As the Burger Turns part 3

Monday June 29,2020 at 6:00 a.m. I slept in today, us old folks do that from time to time

Here are the morning COVID numbers - straight from the google. All USA only. 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ 

Cases of the virus	2,637,180	Cases with an Outcome	1,221,965
Deaths	128,438	Recovered or Discharged (89%)	1,093,527
Recovered	1,093,527	Deaths (11%)	128,438

Disclaimer: The title of this post is the start of my soap opera for old people called "As the Burger Turns" or it could be titled "Tales from the Grill" or maybe even "Flipping for posterity", not sure what to call it yet. Anyway, to make this clear right from the start, everything in this post is wholly 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 today 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.  

So anyhow, the next day I had no idea what to expect. This gorilla of a man who was probably the most nonverbal manager I had worked for at that point, asked me if I wanted to keep my job and when I answered the correct way I suppose, he bought me new uniforms after I pled poverty and took me to the barber. Then took me back to the restaurant, told me to get out, and left me standing there, looking stupid. 

The next day I got up early, not my usual rushing at the last minute, will I make it to work on time nonsense, took every short cut I knew, and pulled in the parking lot a full 15 minutes or so before I was supposed to be there. It didn't matter, John was already there, coffee half drunk, half the line set up doing my job again. So I went into the door and had no idea what to expect next. I also knew something was very very different about this man than most folks I had ever met up to this point. He had a manner about him, I can't exactly explain it, but just the way he approached things. 

I once saw him tear up the delivery ticket from the bread man, called him a cheating bastard to his face. The guy was livid, got pissed off and red-faced, and was angry as hell and John just smiled at him.  The guy just handed John his pad and said "Well hell, you fill it out, whatever you want John". I also saw him chase the coffee man back into his truck because he told John to move "He had work to do". That guy was an idiot. I also saw him help an older woman from her car, helping her balance up onto the curb and into the building. He was shall we say, an anachronism. 

I didn't know what to make out of this guy. I remember thinking, there is going to be a line of fire with this guy, he reminds me of my Dad. Very gruff, beat your ass in a heartbeat, smack you upside the head, walk old ladies in from their cars. Weird as hell, but in the same way, I learned to stay under the fray so to speak, kept my head off the chopping block, and watched the world around me transform in a way I have never seen before nor since.

For the first few days, I wouldn't tell you I can remember exactly what happened. I do remember what John did because we talked a lot about it later on, but for the first couple of days he just watched us work. He cashed out customers sometimes, placed all the orders, did the administrative work (which I was glad because I was doing it up to that point for no extra pay), and otherwise, it was sort of uneventful. The crew would come up to him and ask him questions and he would say things like "What would you do If I wasn't here?", he said that a lot. A lot of the time they would say I would do this or that, and sometimes they would say I would go ask Mike because he was usually in charge in the mornings. Whenever they said that he would send them to me while I was working the grill and I got the idea I was supposed to make a decision about whatever it was, so I did.  I sent people on break, gave customers refunds, had the crew make food over, settled some minor disputes and etc. 

After a few days of that, one morning about 3 or 4 days later, John asked me to sit with him. The last thing he had said to me before that was "Get out of my car." At that point, we were pretty nonverbal (boy was that ever about to change!). He asked me how I thought it was going and what I thought about certain things and after I told him what I thought, he then told me I had too many friends on the crew to be a manager. Hell at that point I knew what my nametag said, and I knew what I did, but I didn't know what I actually was, so I just sat there. He said to me something like (I mean it was 40 years ago or so, I do not exactly remember verbatim what he said), what are you going to do when you come to work one day and one or more of your friends are ex-employees? I remember saying "I would come to work, what do you mean? I'm not stupid, they don't pay my bills", or something to that effect. 

Over the course of the next few weeks, I saw him replace every single ding dong, hard-headed moron and dumbass that was on that crew. Everyone that came to work every day looking for a fight, got one with John and every single one of them lost. Every single time. He didn't announce it to the world and only a few times in the whole time I knew him did I ever hear him make any kind of spectacle out of it. He would catch people on the way in the door mostly but I remember seeing him tell bus riders the night before that they needed to look for a different job. I learned later that it was about keeping them from taking the bus to a job they no longer had but didn't know it yet. He also told me much later that it was about keeping the drama to a minimum so somebody who had just ridden the bus to work would not have to wait for a way to go back home.  I thought maybe it was compassion but he just called it good planning. "Poor planning on your part, Does not constitute an Emergency on mine."

He would sometimes be forced to terminate someone for something they did, but it didn't happen often, but when it did, he would just hand them their time card. He would say does that look right? Then he would tell them to "Sign their timecard." Mindlessly most people would sign it and say what was that for? That's where he would say, "You won't be needing it to clock in and out here anymore because you don't work here. You just verified your hours are correct." They would stand there and be stunned thinking he was joking or something, he would just tell them to get their stuff and go home. It was an abject lesson in being calm under fire. I found out later that virtually EVERYTHING was a lesson with him. You do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because somebody is looking.

There were probably more people than this, however, Linda McCoy, Rita Groce, and I were the only ones I remember, and about 3 or 4 more I can't think of the names of still working at this restaurant after the first 10 weeks or so. Like I said there was probably more and I'm probably wrong about that, but it seemed that way. The people he hired to replace the ones that were terminated were all pretty good folks. Most of them worked out and I recall this store got easier to run and busier as hell as a result. The funny thing I remember in that period of time was unlike every other month I had ever worked in any other store, I never saw any higher-ups in the store. John would be on the phone from time to time but for the most part, no one from the Division Office ever came to see us. That was weird I remember thinking because everywhere I had worked before had visited on a regular basis and you could almost set your watch to it. 

As a matter of fact, sitting here and thinking about it, after Vern Tetrick was let go, I could not tell you who our District Manager was for quite a while. We probably had one, I just didn't know who it was. It was very strange. I was (was yeah!) very nosy and liked to know stuff and that was something that I never knew until much later. Apparently, John had first been assigned to the N. Keystone store and had at some point ran the district manager off, literally, telling him if he wasn't there to help he could go drink coffee somewhere else. I was never sure if this was a myth or it actually happened. Based on all the other stuff I saw in my time with John, I am certain that it was true. He probably threw the guys briefcase at him too for good measure. I've seen him break the earpiece off of a receiver on a telephone from hanging it up so hard on some poor soul, at the front counter in front of a line of customers waiting to pay, then he just says "I think this one is defective and walks off". I remember trying and losing my ability to keep a straight face while I was taking people's money. It was like a surreal episode of Saturday Night Live.  If you aren't part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. 

John did not put up with shit from anyone, he didn't care who you were. I asked him once if he just wasn't concerned with getting in trouble. He looked right into my soul and said "Michael, I was looking for a job when I found this one." I think he meant he wasn't going to change who he was, take it or leave it. Some people hated John for who he was, especially the ones that thought they were superstars that he canned. 

The rumor always circulated that John had been a high school teacher in a past life teaching math and calculus and stuff like that. Working with him I could believe it because the guy was a wizard with numbers. I never asked him about it though because I was too busy getting my ass worked into a frazzle and answering a lot of questions about products and cases counts and etc. If you worked for John you had to know everything about the products that there was to know. He studied the numbers in our store so intently that not only did we stop running out of products, but he eliminated overtime, MWD, the PnL fell into line (I think he scared it into line myself) and every other number you could think of to discuss in a restaurant. 

He would look at finished food waiting to be served so intently that I expected it to jump up and run away. I saw him, in the beginning, reject food by just pushing it off the Passover back into the cook line saying stuff like "We don't sell junk boys and girls". Whenever he was around the Passover the Dressing table person paid attention because nobody wanted a Chili 3 ways in their lap. After a while he didn't have to do that anymore, as the crew would do it for him, they would tell each other "I'll make sure he throws it at you if you try to serve that". If anything that was made from spaghetti wasn't steaming you had to make it again. He would not allow you to serve a spaghetti product that wasn't steaming hot, same with soup. No steam? TRASH!! Make it again. 

