Everything costs more

 And everything costs more.

I'm pretty detail-oriented. I use two different user-friendly accounting programs to track expenses across all three of my banking accounts and to record sales invoices, purchases, and other business-related transactions. One thing I can tell you is that, compared to last year, nothing has decreased. Every single thing costs more. Everything. No exceptions.

Just looking at basic things like Utilities. We are using roughly the same amount of kilowatt-hours as we did last year and the year before, and our cost is up by over 10%. Same thing with gas; it is up 7-8%. Same with water; you're using the same gallon we used last year and the year before, and you're paying more per month. There's no benefit to paying more; it just costs more.

It isn't like we added showers, air conditioners, or heaters. We're just paying more because everybody pays more; that's the problem. Our politicians don't seem to think that's an issue, or at least they don't act like it is. Yet to me, it's the biggest issue we have: the economy. Someone once said I think maybe Bill Clinton, 'it's the economy, stupid, or something like that.

The value of a dollar is lower than it was this time last year and the year before, which means its buying power is lower. Things are more expensive, so you get less bang for the buck. Gasoline and milk prices are up, and insurance on my house and car has gone up over the last two years in a row, and we have had no claims whatsoever. We are not more expensive to insurance companies, yet our costs are rising in line with inflation. It's unbelievable.

Where I live, there is a building boom that is probably 3/4 over. For the last couple of years, ok maybe four years, I think they have been building like crazy everywhere you look, there's a new apartment or new townhouse. And I'm not talking about a few; I'm talking about 2000 to 3000 units built over time in what were previously undeveloped areas. We've got a building boom underway at gas stations and convenience stores. There have been so many of them that my town had to put a moratorium on new convenience stores. They're not allowing permits to build anymore unless the project is already under construction for about the next year or so. Personally, I don't care what you do as long as we can support it.

There has been no progress in infrastructure growth. There has been really no improvements in electricity, that I am aware of there are no improvements in natural gas delivery, I don't think we have bought or paid for any new waste water regeneration or treatment facilities, and I am pretty sure that from driving around this area, they haven't done much to support the increase in traffic, or the schools or the roads, that goes along with building new places to live and new places to buy things.

The other issue that concerns me greatly is a glut in the market for this new housing, and it's all overpriced. I really don't see how buyers or renters can afford these new units, given how much they cost. I would hate to be starting a life right now. Warehouses, logistics services, Mill and factory operations, and, in large part, the service sector drive the economy in my town. I don't know whether building all these houses is for. A recent college graduate just starting life would probably have to work two jobs to afford one of the fancy apartments they are building. I watched a lot of them being put up, and I would not live in them myself. I've never seen these places go up so fast, with so much corner-cutting.

I talked to a County building inspector a couple of months ago, and he said he's working longer hours, sometimes six days a week, to try to keep up, and the quality of buildings is just pathetic. It is wild that the proposition that you can build expensive housing (that is, overpriced) in such quantities that you think your product is immune to a market downturn is kind of nuts. I wonder what they think will happen to all their nice, new, pretty apartments if we enter a downturn or recession.

It could be that they're building the next ghetto apartments with 40% vacancy rates and Section 8 housing.

I use social media personally and as part of small businesses I am involved in. I have never seen so many people asking for help as I have in the last six months or so. People are asking for rides to work because they can't afford to get their car fixed. They are also asking for donations of clothes because they cannot afford new ones or because they lost everything in a fire and have nothing left. People are outright asking for financial help of various kinds to buy baby diapers or formula donations, and so forth. It is amazing. I know a couple of people who work in food banks around here, and they say the crowds who show up at their doors for help are twice as big as they used to be. I wonder if that indicates that we have something coming that we are ready for? What do you think will happen if our economy actually does fall into a recession?

Things already cost more than they did last year. People in the technology sector (such as those working in IT) have lost about 30% of their jobs overthe last 24 months. That is one in three tech workers who have been laid off. Well, laid off and or eliminated. What are people going to do if they are around here, for example, if money becomes even tighter, who is going to buy all the goods produced in the factories here? Who will pay for new flooring when they don't have a job?

Economists predict that for every job loss in a specific sector, such as technology, there is a corresponding job loss in manufacturing, retail, logistics, or marketing. I don't understand and really don't have any way to predict how much farther this can go before we reach a breaking point. I mean, we may already be at a breaking point for all I know. We used to buy steaks to eat every once in a while, and we don't buy them now because they're too expensive. The cost of meat is crazy. Things like bread, butter, eggs, milk, pasta, canned goods, and cereal are all increasing in price, as if money were no object. It's got to reach a tipping point. Politicians always talk about lowering prices on things like prescriptions or food. Once the price goes up, has it ever come back down? Never in my life have I ever seen prices fall to prior levels.

I mean, at the grocery store prices right now, do you really think any of them will come back down? What has to happen is an upward pressure on wages, and owners don't want that because that increases their cost. There are still jobs out there that pay $10 or $11 an hour, and I'm here to tell you that you cannot survive on that kind of money anymore. You might be able to live in someone's spare room or with your parents, but making $15,000-$16,000 a year is not enough to pay for the gas that goes in your car to get you to work.

When you consider that the price of insurance is up, that the price of a new car or for that matter a used car has went up, that the interest rates on loans for you new and used cars have went up, that the parts to repair your car are up or have tarrifs attached to them, and, the rates that shops have to charge to stay in business have went up, I don't know where they think it's going to end.

On top of that, there are more homeless people in the United States of America today than there ever have been in every city, state, county, municipal area, you name it; homelessness is on the rise. We can't take care of our people who work, and we have more homeless people than ever before.

I'll bet every one of you already knew every bit of this.

I do not have any answers; however, if you didn't know this, you should consider it if you were thinking about leaving your job. If you have a job right now, you should think about it 38 times before quitting to go somewhere else. Right now, you want to be worried about the certainty of where your next paycheck is coming from. I would be more worried about keeping my job right now than I ever would be about whether they would pay a bonus, whether I would be allowed to take a vacation, whether I could cash out my PTO, or even about my workload. 

Thankx for reading, 
- BigMike

Old habits die hard

So, you looked up one day, you're older now, maybe you're making more money than you used to, maybe you have a better car than you used to. You wonder whether what you are doing in your life is really what matters, or what you should be doing.

See, here is the thing humans by their very nature develop habits. Sometimes those habits are great. They eat healthy, go to the doctor when they need to, and clip coupons before going to the grocery store. Those are just examples of habits you may have started when you were younger that you carried over as you grew up. The question is, are the habits that you have developed over time serving you well?

I once knew a man who owned a franchise of a popular ice cream store. Every year, that man trades in his old Cadillac or last year's Cadillac and gets a brand-new Cadillac. He was about 55 when I met him. I asked him one day in my youth, "You must have a lot of money," and he looked at me and said, "No, not really." Why do you ask? I said you always have a new Cadillac every year, every spring you buy a new car. I assume you have a lot of money because of the depreciation. He looked stunned. Then he said, " What do you mean? In the conversation, I was probably only 19 years old, and I told the man that one of the hallmarks of owning brand-new vehicles is that in the first year or two, they lose a high percentage of their value due to depreciation. I said to them, or at least I have always been told, that if it's 20% then, then a $5000 car would lose $1000 in the first year or two in its perceived retail sale or trade-in value. So my logic was that if you traded in your car every year, as he did, you were willing to give up that depreciation each year.

You see, he paid cash. Every year, he would say to the dealer, "I want a new Cadillac. What will you give me for my old Cadillac?" He never thought about what he paid for the original Cadillac to begin with. Old habits die hard. This scenario would be even worse if you financed your car. Here's what I mean: take the example I used above. If the car was $ 5,000 and it lost 20% of its trade-in value in the first one or two years, the dealer would only give you $ 4,000 for the trade-in. So you go to buy a new car, and you have to pay the dealer back the depreciation every time you buy a new car. If you financed your vehicle, the lender will be responsible for the loan, so you are paying for depreciation and your new car. Really, the only difference I told the man was that in your case, the depreciation comes right out of your checkbook. To him, the deal was personal; he liked how he was treated, and he dealt with familiar people, so it made sense.

Old habits die hard.

