You gotta know your stuff

Tuesday, May 19, 2020 at about purt near 06:20 a.m.

Howdy Pardners,

First just a brief CoronaVirus update:
1,516,550 Cases
90,916 Deaths 5.99% of all cases

A first-time academic author has published a new math study in the journal "Research in Number Theory". No big deal right? Well the twist to the story is that the author is a convict who authored the paper from behind bars. Christopher Havens is serving a 25-year sentence in the State of Washington for felony murder. Go figure huh?

I remember learning to do a lot of things for the first time. One of my quirky passions is that I love to learn new stuff, and it doesn't necessarily have to be hard, it just for me, has to be something complicated enough to make me think and to make me want to figure it out. I once had a district manager named Joe Smith who came to our area from the Pekin Illinois area. One of the things he did, with an idea towards teaching us cost control, was to supply each store of his with these enormous columnar pads. He dictated what each column should be named and then we had to fill in the blanks.

I loved math, still do. I'm a little dense sometimes and will go down an incorrect path towards a solution if I made a miscalculation, but have no problem with correcting my assumptions once I have the right information. Anyway, my mentor was an ex-high school calculus instructor named John Fair. He was a rough and tumble kind of guy who didn't take any crap from anybody for any reason. I worked for him as a young apprentice for several years. He was my tutor, trainer, teacher, and dean of men. One of the things he taught all of his trainees, even the ones that didn't know they were trainees at first, was the ways of restaurant math. He taught you how to take an inventory by doing a process that you could replicate every month so you were always comparing apples to apples. He taught you how to visualize what  0.25 meant for example when you were talking about say for example a case of ketchup bottles. He was very good at helping you to understand complex numbers and calculations by teaching it to you in pretty small chunks.

I was so entranced by him that I was called "John Fair Jr." for a little while because I sort of adopted his characteristics. I have a tendency to do that, to emulate the folks I am around, especially if they were successful.

So anyway, when Mr. Smith showed up with these columnar pads and started explaining what he wanted us to do, I was a tiny bit annoyed because it was seemingly pointless busywork. Like I didn't already have a buttload of work to do so that I could afford another hour a day of filling out a calculating process that would tell me on the last day of each month exactly what my Food Cost was and etc. I knew there was no way out of it, so I did the next best thing. I taught pieces of this process to all of my key people. My assistant managers learned how to do a lot of things because I loved to follow up and yet hated to actually do the work. That left me plenty of time to spot-check everyone else's work and entries and make corrections and teach them how to get it right the first time. One of the things I loved to do was produce or advance a person to the next level. Provided they had it in them, I saw every assistant manager as a potential GM. A lot of my assistant managers got promoted.

Anyway, to make a long story short, my store had our numbers done and turned in on the last day of the month and I thought, good now he can get off of my back about this crap. The problem was he really didn't know me at the time and he assumed incorrectly that I was a dumb as the other managers he had running his other 6 stores (or was it 5?). He called me and said he wanted to meet me at 7 a.m. the next morning after I turned in the first numbers and wanted a full explanation as to why I didn't take the assignment seriously and he was a little pissed off. As a matter, of fact so was I.

So anyway, bright and early at Oh-Dark hundred the next morning we are sitting at a big table, he wants to starts by being an asshole and asking questions, and I just said "Why not review the work, before you chew my ass? Seems logical, no?" He grunted a yes, picked up the columnar pad, and under it saw I had each category and any backup invoices, paperwork, etc in its own file folder labeled and ready to correlate with the answers on the large pad. He went over the pad, asked a couple of questions about how we came up with this number or that number and went back to reviewing the pad and its calculations. After about an hour, the restaurant picked up a little, I crept away from the table to go to the bathroom and sort of abandoned him and the pad at the big round table at the entrance. He looked at it for about another 30 minutes, then put it on my desk, packed up his crap, and left without saying another word. When the calculated numbers came back from the corporate office, my projections were off for an entire month by $5. The money I was off was an incorrectly assigned Invoice, which went to another store and I had it transferred to the correct store the next month.

He didn't bug me with his goofy shit anymore. The moral of the story is, whatever your business is you have to know your numbers if you are going to thrive and survive.

Woodchucks have gone on strike.
The beavers are now chucking until further notice.

1. Deadpool 3 is now in serious pre-production. Marvel is making their dents in the story and I fear it won't be as good because of it, but maybe they will surprise me. I think Marvel does a good job, I'm not as confident about Disney's involvement though. I think they will be a hindrance instead of helping any. Most of the cast from the last two movies is reportedly returning, with the notable exception of Deadpool's love interest and his friend Weasel, played by comedian T.J. Miller. Apparently, they will be around in Deadpool 4, but not this movie as Marvel wanted to show off two new bad guys and introduce Deadpool somehow into the MCU (The Marvel Cinematic Universe).
   
   
2. My wife is a marvel and is great at a lot of things. She is a professional medical staffer and an excellent RN who shows excellence and compassion at every turn. She can take a pile of fabric and turn it into things. She is a magician with a sewing machine. I wouldn't insult her and call her Betty Crocker though. She cooks but isn't in love with the idea, however, everything that she cooks is great. One of the things she does that I absolutely love is her banana bread, It's awesome. I wish she would make a loaf of that every week.
   
   
3. JC Penny is closing 30% of its stores as part of its bankruptcy restructuring plan. My only question is why did it take a bankruptcy plan to see you needed to shed 240 stores?
   
   
4. An electric dragster has broken the 200 mph in the 1/4 mile barrier. It ran 7.52 seconds at 201.07 mph. It is powered by an 800-volt lithium polymer battery that provides its two motors with 2400 hp and 2000 lbs of foot torque. It weighs just 2010 lbs.
   
   
5. I've become a big fan of ordering pet food and etc online from Chewy.com We have 6 dogs and it is super convenient to have the driver leave a box of dog food at the front door, as opposed to lugging it home from the store and carrying it in the house. At first we had a couple of shipping problems, but their superior customer service fixed it PDQ. Now we even get pet medicines and toys though them. We have not been disappointed.
   
   
   Bye for now,
   BigMike