He kept everyone on their toes at all times because you never knew what he was going to throw at someone next, if they were a screwball it could be a metal pan or a straw. You just really never knew especially if you tried to make a substandard product and pass it off as a good one. My favorite was when he rejected a milkshake. Right up until the point where he made me help clean up the mess. 

The people whom he kept and the ones he let go were all pretty much the same unremarkable kind of person with the exception of these things. He kept you if you came to work on time, wore a clean and cared for uniform, were manageable, and took direction. Once you were deemed capable of being managed, he would push you to produce at levels you never thought was possible. He would push you harder and harder right up to the edge of insanity and sometimes right over the edge. He demanded exceptional effort, terrific work ethics, trust, honesty, and perfect customer service. There was absolutely no excuse for poor service and if you wanted to see someone disappear with intensity just let him catch you being rude to a guest, whoo doggie! POOF! YOUR ass was GONE, and I mean right now, out the door, and he would walk you to it. You could not apologize for a piss poor attitude, although I did see him give a few people their jobs back the next morning after everybody had calmed down. 

I also saw him take a boyfriend or husband who came into the store to fight with his wife girlfriend or whomever, by the back of the neck and the middle of the back of his pants and literally throw his ass out the front door and tell him if he came back he would beat his ass. If the person persisted, he would station someone by the phone with instructions to call the police if he had to punch the guy. I never saw him have to hit anyone, but man was this dude ever intense. I have no doubt in my mind that he would have if he thought he needed to. You could be married and but if you worked for John you were his and he would defend you against all comers. Although if you did something exceptionally stupid, he would let you get you ass chewed by whoever desired a piece of it. That happened to me once.

I was accepted into the actual corporate management training program (Turns out before that I was being strung along by those assholes) not long after that and began the actual arduous process of completing the daily, weekly objectives of the process. In the middle of the program, John decided that he didn't like the company plan and created his own, same length of time, but way different in terms of what you expected to learn. While I was in the middle of this program (which was 6 months long, a full 26 weeks), with all of the prior programs being crammed full of exciting days of station operations processes, completing food prep procedures, sweeping, mopping, doing dishes, and so forth. 

John said to me one day, sit down and go over this program and check off how much of it you can already do. He had me read the entire outline word for word and check off all the things I had already been trained on and everything I could already complete. Since I was service qualified from the beginning and was trained by Meredith Nunamaker, Franny, Linda and Becky at Madison Avenue, and John had pretty much worked the dog shit out of me on everything else, there wasn't much. I hated the fountain and told him so because it made you so sticky and no one knew how to work that station clean and keep it that way. He just said "Huumpff", gathered up my checklists, and walked away, he told me to go back to work. This guy was maddening sometimes. He would ask your opinion, you would give it and he would walk away. I was about 6 months in with John and still could not really get a handle on him. 

My Dad was retired military and could raise the roof with his voice, he was as gruff as John, maybe more, was as direct as John, and was as quick to anger as John. Later he told me that was one thing he really liked about me, he could yell at me and I didn't flinch, I just took it and went back to work. I sometimes got the idea he was really yelling at the guy one station over from me (metaphorically speaking) and not at me. I would think that because sometimes I knew I didn't do anything wrong and got yelled at anyway. It drove him a tiny bit crazy that I looked right at him while he was yelling at me, kept my mouth shut, responded calmly with a "yes sir or a no sir", at the appropriate times and when he was done or flamed out as we called it, he would just walk away and I would just go back to work. The guy next to me would get the idea, would stop shaking about 5 minutes later and say "I'm glad that was you, he scares me to death". Yeah, I knew that, man, I got it. 

One time I was about 5 minutes late coming in the door because I stopped outside to clean up a big trash mess by the dumpster before I came in. I knew I would have to do it later, so I just took care of it sooner, rather than later. It was snowing and cold and later would have been after sundown and screw that. So anyway I came in the door and was washing my hands and putting on my apron and stuff and John came around the corner and let loose on me from 50 feet away. "Jordan, god damn it what the hell am I going to have to do, get a tow truck to come and drag your ass here to get you in here and clocking in on time?" and so forth for the next 10 minutes or so. I just stood there calmly and let him flame out and then he said: "Put your jacket back on and go clean up that mess somebody made by the dumpster Since you were late when can do without your Mr. Tardy ass for another 10 minutes or so".

I remember smiling and finishing putting on my apron and just saying "You want me to go do that again? I did that right before I came in?" He just smiled and walked away.

So anyway I was in this corporate training program, and in the middle of it, I was one of about 30 people picked to take the bus ride to Bloomington IL to take a tour of the SnS distribution center run by a guy named John Runge. This point in time, we did a lot of the work of getting all the products to the stores ourselves, and very little of the work had been moved off to other companies. We had our own semi-trucks, our own warehouse, meat processing plant, etc. Everything was done in house. The beef was processed into these 25 pound round tubes that looked like big frozen sausages. The chili meat was poured into these 6-pound tins and the orange suet was allowed to settle to the top before being flash-frozen in the huge freezers. So anyway we got to walk through all the processes, watching the butchers work on the carcasses (they came in already dead I'm glad about that), after that we ate lunch, got back on the bus and headed back to the hotel In Indianapolis we all affectionately called "Musty Acres".

On the way back, the two lead trainers, Tom Forst(?) and the other guy David somebody, handed out this 5-page questionnaire, that was supposed to be anonymous and asked us to fill it out. For the hour prior to that, there had been this huge discussion on the bus while we were sitting still waiting on something, and Tom and Dave passed out 2 beers to each of us if we wanted them. We were only supposed to have two. Well, there were some people who didn't want any beer or didn't drink it and somehow a few of them (I really don't know how many) got passed to me. I drank everything that was handed to me. Stupid me. So anyway, they passed out this questionnaire, and I was sitting there on a bus in Bloomington IL, drunk as a monkey, it was supposed to be anonymous, and it was multiple choice, you know, A, B, C, D pick one answer. 

I added an answer. To every single question. 

And to the answer key on the first page.

 

X= Who Cares

The next day, for the first time ever I met the Division Manager.

A guy named Daniel S. Jarvis. That was a great conversation, John laughed his ass off at me afterwords and Dan came within an inch of firing me on the spot. That happened to me with SnS about 4 times in my career. I admitted doing it because, I mean, why lie? They didn't actually know who did it, because it was "Anonymous", yeah right. I guess I make distinctive X's or something, but anyhow they knew who did it. I must have had a reputation or something. Mr. Jarvis came right to me and later I learned they didn't actually know who did, but he was very very suspicious and John knew me well enough that he knew it was me too, and shit I did it, but in my defense, I was drunk, in the sun, on a hot ass bus in Bloomington with a bunch of posers who were driving me crazy. 

I guess the training guys were pretty pissed because they felt disrespected. Once they found out they got an underage (20-year-old) smartass manager trainee drunk, they let up a little bit. At the time you could enter the training program as long as you were 21 by the time you graduated. The funniest part was when Dan asked me how I got drunk on a bus and I told him that they gave out the beer, well the whole matter was sort of dropped, I just had to apologize, which I did, they got their ass chewed because they didn't bother to tell anyone they supplied the beer, all I brought was my smart ass attitude. 

Sometimes that was all I had to offer.

More tomorrow.

BigMike 

As the Burger turns Part 2

Sunday, June 28th, 2020 at around 4 a.m. Why ?, because I like to hallucinate that's why.

So anyway, there I was, surrounded by the VC, fighting with Charlie.....No wait, that a movie. Man, old people huh? I think Sam Kenison and Rodney Dangerfield is in it.

