Executives from rural areas in the Midwest of the United States generally do not realize the complexity of the world (the company is stingy and does not hire security guards, but you have to hire bodyguards at your own expense). Buffett’s annual bodyguard/security fee is probably hundreds of thousands. More than 20 years ago, Microsoft’s Balmer came to the village and also had bodyguards. I think he took these shots for the shareholders.
I have worked in the United States for 24+ years and have used basically all major medical insurance companies. I personally feel that UNH’s service is relatively reliable. There are many unreliable insurance companies-many of them just take money but do not do anything.
I also despise the American Boxers/keyboard warriors on the Internet, who smash Japanese cars of compatriots and make all kinds of medical troubles: the medical system and medical insurance problems in the United States are mainly caused by politicians. Republican politicians should bear the main responsibility: I dare to guarantee that they are the ones who receive the bulk of donations from insurance companies. The United States should learn from other Western countries to implement universal health insurance. I have experienced some of the darkness of American (extreme) capitalism, which takes profit as the only goal and relies too much on the market. I remember that Amazon laid off employees with cancer a few years ago, and the New York Times reported it at the time.
PS: The US medical system is huge and has its advanced aspects (new drugs, new equipment, new treatments), but it does have some drawbacks, which I have personally experienced recently.
Actually, I first saw this news on Xiaohongshu yesterday – I hope the Chinese people are not posting it out of gloating.
(Update 03-27-2024) Both the app and the website are back, fully functional as of now (this morning). Btw, I cleaned up a few CC in my account (from 6 to 3); also enabled 2 factor authentication for MyPanera account (via SMS, not perfect, but better than nothing). Honestly I still don’t know what happened to Panera’s system. One thing impressed me a bit is their mobile app works out of the box – it’s logged in this morning when I opened the app. I used to work on an app when I was working for the Mastercard, and that feature alone (make sure the user logged in if he/she was logged in before the app update) is a difficult task to do.
(Update 03-26-24) It looks like the website is coming back, but I cannot log in using my old credential either. Forgot password via email or #MyPanera number don’t work either 🙁 Thanks to the Twitter user who reported the website coming back. || A small benefit of this thing is it made me to look up the good old MyPanera number. Another side benefit is for me to rethink the practice of saving credit cards under my Panera account (going forward will probably only do Apple Pay). Also refer to our friend’s new article at SVDaily.
Yesterday morning (3/24), I went to the the new U City Panera Bread as usual, and noticed system is down nationwide: the mobile app and the kiosk didn’t work. But the register still works. Note the new U City is an all digital store and it’s almost full outage – the manager said they have a computer for employee order and I assume he can ring a bit regular customer sales as needed (maybe it’s the 3rd party app such as Uber Eats order instead?). WiFi is down too so I am using iPhone as hotspot. At this time it seems 3rd party apps (e.g., Uber Eats) still work.
I posted it on Twitter and also posted a survey yesterday evening.
PSA: Panera system is down nationwide now: the mobile app and the kiosk don’t work. But the register still works, I think. I am at the new u city all digital store and it’s full outage. || WiFi is down too so I am using iPhone as hotspot 😀 https://t.co/cIEwKLRNFT
This sadly could have more impact to Panera compared to say, companies such as Garmin. Some of my readers may know I am a loyal Panera bread customer, and I regularly went to the Old Olive store (sometimes walk) since year 2005; sometimes I work there using laptop (remote work). So it’s almost 20 years since I regularly go there. I also talked about them quite extensively on my blog.
(In Chinese) 原来Panera网站炸了. Note Panera is popular in Chinese American customers too.
In the News
This incident was not widely reported in the news, due to various reasons: it happened on a Saturday; and Panera is not McDonald’s or Starbucks.
Btw, it’s the 1st time Panera Bread website/app/kiosk underwent an incident like this. A few years ago, I do recall Panera Bread had a security related issue, and was remediated quickly. Below are some articles around the issue.
Panera Bread, here in the St. Louis area they are called St. Louis Bread co., or breadCo as some people call it, is early in its digital transformation effort. The in store kiosks and the online ordering (web and mobile app). Personally I liked the convenience of it, although I do miss the “first name basis” at the counter when I started going to Bread Co almost 20 years ago.
Sipper Club (loyalty program) (and in year 2011, I interviewed there once for a dev position related to that, no offer)
I like that too. I recall it was initially called “Coffee+” or something like that, and it was limited free coffee refill. Later it was expanded to soda and other drinks. Note there were controversy around that too. I mean the chargedlemonade. Initially I didn’t pay close attention to the caffeine content, until the news break. My wife was not happy that I gave our daughters that drink once or twice.
Pandemic (during pandemic in year 2020?, I interviewed there again for a software architect position, no offer)
I recall in the early days of pandemic, probably in May 2020, we cannot go in the store. The first time I ordered and picked up the food there, when I saw the young girl (masked) brought out the food, I was almost in tears.
Menu Revamp
They are in the process of big revamp of the menu items in the coming April. Then this happened. I still think it’s unlikely menu revamp will cause this. Menu revamp is nothing new at Panera and at other restaurants, Panera has done many times during my 20 years observations with them. I recall once they tried pizza: it didn’t work out very well (this was before the most recent pizza effort). Once they removed the famous Frontega Chicken sandwich, and some fans revolted, and they brought it back. I am a fan of Frontega, btw.
Key People
Ronald M. Shaich: he is the founder of Panera, and I believe he engineered Panera’s buying St. Louis Bread Co., rebranding, and digital transformation and so on. I saw him in person once at the SunsetHills Panera. It seems he is friendly with the rank and file Panera IT people (I saw a guy who interviewed me in year 2011, quite a few years after that).
