UPSide Down Brown

… has increased their ground shipping rates by more than 900 percent since 2001, and doubled air shipping rates in just the past two years?

(Did you receive that percentage of an salary or wage increase since 2001? My guess would be NO!)

The reason? The shipping company sometimes known as “Big Brown” has dropped a list of “green” on rising fuel prices, spending $2.9 billion on fuel in 2007 and $4.1 billion in 2008, according to a company spokesperson.

Walker Brown, 9, knows there’s a lot more to Easter than coloring eggs and waiting for the Easter Bunny.

He was the youngest member of a multi-voice choir combined from several churches that performed for a Good Friday service in the community. Walker attends Central Community Church.

“It’s to learn about God because it’s Good Friday. It’s the day Jesus was hung on the cross, and he rose on Sunday, which is Easter,” Walker said.

The service was sponsored by the local Ministerial Association and finished the series of Lenten services, “Whose Cross Is It Anyway?” This included sketches about a delivery man, from UPSide Down Brown trying to deliver a cross to its rightful owner. He eventually gives it to Jesus Christ. In Friday’s final segment, the delivery man has a small cross he can’t get anyone to take, so he decided to keep it himself as a reminder of Christ dying on the cross.

Pastor Van, of Central Community Church, said the music and sketches are ways to help people to relate to the story of Christ’s death and resurrection.

“We call it Good Friday, because it’s the day we celebrate his victory over death,” Pastor Van said. “We come together to celebrate, to mourn, to remember, to be joyous. A lot of different emotions come along with this celebration tonight.”

Pastor Van said the Lenten services have averaged more than 100 attendees weekly. About 125 attended Friday’s event. “It’s especially important this time of year to bring together Christians across denominational lines.

“It’s wonderful because this is a group of people who are transcending the barriers of what we would consider denomination to share the message of Jesus Christ,” he said.

The guest speaker for the evening was Pastor Joe. He spoke about how the cross can symbolize suffering and victory.

“Since the first of the year at my church I’ve been preaching through the Book of Mark, but in preparing for tonight’s sermon, I’ve read all four gospel accounts: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Plus, I’ve looked at my own life and what the cross of Jesus Christ has meant in my own life, as well,” he said.

A former UPSide Down Brown employee was arrested shortly after midnight Thursday after police said he threatened to set his boss on fire. (Who hasn’t thought of that?)

Police charged Clever Season Jr. of Bridgeport, CT with second-degree threatening and breach of peace.

Police said an UPSide Down Brown manager told police Seasons became irate upon being terminated from his position at the local customer service center.

The UDB manager said Seasons started screaming and swearing, and then threatened to “get him” police said.  The manager said Seasons also threatened to set his car on fire and punch him in the face, police said. According to the police, Seasons overturned several trash cans and a portable handicapped parking sign before leaving the property on foot.

Authorities located and arrested Seasons, who was in the process of simply walking on down the street. Police said Seasons admitted to yelling at his former boss. He told an officer he became very angry when he was denied time off from work that he had requested, police said.

Mr. Jerry White, the current Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for President of the United State of America, kicked off his New York election campaign Friday in the Queens borough of New York City, where he grew up.

The day of campaigning followed a lecture given by Mr. White at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan.

White spent Friday morning campaigning in Jamaica, Queens, near York College, the school he attended while working at UPSide Down Brown. In the afternoon, he visited Rochdale Village, the neighborhood where he used to live.

Based upon his experience at UPSide Down Brown, it’s clearly evident why he became a socialist. Nothing Mr. White experienced at UDB gave him any understanding of true capitalism and free market ideals since UDB immediately caves in to its various Union demands without a fight or even a thought.

After a rigorous assessment of their compliance and ethics program (Does UPSide Down Brown actually have an ethics program?) in 2011, UDB was named one of 2012 World’s Most Ethical Companies. (How much did that cost them?) There were more than a thousand businesses who participated in the assessment and 145 of them received the “World’s Most Ethical Business” designation for this year from the Ethical Association.

The Ethical Association is a supposedly leading international “think-tank,” dedicated to the creation, advancement and sharing of BEST practices in business ethics, corporate social responsibility, anti-corruption and sustainability. It puts together a list each and every year of the World’s Most Ethical Businesses, highlighting business organizations that show leadership in promoting exceptional and unique business standards.