COVID-19 update (USA)                                 Closed cases (USA)

2,596,770  Cases of the virus                   1,208,646   Cases with an Outcome

   128,152  Deaths                                     1,081,494    Recovered or Discharged (89%)

1,081,494  Recovered                                  128,152    Deaths (11%) 

Disclaimer: The title of this post is the start of my soap opera for old people called "As the Burger Turns" or it could be titled "Tales from the Grill" or maybe even "Flipping for posterity", not sure what to call it yet. Anyway, to make this clear right from the start, everything in this post is wholly 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 today 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. 

So anyhow, backing up just a little bit from yesterday and talking about the changes that happen all the time just about everywhere you go. When I first went to work at Steak `n Shake in the spring of 1974, I was this 16-year-old pimple-faced, long-haired, lothario with a thing for older women (I mean I was 16, I thought 25 was an older woman), and a greedy streak about a mile wide. I loved having cash money in my pocket and not waiting for payday all the time. I had not even considered waiting on cars as a "curbie" when I applied to work there, but I remember the manager at the time, a man named Wayne Duncan, who told me if I liked money working the curb would be a terrific thing for me as you got paid by every car and the better you were at serving, the more money you made. 

It was a persuasive argument and on March 12,1974 I began my career by taking a curb tray with 6 of the 10-ounce water tumblers on them, balanced on my right hand at eye level, and walking to the other end of the parking lot. Right next to me was my trainer who told me when I got to be comfortable with the tray that I needed to swing it a little bit so it would move in step with me, it would swing as I walked and I could then start to move a tiny bit faster with each walk around the lot. That is all I did on the first day, well, I carried water and took out the trash. Curb 80, please!!

After a day or so of carrying water, my trainer told me to get my water and follow her. Then she took off running with the tray and the 6 glasses of water and I stood there going, UH, what the hell? Her name was Becky and I could already tell she didn't think much of me because I was this young stupid boy who had this goofy grin and some broken glasses. She had already told me to not even bother hitting on her before I even thought about it because she didn't dig young boys, ya dig? So as I watched her disappear into the distance, running off with the water, red hair blowing in the breeze, mysteriously somehow swinging that tray, running in full stride all the way to the end of the parking lot which was about 400 feet away or so. 

I, on the other hand, had not moved an inch. 

I was stunned.

She walked back to where I was standing and said something like "What happened?", I said "To what?", she said "To you?", and I thought, this girl is silly because she thinks I can do what she just did and run with her and a loaded tray to the end of the lot. I just said "So, you think I can do that?", and what she said stuck with me, She sorta challenged me and said, "You know this is what the girls like right?". I was hooked. Of course, I was young and stupid, and she had just given me a secret so I swallowed the hook and thought, "Well, if she can do it, I can do it" and I took off running with my tray of water tumblers.

Not the only time it ever happened, but I broke every one of those damn glasses. She had not told me how to stop, so when I stopped, the glasses didn't and they all went crashing over the edge. As I was trying to salvage them, I flipped the tray back towards me and most of the 60 ounces of ice-cold water came right back into my face. Then they hit the ground, Ice, water, tray, and now broken glass. An auspicious start if there ever was one. Becky just walked into the store, picked up the broom and dustpan she had already put by the front door in preparation for this moment. She walked out to me, handed them to me, and walked away without saying another word. I cleaned up the broken glass for about 15 minutes.

At least she didn't laugh, to my face anyhow.

My Uncle George it just so happened was the Division Curb Manager at the time, sort of like the chief Curb Captain of Car service for the Division office, which was in a lot of ways sort of like the District Manager of Curb Service. He came by the store to see how his nephew was doing on his first day on the job. I wasn't even aware he knew I had started work there, so it surprised me to see him. He asked me how it was going and I told him what happened, how I had sent the water glasses flying, and they now had me carrying paper cups with lids until I mastered the skill. He squashed that idea, got 6 more ice water glasses, and made me run with him, while he carried the tray and he demonstrated the proper techniques of bringing the tray up and down, starting, stopping, and delivering the drinks to the customer and so forth. He worked with me for about 2 hours individually and when he got done, I could do it and found out I was actually pretty good at it too.

Over the next few weeks, I learned a lot about making money, some good tricks, and some stupid habits that given time and context I saw later how dumb they were. I also found time to think about how my training had gone so far, and I thought to myself that if I was ever put in a position where I was responsible to train someone to perform a function, I would give them the same kind of personalized instruction and help that was afforded to me by My Uncle George on my second day of work. Not many people got that kind of training and I wondered if that was true then what kind of training did most people get? It was a powerful lesson that stuck with me all these years later and I never forgot it. Oh, and she was right too, Becky wouldn't give me the time of day, she laughed at me no matter what I suggested. I tried to be friendly with her, I think she just didn't like me. It turns out years later, it wasn't that she didn't like me, It was just that I didn't MATTER all that much. I was the FNG and she had seen a million of them.

Oh well. 

I was 16 at the time, all 16-year-olds are idiots by definition, so what did I know?

So back to Franklin Road, I was appointed to be a Manager Trainee and was started in training to be a manager. I was eager to learn and it seemed like I was in a self-directed Montessori open classroom sort of 26-week training program. I filled out a self-evaluation every week, but what I did during the week was pretty much ran the place while Mr. Tetrick paid his bills, ran personal errands, talked on the phone, and a BUNCH of other things having little to do with running a burger joint. It turns out that he had been a District Manager for the company immediately prior to this and had been demoted to Unit Manager (Or Store manager as we called them back then) and his heart wasn't in the game. I never did know why he was demoted and truthfully, I didn't care all that much as I didn't really know him and he was pretty hard to get to know as he held you at arm's length all the time. All I knew was that if somebody wasn't in charge of this place, then my day was going to blow so I decided to just take over and let him rest. It didn't seem to matter to him one way or the other. I was fairly happy at the time because I got a pay raise to do what I always did, which was to work my ass off, do my job, and go home.

At the time I remember thinking that it couldn't get much better than this. I was barely 18 years old, got my pay bumped into the Manager zone where if you can believe it, I was making the princely sum of $2.625 per hour for the privilege of working 50-60 hours a week, 5 or 6 days per week and now I had enough money and a good enough job to get married. Also, I was working for these bunch of clueless turds like Mr. Tetrick that didn't give 2 squirts what I did so life was good. I was basically my own boss at 18 and ran a store unofficially of course, but being the short-sighted teenager I was, I can honestly say now, that I didn't know any better. I had my own key to the door, made my own coffee, opened the store and he would stroll in around 9:30 - 10:00 to do the banking. 

It was barely more than 12K per year and I was rolling in the dough. Or so I thought. One day I came to work, found the door already unlocked coffee already made and half-drunk, and about half the line was already set up. Somebody was doing my job.

That was the day I met John Franklin Fair.

First impressions are important and as I found out much later I wasn't very impressive. I knew better, but I had not shaved that morning, my hair was longer than it should have been, my uniform was pretty rumpled, I never ironed a shirt at the time, I always wore wash and wear slacks and I am certain that my shoes had seen better days because I flat wore shoes totally out before I ever replaced them, mostly because I was a tightwad, but usually because, who thinks about shoes? So, pretty much I thought I was king of the world and I was a slob. 

The first moment I saw Mr. Fair, I just knew this was going to be no walk in the park. He was just about 5' 10" maybe, about 220 pounds, had arms like an ape and canned hams for fists. He could have been a little taller I don't know, but he also could have been the bouncer. He had on basically the same uniform I did, except his was clean and pressed. Oh, and the toes of his shoes weren't all scuffed up and worn out either. I went over to him and introduced myself and said "Excuse me, sir,  Who are you? Where is Mr. Tetrick?.", He just looked at me for about 15 seconds without saying a word then shook his head, said "I'm John, your boss. Go do whatever it is that you do around here." and I was DISMISSED. 

