…like most of my second and third shift employees. Since my food cost is so fucking high, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time checking tickets. EVERY ticket that comes through the place. Normally I would just go through and make sure that none were missing, and maybe check about five from each waitress. Since there is so much waste going on, I needed to start going through them with a fine tooth comb. I was there until after midnight last night.

My third shift is pretty slow right now. VERY slow. There’s nothing here in town to keep people awake after 9PM or so, not even a grocery store or any other places, so it is pretty dead. About 10:30PM or so, my entire third shift decided to sit their happy asses down at the low counter and take a break. This is only about an hour and a half since the start of the shift, so it’s not like everyone was exhausted from the five customers they had waited on. We have assigned cleaning, and prep work, and plenty of shit to do. Any we don’t sit down in the customer area while on the clock. I guess they must have forgotten that I was there, or maybe they are as fucking stupid as I think they are.

I decided to clock their asses out until they got back up. Hell, about 11PM or so I got tired of waiting, leaned out from the back room and asked if they had finished their assigned cleaning. My cook says brilliantly “What?”. I explained that they don’t get paid while sitting at my low counter and they need to get their stuff taken care of. They were up and working at least until I left about and hour later. I’m sure that they sat their asses back down once that happened.

I went by this afternoon briefly to speak with my boss, and the ONE extra thing that I had assigned my cook did not get done. I can’t wait for the holidays to be over so that I can get rid of the rest of these ass clowns.

A few months ago I visited the CAIR website. Apparently if you sign up on their list they will send you a free copy of the Koran. Cool. I mean, you can’t really diss a religion if you don’t actually know anything about it. I know all about it’s millions of worshipers, but that doesn’t really tell me anything about Islam itself other than a bunch of stupid people worship, but that’s not a lot different than other religions, except that they are more violent, while the other major religions of the world have evolved and let the secular governments take care of violence for them.

Damn, this thing is big and heavy. It’s going to take me forever to read it. For the time being it is sitting in the shrink wrap on my floor, so I guess I am already starting out bad, at least according to the coversheet that they sent with it. Speaking of the coversheet, here’s what it says.

“This is a book that We have revealed to you (Prophet Muhammad) so that you may lead mankind out of the depths of darkness into the light.” (The Holy Quran, 14:1)

Greetings:

Thank you for requesting your copy of the Holy Quran, Islam’s revealed text. This is an important step toward understanding and coming to appreciate the universal teachings of Islam.

I hope you will take the earliest opportunity to read its verses and reflect on their meaning, thus doing your part to promote mutual understanding and tolerance of religious diversity in America.

That certainly starts out innocently enough. Of course I want religious diversity and freedom in America. Hell, I’m even OK if the Great Spaghetti Monster takes a stop in and wants to hang out.

As you may know, Muslims regard the Quran as the inerrant Word of God as revealed to the Prophet blah blah blah and so on lets get to the good part.

Muslims are taught from an early age to treat the Quran with great care and respect. For example, Muslims avoid placing the Quran on the floor, near the toilet and sink, near the feet, or in dirty or wet areas, as this is considered inappropriate treatment of a holy text.

Oops. Since it’s currently holding down the floor next to my computer desk, I guess I am already fucked. Well, it is still wrapped up, maybe I have an out there. I wonder if my mail carrier made sure not to set her mail bag on the floor today. She could already be subject to eternal damnation for that one.

Many Muslims hold the Quran by taking it in both hands as one would a valuable piece of art and keep themselves in a state of ritual purity, washing before opening the holy book.

Damn, I forgot to wash after I played with myself earlier. I haven’t even cracked the book and have already sinned. That’s pretty heavy stuff.

Just as Muslims are expected to treat the religious texts of others with the utmost respect and courtesy, so too do we hope that you will take the information above into consideration when handling the Holy Quran. (or we will come fuck your mothers and cut your dick off before we blow something up).

Damn. Most of my reading time for something like this is spent on the toilet, so the entire time I will be reading it, Muhammad will be looking down on me thinking what a bastard I am.

Technorati : Islam, Koran, Muslims, Quran

I have probably written dozens of “TGIF” posts since I started, maybe more. Well, TGIF!! At least it is for me. The holiday season really seems to take it out of me, and this year is no different. Most years having to work Christmas is a real big pain in the ass, but one I can deal with. In the past I have always had an extremely experience staff. At my last store I had something like 250 combined years of experience. I could leave the store at 3PM on Christmas day, and although I always came back that evening between 6 and 9PM, it was more of a morale thing, I just sort of hung out. This year will be different though. I will be lucky if I get to leave the store at all, and chances are I am going to end up working my ass off from the time that I get up until after midnight.

