Category: Uncategorized

UPDATE (12/18/2017): *I have discovered that I had not completely read all of the details for this position. I mistakenly applied the time period in which a person can apply as the end of the voting period. You can still vote every 24 hours until Sunday, December 24th at 11:59pm. I would appreciate your continued support. Thank you.*

This is going to be a short post. I saw an ad on one of my Facebook friends timeline. It wa s a position for a CEO which stands for Cancun Experience Officer. Neat huh? The position would require an individual or team to live in Cancun for 6 months. They would eat at different restaurants, stay in different hotels and participate in activities in and around Cancun. This cannot be real! Oh wait here is the kicker. You will be paid $10,000 a month! Now that is really unbelievable. I looked it up. Went to their website. Checked out the requirements. It seemed legit.

Now the next step was creating a 60 second video saying why I was the best person for the CEO. I had an idea as to what I would bring to the position. My issue was saying it in 60 seconds. I mean I started a blog because I talk so much. Lol. Now you want to confine me to 60 seconds. Wrote some things down, recorded it. Yea…longer than 60 seconds. Then I had an epiphany. You can have a team. Now the pay stays the same no matter who is on your team, but I only needed one other person. My teammate is my mom. Hell I have been on almost all my trips with her so why not have her experience this with me. She agreed to be a part of team. We were going to shoot the video together when I was there for Thanksgiving but we were so busy with the Prayer and Praise event that we never got to it.

My 60 second pitch actually turned out to be 53 seconds. I cut out a few things from my original speech and tried my best to sum up why we would be the best choice. I think I did a good job but only time will tell. I do truly believe we would be a great choice. Even though we cannot highlight Cancun as a family vacation spot, we can show families with older kids and adults the best places and activities. My pitch actually included something that I don’t like to share with most people, my limitations. I have been traveling more recently and it is imperative to know the resources that are available for people with physical limitations. Especially if you are traveling alone. I don’t want my limitations to hold me back from living a full life. If I know that the places I choose to visit has ways to accommodate me, I’m there. When I was in Cancun in July I was impressed with how people treated me. Since that trip I have changed my diet drastically. I was vegan for a small time but scaled back to vegetarian because I do not want to give up seafood for the rest of my life. This is another advantage for my team. To travel around Cancun and show meals that will accommodate vegans and vegetarian and also put a spotlight on handicap accessible hotels, restaurant and activities, win-win.

Now my mom may be older but she loves trying new things and living her best life. On a mission trip, she ziplined in Nicaragua. I haven’t even done that though I want to. The advantage that she adds to the team is that she doesn’t have physical or dietary limitations. She would be the person to do all the activities that I may not be able to. She would also eat the meals that I couldn’t due to it containing meats I don’t eat or dairy. We as a team can give so many different perspectives of Cancun, I don’t know why they wouldn’t pick us. I, of course, could not say all these things in a 60 second video though. And even though I said this was going to be a short post, it’s not looking like that anymore. Lol.

Now that I have submitted my video, I just need votes. I am not sure how big of a role the votes play in them narrowing down the pool to 100 people/teams but it never hurts. A person can vote every 24 hours from the last time that they submitted a vote. Voting is open until 11:59pm Sunday, December 17th. So I am just asking for your support. Here is the link where you can vote, https://ceo.cancun.com/profile/ebony-sims. I will be sure to update this post to let you know if my team is part of the top 100. Thank you for your support.

Sorry it has taken so long since my last post. This topic I’m blogging about today I wanted to do it justice. I didn’t just want to slap it together. This is about a movement. About a person being obedient to God’s word no matter what. To continue year after year to gather Christians of any and all denominations to praise and worship God just for who He is. Not asking for a single thing, just glorifying him. This day last week, I was in Bluffton, South Carolina to be a part of this movement. Why South Carolina you ask? The person who God gave the vision and who has continued to be obedient is my mother. Whatever she needed I wanted to be there to help. Even though I have not seen his vision, I want to help it come to fruition. So I helped to crochet the gifts that were past out to anyone who praised and prayed with us.

I also attached the beads and bagged our unique one of a kind crosses. Lol. Every one of them came out different so therefore no two were alike. They are ornaments.

My mom’s friend Constance, put the bows and handles on the programs, which were fans you can use on a warm day or in a warm church service. She also snipped and clipped to add the finishing touches on the corners.

Other people who believe in the vision and who is committed to honoring God helped in countless other ways. From the food, various soups and chilis are provided to everyone after the main event.

To the set up and decoration of the location.

To the clean up afterwards.

To lending their voices in songs of praise and worship.

Unity in the Community Praise and Prayer calls us to come together as God’s people and on this day last week, we did. This was not a church service. Even though words were spoken, no one was there to provide the word as a preacher or teacher. We were there to sing praises to God and lift Him up. To pray to God and thank Him for all he has done and all that he will do.