Now I tell the story about this man because he was a well-respected businessman who ran a top-notch operation, and I really liked him a lot, and I was just making conversation, but I've always been good with math. He told me he had been doing this for more than 20 years because it had been easy in the first couple of years. He said he negotiated with the dealer by showing up with the Cadillac, taking whatever they offered, and getting the new car.

We came up with a whole new plan. Can you do that with your life?

Are you buying name-brand goods because you always have?

Do you go to buy a car without thinking about all of the things that go into that transaction beforehand?

Do you think about the total cost of ownership, for example? Questions like: What does it cost to insure this car? What does a new set of tires for the car cost? How expensive will it be to maintain? Typically, how well does this car hold its value?

When you negotiate, how do you begin? Do you just ask the seller what their lowest price is? And then do you think that's actually the lowest price and you pay it? When buying consumer goods, do you do the same thing with them that you do with restaurants? If there are low-, medium-, and high-priced options, do you usually buy the medium-priced option? Do you ever wonder why that is? 

There are literally thousands of habits that may be ingrained in you, and the only reason they are used is that it's always been done that way.

I had a man tell me one time, "If you always do what you always did, then you'll always get what you always got." I don't necessarily get along with that man anymore, but I still remember it and think it was good advice.

Thankx, everybody,

bigmike

Boomer explains Tool and Equipment Maintenance

 01/05/2025

Good Afternoon, ladies and gents,

Today's video explains why you should regularly repair and clean tools and perform all the simple maintenance required. The simple answer is that you like saving money.

Well, you don't, do you? 

Many people will not admit that they never considered the maintenance cost or the upkeep when they purchased it. I've seen people, only two years after they bought a brand-new lawnmower, throw it away, sell it for nothing, send it to the dump, or give it to someone because it didn't work anymore. I cannot tell you how many times I have bought a nonworking piece of equipment from someone in the last 20 years, and with a tiny bit of work, I have made it a functioning tool that has done its job again for many years.

A case in point is to look at weedeaters; I see a lot of weedeaters go to the junk yard. Two reasons for that. Usually, the first big reason is you don't know how to mix the oil with the gasoline, and you end up burning the rings out of the engine or motor, and it starts to consume oil and smoke, and pretty soon, it won't start or run. The next big thing is that nobody knows how to maintain them, so they just call them throwaway items. They paid $200 for the last two years, so they throw it away when it doesn't work, and I get a new one to get a replacement unit. To me, this seems dorky. And by dorky, I mean pointless, verging on stupid, because there's not much you have to do to a weedeater to winterize it for next year. 

I'm looking up on Google. Google is your best friend. You may use a different browser, or you may use Microsoft BING. I don't care. Search for "How do I winterize a weedeater?". The Almighty search engine will take you to someplace that basically just says to follow these steps,  For example: 1) Change the spark plug, 2) find some gasoline additive that stabilizes fuel (the big one is called Sta-Bil), and what it does is a teacher fuel from gumming up inside the little tiny carburetor that's on every weedeater and keeps it running. All you have to do is put the right amount of Sta-Bil inside your gas tank and then run the fuel for a few minutes to make sure that it went through the fuel line that got to the carburetor that went to the spark plug, etc., and then you can go put your weedeater up till next year. When you go to start the weedeater next year, it will begin because the carburetor is not gummed up with all your old oil and gasoline, and you also 3) put new filters in it, and maybe air filters or fuel filters if it has one. So, the only thing that passed was time.

The oil and the gas did not degrade; it did not turn into sludge in your gas tank, in your fuel lines, in your carburetor, or near your spark plug. The purpose of the additive is to keep your fuel in top condition and to keep it dry, to keep the water out of it. Maintaining a weedeater takes about 15 or 20 min. Total. From the last time you used it until the next time you used it, it takes about 20 minutes. To put it away right in my put away right, I mean to do the maintenance for next year. What do you do?

What is your plan for not buying a new weedeater every spring?

Thank you for reading this and, in advance, for watching my video.

BIGMIKE

Get started with learning C++

 

Here's a roadmap to get you going:

1. Grasp the Basics:

Understand the Fundamentals: C++ is a compiled, general-purpose language. Familiarize yourself with concepts like variables, data types, operators, control flow (if-else, loops), and functions.

Learn about Object-Oriented Programming (OOP): C++ is object-oriented, meaning you can structure your code around objects that encapsulate data and functionality. Understand classes, objects, inheritance, polymorphism, and encapsulation.

Explore C++ Syntax: Get comfortable with the way C++ code is written, including keywords, punctuation, and commenting.

2. Resources:

Online Tutorials: - W3Schools offers a well-structured introduction to C++: https://www.w3schools.com/cpp/ - CPlusPlus.com provides comprehensive coverage of all aspects of C++: http://cppreference.com/

Books: - "C++ Primer" by Lippman, Lajoie, and Moo is a classic and in-depth guide. - "Starting Out With C++" by Gaddis is a beginner-friendly option.

Online Courses: Many platforms offer interactive C++ courses, like Coursera, edX, and Udemy.

3. Practice and Experimentation:

Coding Platforms: Once you grasp the basics, try online coding platforms like HackerRank or LeetCode to solve C++ programming problems and practice writing code.

Small Projects: As you progress, set up a development environment (like Visual Studio) and work on small projects to solidify your learning. This could be a simple calculator program or a text-based game.

Additional Tips:

Join Online Communities: Engage with online forums or communities for C++ programmers. This is a great way to ask questions, get help, and learn from others.

Be Patient and Persistent: Learning C++ takes time and effort. Don't get discouraged by initial challenges; keep practicing and focus on making steady progress.

Remember, consistent practice is key to mastering C++. Happy learning!

Getting Started with 3D Printing: It's Easier Than You Think!

3D printers turn digital designs into real objects, like making toys or decorations at home! Here's a quick guide to get you started:

1. Pick a Printer:

There are different 3D printers, but most beginners use ones that work like hot glue guns, melting plastic to build things layer by layer. Starter printers are affordable, around $200.

2. Find or Make Your Design:

You can design your own creation on a computer using free software, or download free models from websites like Thingiverse.

3. Get Ready to Print:

A program called a slicer turns your design into instructions for the printer. It's like a recipe for the printer!

4. Let's Print!

Send the sliced file to your printer and watch your creation come to life!

Bonus Tips:

Safety first! Printers get hot, so keep an eye on them.

Be patient! It might take a few tries to get your print just right, but that's part of the fun.

3D printing is a cool way to turn your ideas into real things. With a little bit of learning, you'll be printing your own creations in no time!

Obviously, this is a simplified list, However, it is really this simple. All the rest is learn by doing

Embracing Courtesy: A Guide to Interacting with People with Disabilities

In a world that champions diversity and inclusion, we must extend our courtesy and respect to everyone, including those with disabilities. Yet, despite our best intentions, many of us may feel uncertain or uncomfortable when interacting with individuals who have disabilities. However, with a little understanding and empathy, we can create an environment where everyone feels valued and respected. In this blog post, we'll explore the importance of courtesy towards people with disabilities and provide practical tips on how to engage with them respectfully and inclusively.

Understanding Disabilities:

Before delving into the specifics of courteous behavior, it's essential to have a basic understanding of disabilities. Disabilities come in various forms, including physical, sensory, cognitive, and intellectual disabilities. Each individual's experience with their disability is unique, and it's crucial to recognize and respect their autonomy and agency.

The Importance of Courtesy:

Courteous behavior towards people with disabilities goes beyond mere politeness; it's about acknowledging their humanity and treating them with dignity and respect. When we approach interactions with empathy and consideration, we create an inclusive environment where individuals with disabilities feel valued and accepted.

Practical Tips for Courtesy:

1. Use person-first language: Instead of defining individuals by their disabilities (e.g., "disabled person"), prioritize their identity as individuals first (e.g., "person with a disability").

2. Respect personal space and boundaries: Always ask before offering assistance and respect their decision if they decline.

3. Communicate effectively: Speak directly to the individual, maintain eye contact, and avoid patronizing or infantilizing language.

4. Be patient and attentive: Allow individuals with disabilities the time they need to communicate or complete tasks and listen attentively to their needs and preferences.

5. Offer assistance thoughtfully: If you notice someone struggling, offer your assistance politely, and wait for their response before intervening.

6. Educate yourself: Take the initiative to learn about different types of disabilities and common barriers individuals may face. This knowledge will help you better understand their experiences and needs.

