Dan Fogelberg has passed away at the tender age of 56. He has apparently been battling Prostate Cancer since 2004 and died peacefully at his home in Maine with his wife Jean by his side. He’s not one of the huge names in rock but his music is instantly recognizable such as Leader of the Band…
It’s been kind of a slow weekend here at the house but too darned busy at work. We are all gearing up for Christmas at work, which means lots of extra preparation to get ready for next week. I get asked all the time why we stay open for Christmas. This is normally by people who assume that nobody goes out to eat on Christmas day. That’s about as far from the truth as you can get. Christmas is by far the busiest day of the year for us out of the entire year. Some stores aren’t that much busier than a normal weekend but in the case of my three my business literally doubles. My slowest store will do about ten times the normal business, which is insane. On a normal Tuesday that store grosses about $500. Christmas Day last year it did $5000. We don’t really make that much more money because we spend so much more money on payroll. Not only that but since it’s busier, the margin of error for pricing mistakes and register errors goes up as well.
The managers are supposed to be starting their thaw and extra prep work today and I have to make sure to go around over the next week and verify it’s getting done as well as get a couple more people working in some of the empty slots that aren’t filled. Everyone works on Christmas Day with no exceptions, and even with that I have several empty slots in two of my stores simply because I can’t just hire and train five or six more people just to let them go on January 2nd, which starts the slowest time of the year for me and the couple of months where I will be really cutting back on expenses.
It looks like we will be doing our Christmas on the 24th after all this year. As a store manager I would typically get two days off the week prior and Santa would visit the kids then but this year Carroll County is starting their Christmas break four days prior to Christmas and I just won’t have any time off. Not only that but my brother won’t be in town until around the 23rd. I think that most of the family is going to be here for it, which will be nice.
Once the holidays are over I need to get back down in the basement again and get some cleaning done. It is getting full and unorganized again and the perfect time to do some straightening up will be when we go to store the Christmas lights. I at least wouldn’t mind organizing the back room. All of the Marine’s stuff is stored in there as well as old furniture and decorations. I would kind of like to move some of my computer equipment out of the garage and into the back room, such as my wireless router and cable modem as well as my home automation equipment.
I am going to try and get out of the stores by four this afternoon. While I was just off on Thursday I spent seven hours in meetings and am tired. I want to spend some time at home with the girls, even if it’s just watching them play and fooling around on the computer. It all depends on my staffing. I guess it’s just that time of the year but I have had about eight people call out in my district over the last two days. Part of that is because the manager’s put up with it.
It’s time to start getting ready for work now, I will hopefully be back later this afternoon.
For awhile there it looked as if I was going to have to work the graveyard shift last night and I was, needless to say, not very happy about it. I had one of my managers off yesterday so I was running his store and at the end of the shift yesterday morning the cook let me know that she had given him her two weeks notice, that she was moving and needed to transfer but that she would work through the holidays. For the most part I believe her as she knows that I can keep her from working for us at all if she doesn’t work through the end of the month. I already called the Division manager where she wants to go and we made this very clear. Then she asks for an advance on her paycheck because she is having to move.
I have this cool deal with the local bank. They don’t lend cook fucking waffles and I don’t lend money. It’s a sweet deal and keeps me out of trouble. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve given out five or ten bucks in gas money and there are a couple of long-term employees that I have even made personal loans to but those have always come out of my pocket. The last thing I am going to do is lend my company’s money to some crack-addled bitch that is getting thrown out of her house. I would end up being out the money and endanger my job. It’s just not my money to lend. Of course I didn’t go into all of that, I just told her no. Then I started looking for a cook because at 7 am yesterday morning I knew she was going to hang me.
Nobody had an extra cook but one of the waitresses is married to a guy that works at one of my other stores and he agree about 3 PM to do it for me. Along comes 8 PM last night and someone else calls in for her, I call the dude and he’s too drunk to work. Asshole.
I eventually found someone form a neighboring town and just had to come off with some gas money. Heck, the guy won’t even be any overtime. I think I made it home by ten last night so it could have been much worse than it was.
Christmas week is about to start for me and I am certainly not looking forward to it. I was going to have the additional help of a couple of manager trainees but since another manager quit from the store I opened last fall they are going to end up taking one of my trainees. So much for that.
Some days I just wake up and wonder if the promotion was worth it. I certainly think so on payday but it’s damn harder than I thought it was going to be. I am under much more scrutiny than I ever was as a store manager. As a manager they pretty much left me alone since I have done it so long. The only thing I really had to bitch about then was the crack-heads…
Like I said in the last post, I am a bit behind this week. I arrived home from meetings around 9:15 last night and while I posted some news and pictures I darn sure didn’t feel like thinking…
1…. Uh…My Dog ate my homework?
2…. No, No…My dog ate my keyboard!
3…. My dick fell off?
4…. My wife grounded me…
5…. For a month!
6…. I was busy winning the Megamillions
7…. The I lost it!
8…. I ran out of gas
9…. I had to walk up hill to get to my computer…
10…. Both ways!
11…. I overslept
12…. Ran out of coffee? (we all know sleep is just a cheap caffeine substitute)
13…. I’m a slacker…
Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants
This Week’s Hero Was Suggested By Louie
These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived
This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your blog, you can go here.
