Asthma, Publicity and Scammers – Oh My!

This week has been a doozy.

Baby girl has had a terrible cough that developed out of nowhere. No amount of Mucinex or allergy medication seemed to be easing her cough so off to the doctor we went. Turns out that baby girl has Asthma. I can’t say that I was shocked, I did have some suspiscion that it could be; but it wasn’t until the doctor had me listen to her lungs through the stethescope that it really hit home. I felt terrible hearing that wheezing sound. How long had I let her suffer when she could have been on the road to recovery?? This is the 2nd or 3rd time she’s developed a cough like this – no other symptoms just a nasty cough. I thought it was allergies since everything is blooming right now. I wish I had taken her much sooner. The good news is she doesn’t need an inhaler (at least not yet) and is responding well to Albuterol breathing treatments and Prednisone.

That was Tuesday.

The same day we were contacted by a producer at Fox 13 here in Tampa that saw our story in the Tampa Tribune. He wanted to know if we were interested in doing a follow up story/interview on TV.

Silly question!

Fox 13 sent a reporter and videographer to our house at 11 am the next day. That was Wednesday.

That same day, we received word that an article about JobShouts.com was published on ERE, a popular recruiting network. It was later in the day on Wednesday so the buzz didn’t start to appear until Thursday.

Thursday. That was yesterday. It was also our biggest day ever for number of new job postings. More than 100 jobs came flying in and most of them were new posters/users. How exciting!!

So here it is Friday. What do we have on the trauma drama plate today?? Right – a scammer that posted an ad on JobShouts. sigh. Apparently it was posted a week ago but it slipped by us because it poses as a legitimate job ad for a company called Gen-Tech. Only the person that posted it doesn’t work for Gen-Tech and he/she isn’t trying to help you get a job. They request an “IM interview” to try to sucker you out of your personal information such as SSN, date of birth, etc. One of our job seekers witnessed the scam attempt when she applied to the job through our site and was contacted for an “IM interview”. Turns out this scammer isn’t as bright as our job seeker – he/she chose as the first question “age, sex, location?” You’re kidding, right? Is this for a job or a date? Good grief.

Mike has been investigating and we’ll be reporting this to the proper authorities and cooperating fully with any investigative attempts to eliminate this scam. I find it completely appalling that anyone would prey on those that can least afford to be scammed. Why am I surprised? It happens all the time. For me though, it’s personal. How dare this person try to scam OUR people. Using OUR site! Ugh.

So in case I haven’t mentioned it – TGIF and I’m SO looking forward to Saturday. I’m sleeping in and don’t you try and stop me!