Challenging Stereotypes and Stigmas:

Unfortunately, people with disabilities often face stereotypes and stigmas that can hinder their inclusion and participation in society. As allies, it's our responsibility to challenge these misconceptions and advocate for equal rights and opportunities for all individuals, regardless of their abilities.

Conclusion:

Incorporating courtesy and respect into our interactions with people with disabilities is not only a matter of basic human decency but also a reflection of our commitment to inclusivity and diversity. By fostering an environment where everyone feels valued and respected, we can create a more compassionate and equitable society for all. Let's strive to be mindful of our words and actions and extend kindness and understanding to those around us, regardless of their abilities. Together, we can build a world where everyone belongs.

Boomer Talks about Stopping Procrastination

Stop Procrastinating! 
Why do you avoid doing things?

Why do you put everything off until the last minute?

What can you do about it? Why should you fix this?

Boomer Talks about Embracing Change

 Boomer Talks about Embracing Change

Are you a person who hates for anything to ever change? Why is that? Do you understand that it affects your reputation if you're one of those people who complain about everything? Think about it, watch this video and make a change. You can do it!

Thankx for watching my video. BigMike

Boomer Talks about Life Hacks

 

What is all the buzz about so-called "Life Hacks" and is it a good idea?

Thankx for watching my video.

BigMike

Boomer talks about who is responsible for You

 

How do you know who is responsible?

I mean for anything but especially for you.

Responsible for your actions, your inactions, and what you do
 and what you don't do?

I know this seems like a weighty topic
 that really can be explained with gravity.

Watch the video

Thanks for watching my Video.

Bigmike

Boomer Talks about What you are worth

 What are you worth?

Not what is your salary, I mean what is your true worth?

Not only how do you know, but how do others determine your value?

It's actually pretty simple.

Thanks for watching My video.
BigMike

Boomer Talks about Plan your Work and Work your Plan

 

How do you get things accomplished?

Do you have a system or method that you use every time

or do you just bounce from item to item

 until you are too tired to continue?

If you are like a lot of people you just want somebody
 to point you in the right direction to get you started,
 and that's what this video is all about.

Plan your Work and Work your Plan.
Start with what you're trying to accomplish (the end) in mind.

use the G, A, M, E method

Gather information on what you need.
Analyze the Information.
Make a decision about what to do.
Execute - Get it done.

Make a list.
Write the items down in pencil.
Mark them off in ink.

Thanks for watching my video

BigMike

Boomer Talks about Doing The Right thing

 How do you know that you are doing the right thing?

How do you know what the right thing is.

What kind of things should you think about?

What kind of things should you not think about?

Is doing the right thing situational?

What is the right thing?

Thanks for watching my video.
Big Mike

Boomer Talks about Reducing Expenses

Boomer Talks about Reducing Expenses.

It matters how you earn your money. It matters more how you spend it.

If you don't have any money left at the end of a paycheck cycle then there are problems with your strategy. it could be that you are just buying things that you don't need, or you are buying things that cost too much. It may be that you don't make enough money to pay your expenses, it may be that you have unexpected expenses that came up that you did not anticipate but more likely, you did not have a plan and you didn't have a target. Like a lot of things in life if you didn't know what the target was to aim at you are sure to miss it. Think about it this way put a blindfold on, turn in circles, inside your house, and throw a baseball. what are the chances that you are going to get something that's going to break with that baseball? That's just an analogy that says you have to know what you're aiming at if you expect to hit the target and you are the only one that knows what you are capable of.

Boomer Talks about Staying out of the Rental Trap

 Today on Boomer Talks:

Being in the rental trap means that you're getting continually paying for a used item until it is worn out. then it's time to go buy another one so you go down to the rental store and rent another one that's just going to wear out. Chances are it was probably used when you got it. Stay away from these places they don't have your best interest at heart. Buy here pay here car lots, rental places, title loans, pawn shops, and the like all have one thing on the top of their mind and that is making them as much money off of you as they can. It's a trap.

Boomer Talks about Buying a House

 Today on Boomer Talks:

Buying a home (New or Used) is more than likely the biggest transaction you will ever meet in your entire life. whatever the price was the day you signed for it is probably about four times that much when you get done paying it off. You really need to take the time to study and figure out how to do the right thing when you buy a house.

Boomer Talk about Living within your means

 Today on Boomer Talks:

if you are more interested in granite countertops, Disney vacations, having a brand-new car, having an in-ground pool, or being able to take an airplane flight whenever you want to then you are worried about your retirement then you probably need a little help with living within the amount of money that you make. That's called living within your means and I see a lot of people that don't have any idea how to do that or even what it means. "I mean they gave me that credit increase that means I can spend it, right?"

Boomer talks about Telephone etiquette

 Today on Boomer Talks:

We need a course taught in every school to teach people how to behave on the telephone !! My God, we are terrible, inefficient, and just downright dumb sometimes.

The Big Mike Rant - Boomer Talks about Making Change

Boomer talks about

How to teach a Cashier or Server
to properly count back your change !!

The Big Mike Rant - Boomer Talks about Staying Calm

How to Stay Calm - One Strategy

Boomer Talks about Speaking your mind and how to do it

 
Boomer Talks

about

How to Speak your mind

Boomer Talks about lending out your own money

 Boomer Talks

about Lending Money to others

Boomer Talks about Buying Stocks

 Boomer Talks

About Buying Stocks

Boomer Talks about Basic Finances

 Boomer Talks 

about Basic Finances

Boomer Talks about Pay yourself First

 Boomer Talks

about Paying yourself First

Boomer Talk about Insurance Pricing

 

Boomer Talks

about Insurance Pricing 

Boomer Talks About Prescription Drugs

 Boomer Talks

About Prescription Drugs

Boomer Talks About Gas Prices

 
Boomer Talks

About Gas Prices

Boomer Talks About Term Limits

 

Boomer Talks

About Term Limits

Boomer Talks about Science

 
Boomer Talks about Science

We like Science even when we don't get it.

Musings of a Computer Madman (Ebook digital download)

 My Book titled "Musings of a Computer Madman (Ebook digital download)" is available for sale in my Etsy store. This is a complete faithful replica of my book entitled "Musings of a Computer Madman" , and is for sale here in PDF format.

This exact book is also also a paperback available on Amazon at:

Buy the Book On Amazon

On my Etsy site, it is available for purchase at:

Download the Book here

 By separate agreement, I can also provide this book in just about any e-reader format.

This is a digital and downloadable PDF file. The photo is an exact replica of the book for sale on Amazon. The book is accessible as a digital download file for you and upon purchase, you will receive a link to download the digital file. This file is about 700 kb and should download pretty fast on most internet connections.

Note - Digital purchases cannot be downloaded through the Etsy app for the time being. Please read Etsy’s full article here: https://www.etsy.com/help/article/3949 This listing is for a digital download. No physical product will be shipped. Colors may vary due to differences in monitors.

Colors may vary due to differences in monitors.

My Book titled "Musings of a Opinionated Madman (Ebook digital download)"

My Book titled "Musings of an Opinionated Madman" (Ebook digital download) is available for sale in my Etsy store. This is a complete faithful replica of my book entitled "Musings of an Opinionated  Madman", and is for sale here in PDF format.

This exact book is also also a paperback available on Amazon at:

Buy the Book On Amazon

On my Etsy site, it is available for purchase at:

Download the Book here

By separate agreement, I can also provide this book in just about any e-reader format. Over time I have formulated opinions on just about every subject. Just ask any of my former supervisors and they will tell you that I always have an opinion to give, even if you didn't ask me for one. I wrote this book in the spirit of humor, however many of these pages discuss very serious topics. Trust me when I say we don't have to agree, we just sometimes have to agree to disagree. If there was one thing that I would like for the reader to take away from this publication is to understand that what I am offering here is not a definitive unshakable fact. It is an opinion, which is solely my opinion, that I think is fairly informed having thought about all of these issues for years and talking to thousands of individuals over time to understand the issues and the problems that are represented here.

This is a digital and downloadable PDF file. The photo is an exact replica of the book for sale on Amazon. The book is accessible as a digital download file for you and upon purchase, you will receive a link to download the digital file. This file is about 700 kb and should download pretty fast on most internet connections.