So confused and not knowing what in the hell was going on, I went to check the line, started changing plates in the grill box, making sure the steam wells had water in them, checked the hot fudge pump, stocked the shake base and ice cream and got a pan of hot water and cleaner and began to wipe down and check the entire line to make sure it was ready to go for lunch hour. A couple of the other crew members asked me if I knew what was going on and I just said"That's John, your new boss, go ask him." I didn't know it at the time, but two things happened that morning that I found out later had changed Mr. Fairs' opinion of me. His first impression was "Well here is another slob to get rid of", and his first impression was that he was probably going to have to replace me too because I didn't look like I cared much about my job. What saved me was I was polite, wouldn't immediately engage in gossip, and went to work checking the line and worked hard at getting the place clean and ready for lunch. I doled out assignments, got cleaning lists made, made sure the bathrooms were clean, the floors got mopped and the lot got picked up. He caught me using a 14 point program checklist, asked me what it was and what it was used for. After I answered him he asked me if I had been doing it long enough that I didn't need the checklist, I told him probably but somebody told me one time that pilots with thousands of hours of flying time still used a checklist every day to make sure they didn't forget anything so I thought it was a good idea.

After lunch hour was over that day Mr. Fair asked me if I wanted to keep my job. I was sort of stunned and said, Of course, It's a pretty good job and I like doing it. He said when I came into work tomorrow and every day after that I needed a new pair of shoes, some new shirts as my collars were severely frayed, some new slacks as mine were worn out and I had to shave every single day. Then he said do you think you can do that? I told him honestly that I could not as it was about 2 days until payday and had already paid my bills and didn't have any money set aside. I told him that I could do all of it by the day after payday, and I would be clean-shaven tomorrow. He just looked at me. Then said go back to work, come and find me and see me before you go home. 

Oh boy, aw crap, ah hell. I screwed up now, I shoulda lied, I shoulda said I could do whatever he wanted. I just know he is gonna fire my ass.

I went and found him after I clocked out and he pointed at his car, said can you be an hour late getting home? I said yes, He told me to go get in the car. I went and sat in the front seat of his car and wondered just what fresh hell I had walked into. I was so nervous I think I could not have shit a pebble because my ass was so tight at this point. He came out of the back door, deposit in hand, locked the door, got in the car, started it up, and drove it away. Me and him, him confident and large and in charge, Me with an ass puckered up so tight I am sure I sat up about three inches taller than I usually did. He drove down to the bank, dropped off the deposit, and went down to the mall. We got out of the car and he and I walked into the mall. He found the Barbershop/style salon whatever it was, pointed at a chair, said "Sit", so I sat, he went over and talked with the stylist who then called me over and put an apron neck thingie on me, and cut my hair. No direction from me at all, and when I attempted to say what I wanted she just pointed at John and said "Your dad told me what to do." 

Ok, so I am totally freaked out at this point and have no clue what in the hell is happening, but it looks like I'm getting a haircut. I needed one anyway so I just said what the hell and let it happen.

Over the course of the next whirlwind 45 minutes or so we purchased a couple of shirts, some slacks, some shoes, some socks and I got a haircut. At this point, Mr. Fair had not said 50 words to me the entire fricking day. We got back to the store, he turned to me in the car and said: "Now can you start looking like I asked you to look, starting tomorrow?", My answer was "Yes sir Mr. Fair sir." He told me "Well that's just fine", and he said he would see me at whatever time it was that I was supposed to be there the next day, told me I owed him for what we had just spent on me, told me to get out of his car and left me standing there, right near the back door of the old Franklin Road Steak `n Shake location. 

I am sure I had the biggest and goofiest grin on my face that anyone had ever had on their face and I just knew that something special had just happened to me, although to tell you the truth I had no idea what I was in for.

Stay tuned for part Three of as the burger turns.

BigMike

As the Burger turns Part 1

06/27/2020 at purt near 8:00 a.m. or so, and it is Saturday

COVID-19 update in the USA

2,510,000 Cases of the virus

   127,000 Deaths

   771,000 Recovered

So anyway, go get your drink and go pee and then come back and don't be so damn impatient, cop a squat and read for a spell,

The title of this post is the start of my soap opera for old people called "As the Burger Turns" or it could be titled "Tales from the Grill" or maybe even "Flipping for posterity", not sure what to call it yet. Anyway, to make this clear right from the start, everything in this post is wholly 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 today 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. There, I just had to say that.

Look, I totally get and understand that things change and nothing ever stays the same. Not hard to understand not really, except for how fast TV Networks like FOX cancel good TV shows, replace them with shit and it makes sense to keep that in mind. The way it used to be is not a guarantee that that is the way it will stay. Especially if some money-grubbing capitalist is in charge of the money and all they want is MORE, MORE, MORE. If that is the goal, then everything that happens including the firing of some very talented people is a result of that concept. Basically, that's how American business is run today.

The accountant is in charge and nothing they do is really about growth, not really, everything they do and every decision they make is about cost containment and not much else. Even when those decisions have nothing to do with how the business is run, and everything to do with lowering costs, that's how they approach the process. We used to call that managing from the bottom up, meaning start with the profit line and back everything up to Sales even when what you do may hurt revenue, you still accomplished your goal. It's business killer sometimes, but accountants can't see it that way, they are trained to see it only one way. Similar to them are folks like stock traders, people who buy and sell REITs, derivative traders, hedge fund managers, and so on.

So I spent a great deal of my life working in the Food Industry, from about 1974 until about 2014, I worked in some role working, managing or supporting this industry primarily for two different organizations. Some people call the segments I worked in the lower ends of the business, however, I prefer to call it the busier ends because the casual dining and QSR segments account for about 3 out of 4 dollars of every dollar spent on food by consumers in restaurants. We used to jokingly call that our S.O.S. (Share of Stomach).

I worked for Steak `n Shake in one capacity or another for about 28 years total, serving as an employee in service and food production, as  Unit and District manager, corporate department manager, and with a franchise as their District Manager and later as their IT support. I also spent about 10 years or so with The Krystal Corporation when they were headquartered in Chattanooga TN as a restaurant inspector, a District Manager, and as the Corporate Manager in Charge of the restaurant inspection process as well as the customer complaint program. So you could say I have seen a lot of changes in my time in the restaurant business.

I was part of a team that began to serve Breakfast and helped to roll it out in all company stores, one of my early Bosses was in charge of introducing the 24-hour concept to the Louisville KY and later to the Indiana markets. I worked inside the process of converting the brand to a drive-thru based concept from one where the central service aspect was based on car side service (we called it "curb service" back then). We changed again from one production line unit to a dual cook line process and then again as well converted from a stark black and white tiled restaurant to one that closely mimicked a casual dining restaurant (we called it a coffee shop). They had common names for upgraded units like "Proto 1", and "Proto 2", they were very imaginative.

We went through a period of time where the company was trying to figure out how to reduce manpower from the methods of the 70s to be more competitive in the future. When I first started to work for them I think their philosophy was to "pay 'em cheap and stack 'em deep", as the change of shift in 1974 in the Madison Avenue unit was to line up in the Dishwashing area, by the station and everyone came on the line at the same time and checked their stations, then relieved the operator and only then could they could go home. Monday had about the same staff as a Saturday night did in basic numbers, except you may add a second fountain person, or a grill helper or an additional person here or there as sales dictated. I cannot exactly remember but I think the minimum wage was about $1.75 per hour back then, so you could do that as help was cheap, and there was no lack of applicants. For about 10 years starting when I did in 1974 it was a buyers market, you never had trouble staffing a restaurant and could turn away every idiot that applied. It has never been like that time, since then.

The company did all sorts of stuff to stay ahead of the competition, to stay relevant, like they added carpet, plants, overhanging ferns, did away with Chrome-based tables and chrome-based chairs, and then added a classy looking but terribly uncomfortable black and red motif table and chair setup. We changed from pound away cash registers where you literally had to pound the keys to ring a sale to a more computerized system called a "Documenter", made by Addressograph Multigraph corp. (ADM). Programmed by a tape reader, when the register had to be re-programmed, they sent a technician to re-load it using a spool of punched tape (and you better know where yours was!!), that was hooked up the register and read by a special reader. later we changed several times until the touch screens that are all the rage today came into use. These were the best as you could just see them being destroyed by the grill cooks as they used their spatulas to hit the bump bars. It was great he said sarcastically.