“Do you believe in God? Do you believe in the Bible? If you answered yes to both of these question, then let us look at Genesis. God created one man and one woman. So if we are all descendents of that one man and one woman, we are all related. So look to your brother or sister next to you and say, I am your sister or brother and I love you.” These are words that were spoken at the Unity in the Community Praise and Prayer gathering. I believe they were the most powerful words said that day. And not just because they came from my mother. Lol. But because they illuminated the connection between us all. The vision that was bestow upon my mom was for all believers of God to come together the Sunday after Thanksgiving and unite in praise and worship. If you answered the questions with a positive response, we are related. Then why do we as a people allow ourselves to be divided? Why do we allow ourselves to be separated by skin color, continents and hemispheres. We are so focused on defining ourselves by what separates us but never acknowledges what we have in common. GOD! He is the answer.

If we as believers of God, descendents of Adam and Eve, brothers and sisters, woke up each day believing these things and acted upon them, how much better would the world be? If we lived our lives as Jesus lived his, where could we go wrong? Unity in the Community would not just be a one day event. We would stay honoring and glorifying God with our praise and our actions. We would make God proud. We would give God joy. We would not let others divide us from our brothers and sisters, our family. Please don’t think that I am on my high horse, everything I said applies to me as well. I am quick to separate myself from others with my skin tone. But I believe one of the best human beings I know is my co-worker Melinda and I never notice her skin tone. I looked at the person she is and her heart. And I would wage a war on anyone who hurts her just like I would for my own brother.

This post opened up an awareness within me. Now I can’t go back. To ignore it would be disobedient. I am not saying I will change overnight. I am saying that now I need to be more aware of my actions. Aware of the things I do and say to divide me from others. Ways for me to bring unity in my own community. Did any of this make sense to you? Were you touched in anyway? What can you do better as a person, as a believer. I’m going to be honest, I don’t expect a single comment on this post. And that’s fine. If you do want to talk about this, please feel free to call me, 419-213-9391 or email me, elsims27@yahoo.com. You can also text me.

I just want to acknowledge my mother, Rochelle, for continuing to be obedient and to persevere each and every year to bring God’s vision to fruition. I would also like to thank all who came out and all who helped in any way. God bless you.

Black Friday, which does not even start on Friday anymore, is only a few days away. There will be deals that you may not be able to get throughout the year. This may be a tradition in your house to patronize these sales by waiting in line and being one of the first in the store. Or if you are like me, you will go online to grab a couple of items. I like the deals but I don’t like waiting in line or the crowds. I have no real tips on how to shop on this particular day/weekend. I do however have a few tips for this day and the rest of the holiday season.

I worked for 7 years at Target. Seven holiday seasons. If you have ever worked in retail you know that it can be rough. No vacation days off from mid November to after the first of the year. Mandatory to work on Thursday/Friday of Thanksgiving weekend. Longer store hours. Less family time. Not really exciting for the workers. And yes we realize what we signed up for by working in retail. We even realize that customers are going to be a little rude. What we don’t sign up for is to be disrespected. So with all my ex-team members in mind, here are a few tips.

1. Team members, cashiers, sales associates, whatever you want to call them, are people. People with feelings.

2. Majority of the people you will encounter are probably working for minimum wage or a little more. They don’t get paid enough to put up with your shit. If you have an issue, ask for a manager. But they are also still people with feelings.

3. If an item that you want is not in stock, it is not the employee’s fault. We think that it is stupid as well to have items in the ad that we do not have. The ads are the same for all stores in the area but all stores don’t get the same stock.

4. If you waited to the week before or a few days before Christmas and the store will not have an item until after Christmas, your fault. That does not give you the right to cuss at or be mean to anyone who is working in the store.

5. Yes I know that you have stood in line, probably in the cold, waiting for that one special item. Once the doors open, please no pushing, fighting or running. It is not that serious. Let’s us be courteous and considerate.

6. This is a statement that doesn’t just apply in the holiday season but each and every day. We do not get paid to clean up after you. When you leave stuff laying around the store or a table of shirts totally trashed, we do have to clean that up. But cleaning up grown people’s messes hinders us from coming to the registers when the lines get long. Or keeping areas stocked with the items you want because we can’t put the product out due to you having shoved a bunch of items you didn’t want in that location. If you decide that you no longer want an item, just give it to the cashier at the register. Do not leave it laying all around the register. We have carts that are sorted out to go back to the departments where they belong. When you hand it to us, we can put it in those carts. Makes sense right? Yes damn good sense.

I don’t know when the holidays became strictly about buying things. And at this point I don’t care. What I do care about is how the holidays have become a time to be rude and disrespectful to workers and others. We should be treating everyone with the spirit of the season not the just the people we know and love. I always say you don’t know what that person is going through or how their day has been going. To acknowledge them with a smile and a kind greeting could mean so much to them. As workers, we are not asking for special treatment. We are just asking to be treated like human beings.

Let’s be better. Better people. Better customers. Better representatives for others to follow in our footsteps. You don’t get a pass because you are stressed due to overloading your holiday season. Or because the store doesn’t have what you are looking for. Don’t go to people’s jobs acting a fool. For the people who have worked in retail, share your stories. Have you encounter any rude and disrespectful customers? Do you have any uplifting stories of proper customer behavior? Please leave a comment in the box or feel free to email me at elsims27@yahoo.com.

Happy Thanksgiving.