Note - Digital purchases cannot be downloaded through the Etsy app for the time being. Please read Etsy’s full article here: https://www.etsy.com/help/article/3949This listing is for a digital download. No physical product will be shipped. 

Colors may vary due to differences in monitors.

What the hell do old people do?

What the hell do old people do?

 3:38:12 pm on a fine Sunday afternoon when for once it's not raining and it's not hotter than shit.

What the hell do old people do? I'll tell ya, Not Much.

Disclaimer: The title of this post is and every other post is based on my memories and on my opinions. So let me make this clear right from the start, everything in this post is created from my own recollections, which may be faulty because I am old, or because I choose to lie about it, take your pick. At any rate, everything I post here belongs to me, the good the bad, and the ugly, and is a product of my highly developed imagination. If I use a situation that you know about and it was actually different, then shaddup! , just read it, and don't ruin a good story with a correction about some trivial things called facts. It's a story, stories are based on what people think and everybody knows that people lie. Fuhgeddaboutit!!

About every day starts the same way. It's 2 a.m., and I gotta go pee. Then it's 4 a.m., and I gotta go pee. Then I get up. One bottle of water, start the coffee maker, get my bucket of pills, my cell phone, and my book if I'm reading one at the moment. Take all of my stuff and go find my wheelchair and sit at the table and tune on the TV and tune it into the weather channel and see how badly my day is going to be ruined by the weather today. 

I make plans to do things every day and somehow and someway things get messed up before I even get started.

--   Thankx,  Michael (is answrtek)  lto: answrtek@answrtek.com

What the hell do old people do?

 3:38:12 pm on a fine Sunday afternoon when for once it's not raining and it's not hotter than shit.

What the hell do old people do? I'll tell ya, Not Much.

Disclaimer: The title of this post is and every other post is based on my memories and on my opinions. So let me make this clear right from the start, everything in this post is created from my own recollections, which may be faulty because I am old, or because I choose to lie about it, take your pick. At any rate, everything I post here belongs to me, the good the bad, and the ugly, and is a product of my highly developed imagination. If I use a situation that you know about and it was actually different, then shaddup! , just read it, and don't ruin a good story with a correction about some trivial things called facts. It's a story, stories are based on what people think and everybody knows that people lie. Fuhgeddaboutit!!

About every day starts the same way. It's 2 a.m., and I gotta go pee. Then it's 4 a.m., and I gotta go pee. Then I get up. One bottle of water, start the coffee maker, get my bucket of pills, my cell phone, and my book if I'm reading one at the moment. Take all of my stuff and go find my wheelchair and sit at the table and tune on the TV and tune it into the weather channel and see how badly my day is going to be ruined by the weather today. 

I make plans to do things every day and somehow and someway things get messed up before I even get started. 

As the Burger Turns part 11

Wednesday, July 15th,2020 at about 4:30 a.m. or so.

I took a tour of Northwest Georgias finest Medial Facilities for the last two days. I'm beaten up tired. Sorry, its sorta short today. Oomph.

On this day 20 years ago in a couple of hours, I became a Grandpa for the first time. I was only 42 or so and thought I was too young to be called that name so I opted for something else until my wife gently reminded me that it wasn't really up to me, that the womenfolk and the grandkids ultimately decide who gets called what. They decided that she was too young for example to be called Grandma so they opted for Nana for her, and because it didn't matter what I thought, not a tiny little bit, shut up and go get coffee or sit down and go amuse yourself, I am called PaPa. I like it anyway, and love to hear my actual and pseudo grandchildren call me that name. Hell, I would probably answer to anything if one of them said it, Anything except can we have money that is.

So anyhow, having said all of that, Happy Birthday, James Bishop!!
Papa loves you and misses you every day.

Disclaimer: The title of this post is the start of my soap opera for old people called "As the Burger Turns"  Anyway, to make this clear right from the start, everything in this post is created from my own recollections, which may be faulty because I am old, or because I choose to lie about it, take your pick. At any rate, everything I post here belongs to me, the good the bad and the ugly, and is a product of my highly developed imagination. If I use a situation that you know about and it was actually different, then shaddup! , just read it and don't ruin a good story with a correction about some trivial things called facts. It's a story, stories are based on what people think and everybody knows that people lie.

I post that disclaimer on the Steak `n Shake stuff because I know eventually I will get it wrong and somebody will want me to correct it. I don't want to spend all day fact-checking my memories so hell to the no, I won't go.

So anyhow when we last left our intrepid young restaurant manager, he had been appointed the GM at a tiny ass little store at 4105 E. Washington St know affectionately as Little East, where if one did a DNA analysis of the underlying soil in that location I am sure you would find gallons and gallons of sweat just soaked into that soil because of how hard you had to work there to cook a burger and then get it served. 

A lot of people didn't make it after being assigned there because of the effort it required due to the lack of staffing created by the lower sales volume. Its an anachronism of the restaurant business that most if, not EVERY company has sliding budgets that are based on your sales volume. Almost none of them take into account the effect that a very low sales history has on the ability to deliver quality products in a reasonable amount of time. I know that things are not like back "in the good old days", but it is sorta ridiculous then and now to expect a 5-minute service from a 60-foot production line where the manager and maybe 3 other people are making an extensive SKU heavy menu. 

So anyway day after day you come to work at 0 dark hundred, do whatever paperwork you have to do to get the store ready to open, get yourself and the staff assigned various tasks that make the store ready for business. You have to get the preparation line stocked, tools and implements put on each respective station, clean everything, stock each station with food and condiments (based on whatever daypart is being prepared), run whatever reports, place any orders for future delivery that are needed and all the misc tasks that come up in this time frame. Before we started serving breakfast this was about 60-90 minutes of prep time and after we started it was about 30-90 minutes because A lot of time we were open while this was going on. 

This is where the secret and the science of staffing a store merge together. You wanted the very best people to work for you however sometimes that was the secondary characteristic you looked for because it was occasionally better to have somebody who would bring their ass to work no matter what, than it was to have someone who was a great cook, but would drive you crazy with their reliability issues even if the issues were legitimate. For example, I once had a super-duper prep/breakfast cook who was just about the best cook I had ever seen, except she was late or missed work all the time because she had a special needs child that affected her ability to meet her schedule on a regular basis. It made me nuts trying to figure out how to accommodate her and take care of the business needs at the same time. It also drove the other employees nuts covering for her and making up for her when she missed a day.

I remember actually discussing this with my District Manager while I was a tiny bit frustrated about it and talking it over with my peers in meetings a few times by asking their opinions about what they would do. I got good advice from my peers and also learned that it was usually a bad idea to ask your boss how to solve problems in the store because he usually had a dumbass answer that didn't help any, or at least it didn't help me at all. My peers had several creative solutions and I ended up using one of their suggestions to solve the issue enough so that everybody was happy and the work got done. 

That's really all I cared about. Did the work get done? Were the jobs accomplished? If you could answer yes, then I say go get another cup of coffee and move on to the next problem. I was incredulous when my boss told me I should let her go and tell her to file for unemployment and then just let her have the unemployment check as it would fix my problem and she would still have money until she found another job. She was a great crew member who had a special needs child and his compassionate answer was fire her and let her have the unemployment. What a great human he was. 

Can you believe that? It really pissed me off to hear that but in my defense, I didn't say anything because I knew if I did, it wasn't going to be professional, calm, or polite. 

Better I just shut my face.

I think this is why I have been told I didn't have the "Killer-Instinct" required that it took to get to the next level of supervision because I thought stuff like this was cold-hearted, bad management, and just plain stupid. It also reinforced for me how I used to think the dumbest people got promoted to DM in the first place. It seemed like a dumbass contest to me and that wasn't dispelled until years later when a fella named Ed was made District manager and I thought he was pretty brilliant. I do remember and wondered if they knew how smart he was though, and thought maybe when they found out (they being the Division Manager or others like or above him) they would be unhappy because it was pretty hard to manipulate Ed and feed him bullcrap. 

Turns out I was wrong about that too but that's a different story for another day.