We went through lots of periods of change, where the company did all kinds of things to stay relevant. We tried a big 1/3 pound burger, we changed french fries to a just like mickey D's fry (that customers hated and we changed right back), we served a drink called "King Cola" that was a brand owned by Mr. Kelley who was also our owner, we changed from gas grills and single vat fryers to Electric grills and multi-vat fryers, we changed the shake mixer from single head units mounted on the milk machines to one that could mix 5 shakes at a time. There were changes that defined an era too like the addition of 3 Melt sandwiches that pretty much ended the era of a single grill person being able to run the grill when it was busy. Change in the restaurant business is a way of life and it has always been that way. The uniform has changed about 100 times in that time frame. When my oldest brother Clyde worked for Steak `n Shake, he wore all white, except for shoes and a bow tie and a cumberbund. Talk about a pain in the ass to keep clean, geez Louise!

We once endured a time and motion study conducted by our own training department that was the biggest herky-jerky pain in the rectum piece of crap I ever saw. It was I think designed to destroy your ability to take care of business, as it asked questions and measured things like "How long could you leave a dirty table dirty" until you absolutely had to clean it? How many people did you have to have on duty to take care of a minimum amount of business? It brought on the era of employees being made to do the work of more than one person even when you were slam dunk busy. I hated that crap and still do. I can remember faking those bar charts and only got caught once or twice. I ran great labor control according to their budgets (well most times I did, not always),  and still got my ass chewed because I didn't use the stupid bar charts. I know, I know, it was their business and they get to dictate how you run it, I get that. But if everyone took care of their money like I and a few others of us did, and they learned from that, they would not have the issues they have today, COVID-19 be damned.

So anyway, after a while after I first started, I took a transfer to Washington St and Franklin Rd in Indianapolis IN. I applied to join the M.T. program, not to be confused with the M.I.T. program. The M.T. program (Manager Trainee) and the M.I.T. (Manager in Training) program were different things as the first one was an employee promoted through the ranks, they were generally looked down upon as the lesser manager and the M.I.T. program was a Manager who was hired from outside the company. They were allegedly already a manager and were expected to act and look like one, although I rarely found that to be the case. Really what it meant it meant to be an M.T. is that you now had some free labor you that you could work the dog shit out of. They even had a racist nickname for it and called us "coolie labor", a coolie being a like a Chinese peasant from the early 1900s who worked on the railroads for little more than room and board. 

The M.I.T. might be smart enough to be a manager but didn't know a thing about working in this concept and they were usually dumber than a brick. I firmly believe that to this day. Anyway, after about 4-6 weeks of "evaluations" meaning I worked every crappy shift there was and every crappy schedule you could be given to see if I could or would "take it", I was accepted into the 26-week training program. Guess what the main emphasis was? That's right, once again,  I worked every crappy shift there was and every crappy schedule you could be given to see if I could or would "take it". I don't remember there being very much manager training during the first 4 weeks. Soon though, everything changed.

Stay Tuned tomorrow for more of "As the Burger Turns"

BigMike

Living in the suck

June 26th, 2020 at 5:00 a.m.and it is FRIDAY!! Whatever it is just another stupid day

Confirmation of the existence of a rotating mass of the magnetic iron core particles and deflection of the coronal ejection of solar material will commence at 6:28 a.m. est. Be prepared.

I have the dubious pleasure of telling you that all of my scans came back negative, That is they didn't find anything worth talking about so far. That is good I suppose because more talking is bad and it is more co-payments and more bills for stupid crap I don't want to talk about anyway. All of my lab tests came back at normal or better levels, even my A1C was better for the 5th time in a row. Everything is just hunky frickin dory. Well except for the formation of the bony structures in my back and the facets that surround them. Those are fubared but everything else is within normal parameters as Data from Star Trek used to say.

I'm still fat, I still have CMT type 2, still can't walk or run at all and still have diabetes but not as bad as it could be. The only thing that really bothers me is the fact that I can't stand for more than 2 or 3 minutes and can't walk more than 25-30 feet without pain. If I could figure out how to fix that part I could ignore the prostate cancer diagnosis altogether and go back to being a teenaged cheerleader. Yay rah, sis boom bah.

I have been thinking about writing a book of some sort. I am not sure what topic or genre it would be but my brother and I have been talking about doing that for some time. The thing is it doesn't appear to be something that you can just go do. You need to have a plan and a topic or a genre, then you have to decide a style. For example, is it going to be a story that is fact-based or fiction or biographical in nature or what? They say you cannot worry about whether it sells copies or not, because that is the function of the marketplace, but one wonders what would be the point of the exercise if one wrote a tome that blew chunks? It is hard to imagine why anyone would want to read a book that sucked.

I know when I am reading a book, especially a new author, I have certain expectations. The story has to move along and it has to have a little zip. It can't be a lazy rip off of something else. I won't even make it out of the first chapter if it is some slow-moving, borning epic adventure about some pointless balloon ride that bores the crap out of me. I mean it doesn't have to be car crashes and explosions every two pages, but if it is boring? Boom, throw it across the room to the trash can pile and forget that crap! Life is too short to read shitty books.

My wife finds that to be a humorous proposition. She has found some very good stories with very good content that took a little while to get going in my discard pile. I'm not always right, I just get bored quick so you better capture me or I am GONE.

So anyway, the decision about what to write about starts the thought process. Then I think who the hell would want to read anything I publish? I mean I have friends and associates numbering in the low ones who may pick it up, but after that why would anyone want to read a story written about the life experiences of some ex-burger manager ex-truck driver weird philosopher dude? It seems a little preposterous to me and I have a hard time wrapping my head around it. I mean, I have a following of about maybe 20 people that check in on me here and read what I write on my blog, but I do not think that is the same thing at all. Developing a fan base of people who want to read what you have to say because it is interesting and might be a good purchase seems like a far off distant kind of Steven King-ish abject negative reality, ya dig?

Occasionally I see things in the news or on Facebook or other social media and I think to myself, WTF did I just read? So I go back and read it again, this time weirdly focusing on the story content whatever it was. Sometimes that gets me motivated to express my opinion on my blog and I'll bang out some 30 paragraphs required reading sort of triangulated nonsense that doesn't make very much of a difference whether I wrote it or not. That is what happens to most of the stuff I write about, its time you will never recapture and I've just helped you to waste it. A very good friend of mine told me "If you don't grab me in the first 2 paragraphs, I'm gone." Of course, He also said he won't read anything over 2 paragraphs, so there is that.

I once watched a work crew cut down a big tree next to a highway and they dropped it expertly and exactly where they were trying to drop it. That fact that I stood there for 20 minutes while they did it made exactly no difference in the outcome, but I felt better seeing the conclusion of the action I saw from beginning to end. Same sort of thing with reading my stuff. Its an opinion, it is about stuff whether you agree or not is immaterial and it takes some time to slog through it. That's the same way I feel about potentially writing books. I understand the how and the who and the where. I can't figure out the WHY or the WHAT.

Does that make sense to anybody else?
BigMike

Reality worst game ever

Thursday, June 25th, 2020 Just about a month until my sweeties birthday (or so)

I am pleased to partake in the bittersweet example of waking up on the top side of the dirt,

Yay.

Sometimes I wonder why I sit down here every morning and write a blog post about just whatever random thing is going through my mind at the moment. I mean occasionally I have a fully developed topic in mind and other times it is driven by what is happening in the world at the moment but some days I just don't have a coherent thought about anything until I sit down here. Today is one of the latter days. I suppose I could start writing stories about different subjects however, I think it would be even more boring if I did. I can imagine a bunch of people seeing on their Facebook profile that he is writing about why you should perform regular maintenance on your computer for example. The collective eye rolls may be powerful enough to affect the tides. Trust me I have seen the glazed looks I get when I hit a nerve that bores the absolute crap out of people while I am speaking, so I can only imagine how quickly somebody could scroll right past my missives if they even approached that level of rusting prose.

