January 2008

I’ve been thinking today about the vacation. Now that I have bought the plane tickets I am seriously looking forward to the trip to Nassau. It was a fairly stressful day so vacation even looks that much better. One of the bonuses that the store managers get is basically ‘gimme’ money. They have to get each days sales into the bank by 2PM two days later. Very simple and easy. They get a $200 a month bonus just for making it to the bank on time. Occasionally it can be difficult because on Wednesdays they get produce in and on holidays they have to buy a bunch of change because the banks are closed. Since there are occasional glitches like that the company gives them four mulligans. The have to make 24 out of 28 deposits on time in order to get the bonus. AND they get an extra day. Saturdays sales don’t have to be in the bank until TUESDAY because Sunday is pay day. In 21 years I have never missed a banking bonus as a store manager or a district. See, I get a banking bonus as well. All of my managers have to get theirs. If one misses, I lose my bonus, which is $250.

Out of the last 21 days the guy that transferred in from another store has had 11 late bank deposits. In three short weeks he’s lost me my employee retention bonus for the next two months and my banking bonus for this month. That’s about $1200 all total that I won’t be seeing over the next month or so. I am not particularly happy with him right now as a result.

He’s a pretty nice guy but he has a hard time staying focused so I am going to have to stay on him over the next few weeks to get him in the habit of doing the things he needs to do. I think I can get him trained but he may not like it in the meantime.

Thanks to Becky over at Tall Cool Drink of Water I get the info I already knew…

You Are 100% Burned Out

You are extremely burned out. You work too hard, and you’re not getting the results you deserve. It’s time for a life change, as soon as you can manage it. You’re giving away most of your energy to something you don’t even enjoy.

Are You Burned Out?

doh…

There is kind of an old wives’ tale that says whatever you are doing at midnight on New Years Eve is what you will be doing for the rest of the year. If so then my year is going to suck because I was working all night. Damn.

I have always been proud of my associates as a store manager. I generally tried to make sure that my evening and overnight shifts were, if not as good as the day shift, then as close to it as possible. One of the biggest failings of my company is the lack of supervision on the evening and night shifts or any kind of follow-up after they have been told to do something. As a store manager I could directly affect their hours and paychecks and thus was able to get people to do what I wanted. Not only that but since I was there six days a week I could generally show them why doing a certain thing a certain way was to their benefit.

The biggest problem’s with me NOT being a manager is that either the manager’s under me feel like they have no control over their shifts. That may be because they are afraid to work the shift or that they just don’t give a shit. I don’t know. Either way all three of my second and third shifts pretty much suck balls. Some of the folks are better than others but for the most part they suck. It’s entirely a training issue.

New Year’s always hits funny in the restaurant business. On the third shift it comes in extremely late and drags over to around 7 am and the morning shift is dead until just before noon. When it does get busy you get hammered. Last night it hit about 2:30 and it hit hard. It didn’t take long before it got ugly and then I started getting ugly. I had to kind of take a step back and shut my mouth several times but I know the words “you can’t serve that nasty looking shit” must have come out of my mouth seven or eight times. The cook didn’t walk out though, so he will be OK I guess. At least two of the three waitresses don’t want to work with me again though. I don’t have a problem with people that actually do their job but I can be a bit of an asshole to folks that refuse to do things the right way.

I hate working graveyards shifts, so that didn’t help much. It always screws me up for several days with my sleep patterns. I got home around 9 or 9:30 this morning, went to bed by 10:15 and was up by 2PM. Hopefully I will be able to get to sleep tonight. I may fall back on the Benadryl just to make sure.

So, first I’ll introduce myself.  Richie asked me to stop by here every once in a while and post a guest blog.  I’m his brother, so I’ve probably known him longer than most of you. Currently live in North Carolina with my wife and our two monsters. You can check out my website and blog here: http://www.sheehanmiles.com, and my family website here: http://www.sheehanmiles.net

Today I’m writing about New Years resolutions, and my decision to give away my book for free.

I’ve never been one for New Years resolutions.  Quit smoking? Yeah, right.  However, a New Years action I can deal with.  Here’s the plan: starting today, I’m going to be giving away the ebook version of my novel Republic for free.

No
more sample chapters, partial books that end in the middle, none of
that. No DRM, encryption, or other hassles to give you a headache. You can download and read the complete book. Share it with your
friends, email it, do anything you want with it except sell it. Hope
you enjoy the book and tell others.

Ebook Links:

Adobe Acrobat PDF

Mobipocket / Amazon Kindle

HTML (Read online)

RTF (Rich Text Format / MS Word)

Okay,
so maybe you are wondering why? After all, I’m hoping that within the
next few years, I’ll be making enough money from book sales that I’ll
be able to write full time.  Isn’t giving the book away somewhat
counterproductive to that goal?

I don’t think so. Here’s why: the
biggest challenge most authors face isn’t online piracy. It’s not
people out there diabolically copying their works and distributing them
for free. In fact most authors (including yours truly) suffer from a
different problem entirely — no one has ever heard of them. After all,
literally hundreds of thousands of new titles come out every year, and
only a few hundred writers in the entire United States (if that many)
actually live off their books full time. So, by giving away the book, I hope more people actually read it.

Want
to share it with a friend? Feel free. Email it to them, send them the
link, whatever. If you find that you enjoy the book, I’m hoping you’ll
order a copy, but that isn’t required.  You could also post a review
somewhere.  Post a link in your blog.  Ask your library to order a
copy, so more people can get it for free. Whatever.  If you do post a
link somewhere, let me know about it.  I’d love to see lots of people reading the book, the more the merrier.

Will
giving it away cut sales and make me a poorer person? I don’t think so.
There’s plenty of evidence out there that giving away the book will
actually boost sales.  If you don’t believe me, check out Eric Flink’s
column in Jim Baen’s Universe, which actually runs the numbers and
takes down some of the myths associated with Digital Rights Management,
publishing, encryption, and copyright fanaticism. 

http://www.ericflint.net/index.php/2007/04/27/eric-flint-on-drm-and-copyright/#more-316