Anyhow, I was sorta just stunned and stood there with my mouth open dragging the floor, thinking to myself "Are you really this stupid"? Then it dawned on me that I was the one that was the dumbass for bringing it up to him, to begin with. I forgot the rules of operation I had created for myself. Rule #1 was "Never ever forget who or what you are dealing with.", and being as I already thought he was a dipshit before this and that he was one of those guys who was more worried about looking good rather than being good, I don't know what was going through my mind when I asked him about this in the first place. It was a stupid move on my part. I remember saying "Thankx for the advice" and moving on to something else. Anyway, I didn't take his advice, I did not let her go and came up with something else entirely different. I asked the employee if she could make plans to come in or stay late one day and talk to me sometime in the afternoon. I made it simple enough and couched it in terms soft enough so that she wasn't left wondering if she was going to be fired because I had said something like "I need to talk with you at 4 o'clock tomorrow afternoon."

The next week she made arrangements to come in for a sit-down, I made arrangements to have all the bases covered so I didn't have to jump up every ten minutes to run the store and we explored solutions to the problem. Here is the funny part. She already knew it was a problem, she already had been thinking about how to fix it and she had already figured out how to fix it before she even sat down. I sort of began the conversation by telling her that the store had a problem however I also thought she was a wonderful employee and wanted to talk to her about it. She smiled, teared up a little bit, said she had wanted to talk to me about a problem she had too, and wanted to know if it had to do with her schedule interruptions? When I sort of acknowledged that yes that was what it was about, it almost seemed as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. 

At this point, I was worried that she was going to resign because she looked so relieved.

Instead, she told me the story about how she never wanted the heavy responsibility of being an opening employee but she loved working for Steak `n Shake and had a family history going back to her Grandmother who had worked for the brand and didn't want to jeopardize her job or do anything to get fired. She said she knew it was hard on the store covering for her all the time and it made her sort of unpopular with some of the other crew because she was always ruining someone's days off. She also said she had been trying to talk to someone about her proposed solution (I had been here about 2 months at this point) through the last 2 General managers and they never stayed long enough or seemed interested enough in fixing the problem. She said she had worried and worried about losing her job to the point that she thought her husband was going to make her quit because of all the self-imposed stress she has put on herself. Keep in mind dear reader I had not said a word to her about the problem before this day, not a single word.

So I said in the softest voice I could use and still be heard, something to her like, "I'm all ears, tell me how do we fix it?"

Keep in mind there are really three elements to the problem. 

1. One was when she was scheduled to "Open" meaning one of the first employees to arrive, whenever she had to call in because of her child, it created a hole in the getting ready schedule.
2. Two was when she was the cook, you had to replace the cook, for breakfast, which let's face it, was impossible, You would just have to do it yourself. If anyone ever saw me cook breakfast, you would immedialtely know what that's a bad idea. 
3. Three when she as the food prep person, somebody had to do food prep. So If she was forced to call in for the entire shift, you were screwed, and no matter how good she was when she was there, you were screwed when she wasn't. It turns out that one day when the DM was there running the store because the previous GM had resigned, he got stuck by this and the day was a nightmare. It was a gloriously bad day for everyone, and that was why he didn't like her. 

Like I said he was short-sighted, a part of the promote the dumbest people you can find campaign, and didn't like for his hair to get messed up, so as far as he was concerned she had to go.

I simply sat and listened to her as she laid out the solutions as she proposed them and it was so elegant and clean it was beautiful. It wasn't what I thought it was as I didn't know about a sister, however, she was keeping in her mind the store and using the exact same number of crew hours as before she proposed these things, this is basically what she came up with although I don't exactly remember all that was said, it was something like this. 

1. One -Was to allow her to shift some of the more labor-intensive chores to the evening shift and she would come in at night and complete these tasks after the kids were in bed and as she only lived down the street (about 3 blocks away), it wasn't a burden on her at all. 
2. Two -I should hire her little sister who was looking for a part-time job to help pay the bills. She said I will train her and make sure she can do the job as well as I can. 
3. Three -Let her sister stay come in her place and then stay through lunch when she could not be there which would replace her on the schedule and nobody would be inconvenienced. In these three ways the problems would be solved, she would keep her job, her sister would get a job, the store would run and everybody was happy. I was skeptical at first because of several things but told her I would think about it and wanted to interview her sister.

A couple of days later her 16-year-old sister sat down across from me and gave one of the best job interviews I ever conducted. She was nervous as all get out and stumbled though the answers a little, but man! the energy, the passion, the enthusiasm, you couldn't beat it. I hired her and began the process of training her and etc. Let the paperwork begin!

I remember a few days later as I was talking to her older sister why she had never brought her up to apply before this and she told me that before I start cleaning the house and getting rid of the thieves and etc she didn't want her sister working there. It just goes to show you, it is true to say the crew knows everything that goes on if you just listen to what they have to say. I can honestly say I learned this skill as an assistant manager working with Bill Duncan at East 38th street because he was always telling me to shut up and listen, and it always paid off for me whenever I remembered to use it. 

Later on, both Jackie and Virginia said it was a no brainer hiring her sister because she was as good or better than her older sister ever was. I felt like a genius and know I didn't do anything to fix it except nod my rubber neck and say "Good idea, let's do it." I never had an issue with her after that, it always got solved, the work always got done and my clueless DM? He had no idea how I pulled it off.

He never understood it. 

I'm a genius! (Yeah right)

-BigMike

BigMike's Rules for Good Operations
 Rule #1 "Never ever forget who or what you are dealing with."

 Rule #2 "Never ever provide the ammo for the gun to shoot you with"

 Rule #1 "CYA is not good enough, It has to be CYAA (Cover Your Ass Always)"

As the Burger Turns part 10

Thursday, July 12th, 2020, and a glorious day it started out to be it did about 6:45 a.m. 

Disclaimer: The title of this post is the start of my soap opera for old people called "As the Burger Turns"  Anyway, to make this clear right from the start, everything in this post is created from my own recollections, which may be faulty because I am old, or because I choose to lie about it, take your pick. At any rate, everything I post here belongs to me, the good the bad and the ugly, and is a product of my highly developed imagination. If I use a situation that you know about and it was actually different, then shaddup! , just read it and don't ruin a good story with a correction about some trivial things called facts. It's a story, stories are based on what people think and everybody knows that people lie.


I took a few days off to recharge and to get a bunch of projects done. My grass was like 2 or 3 feet tall, lawnmower needed maintenance and a bunch of other stuff had to get done around here. It takes a lot of energy to supervise that kind of work.  

So anyway, on the previous iterations of this story, the previous 9 sections, I have attempted to layout the balance of my career and tell the story as fairly and as accurately as old people can remember to do. Sometimes the fondness of memory gets in the way and in reading it later it sounds more like a tribute or a gripe session depending upon one's point of view, however, that is not intentional. I have found it to be somewhat tough to tell your own story without being one-sided in your interpretation at some point. I suppose that reaction might be human nature or is maybe a natural defensive gesture, I'm not certain how to look at that. Anyway, my dear reader I acknowledge that yes, I am full of shit, just like everyone else. 

Not only that but I have a lot of practice at being full of shit so I am better at it than most people. 

Sometime in about late 1978 or so, about 2 or 3 years after I graduated high school at 18 years old after a couple of assignments as an assistant manager at three different stores, I was promoted to the position of General Manager and assigned to the old unit called "Little East Washington". It was by a place called the Sahara Grotto located at 4105 East Washington St in Indianapolis In. The building isn't there anymore, however, in all fairness it had already been there 30 years or so when I got there. so a lot of the life it had was already wrung out of it. I believe the location now is an auto parts store now or something like that, maybe an AutoZone store. It was still in the era of curb service and no drive-thru windows yet. We still had the curb window, the microphone that broadcasted outside, the kitchen window that you put dirty dishes through and it had a freight elevator for loading the stock from the supply truck down into the basement.

So my first day there, I get to work and meet the District Manager a guy named Jim something started with a "J", and truthfully it was sort of obvious to me that he didn't know a lot about running restaurants I mean maybe he did but he struck me as a guy who would rather look good than be good. He had gorgeous hair and nice clothes, shiny shoes and expensive glasses and I never saw him get dirty, the whole time I knew him. He introduced me all around, and keep in mind I was about 20years old, I'm not sure but I don't think I was 21 yet, I just cannot remember. I remember being worried about whether or not the crew would like me, that's how rookie I was. There were several members of the crew there and two or three people that stand out in my mind to this day. 