I don't think the stuff that happens to me is a lot different than what has happened to many of you. I've never served in the armed forces for example, as many of you have, even though I wanted to pretty badly when I was a kid, they just would not let me in. Some of you guys have done some pretty exciting stuff in your careers and I love talking to you about it whenever I can. One of my past supervisors for example owns an airplane and flies it from place to place occasionally now. Man what a trip it would be to be able to just drop over to the airport and hop in the plane for an afternoon flight to somewhere. That would be cool.

I've often wondered what it would be like to be a pilot and even had a few of those airplane simulators over the years, playing around with them on the computer. It was a blast, but nothing like the real thing at all, and I get that. It's sort of like when occasionally the subject of playing golf would come up and someone would say "I've played a lot of putt-putt golf over the years", and I know they do that to maintain relevance in the conversation and to keep the subject alive, to be a part of it. I completely understand why someone would do that, even though one has nothing to do with the other, except for one clubface. It's still what people do as they try to relate.

I do a lot of listening when others are talking. To me that is the ultimate form of respect, to listen when someone is speaking to you. I have also had the very unpleasant experience of being in a conversation with someone who cannot wait for you to finish your sentence and talks right over the top of you. They sometimes do not even wait for you to finish before they starting a new thought. I don't make a big deal out of it, usually. Normally I just let them talk, just let them continue on because I figure they needed to get it out. Sometimes though, especially if there are a few people standing there, I am usually wandering away, looking for someone else to talk to, for something else to do, because you can just tell, they don't really want to talk to you anyway. To me not only is it disrespectful, it just shows me what you really think of me. I'm probably wrong about that, but I don't get all butt-hurt about it, I just shake it off and keep moving.

I'm the sort of person who doesn't need a crowd to keep me happy. Does that make any sense? I love being around people especially if they are folks who can tolerate me, however, I am just as happy alone, working on whatever is front of me, doing my own thing. It's why I am so bad at returning calls. It just doesn't dawn on me that it is something I can be doing to pass the time, I'm usually in front of my computer or playing around with some tool or another. I can kill 10-12 hours with quickness and not even think about anything important if I put my mind to it. It's sort of how I keep sane, well that and talking to myself like I do here.

I have found my self in a crowd, like in a basketball arena or at a football game of something and although I may be with other people, or with family, I have found myself drifted off in some other place, thinking about a lot of other stuff and then realize I don't even know what is going on around me. What's the score? Who the hell knows. It is the same reason nobody likes to play any kind of card game with me. I totally understand it, as paying attention is what drives the game. The problem is if I lose interest and paying attention is necessary to competing effectively, then I am screwed. We used to play Euchre all the time and I would constantly ask what was trump or play a card I should have played the last go around and inevitably somebody gets pissed off. Then they explode and start giving me shit, I am always stunned by that because I tried to tell them they did not want me to play cards with me in the first place. I even tell them what is going to happen. It almost always happens they want to get mad when I quit the game. I just can't win, nobody is happy and I predicted it. It's goofy.

Something else that used to happen to me all the time is to be recognized and talked to no matter where we went. My wife and I went to a basketball game one time and I got stopped 5 or 6 times going in and coming out of the arena. It was pretty normal for me, I don't know why exactly, however, it probably had something to do with the fact that I ran a very busy couple of restaurants at the time. My wife said something like "Wow even in a crowd you get recognized!". I never realized it. I am usually clueless and that seems a tad bit wacky doesn't it? The other day at the hospital I experienced the reverse of that. situation. Everyone saw my wife and knew her and most of them spoke to her. The other day at the doctor's office, one of my doctors looked at my wife, immediately recognized her, and then looked at me and says "So, you decided to take your life in your own hands and marry her, huh?". It was funny because she has such a good relationship with the Doctors she works with every day that they are totally comfortable talking to her as a human being.

I love that part.
BigMike

Living in weird times

Wednesday, June 24th, 2020 Today is my wife's Monday, can't wait until her Friday

So I missed my first blog post since spring yesterday, as I had to go on my tour of Northwest Georgia's finest medical facilities and greet all my fans in the Radiological. Administrative, Nursing, Scanning, and various other departments that I have had to deal with this week. I've had a ton of X-rays, an MRI of my neck, a radiological scan of my bones in Nuclear medicine, I had a lo-Dose Cat Scan of my lungs checking to make sure I don't have any apparent lung cancer (I don't thank god!), and CAT Scan of my abdomen and pelvis. I am poked and prodded and scanned and X-rayed and Magnetized and done with that crap finally, at least for a time. It is not only time consuming but annoying and you feel as if you are just a peg in the pegboard of the process. You go through all that crap and pretty much nobody can tell you anything.

Oh, I'm wrong, I did find out my kidney function is good.

I have a blast making sound effects like the screeching sound of going around a corner in the wheelchair while somebody else is pushing it. I do that to amuse myself and see if I can get the bored medical person (titles schmitles) to giggle. It usually works to some extent. It's always better when my wife or daughter is there and can be a floor show if I brought PJ. One or two funny things happened, One was a medical student who came to get me from the waiting room to take me to a scanner, and he says "ok let's go, its this way", and sorta turns around and begins to walk away. Then he noticed that I wasn't with him, he stops, looks back sort of puzzled, noticed I haven't moved and says "Do you need me to push you?"I just giggled and said, "If you want me to go with you, yes!" I mean, the scanner room is several hundred feet away down the corridor and around a couple of corners and it's not like it is one doorway to the right, pretty close to me. I could not have moved the wheelchair that far if I wanted to.

Later on, in the scanning room, I was messing with him and said "You did notice I was sitting in a wheelchair right? and that I am handicapped, I mean disabled?", He was embarrassed and admitted he was distracted. It was a giggle. Another time, a nurse came out of a set of double doors that were behind me and to the right of me, behind a wall that was obstructing my view. She came out and called my last name, and I yelled back "Yes?", and she waited. Then she said my name again, "I said "Yes", again and then she came into view from around the little corner we were behind, saw I was sitting in a wheelchair, and apparently was embarrassed and told me to hold on and rushed back into her doors. I didn't have the heart to say "Where do you think I am going to go?", but she came back with all of the blood draw equipment she needed and took my blood sample right there. It is amazing to me that even in a hospital, people are taken aback and a little unprepared for a person who doesn't walk. I'm used to it everywhere else I go, but even in a hospital, it happens. The best part is my wife. She just rolls her eyes and ignores my silliness and goes back to her book.

Anyway, It was a blast, Trust me.

So moving on, my observation today is to say out loud "We are living in very weird times, Bro". I really never thought that I would be a part of a society that seems so intent on tearing itself apart. Ideologically people who have differing opinions from each other are enrolled in the biggest character study I have ever seen.

It's a study in the denial of reality actually.

I watch perfectly normal-seeming rational people argue about some of the stupidest crap I have ever seen and sometimes I have to hit the mental replay button to make sure I heard what I thought I heard. People who I know personally, for example, that I know have absolutely no scientific training whatsoever, and who are good mechanics and great fabricators have formed opinions about scientific subjects that make either no sense or have absolutely no facts behind them. It is sorta stunning that they will believe five or 6 youtube videos made by some wacko presenter but anything actually made by scientists or people who have expertise in the subject being discussed are labeled as "Fake news" or liars, and the sole ONLY reason for this pronouncement from them is because they do not understand what is being said and because of that they don't believe it. Amazing. Just think if they didn't believe that Advanced mathematics was real.

Our leadership doesn't help the situation at all either. I am not talking about one person or party though, because this problem lands squarely on and belongs to each individual, without regard to their political party or their elected position. They all seem to be intent on not coming to grips with dealing with what is happening at ground level. All of them act like we aren't really in the middle of, for example, a pandemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people. I have seen comparisons that make no sense and don't have anything to do with each other be used as the basis for what I can only call dipshit announcements.