I have finally redone the templates (mostly) for my tech site at TheAppDotNet, including the mascot I won in a blog contest a couple of months ago. I still have to add back in my blogrolls and whatnot but it’s coming along very nicely.
I ended up spending the last seven hours of my only day off this week in a meeting in Anniston Alabama, which really sucked. It’s about the last thing I want to do on my day off but I didn’t feel like scheduling any of my managers off and then making them go to the meeting.
I may put up another post or two but I think I will be hitting the sack pretty soon. I am actually supposed to be doing a couple of reviews for ReviewMe but most likely am going to go past the deadline and just lose them. I hate losing money like that but have just not had the time the last couple of days and the deadline just sort of crept up on me.
The right reverend Al Sharpton today denounced reports of an investigation into his 2004 presidential bid and suggested that federal authorities were retaliating against him for his civil rights advocacy.
Civil rights advocacy?
Al Sharpton is the biggest fucking racist in this country aside from his ‘brother’ Jesse Jackson. They are both a pair of race-baiting haters that wait until they have been out of the news for a couple of months and then jump in with something else calling everyone else racists and bigots. Like now.
According to CNN as many as ten Sharpton associates were subpoenaed on Wednesday to testify before a federal grand jury in Brooklyn on December 26th. Hey, isn’t that when Kwanzaa starts? I don’t guess they will be making it to the grand jury or will find some way to get out of it between now and then. All of my personal pissiness aside, the grand jury probably could have picked a better date for that shit, like after January 1st. If they were to summon my ass on December 24th I would be pretty pissed off.
A couple accused of beating their toddler to death, tucking her into a plastic box and dumping it into Galveston Bay were indicted Wednesday on charges of capital murder.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://i0.wp.com/img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png)
I love coffee. Ever since I was about ten I have been drinking coffee and I don’t go very long without drinking it. Heck, I even have it at night. I can usually drink it up until about eight PM or so without having any problems falling asleep. I don’t know that I would consider myself a coffee connoisseur but I certainly love the stuff, hence my motto ‘sleep is just a cheap caffeine substitute’.
I drink everything from canned Folgers as well as Waffle House and Starbucks coffee. Right now my favorite by far is Starbucks but that is because of consistency. Most of the gourmet flavors that I have picked up from the grocery store have a greasy oily taste that I just don’t like. There are some places around to get great coffee though and I found one that I am going to have to try. Apres Cafe has quality exotic gourmet coffee on their web site that is available to order 24 hours a day. You can even call them on an 800 number listed on the web site as well. Along with coffees, they also offer tea and chocolates, a must at this time of year. Who doesn’t like nice dark chocolate. Very soothing.
I am particularly partial to very dark roasts and am pretty interested in trying their Sumatra Mandheling as well as the Midnight Special, one of their darkest roasts. I would also like to try their Kenya AA Lenana. The brew has a deep complex aroma of smoke, grapefruit, berry, hints of butterscotch and dark chocolate.
Apres also offers recurring deliveries, subscriptions in other words, so that you never have to run out of your favorite brand of coffee. At the rate that I drink the stuff, if it’s any good this will end up being a necessity for me. With recurring deliveries they also give 15% off on shipping via UPS ground, you get free samples of their coffees as well as other special offers on coffees and teas.
I’ll let you know how I fare toward the end of the month and compare it to my favorites that I am able to buy locally.
Sponsored by Apres Cafe
I had a pretty long day yesterday so I just now approved some of the track-backs and comments that were caught in my spam folder yesterday morning. They should be showing up properly fairly soon.
We had our annual ‘Santa’s Sleigh’ yesterday for the children of our employees. It’s always been a pretty cool thing which we do but it has evolved over the last couple of years to become a party and even the adults show up now.
What we do is to get a list of all them employees children and their ages. What we used to do is rent an RV and then the division managers and area vice president would make three stops and the kids got their picture taken with Santa and got a gift. Nothing major. With a ton of kids we usually hit Big Lots or something like that because normally it’s a couple of hundred gifts we have to get and we do have a budget we have to keep.
Over the last couple of years it has been turned over to the Division Manager. This year we blocked off the back of one of our parking lots and had a local company come out with the air walk things, popcorn, snow cones, we grilled hot dogs and had other refreshments and snacks. We got a hold of the company RV with our logo and actually hired a Santa instead of one of us trying to pass ourselves off. It was pretty cool and lasted about three hours.
The girls always enjoy it, as did the Marine when he was young. We have many pictures from Santa’s sleigh with all three kids. I suppose I need to scan them at some point.
Although I am off today we have a mandatory holiday meeting I have to attend, which is one of the reasons I am off. I changed my manager’s schedules so that they were all working as I didn’t want to give them any excuse to not be there on time this afternoon. I won’t hear anything new but have to attend anyway. It sucks because I only have one more day off between now and Christmas and that is next Friday. The Marine will arrive home next week as well. I have to pick him up from the Greyhound station next Friday morning.
Next week we have our company Christmas party in Anniston, Alabama for all of the managers and their spouses or girlfriends/boyfriends. It is usually pretty nice. There has only been one that turned out bogus and that was in 2003. My AVP rented a meeting room and had it catered. It ended up more like a meeting than a holiday get-together and there were so many complaints that we have had it at a restaurant each year since then. The manager’s are used to bullshit like that but all of our spouses said they wouldn’t be back if we were going to continue having it there.