One person I distinctly remember was the Lead server, her name was Virginia Pittman. Now I have nothing but good things to say about Virginia because I cannot tell you how many times she kept me from screwing up and kept my young full of self out of trouble. I reckon at this point Virginia was maybe 35 or so, and she was at least double me in experience and years, had a husband who was an ex-General manager named Henry, and just knew everything you needed to know. The company put me in charge of this restaurant, but Virginia was in charge of Virginia. If any of you knew her, you know exactly what I mean. It's a good thing too because I was too wet behind the ears to manage her, I was barely able to manage myself at this point. Virginia was direct and blunt and to the point and was about as no-nonsense a person as I have ever met, before or since. These are all characteristics I later learned to appreciate about her, but on the first day in that first week, I'll admit it, I was intimidated. I was a young man, she was an experienced long term crew member. She had probably seen more managers come and go over the years than I could even imagine, I am sure that to her, I was not impressive, to say the least.

I was the sort of manager that was maybe a tiny bit headstrong and maybe a tiny bit pushy, although I really have a tough time remembering myself as either pushy or headstrong. I mean I was a sweetheart and a pushover! I just wanted things to be how I said they were to be, without regard to how they had been in the past and oh, by the way, If you could get that done right damn now, that would be great. In retrospect, I am aware that I didn't know shit about shit and I also didn't know a damn thing about human nature or managing people or getting things done. After thinking about it for a bit I knew the reason they put me in this store too. The company needed somebody who would go into this restaurant and work their complete ass off, working long days and long hours,  because it was a very low-volume restaurant, meaning it was a low sales store. 

Because it was low sales it was also a low labor budget and a low sales budget restaurant as well. Being in the so-called Low range doing less than $8,000 per week made it tough to make money if it could even be done. The PNL statement in this store was a disaster a couple of years before I took the store over, and it had lost a lot of money and was a drain on the surrounding Division's combined statement. No one wanted to be associated with a store that lost money and it showed. They didn't spend a dime on repairs and hadn't bought anything new for 5 years. Of course, I immediately ignored that history, fixed everything that was broken, bought everything I could in the first 2 months, and figured correctly that they would just tell me to knock it off after the first PnL, which they did. I had already done what I needed to do by that point and because it was my first store, the DM is who took the heat for not paying attention. 

I sorta knew that was going to happen too. Those people always underestimated me and I always took advantage of it.

I sat down with the DM and analyzed with him exactly what we thought it would take to break even in this store. It was a long time ago so I won't tell you I remember exactly what was said, however, the gist of it was we needed about a 10% sales increase and needed food and labor to fall about 2% each. It was a tough order to fill, as I could see the labor falling but had no idea how to get the food to fall 2%. I mean it was out of whack, sure, but to this point, all I had worked as a manager in were stores run by strong GM's. At this point, I had about one year of Profit and Loss analysis under my belt, and all of that was either as a rookie manager or as an assistant manager, So basically, what in the hell did I know? Not much I'll tell you. There was a side benefit being narrow-minded and not knowing everything about running a store though because, with no other distractions, I could always focus on fundamentals more effectively. As a result, my shifts as an assistant manager served excellent food, hot food was hot by god! Its what I knew how to do, so I did that to the best of ability. That was one thing I never lost sight of right up until the day I retired from the business.

Fixing the PnL was my number one job here though, but keep in mind that are not talking huge numbers. For some perspective, the reductions needed to equal about $150 per week in food costs and the same in labor costs. To achieve the sales goals, we needed about 100 more customers a week or the ones we had already needed to spend about 40 cents more per meal. If we could get more customers somehow, and get them to spend a tiny bit more, then all the better. To me, it didn't seem like these goals were that big until he told me no one else had ever been able to get it done or get anywhere close to that for the last 5 years or so. 

That scared me a tiny bit. Ohh, I think I just learned about negative motivation. I thought seriously about figuring out how to blackmail this guy somehow, as I thought I might need some ammunition to stay employed. I'm just kidding of course, but I did get a comedy bit out of it that I used for several years. 

This is when I began my management career (and I wasn't under the wings of John), the East 38th street store's biggest needs were cleanliness, store organization, and employee appearance. Labor was a little high but sales were somewhat higher than 4105 and man, sales cures a multitude of sins. In the Pendleton Pike store, the problem was high food cost, and after I discovered the auxiliary stock room in the porter's garage that problem got fixed, WHAM!. I think those two-course corrections are the reason I got promoted, but it could have easily have been that I was still standing after everyone else quit or got fired, I don't know. So anyway as my new DM talked to me about the crew it was evident that he didn't like the person who was the Production Trainer, an older woman (in her 40's)  named Jacqueline (not to be confused with the Franklin Rd Jackie, not the same person), he talked negatively about her and to her the whole time he was there. 

He didn't come out and say it but I think he wanted me to fire her the first week I was there. That made me want to do the opposite and figure out how to make her look good so he would stand down and go find something else to do when he was bored. He was very happy with Virginia who was my Lead Server and was convinced she adored him (she didn't) and that she told him everything (she didn't) and that she trusted him (no way), so he had only good things to say about her. She figured out quickly that all she had to do was fix his coffee the right way, smile and hand it to him and he shut up and went away. Jackie on the other hand had an RBF problem, you should have seen the shocked look on her face when I explained that to her, she was Flabber-Friggin-Blasted by the shallowness of him. She did have a sneering look that came over her face when something stupid was said or happened, and he contributed to that a lot. Maybe that's why he didn't like her, as she couldn't hide it. I don't know. 

If you don't know what RBF is, go ask your teenager. I don't remember Jim's last name, but he wasn't around more than a year after this so in retrospect I guess it didn't matter. 

As soon as he left Virginia and Jackie took me aside and had their own first of dozens of mini-meetings with me. They asked to talk and I agreed to listen. We had a ton of these, and you wouldn't believe how much I learned after I figured out how to shut my face and listen to my staff. Well as it turns out one of his (The dm that is), "pet employees" and he had a few of them in every store, was running a mini theft ring and both of them had told him about it. Not only did they tell him about it but they explained it to him in detail, and as Jackie said to me "That dumbass just looked at me and said I didn't know what I was talking about". 

This "pet" employee had been given a lot of autonomy by the DM purportedly to assist the GM in getting things done. He unloaded the truck, had his own key to the freight elevator, and to the doors, and was in charge of moving stock to and fro when the line needed to be stocked and basically he was the one assigned to always take the trash out during the daytime and etc. 

Right about the time they had this conversation, his attitude towards Jackie changed to the negative, he told them he didn't believe them and threatened both of them with their jobs if they kept trash-talking a great employee. Basically, they both told me to "watch my ass" with this employee, that he talked to Jim behind the managers back constantly. He had already demonstrated he couldn't be trusted and they both thought he was stealing every time the truck came in and every time the trash went out. I'll never forget their closing remarks "The little snot is a snitch and a kiss ass and is always broke until he got those keys, now he has more money than anybody, where did he get it?". It was a revelation and a stunning 30 minutes, to say the least. There was a lot more than that to it, but that was the overview. 

So here's where we stand, I'm a brand new GM a rookie, wet behind the ears, don't know shit about shit, my first restaurant, has lots of problems, first leadership role, had no idea what to do next, and 2 lead crew members telling me what was going on and I could take it or leave it. Man, I was just shocked and stunned and PISSED OFF. I actually didn't really know who to believe but I was leaning very strongly towards Virginia and Jackie. Here was the deciding factor, my brother Clyde has worked for Henry (Virginia's husband) when he was the GM at one of the stores, (I think it was 3810 W. Washington but who knows?), I was talking to Clyde and telling him the story. He asked me what my instincts were telling me, I told him and he was like "You should trust Virginia". He said she has no reason to lie and has a long history and he always trusted her. 

Man, easy stuff huh?

I was a rookie General Manager but had worked for the concept for quite a while so I knew what wrong looked like when I saw it. That was the easy part. To make a long story short I made a few quick decisions and decided that the DM had no say over who had keys in my store if he wasn't going to be here running it every day. Once I made that clear to him he sorta gruffly let it go and said do what you think is right. Here's where that whole "Do the right thing because its the right thing to do", came back into play. I knew what to do, I just had to stick to my decision, stand my ground, and do what was right. 