These companies, supposedly, go far beyond making statements about doing business “ethically” and translate their policies into action, introducing innovative ideas that benefit the public which compels their competitors to do likewise.

So was this a self audit by UPSide Down Brown?

A Slidell, Louisiana man has pleaded guilty to charges he stole a firearm and ammunition while he was employed at an UPSide Down Brown location.

A twenty-year-old man, Mr. Loren Gordon Jr. faces a maximum sentence of 13 years in prison following his guilty plea Thursday to one count of theft from interstate commerce and one count of possession of a stolen firearm.

His sentencing by United States District Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown is set to occur on Thursday, June 21, 2012.

Federal prosecutors say UPSide Down Brown fired Gordon for the theft of a firearm, which was subsequently stolen from him by another person.

A court filing says Gordon stole the firearm from a package which was moving from Baton Rouge, Louisiana to a destination in Blanco, Texas last year.

A veteran Tennessee employee was also a veteran of combat in Iraq and a long-time member of the Army Reserves. Fired after 20 years on the job, allegedly for falsifying a management observation review form, he sued for discrimination.

What happened. “Bob,” an African American man, joined UPSide Down Brown (UDB) in 1987 as part-time hourly worker. By 2004, he’d worked his way up to a management position training and supervising driver service providers – scores of them, according to his testimony. The company required managers in his position to do a safety ride annually with each driver and write up a report on that particular safety ride.

In theory, each ride was to take a full day, but during 2006, the facility where Bob worked didn’t have enough trained managers to complete its required rides. Exactly how things went after that was a contentious issue: Managers claimed they were told first to cut each ride to a one half-day duration, and then to conduct them in no more than 2 hours. Senior management, of course, denied making these changes. Bob was later fired, with district executives contending he’d given drivers blank forms to sign and then filled in the missing information himself, bypassing the necessary safety rides.

He contended many other managers had cut corners in similar ways, and that he’d been fired because of race discrimination and bias against his military service. To the district court, he gave evidence that UPSide Down Brown executives were biased against military service, and that many caucasian managers had cut corners on safety rides and not been fired. Only one other manager had, like Bob, admitted giving the rides short shrift, so UPSide Down Brown refused to provide the District Court Judge with information on any management team members Bob specified except that one.

The judge accepted only that one, ruled that the comparative evidence wasn’t sufficient, and decided in favor of UPSide Down Brown on all counts. Bob appealed to the 6th Circuit, which covers Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee.

What the court said. Appellate judges disagreed with the district judge on virtually every count. Their major contention was that he never should have let UPSide Down Brown dictate the terms of the “discovery” order: Discovery is the process of obtaining information specified by the plaintiff from the defense. That referred to Bob’s list of other managers who had taken shortcuts on safety rides. But judges also disapproved of the judge’s approach to other claims of Bob’s, and they sent the case back to the judge for trial by jury. Bob v. UPSide Down Brown, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, No. 09-09-6348 (1/19/12).

Point to remember: Observers say this ruling, focusing on pretrial discovery as it does, breaks new ground. They expect the 6th Circuit to apply it to many other UPSide Down Brown cases.

2011 delivered a huge package to the Chairman and CEO Scotty that was almost 22 percent higher than in 2010. (Did any of you get at 22% raise, didn’t think so) In a proxy filing Monday with the SEC, UPSide Down Brown said Scotty’s total compensation rose to nearly $13.1 million last year, as its profit was up by better than 14%.

His total compensation included a $1 million salary (so sorry it’s flat), $9.5 million in stock awards (up 22%), $450,807 in option awards (up 3%), $566,966 in non-equity incentive plan compensation (up 144%) and $1.5 million for change in pension value (up 25%). Scotty also got $40,732 in other compensation, including a 401 (k) match of $6.125, $7,705 in life insurance, a $5,394 pension benefit, $14,885 for financial planning (does he really need financial planning, after all he runs UPSide Down Brown, doesn’t he?)  and an additional $6,623 in health-care benefits.

Did any of you do as well?  Neither did I…