August 2006

I was up at 4am. I need to be in by 5:30 or so, have a bunch of stuff to do today, and don’t want to be there until 6pm, since I have to be back at 9 tonight. Perhaps there will even be time for a nap this afternoon if Stephanie lets me. Damn I had a hard time rolling out of bed this morning. The only saving grace is the fact that I am off the next two days.

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Tomorrow is my dad’s 60th birthday. I know because he and my mom are both 20 years older than I am, which sucks because that means I won’t be a teenager anymore at the end of the year when mine rolls around 🙂

I guess it is a southern thing, but my parents will always be mama and daddy. Kind of funny I guess.

My family and I have a very weird relationship. We are not very close at all, though I would like to be. My father and I had a love/hate relationship growing up. While not very strict, he was very authoritarian, and I was very much a rebel. I got into a lot of trouble, and he yelled a lot, and I just could never talk or share my feelings with him or my mom. I had to sit through years of family counseling with them, from the time I was very young until I hit about sixteen, which is the first time I moved out of the house.

I am friends with both of my parents and I love them very much. That is about all I can really say about our relationship. Sometimes we will go months without speaking to each other, and then just get together. Neither of them were ever “children” people, and probably never should have had kids. My dad is much more kid oriented than my mom though. He will get down and play with my kids and they all love him, particularly the girls. Chris did not get to see them very much until the last year or two because they lived in Arlington, VA for several years, up until last year. It was nice to have them move back to Georgia.

I guess I did manage to pick some stuff up from my parents, some of it I am not particularly proud of. Their money management skills suck shit, and I have worked very hard to keep from being like that, and still have to work hard at it every day. While not poor growing up, we certainly were not well off, and sometimes did not have money for school clothes, things to do, or sometimes even Christmas presents. I always hated that as a kid. Being the one with no money, and Goodwill clothing tends to get your ass picked on. Nowadays, I prefer to shop for my work clothes at consignment stores whether I can afford expensive clothing or not. Hell, it’s just more economical. He and my mom are not going to have very much for retirement unfortunately. He is a smart dude, but has always put the majority of his retirement into the company retirement plan where he happened to be working. He started out with Western Electric, and took the voluntary layoff when the Bells split up. He would have a small pension with them, except for the fact that Western Electric has evolved into Lucent, which is basically crap now. He probably will never see any money from that. I know that he tried a couple of different jobs after that, selling life insurance, but that did not work out real well. I know he did that for at least a few years, don’t really remember how long though. I was pretty fucked up at that time, literally, on just about anything that I could get. My nickname was “the drug” because if it was something new, or we hadn’t tried it yet, I was the guinea pig. About 25 years ago, he went back to work in electronics and computer, for MCI. We all know what happened to MCI. If not, they were bought out by Worldcom, who then turned around and fucked everyone that worked for them, including my dad and his 20 years of investing in MCI and Worldcom stock. oops, bad move there. I don’t have a lot of investments, but I put aside a little every month into mutual funs, and Stephanie has her teacher retirement as well as some annuities that I want to get moved elsewhere. She will get around half of her highest monthly salary as pension when she retires, not including what is in annuities or my mutual funds. Hopefully we can get back in a position soon where I can start putting money into my own stock soon. Historically my companies stock has earned 15-20% over the last 25 years, and never lost money. Ever. I currently have about 18k in options, but it will be a few years before I can exercise those.

When my mom and dad moved back here, he went to work for HP, handling a boatload of servers and heading up tech support. HP was handling the tech support for Verizon, who oh by the way, just recently fired HP. Luckily my dad was hired by Verizon. I hate the fact that he is probably going to have to work until he can’t anymore. Hell, they may end up living with us in a few years.

I guess there is still a bunch of shit bottled up inside that I have never talked about, but now it doesn’t seem so pressing as it used to. Time heals all, or some shit like that.

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Yeah, I threw my boss under the bus today, figuratively. Some of the problems that I have been having are that she is supposed to be in my restaurant, productive on my two days off. Her boss was in today about 1pm raising hell again about payroll, so I sat his ass down and went over my schedules from last week, and showed him where I worked seven shifts, and the manager trainee that was here had worked five. 84 hours. She worked about four. I like my boss, and really don’t want to get her in trouble, but I think that I am finished getting shit upon.

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I am so fucking angry tonight I want to beat the crap out of someone. Looks like I am going to have a fight on my hands in order to get the new store. My Senior Vice President does not want them to put me in the store. Never mind that it is 15 minutes closer, in the town that I live in. Never mind that my youngest daughter’s daycare is 100 yards away, or that my other daughter’s elementary school is within a mile, along with my house. Never mind the fact that they don’t particularly give a flying fuck about their managers lifestyle. What a crock of shit.

Why doesn’t he want me there? Well, we currently have 9 stores in the area, in about a 30 mile circle, with the top end being I-20. Three stores 7-10 miles west of Temple, three stores 10-15 miles east, and three stores 12 miles south. I sit dead center between six of them on I-20, with the other three in Carrollton. He is afraid that if they put me in the store instead of a new inexperience manager that will fuck everything up within two months, that I will take too huge of a chunk of sales from the other 9 stores. What a load of shit. The bad part is that he is right though.

Why? Because I at least try to do everything the right way. The way that they taught me to. I take care of my customers and care about them. I hold myself to high standards, keep my stores clean, and cook everything the way that they want me to cook it. And I keep my store staffed with at least semi-happy folks. That’s one of the reasons I have a hard time hitting my payroll targets. I suppose I am an anomaly. Our pay system is based on retention. The longer the hourly employee stays, the more they get paid. I have the highest retention in my area, therefore I have the highest paid people. Out of the 26 or so people that I employ, we have about 112 years of experience with my company, not counting my 20 years. I also have the highest pay-rate averages out of 27 stores. I guess I am supposed to treat everyone like shit and have a high turnover, not staff my shop, and not come in when the call me. I could do like the manager across town from me and just not order enough food and tell the waitresses to sell something else when they call me at home. Or cheat the customers by giving them less portions.

Fuck them. If I wanted to steal their fucking sales I could do it from where I am, I already have the highest sales in my division. Everyone in Carroll County that is a regular with our restaurant knows me, I have worked in this area since ’89. Damn, just ranting now. I am going to have to work on a couple of friends at the corporate office, maybe that will help out. I am so pissed because it really just hurts my fucking feelings. The girl up the street from me that I trained last year was talking about quitting recently (for the fourth or fifth time) so they let her fucking ass have a 12 day vacation. I’ve seen that with several people. Hell, if they have a fucking cold, they call in sick, and nothing is ever said, because they are black, or women, and they are afraid to hurt their feelings. I do my fucking job, I’ve missed two days in three fucking years (four if you count Acidman’s funeral), I am always there. I am the only one out of nine managers that shows up for work on time. We are require to be in our restaurants by 6:30am. I normally get there between 6-6:30. Most of the rest of them show anywhere from 10 till 7, up to 7:30. They still have their fucking jobs, and it will never change.

Damn, I really like what I do, but sometimes they piss me off and stress me out so bad that I just want to tell them to go fuck themselves. Not that I would leave. I will retire doing this. The last time I quit I ended up working out of our corporate office for three years, and that was pretty cool, but it wouldn’t happen again. I will end up staying no matter what they say. I feel like they are trying to force me to take the promotion that I don’t want in the first place. Stephanie’s Masters raise will be enough to make up the difference, along with cost of living raises, so I would be perfectly happy doing what I do now, only closer to home.

Goddamn fucking assholes.

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