Seems simple but believe me, when you are 21 years old, this kind of stuff feels like you have a mountain on your back. It feels like if you don't stick to your gut then you are going to be flattened by the mountain. I remember seeing the Division Manager, a guy named Gary Reinwald in my store when this was all happening and he asked me all about it delving into specifics and asking tons of questions, some of which I had not even thought of, like what if my plan failed and then what if this wasn't why the food was out of whack what then? 

The only thing I could say was "I don't know, I will have to keep looking". It turns out that even though I didn't understand it at the time, I had just given the perfect answer when you don't know what to say. No bullcrap, no bluffing, no word fill, Just I don't know, I'll find out and no excuses. I found out years later with a tour conversation with a new CEO guy (Tom Charters maybe?), he said I was the only one he ran into who didn't try to bluff my way through when I got asked something I didn't know the answer to. Anyway, Gary listened, and said one thing and then left the store, He said "Well, we'll find out soon enough huh?". Yes sir I guess we will. 

I felt so vulnerable and alone standing there on the street corner like I was the naked cowboy, about 3 days into this grand experiment called "Let's promote the rookie 21-year-old and see what happens!",  I knew I wasn't alone, but I felt so and truthfully it scared me a little bit because what If that wasn't what I needed to do? It felt like I only had one shot at coming up with a solution. It turns out that much later more seasoned people always felt like that when they faced issues they had to correct and it was just a part of owning the problem, I didn't know it at the time, because it felt like "Fix this or die". 

Oh man, everything my whole future, my entire existence was riding on the solution. So I pulled up my jockeys, tied my boots by the straps or whatever that saying is, and got started. 

I immediately made everybody park their cars nowhere near where the truck delivered. I made everyone park nowhere near the back door and nowhere near the freight elevator, which was just about the same thing anyway. My instincts were to eliminate the easy theft travel and because he came in so early I made him and everyone who came in at around 6 a.m. park in the front lot where I could see their cars out of the front window. If he was going to steal I wanted to be able to see it. I didn't single him out however because I made everyone do it, and it sort of seemed counter-intuitive to park upfront anyway because that took up customers' precious parking spots. It had a positive effect also as it made us look busier and drew in more business. Who woulda thunk it? Sometimes it was better to be lucky than to be good.

So everyone was absolutely convinced I had lost my mind when they saw where I made early people park, as the common wisdom was to park your staff as far away from the front door as you could to leave room for customers. All of my peers, except for John had something to say, he stayed quite only speaking to me if I asked him. I remembered thinking "What is the big friggin deal?", We are maybe serving 25 people in the morning anyway so having "room" for customers was not the issue. Being open was a formality and unless we got busier I couldn't see us staying open at any rate. I changed a lot of stuff all at once, as I figured less stress to just do it and get it over with. Also, It wouldn't look like I was targeting him, even though I was if I made a bunch of changes and the things I changed about him were just buried in the middle of them. 

Imagine his surprise also when I took away his elevator freight key, his front door key (which was also the back door), and effective right now, you had to start using the inside stairs to move the stock up to the line and so forth. They were using the freight elevator to move stock to the line, in the morning and after the lunch hour. Seemed only fair anyhow as at night after 5 p.m. you had to use the stairs anyway so what was the difference? I couldn't see the difference and knew it took about 1/3 the time to use the dolly and get your 2 cases of french fries and whatever else and come up the stairs. It seemed to be a no brainer to me as I was sure that was when he was stealing every time they used the back door or the lift anyway. 

See I think every time the truck came in he was taking the things he could sell quickly like beef and fries and so forth and then when as soon as the truck was done, he went home and changed into his uniform (and unloaded his stock). So also I made everyone report to work in full uniform, without regard to their job or function, and stopped everyone from changing in the store or in the bathrooms. I also put a manager in charge of overseeing the truck operation, checking off products as it came off the truck and put a manager in charge of the back door. In essence, I put the managers back in charge. Mr. Theft ring went back to his buddy the DM and told him I was making it too hard to "do his job" and he wanted a transfer to another store. Also about one week after I made these changes he was back to borrowing money every day so he could eat lunch, go figure. 

Within about 90 days or so, we had solved the food cost problem and were under budget on labor cost, had the sales issue headed in the right direction,  The PnL almost made money in the first quarter I was there and It pretty much broke even after that. We solved the sales problem by focusing on fundamental issues, by serving hot food HOT, by fixing all the refrigerators and serving cold food COLD, by running the service times that made guests want to come back and taking every comment seriously and by making sure if it was supposed to have steam coming off the product (Like a Chili 3 way) that it did. I learned that from John but I never dumped anything back on the line, because the only way we made the draconian labor budget in that store was to work the food stations harder than the crew did. That part was a nightmare. I would have had to clean it up so dumping Chili was out of the question.

The DM obliged him and transferred his buddy down the street to Franklin Road. His name was Dave or Steve or something like that and oh boy was he going to be unhappy again pretty soon.

Ha! Curb 80 all cars!

BigMike

As the Burger Turns part 9

6:45 a.m. on Sunday, July the 5th, 2020, after celebrating yesterday 's annual scare the shit out of your animals day.

Disclaimer: The title of this post is the start of my soap opera for old people called "As the Burger Turns"  Anyway, to make this clear right from the start, everything in this post is created from my own recollections, which may be faulty because I am old, or because I choose to lie about it, take your pick. At any rate, everything I post here belongs to me, the good the bad and the ugly, and is a product of my highly developed imagination. If I use a situation that you know about and it was actually different, then shaddup! , just read it and don't ruin a good story with a correction about some trivial things called facts. It's a story, stories are based on what people think and everybody knows that people lie.

My next-door neighbors must have spent $1000 dollars on Fireworks this year or he hired a professional company to come over and set them off. They were the loudest I think I have ever heard and It seemed like it never stopped. It drives my animals totally crazy, puts this feral looking fear in their eyes, makes them find new, exciting, and novel places to hide like behind the toilet, under a bed, inside a closet on the shelf, you know all the normal places you can find a 100-pound + dog crammed into. The 3 little ones all want to jump up into your arms and then shake like the dickens. My Jack Russell named Fred shakes so fast and vibrates so bad that I think at some point he will just sort of fade out the existence of this dimension as he fades into another, as his cellular vibrations start to match the atomic vibrations of the molecules around him. It's crazy.

Our littlest dog, Olive, in the hight of this insanity last night, was shaking so fast and hard and was so scared that she jumped up into my wife's arms and promptly had a Grand Mal seizure. That is scary and so sad because you want them to stop seizing, but what can you do? I tried punching her in the face, and that didn't seem to work (I'm just kidding, I didn't punch the dog.) My brother made the point that there are Vets all over this country that are affected the same way, except she said I can't jump up into her lap. She is so whiny sometimes, something about how my weight might break a bone, or injure her legs, wha wha.

What a Crybaby. I only outweigh her by a tiny measly 175 pounds.

All of my animals (6 dogs altogether, 4 are ours and 2 belong to my daughter), are annoyed and very scared of very loud noises, Car backfires, gunshots, A door slamming anything like that will set them off. If you have never had 6 dogs go completely batshit crazy (for a full on barking session for 3 or 4 minutes), on you and all of them start barking all at once, with at least 2 of them being 95+ pounds with large lungs which makes them very loud and very noisy, well, you just haven't lived. The third large one is part Husky also, so he not only wants to bark, but he HAS TO HOWL too.

Oh, the Joy.

You can be in a quiet room, watching TV with the words on to keep from waking the other occupants of the house, something will make a noise and BARK CITY ERUPTS right next to your ears. It scares the living crap out of you. It pisses me off too, and of course, what do I do? Why of course, I yell at the dogs to shut up. Very loudly I yell at them to stop barking. And what do the dogs do? Well of course they do what dogs are trained to do, they look at you and say "Cool, Dad is going to bark WITH US", and they bark louder. It is smashing fun. I would recommend it to everyone who doesn't need to sleep or who hasn't already damaged their hearing with loud music to give it a try. It is tailor-made fun for anyone with PTSD, as either you have it, or it will give it to you.