I also liked Niren Chaudhary, although his tenure is not as long as Ron, once he replied me to my comment in LinkedIn. It was before Pandemic, I commented on the closing of the store in ForestPark way at Central West End, near BJC/Wash U medical school campus.
It looks we have some minor issues on the web page above: mainly on the right side “Frequently Asked Questions“. Two things I noticed, and below is 1st corrected one:
All students practice at least 16 drills annually. They consist of at least:
10 Fire Drills 2 Active Intruder Drills 2 Earthquake Drills 2 Tornado Drills
(this part is at the bottom, should be moved up)
Why should my child participate in active intruder drills?
Drills are a way for students and staff to practice and be prepared to act in a crisis. Active intruder drills are clearly identified as “Only a Drill,” and we have members of our staff who are trained to assist students with special needs. All students should be trained so that they are not only able to use these skills taught at the school, but also in any dangerous situation they may encounter outside of school.
Touchy topic, is alert system such as #Centegix#crisisAlert helpful or worth the money during intruder / active shooting situation? Has any college (in addition to K to 12) implemented it? #schoolSafety#majorsSurvey2023
My quick thoughts: knock on the woods, 我们学区/学校相对来说是安全的。当然，世界上没有绝对的安全。我来美国27年，00年到圣村，05年搬到Creve Coeur，后来就一直住在拉肚学区。经历过Columbine high school, sandy hook elementary (new town), 近年德州Uvalde 小学，圣村CVPA （central visual and performing arts high school, Stl city) 等。从一开始不理解为什么美国人需要枪到现在不理解为什么美国人需要冲锋枪(assault rifles, AR series). 当然还有September 11 – it’s another big topic.
(Update 09-18-2024) Now I remember when my old daughter was in the middle school, once they had some similar hoax on the TikTok, and one day a lot kids (or their parents decided) not to come to school, after seeing the thing on TikTok.
Agent brown is the name my girls gave to the AirTag I used to attached to the car key (it has a brown holder) and later my older daughter attached it to her brown wallet. We lost agent brown. Saturday, to be more precise, 8/19 evening, at about 6:42 pm I got a text message when I was driving my girls to the premium outlet. The text message is from Amex, and it said “fraud alert” and someone tries to use S8’s Gold Card at a place called “City Gear” for about $280 worth of merchandise. The store declined it and thus the text alert from Amex.
Basically an hour ago my 13 year old lost her purse at the JCreve Coeur girls locker room. She said there is no lock but I cannot verify. We didn’t know then, until the thief started to use the Amex card in her purse and thus triggered the alert from the credit card company.
We were already very close to the Premium Outlet. And I started to call Amex shortly after I get there. To make the card is marked as lost, and also found out two pending transactions at QT. Those 2 transactions will be disputed. After we talked more, it appears someone took S8’s wallet from the girls (kiddos) locker room. S8 said the locker is not lockable. And because she put one of my airtags in her wallet, and I can see at one point the wallet location was at the City Gear (Gravois plaza, or City Gear, 3519 Bamberger Ave, St. Louis, MO 63116). I can even see the location of this person’s home (which I won’t post, I enabled the lost mode and the last location seems to be at someone’s home, at 7:08 pm), as well as QT location (which can be seen from the Amex website from the pending transaction).
A while later after we got home, we found there is even a text message with a time of 7:25 PM saying “I found your wallet” on S8’s phone (she left a number on the wallet).
After some discussions, we decided not to reply back to that text.
This whole episode seems added some excitement to an otherwise uneventful Saturday evening.
I recall when I was in college, my wallet was picked by a thief when I was at a crowded bus (I realized quickly after I got off the bus), another time my drawer in the dorm got broken into and money was lost. In the US, I recall when I was a graduate student, once I lost a digital camera which I left in my office.
I guess this can turn into a good lesson in safety and security (privacy) for our older daughter as the material loss is fairly small.
Peace of Mind
A side note of all this is the Amex and Apple AirTags seem both gave us peace of mind, they provided more transparency than a traditional wallet loss (such as my loss when I was in college in Wuhan). At the same time, I don’t too much curiosity is a good thing. || (update 08-21-2023) it appears the two fraudulent transactions at QT got posted, I opened dispute in the Amex website.
PS– be vigilant: I recall when I was working for the credit card company, on the loyalty and rewards platform, I was tasked to investigate the “fraudulent redemptions for airline tickets and hotel reservations”. It appears the thief (or thieves) got hold of the victim’s personal email and password: the same email and password are used in the rewards redemption website which was operated by the credit card co. Let’s just say the email provider is Yahoo. So from the victim’s point of view, it’s really not a good security practice. At the time though, it was also the 1st time I encountered a sophisticated thief like that and I started to doubt the “evilness” of some criminals. My daughter is 13 and was more thinking about the “goodness” of the people, e.g., she would try to find an excuse why someone would steal her wallet (maybe someone needs the money for food). I don’t know, I would not say she was “woke”. But at the same time, I think we should all be vigilant.
PS 2: handle of loss. 旧的不去，新的不来 (Out with the old, in with the new)。I understand many people want things back, and my daughter is no exception. Recently I started to realized and reconfirm sometimes we just have too much junk (which I discussed below). As a parent I am certainly quite protective of my kids’ feeling got hurt etc. But again we live in a real world. And this sort of thing does happen.
Reading Time: < 1minuteFriends, in case you received an email selling you Viagra online, which appears sent from my Yahoo email. I apologize. Obviously I don’t sell those. Some hackers used my Yahoo email and did this. Please ignore that mail. More information (prevention tips) about this tactic can be seen at:
I realized this problem as my Gmail acct is also in my Yahoo address book. Also, one friend asked me “huh”? I think this is not really brand new tactic, and I believe most people already know it. This note is just in case.