I think that maybe I will start going through old phone lists today and try to call some of the people that have worked for me in the past, that maybe aren’t working for us anymore, see if they need a holiday job or something.

The last week has really just sucked. I have a few people that just don’t “get it” and don’t understand how I get paid. My profits are sucking right now, so of course I am taking a lock of flak from above, but I’m not making any money either. After six weeks of harping on Food Cost you would think they would know how serious I am. Apparently not, so over the last few days I have fired three people, but three more down to one day a week, and even had two of my second shift associates escorted off the property by the police.

That was a real fun one. At heart I just want everyone to get along and do their job. I prefer to leave people alone to get their job done, and I will just pay them. It hurts every time that I have to fire someone, which is why I rarely did it at my old store.

I went outside to have a smoke Saturday afternoon about five minutes before drawer change and what comes out of the van of one of my employees? The 26 year old waitress who owns the van, my 16 year old cook, and a bunch of smoke. It was like a fucking Cheech and Chong movie. When they walked up, their eyes were red as hell and partially closed, and they reeked. They must think I am fucking stupid or something. I went back in, called a couple of replacements in, and then called the law. It took the Temple Police 55 minutes before they showed up, so I went ahead with shift change just like normal, and when the cop pulled up, took the two employees outside and told them “this guy wants to talk to you”. Damn, they were shocked as hell, and probably scared to boot. He was not particularly interested in busting someone for smoking pot, which is just fine by me. He wrote criminal trespassing warrants, made them sign, and had them leave the property.

About an hour later, the guys mother called and let me know that she had bought a drug test and he had passed, so she was going to contact the corporate office as well as the labor board. Whatever. Even if he wasn’t smoking, he was aware that the other employee was and that it is a violation of our company policy to be doing that on the property, so it doesn’t matter. The labor board doesn’t bother me, as Georgia is a hire/fire at will state, and unless things have changed, you can’t collect unemployment unless you have worked for six months.

The other will be a pain in the ass. It certainly won’t be the first time that I have been investigated by our legal or HR department, and I doubt like hell it be will the last. When you do things the right way and try to take care of your employees, someone is always taking offense to the way things are done. About the only thing that I have never been investigated for is Sexual Harassment, and I don’t give anyone a chance to accuse me of that one. Anything else is fair game, because people will make things up to fit what they thought was done to them. Luckily they were both white, so no one can accuse me of racial discrimination, like the guy I fire LAST week.

I don’t guess I talked too much about that one. This guy worked his ass off. He really did. He cleaned all night, and didn’t stop working until he got off the clock. In general anyone would love to have him, except for the fact that he was trying to feed his family for free, eating items that we are supposed to pay for, and making the waitresses cook all night so that he could clean. He refused to follow our system of cooking and at least one time told a customer he couldn’t cook their food because he was busy. I have another guy that he is friends with that works for me, except that this one is lazy as hell, so doesn’t even have the redeeming qualities of the one I fired. Since this other guy seems pretty honest, but just can’t get it yet, I haven’t fired him yet. That and the fact that he and his buddy that I did fire have accused me of being a racist. I just cut him to four hours a week and am waiting for him to quit instead.

Damn, this is going to be a long couple of months. If I can make it through the whole thing without calling someone something I will regret I will be doing pretty fucking good. I think it’s time for me to retire, if I only could.

…at least anytime soon. Maybe it’s just me but this seems to happen more and more the last couple of years, or perhaps it’s just that it is getting reported a bit more.

Technorati : E. Coli, Food Poisoning, Taco Bell

…now that everyone is learning their job. Five fucking weeks later. It has taken a while for some of them, and there are a few that just don’t seem to want to get it. I had to let a cook go Monday who just refuses to do things our way. He works his ass off, and cleans everything, but that’s only half the job. I really hated to do it, but I replaced him with someone else.

Now that it is getting close to Christmas, I have had several ex-employees that have worked for me at one time or another over the last 20 years start to come out of the woodwork, now that they have discovered that they are going to have a hard time paying for Christmas sitting on their collective asses and getting welfare.

It really is getting a bit easier, I have managed to get out of the store by 3pm almost every day this week, and if I did not have a manager trainee, I probably would have been done by 2pm. Hopefully I can get finished really early tomorrow, as there is a Christmas parade here in town that I would like to attend.

I am having some issues with waitresses not wanting to learn their prices, but I may save that bitch for another time, as I have spent the last two weeks seriously pissed off and if I start writing about it my head may start spinning around and pop off.