”, the woman calls him.



Hansen presented the cheques from an outdoor podium at a construction site for new Center for the Contemporary Arts studios on Hastings St., directly across the street from the Center’s old visual arts studios (middle building in photo above) where sexual harassment had been rampant for years. But Hansen’s ‘out with the old, in with the new’ hoopla has not caught on with the woman who dropped out due to sexual harassment. “I have trouble even walking by there”, says the woman who lives in the low income Downtown Eastside neighborhood. “As the years go by, it doesn’t get any better. I make a point of not looking at the building.”

At the time he turned over the $13.3 milllion cheque, Hansen encouraged donors to support the Center for the Contemporary Arts' private fund raising campaign. A press release from Hansen’s office praised SFU Chancellor emeritus Milton Wong and businessman Michael Audain for making “leadership” donations. Leadership is not a word the woman would use.

TD Bank Reimburses Robbed Customer

When Downtown Eastside resident C. Laird used the bank machine at the TD-Canada Trust on Main St. in Chinatown recently, somebody was standing behind him watching him punch in his pin number. The man then grabbed Laird's card. Before Laird had a chance to cancel the card, the man had raced to another bank and drained Laird's account.

Laird, a former ambulance attendant now on Disability because he has severe diabetes and other health problems, asked the TD-Canada Trust bank if they could reimburse him. "No", was the response.

Laird is not without connections though. He is a regular at the Carnegie Centre at Main & Hastings and has been a Board member there. Ethel Whitty, Director of the Carnegie Centre -- who has herself been accused of highway robbery for the $104,000 salary she drains from the public purse annually, a salary approaching what the Mayor earns -- wrote a letter to TD-Canada Trust requesting that they return the stolen money. Others at Carnegie wrote letters to the TD as well: Marlene George, Carnegie Seniors Programs Coordinator; Alphie and Sindi, Volunteer Co-ordinators; and Jean Swanson, an organizer with the Carnegie Action Project and author of the book, "Poor Bashing: The Politics of Exclusion". Sources believe a letter may also have been written by Paul Taylor, a member of the editorial committee of the Carnegie Newsletter, a left wing publication with a record of criticizing corporations.

The TD-Canada Trust reversed their decision.

TD-Canada Trust reimbursed Laird the money he was robbed of via their bank machine and sent him a letter a few days ago apologizing for the inconvenience.