For example, Here is just one stupid one of many, there was a health department questionnaire, that was created (and since withdrawn) in South Dakota, was given to returning Smithfield meatpacking workers who were coming back to work after the plant had been temporarily closed were asked varying questions. Several questions asked things like; Have you been exposed to or worked with someone who has had any of the symptoms such as a runny nose, a high temperature, someone who has been off sick due to the COVID-19 virus, has anyone in your family had the virus, and etc. It seemed that the questions were designed to look for connections between workers who may have been sick. That seemed perfectly reasonable until you read the bottom statement that said something like "If any of the above answers indicate positive then that employee is not eligible for COVID-19 testing".

WHAT? That's right, if you have been exposed, you don't get tested, because the government says testing potentially exposed workers could cause a panic, and meatpacking is an essential industry. Dipshit announcement.

Coronavirus at Smithfield Pork processing in South Dakota

I guess because the virus isn't toppling skyscrapers and leaving big gaping holes in the ground then the facts that 120,000 people have died aren't real enough to matter all that much. I see comparisons made all the time that are just dumb too. People say things like "Hell 50,000 people die from the flu every year and it sparks millions of hospital, doctor and treatment visits so why is this any different?" Well, for one thing, we know how to combat the flu. People die sure for all kinds of reasons like they don't seek treatment, but without treatment and vaccines and intervention millions more could and have died.

The point is we are aware of how serious the flu is and this virus is much more serious because if it takes over your system, we have no real or effective way to treat you. The Covid-19 virus deaths are statistically on top of the deaths from everything else. It doesn't take the place of the flu, hell you could survive the flu and this thing could still kill you. You could get the virus, recover from it, get the flu, and recover from it and then get the virus and still die from it anyway. 

This thing is a monster and it kills in a way that we haven't really ever seen before. It destroys the lungs. Once it has destroyed your lungs, if we could do it, the only way to treat you and reverse the damage is to do a lung transplant. Once it has destroyed your lungs you are circling the drain and are a goner. So why do we ignore it and treat it so blase`? In some areas, it seems like the more you drill down into the data, the more you look and the more you target the areas to look at, the dumber our response looks. The ultimate loss of freedom is to lose your existence, but people are worried about wearing a mask. Dumber than shit. I guess that is our right, but you are still acting stupidly without regard to how you feel about the actions taken by the other political party.

We have talked about there being a flattened curve, about the need to see new cases fall off so that we were moving in the right direction and all of that. In a lot of cases, people are talking like there has been a falling curve and the truth is a few places that have done a lot of work have seen a fall-off but most places haven't changed all that much and at least 21 states are increasing. Yet, everything in the state is opening back up and guidelines are lessening and the restrictions are going away. The virus is in full swing, hospitals all over the place are out of ICU beds, and the casinos are open. Smooth we are, Yoda said. 

The curve has nothing to do with the decisions being made, but the politics do. Politics are playing a huge part in what is going on. The Republicans are opening everything back up because this is an election year and they are trying to hold on until after the election to react, and the Democrats are trying to close everything up, but not really to save lives. They want to win the presidential election and the best way to do that is to make the President look weak and responsible for this mess. The truth is the leadership of both parties sucks and they are both at once responsible for the increasing cases and not responsible for the viral outbreak in the first place. It is maddening to try to explain this to most reasonable people.

Somehow we deem segments of our society as "too important" to close or to restrict. I understand the argument that closing the country hurts more people in the long run with job losses and unemployment and so forth, however, I have a tough time saying "Grandma , I'm so sorry but you have to die so we can still gamble." It is a ludicrous proposition and makes no sense because there has been no leadership that has been demonstrated by either party on either side at any level. If closing the economy does wider damage than the virus does at full steam, then why do we want anyone to wear a mask at all, without regard to the particularly dumbass opinion that it somehow impinges on your freedom to not wear a mask? 

Why bother with social distancing at any level, why not just get some big assed bulldozers and dig a shit load of big ass ditches and open everything up to full steam ahead,  so every theme park, every cruise line, every theatre, every ballpark, every sports league, open everything and let us have at it. Anybody that DIES gets crumpled up and crammed in the ditch and to hell with them. That way, the all-important economy will not suffer and even the funeral segment will see a rise because we will see a bunch of new purchases of funeral services. That is the inevitable conclusion of the dumbass argument for no masks, no restrictions and let me do what I want that all you morons are crowing all day long on social media.  Makes a lot of sense huh? 

Now we have politicians advancing and the folks who follow them parroting another stupid idea. The idea goes something like this "Do not do so much testing and you won't have so many cases. Simple. Slow down the testing. Fewer tests, fewer cases. Problem solved." Do you immediately see the failure in this logic as I did? Finding too many cases is not what is stressing out the medical systems, it is not what is filling ICU beds, It is not what is leading to more admitting to the hospitals. Testing doesn't kill you. You could do ZERO tests and the same amount (or more) of people would still die.

As you drill down from the national leadership to the more local level, what you generally find are points of view being expressed that model very closely the national parties and decisions that are made based upon politics and not science. That is until you ignore politics altogether and look at medical leadership and medical professionals instead. The one thing that medical people say with one voice is that more testing leads to more negative cases too (And I don't believe I even have to say that), however, you look at it however the same #'s of people still die. Without behavior changes, people die. That is something all medical people agree on and we are not listening. 

That is something I will never understand. I am not advocating a return to a locked-down society. I am not saying we need to stay at home all over again and all the stores need to be shut down. Even if this is the very best option, it is not something that is likely to happen because we do not have any interest in it due to our lack of national leadership and because the common man is so confused by our collective stupidity, he doesn't believe it will help. So what to do, what to do?

Well, for a start we could demand a source of information that is not political and is not bowing and scraping to the president, begging to stay funded. Right now if you say something he doesn't like, he will fire your leader and cut your funding and some guy that ran a dry cleaner last week will be in charge of your laboratory operations and reporting. We need an unimpeachable source of medical news. Can you believe we don't have that at present?

We could have a set of national guidelines that make sense and that everybody could agree on? Instead, we got a real estate meeting run by Jared and Chaired by the ex-talk show host from Indiana that doesn't make any sense and doesn't listen to medical people. Great. If only there was a national organization that was run by scientists that could develop something like that. Can you believe we don't have that at present either?

What we do have is a mish-mash of public health policy made up on the fly by ordinary people who have no scientific training and who do not know SHIT about public health or public health policy. Quite a few of them could sell you a used car, some property, or file your divorce for you. That is the make-up of our coronavirus task force. 

Some much of what we do have our leaders telling us is just about as strange as the old "Duck and Cover" advice I was given when I was a child about hiding under my desk in case there was a nuclear attack. I'm pretty sure that was so the burning of our bodies would be complete and there wouldn't be as much pain and it may make it easier to identify the ash piles based on where we used to sit.

We could have used an example or two about what kind of mask to wear or how to wear it instead of leaving that to the internet meme-makers who point out the helpful advice on that back of the N-95 mask that tells you it doesn't prevent the coronavirus from infecting you if worn improperly or if you don't follow all the instructions. A medical professional explaining all of this would have been nice. But No, why waste time and money on that because Instead, I get to see Bruce the painter show me his nostrils filled with paint because he wore his N95 like a painters mask and it didn't stop the paint from getting inside his nose so how can it stop a little germ??? Trust me, that was really extremely helpful, thank you for forwarding that 10,000 times yesterday alone. It did a world of good.

Something that would have really useful would have been a public demonstration of how to help yourself to stay healthy from our leadership, like the proper way to wear a mask. Hell, they missed a great opportunity for some real MAGA marketing if somebody would have just thought to make red MAGA masks and hand them out at his rallies. He would have been the corona King and would have been the leader on this issue. Instead, we get Buffo the clown saying "What mask, we don't need a mask ", and Baldy the life long Democrat Puking up his BLM bullshit in a kente cloth in a black face mask and saying exactly JACK SHIT NOTHING and trust me, both of you are really helpful fellas.

