Phillip Brown
The job: Civil engineer.
The employer: The Kansas City Board of Public Utilities in Kansas City, Kan., is a public utility supplying water and electricity to customers in Wyandotte and Johnson counties.

In this column last week, hirers told what bugs them most about job applicants.

Yep. I got feedback. Job hunters asked for fair time to say what they don’t like about the way prospective employers are treating them.

Two points stood out:

 Job hunters think it’s callous and unrealistic for applicant screeners to say they don’t like it when a job hunter applies for more than one job at the organization.

As long as we are doing it this year, why not do it always?

“This year, it all comes down to value and getting the best bang for your shopping dollar,” said Tod (cq) Marks, senior editor of Consumer Reports.

He was referring to a survey by the magazine showing nearly two-thirds of
Americans plan to cut back on holiday spending. That’s on top of the last year’s cutbacks, when more than three-fourths of Americans polled by Consumer Reports said they planned to spend less.

To all of the numbers churned out in the debate over the nation’s health care system, add one more glaring statistic: 4 million.

That’s the number of college students estimated by a recent study to be uninsured.

Many are part-time students. Others are on financial aid and can’t afford health coverage. A large number of the uninsured attend two-year colleges and are too old to be on their parents’ plan, according to the study by Lookout Mountain Group, a college health advocacy organization.

Our weekly look at all things automotive. Today's review by G.Chambers Williams III of the San Antonio Express-News.

Super makeover?Last year, Ford’s best-selling F-150 light-duty pickup came to market with a complete redesign, bringing lots of new features and innovations.

From Bloomberg News
Trustees of the $6.8 billion pension fund for Missouri public employees, which lost almost $2 billion in 2008, voted to consider lawsuits seeking damages if they suffer future investment losses.

The Missouri State Retirement System trustees, Mosers, voted Thursday to solicit reports from law firms about prospects for legal action.

Public pensions across the country are suing companies and investment banks for their investments’ performance in 2008, a year in which the S&P 500 index lost 37 percent. Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray on Friday sued the rating companies Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Corp. and Fitch Group Inc. over “misleading evaluations” of mortgage- backed securities.

Upticks, downticksThe following stocks were among those that moved substantially or traded heavily Friday on the Big Board and the Naz. Data from the Associated Press:

Wait until Monday to fill up?Gasoline prices in the Kansas City area are essentially unchanged heading into the weekend compared with a week ago.

Shars in most regional stocks fell Friday along with the rest of the market. The exceptions were bank stocks, including Commerce Bancshares and UMB Financial Corp.

Commerce gained 26 cents to $40.68, while UMB closed at $39.48, up 7 cents.

YRC Worldwide also finished in positive territory, at $1.25, up 12 cents.

Garmin down 64 cents, and Waddell & Reed, down 48 cents, led the losers' list for the day.

Barnes & Noble Inc. said Nook, its device for reading digital versions of books, sold out its initial production run and won’t ship new purchases until the week of Jan. 4.

The retailer said last month when it introduced the $259 device that it would ship purchases by Nov. 30. The Nook is Barnes & Noble’s entry into the market dominated by Amazon.com Inc. and Sony Corp.

“While we increased production based on the high consumer interest, we’ve sold out of our initial nook allotment available for delivery before the holidays,” said Mary Ellen Keating, a Barnes & Noble spokeswoman.