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Rather than tell my manager that has time-management issues what to do this morning and then listen to why it didn’t get done I forced the issue. Since I have another manager off today I showed up at his store at 6am, changed the drawer, pulled whatever food I thought he would need today, locked him out of the office and store room and took the keys with me. That forced him to stay out in the front of the restaurant rather than doing stuff in the back. I did give him a short list of things to do before I returned, of which NOTHING was done but I think he did get the message.

I am still trying to find some way to motivate him. He likes to be the victim, so money apparently doesn’t do it. I know he likes gadgets. Maybe I should offer him my iPaq if he runs the numbers that I need him to. At this point I don’t give a fuck. He and I are going to make money out of his store even if I have to force him to.

Damn, I’m tuckered out. Worked about 12 hours today, came home, ate dinner, then cut about half the lawn. We are trying to get the house cleaned up a bit for the party and with it being so dry I haven’t cut the grass in a month or so. It needed it, or at least the weeds did anyway.

One thing about this new job is that I am on the damn phone constantly. A couple of months ago we went a little bit over our minutes so I bumped them up to 2100. That seems like a lot, but there are three of us on the family plan, and mine doubles as the home phone. I figured that with paying out so much in cell costs it was a waste of money to have a land-line. This past month I apparently went almost a thousand minutes over that 2100. Hell, I used all 2100 myself. I carry my charger with me in my car I am on it so much now.

When I get home I average about 15-20 calls a night, even from the stores where the managers are on duty. What the fuck is up with that? My question most of the time is “what did so-and-so say when you asked them?” That usually ends the conversation then and there, but some of them are pretty persistent, particularly considering that one of them is a fuck up and doesn’t answer his own phone most of the time when they call, especially if it’s after 9PM.

I keep telling myself it will get easier, and I know it is just a matter of time, but I am growing very impatient.

Damn, yesterday was just too short. That working seven days with one day off stuff sucks. Luckily I just have to work today thru Friday and I am off this weekend for the Boy’s going away party. Don’t forget if you are coming, shoot me an email at rmiles AT charter DOT net or just leave a comment (although the way the site has been lately you are better off emailing). Anyone that wants to bring anything just bring your favorite side dish and a drink.

We will get started around 4PM or so until whenever. Good folks, good music (debatable) and good food. Good god, this sounds like an advertisement. Now I suppose I’m gonna have to pay myself or some such garbage.

Another one that I took at the ren fest…

It was actually a decent back pic, but could have used some color. That should be nice in about forty years…

not…

I spent the day in my most experienced manager’s store today and will be there tomorrow. The big problem that I have there is that I have been hung just about every shift that I have been in that store for the last six weeks. I trained the guy two years ago, but unfortunately a lot of the bad habits from his previous boss have rubbed off on him and he seems scared to get rid of the pieces of crap that are currently working for him. Unfortunately part of our money is paid from retention of associates and even though quite a few of these people are hurting his sales and profits, he would rather keep his little $120 bonus and be staffed.

Fuck that shit. Two of his five waitresses didn’t bother to show up or call this morning although he apparently knew at least one of them wouldn’t be there and did nothing to fix it. I have replaced their asses tomorrow and hired two more for his store. I dislike taking control of the schedules, if someone did it to me as a manager I would be extremely pissed off, but I am so over this crap at his store. I spend 80% of my time there trying to get covered when I should be cleaning or training people.

One of his evening shift waitresses called in and then about an hour ago his night shift cook called in. I’ve replaced his ass for the rest of the week (three more days). I hope he enjoys his vacation.

It was a bit of a longer day than I expected. I am just now starting to relax. I don’t normally drink on a work night but I arrived home wanting a drink today for some reason. I have that bottle of Maker’s Mark, but I wasn’t in the mood for bourbon or whiskey today. What I need is a Tequila Sunrise, or something close since all I have here is Sunny D. Working on my second one and developing a nice little buzz already. It’s a good thing that all of my managers are on deck today. Don’t have to be back in until tomorrow.

I have seriously hosed my system. I upgraded it but because of my default templates and most of the garbage that’s been her for a few years it’s pretty messy. I have it where it will reindex the main page now and at least a couple of the entries are up, I don’t know if the comments are working or not. They may work from the individual pages or may not. I will check it out. It may be a few days before I get things right here again because of work hours, be patient

It's kind of interesting that I found this today. I don't particularly know why I am paranoid about it, but
when I go back to the doctor on Tuesday to discuss the results of my cholesterol test I have to schedule a PSA.
That's something I've never had done. The PSA is the Prostate-Specific Antigen test. My insurance company
gives us a break if I get one every year, and from what I understand the FDA approved the use of the PSA test to help
detect prostate cancer in men over 50. No, I'm not 50 yet but it's an insurance thing. Apparently they also
use the PSA test to monitor patients with a history of prostate cancer to see if it has come back.

I did a bit of reading on prostate cancer earlier this evening in between dueling phone calls from one of my stores
and a waitress that walked out and it is pretty nasty (the cancer, the phone calls are an entirely different story.

Apparently it's normal to have low levels of PSA in your blood, but cancer and some benign conditions can
increase PSA levels, thus the test. I also did some reading on treatments as well. One prostate cancer treatment in particular that I found kind of interesting is
called HIFU. Apparently they are currently in phase three of clinical trials for HIFU treatment right now. HIFU is
High Intensity Focused Ultrasound. It uses ultrasound to destroy deep-seated tissue with extremely good accuracy
without any kind of invasive surgery. That's way too cool. I don't even pretend to understand the technical
details, I just leave that part to my wife and try not to nod off during the explanation.

Holy cow. I haven’t read anything about this story before now, but her parents must be weeping with relief. Apparently the police located the hidden room when they showed up for a DNA swab of the alleged suspects that held her prisoner.

The Police believe that the girl they found is Danielle Cramer, 15, who has been missing since June of 2006.

The arrested parties were apparently business associates of Cramer’s family.

I hired a girl for one of my stores the other day and interviewed another one and left her app for the manager to look over. I sent the first girl to one particular store where I have my newest manager. It’s also the busiest store so it’s in my best interest to make sure it gets staffed first with quality people. The other manager I guess decided to claim that girl and told the other manager to call the one whose app I had left.

It ends up being that the first girl is all over BOTH schedules now and the other one isn’t working yet. My new manager is off today and of course I am hung because this girl is on the schedule for evening shift, but she worked graveyard at the other store last night and is working it again tonight.

I won’t normally call my managers on their off days as they are definitely sacred and I can handle any problems that arise, but I did call her today and let her know that she and the other manager were going to have to get this worked out as I was not going to get stuck waiting damn tables on their days off.