Sometimes it is sort of surreal. I envision talking to the loudest dogs sometimes and then doing my R. Lee Ermey as DI Dog impression. Picture this scenario. The dogs start barking, the drill Instructor dog runs up and says "What the hell are you barking at Private!" , "Sir, the cat sir." , "Holy dogshit", he says "Only idiots and car chasers bark at cats they can't get to, and I don't see too many cars". "What's your name scumbag", "Sir, Bark sir", "Your full name Fatboy!","Sir, Barkington B. Barkthomew, sir".

And so forth, you get the idea. I keep threatening to go and get some of those remote-controlled shock collars to get the barking under control and my daughter said it would be pointless because my dogs are so weird and stressed out sometimes that you would probably catch them behind the couch with the remote saying "Do Me, Do Me!!", shocking each other for fun. Sonsabitches.

So anyway, yesterday I was talking about when I first went to work at Steak `n Shake and I spoke of Sheryl. What a co-inky dink, I sent her a message about it so she would see what I wrote and she read the post. I then went and looked up some things about SnS and found these menus and uniform pictures in a post that Sheryl had made on Facebook. The one on the upper left is actually a sign from the Madison Avenue store I worked at, although by the time I went to work there that sign was long gone. When I went to manager the store at 4105 E. Washington at Sherman Drive, they still had this sign at the back border of their parking lot.

 

The uniform the girl in the picture is wearing is the exact same one that females employees wore in the 70s unless they were objected to on religious grounds and then they wore a black skirt and a white blouse. We were a classy bunch back then. I think that kind of skirt is called a "Culotte" or something like that. See this explanation Culottes wiki. Males wore a slack that had that same black and white check pattern and a short-sleeved white oxford shirt to go with it. I think for a time we wore red bow ties and then eventually we switched to black ones. Everyone eventually switched to black socks and shoes too, as I don't specifically remember any of the girls getting to wear calf-high go-go boots at any point in time. Don't I wish?

When I first started to work there the menu looked exactly like this one. I still remember we had to remember the slogan "Specializing in selected foods with a desire to please the most discriminating", Slogans like "We Protect your Health" and "Using only USDA inspected Ground beef " was on the running lights behind the light bulbs. Once a month we got out the ladder and changed a couple of hundred light bulbs. What fun that was.

I used to make fun of the Togo service we had that was called  "Tak-Hom-a-Sak", we used to call it "Bring-Bak-a-Sak" or "Drag Home a Bag" or sometimes it was  "Bring-Bak-a-Sak" because there was always some numbnuts working that didn't know how to check a Togo order or the proper way to package items. Maybe SnS should have offered me a bunch of money and an NDA so I couldn't write humorous but bad stuff about their sorry current 2020 selves either.

Hey guys? We can talk,  It's not too late!!

Working grill at an SnS in the 70s was very fast-paced and fairly hard to do but if you mastered the process, then it could be a blast. There were only 9 sandwiches total and 5 of them were made with steakburger patties and the other 4 were not really sold all that often. I would say that at least 90% of the cooking was the 5 primary burger based sandwiches. There were about three main things you had to solidly learn as well as a bunch of tiny things that made it easier before you were trusted to be the GrillBoy.

First, you had to learn the proper way to spear the meat "puck" from the meat pan with your fork including where to hold the fork, and then the proper way to sear and form the patty to the grill. Once you had that mastered, you had to learn the best way to "cut" the patty from the grill top with making it into a "murder-burger", as it was seared to the grill top and is nothing like you see at any other restaurant where they cook at a lower temperature for a longer time from a frozen meat patty (Think Wendys).

We called it a murder burger (and gave you massive crap and made fun of you without pity) if you screwed it up and tore the burger in half or into pieces while trying to cut it from the grill top. If you made burgers like that you probably became a dishwasher or had to work fountain a lot. So anyway, you overcame that difficulty at first by gluing those murdered ones back together with cheese. HA! The last thing you had to master was the ability to remember what had been called off to you by the servers.  Once you had those main things, then and only then could you learn the "fancy" stuff, like playing the grill like the drums (me), cutting three steaks off at a time (me) or flipping the meat, spat, fork or all three (again, me).  When I was younger and had the ability I could make the grill sing! Friday was called "Friday Night Live!" because I usually had a crowd of kids or teens at the counter watching me work while ai showed off for them.

It was fun and made me popular at work, but never helped me to score. HA!
I was the same doofus I ever was at school.

Remember yesterday I talked about the analog voice prompt process that controlled the flow of food into and out of the production line? Servers and the window operator "called" tickets out as they came in, using a simple language and because we had a very limited number of SKU's to remember. Because you could have 6 or 8 people calling tickets, nobody else was allowed to talk except the dressing table operator (we were all "operators", and where you worked was called a station), communicating with his/her grill operator.

You sometimes developed a very strong bond with each other because of this constant discussion with each other. I know of at least 8-10 couples including me that eventually became man and wife after they were DT and Grill person. It was not unusual for the grill person to be a female either, and SnS was very progressive in this aspect. We had one girl named Becky who was left-handed and she could work the grill better than anyone else, except me of  course. She was a wizard at the Dressing table too and I couldn't compete there. I sucked at that station and never really got any better either. I think it was a mental block.

Here is the best DT Operator I ever saw. 

This is Sheryl in the middle.

I could never snow her, not once.

(LtoR) Bill, Denzil, Sheryl, and George
Mgmt at 2935 S. Madison circa 1974

So after you developed the skill to make sandwiches fast enough and could fry in what was called a 3 set rotation, and had learned the skill of using the right amount of grill salt (8 parts salt to 1 part pepper) and learned how to toast your buns correctly (Not a person there now working there, knows how to toast bread or buns anymore), then you had to demonstrate that you could keep up on the busiest nights while remembering what was said by the callers in the right order. Sometimes if you got lost or put in the "weeds" or got "slammed" you had to have your dressing table call sets to you.

Back then while using the original gas grills, a set was defined as 6 patties of meat cooking at once, a 3 set rotation was cooking from left to right across the cooktop, cooking in the right spaces, and keeping the grill scraped clean in the process. Some DT operators preferred to call sets because they could control what you sent to them and they could then work tickets out of order if they had to. In that system, the DT was the god as they had the final say about what got cooked and when.

You would call for "off set" and in return would hear something like "Off set, cheese two", which meant in a total of six steakburgers in the set, send 4 steakburgers and two cheeseburgers. Anything not specifically mentioned was assumed to be a single steakburger. Also when I first started the double was called a Super Steakburger, so you also might hear variations of something like "Off set, Super Steak, Super Cheese, cheese one", which meant two doubles one with cheese, and one steakburger with cheese and the other is assumed to be a single steakburger" because you didn't have to do anything to it, it just wasn't called, it was assumed. Once you learned the shorthand it was very informative, very compact, and pretty efficient if it was used correctly.

Somewhere in the early 1980s they changed to an electric grill top which was made a little differently, didn't have a scrape tray in the front and back, it just has one in the back, and it also has room for 8 steakburgers in each set instead of six. It is just my opinion however I think changing the grill style and grill top in response to the price of natural gas in the 80s was one of the biggest mistakes they ever made. It had a lot of detrimental aspects to it including; being generally harder to work, was more surface to clean, made short grill operators more susceptible to burns, it didn't stay as hot and took longer to recover, wouldn't stay calibrated, allowed people to cook too many steakburgers at once, was harder to clean under, and had too many non-cleanable parts. I've seen dozens of fires associated with these grills and all because you just cannot keep them as clean as easily as the gas grills.

It is my considered opinion that the electric grill top introduced the "Murder Burger" as a menu choice when it was combined with the introduction of the touch screen system and the loss of training knowledge associated with the skills necessary to keep a sharp square-ended spatula and how to keep the grill top clean by scraping the residue from it cleanly. I'm not even really trying to be funny really, I gave that a lot of thought over the years and in every store, I managed I probably spent more time teaching people to do things that were not addressed in any of the training systems that no one except me (and other older managers who knew the older system)  thought were useful skills for your crew to have.

The second biggest mistake was the advent of the touch screen as the controller of the food product delivery process. In my opinion, it should have stayed with the DT operator, as the boss of what gets made when.

Now the communication skills are no longer there and it shows.

Sitting at the table doing schedules

Brian Lawless and Maike circa 2017
Brian was my assistant for many years and one of the
best people I ever worked with.

BigMike today, retired and don't have to shave no more.

I'll have more tomorrow. My back hurts.
BigMike