So really nothing has happened to help us. Neither side has taken the lead, We are all still dying, we are all still sucking worse than we did yesterday and no one has a clue that we are lemmings being led over the edge. 

That's great. I love it.

As a result; (From the CDC yesterday)

2,203,302 Cases of the virus

   120,333 Deaths

   740,000 Recovered

Thank God

BigMike

The Electoral College has a purpose

Monday, 06/22/2020 at about 7:30 a.m. (I've been watching television, sorry)

Again with the lectures and oh well, I see folks talking about stuff like they know,

Well, boys and girls, it's that time again, another day in the lecture series entitled "What you should know in order to be an American citizen."

I'm BigMike and welcome to my Ted Talk.

First, I have to say, I am just absolutely blown away as I read social media and the news and commentary not only on the Internet but on physical newspapers and other sources. I am stunned at how many people really don't understand how our country was designed to operate but also have not the first clue how to participate in it. They do not vote and do not know how to vote. One guy said to me "If I register to vote, the next thing you know they will be calling me for jury duty." In addition, it is overwhelming at the sheer number of people that express the sentiment that they do not care what goes on around them, but they also have no desire to learn it either. Another man told me "I am a busy man with a life to live and a family to raise who has time for all the voting shit." To live life in this country and never want to participate or experience how it works is to me, just depressing.

I cannot understand how anyone can think like that. It is almost easier to understand how people can want to withdraw from society altogether than to be able to wrap your brain around the thought that there are people who want to live here and just want the government to leave them alone in every other aspect of their lives.

Elementally there are certain things I think that every citizen should know. Really, I think there are things that every citizen should be required to do, and I am not sure how you would go about ensuring that it happens. It is amazing to me that immigrants have to be tested to achieve naturalized citizen status and people that were born here cannot even tell you where most of the states are. Jay Leno on the Tonight Show used to have a segment on that he called "Jay-Walking", where he would take a microphone and a camera into the streets of downtown LA and just ask people questions, to see if they could answer basic questions that everybody should know. One of the things he would do is walk around near a college campus and ask college students to identify states on a big US map. Almost everybody could identify their home state, almost none of them could identify the Eastern seaboard states. Usually close to zero could tell him how laws were created, or how our militaries were structured. Until he got to immigrant communities, they could almost tell him everything he wanted to know. People who wanted to be Americans so bad would study everything they could find on the subject in order to prepare for the tests.

People that lived here could care less and would walk away. It's the same way today and it is stunning.

One of the most misunderstood mechanisms of our election system for example is the Electoral College system. Most people know that it exists in some form or another but almost NOBODY can tell you what the purpose of it is or how it operates or why. Students of history may be able to reason out a few details however, Joe Average American doesn't have a friggin clue and to me, that is one amazing and terrifying statistic at the same time.

Almost no one can tell you how a vote they cast in a Presidential election in November translates into the votes of their electors in their states December. Many people think that the name of the system designates a place or a group of buildings and it has nothing to do with that at all. The only reason the term "College" is even used in the name at all is that it was a term that was used long ago to describe a gathering of representatives of the people that were ordained to represent their interests in a collegial way, that is peacefully and with dignity. It never was intended to describe a building or a location.

The number of electors assigned to each state is equal to the number of senators plus the number of members of the house of representatives in the US Congress. In this manner, smaller states with smaller populations have more power than their population may suggest but not as much as bigger more populous states do.

The electoral college was created by a set of so-called uneasy compromises at the end of the constitutional convention in 1787. The framers could not decide whether the choice of a president should be made by Congress or by the States. They also could not decide whether all states should have an equal voice (or power) in the selection or if more populous states should have more of a say in the overall outcome or process. Also, there wasn't agreement as to whether the choice of a state should be made by local elites or by popular votes cast. In the end, the declared "Committee on Unfinished Parts" created a unique structure that was ultimately approved, called the electoral college.

State legislatures could use their discretion to determine how to choose electors and some states just appointed electors until around the mid-1800s. In most states, the legislature gives the winning party the duty of choosing their electors and most states have a "winner takes all" process, although some states allow for a proportioned choice of electors based on the popular vote totals. Most electors are typically members of their respective parties and are pledged to vote for their party's choice for President. These are called "Faithful electors", that are electors that are bound to vote for their party's choice. Some states do not absolutely require this to be and those electors are called "Faithless Electors", and they are not bound by anything ut tradition to vote for their party's choices. As you can imagine, neither party is thrilled with this kind of elector. The political party likes to know what the outcome is going to be with certainty when the electors meet to cast their ballots in December.

This month, the US Supreme court will issue a ruling on the independent powers of the electoral college. This ruling should finally clear up the meaning of and determine the use of the college in the future. We'll have to wait and see what happens in the future to what impact it has on future elections.

There is a movement underfoot in America, funded by the democrats,  that wants to eliminate the Electoral college. It is my opinion that this effort will fail as it will require the passage of a Constitutional amendment to remove this process from American politics and I do not think there is enough political will to make it happen. Also, as most people who are in favor of this, are poorly educated on the way the process works, they have a tough time explaining it other than expressing a general dislike for it, they cannot make a strong enough case to make it happen. It's hard to explain something this complicated to people who don't want to hear the information in the first place.

The popular sentiment is that because of the electoral college system, we have had presidents elected to office who received fewer votes than the person who lost the election. Based upon the aggregate popular vote totals this is a persuasive argument, however it is not how our election system works and is not how it has ever worked and is nothing new really. People have called the Electoral system anti-democratic because of this. In two of the past five elections have been decided by this system and not by popular vote totals. For example, both G.W. Bush and Donald Trump have gone on to become president although they lost the aggregate popular vote totals.

So what would happen if we eliminated the Electoral College system? Well, one thing that would immediately happen is that the saying "one person- one vote", would take on more significance than it ever has. In practice, the system in place now requires a majority of the electoral votes cast to be elected. The majority at this time is 270 votes, which is one more than 50% of the total of 538 Electors. The # of electors varies by state, for example while Alabama has 9, Massachusetts has 11 and Vermont only has 9.
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The problem created by removing the system is that smaller less populous states have will have much less influence in the outcome and the larger your population the bigger your influence. That seems like a good idea maybe until you consider that in some states larger cities can be more than 65% of a state's population and theoretically you could win an election by winning big cities and ignoring rural America altogether. The other side of that argument is that it is exactly what Barack Obama did in 2008 so it didn't make any difference to begin with, however, his x-factor was minority voters as well as everyone else so it is difficult to extrapolate that election using that argument.

The bottom line is the system worked as intended and because of the system doing its job and attempting to represent the nation, Barack Obama won and Hilary Clinton lost. Although the popular vote was huge for Hilary in California, the electoral college diminished the effect of the popular vote by reducing it to the number of electors controlled by the state. That made every other state count more equally and that is what it is designed to do. Without the college, you could control 10-12 major cities more or less without caring much about the vote anywhere else, win the election and the will of 35 or so states would be negated. This protects the votes of small towns and rural America.

That is why we need the electoral college no matter what your political affiliation is.

1. Comedian-actor D.L. Hughley collapsed onstage in Nashville TN the other night and has now tested positive for COVID-19
   
   
2. A federal judge has denied the Trump administration's request to block publication of John Bolton's book. Saying "the cat was out of the bag, the judge opined there was no way to undo what was already done.
   
   They are still going to try to take away any profits he makes from the sale of the book, however.
   
   
3. A warrant has been issued for the arrest of the subject who allegedly burned Wendy's restaurant where Rashard Brooks was shot by police.
   
   A white, blonde-haired woman is being sought.
   
   
4. Sick outs continue on the 5th day in Atlanta as cops refuse to report for duty because of how stupid the politicians are.
   
   No word on a resolution.
   
   
5. Several bags of human remains have washed ashore in Seattle WA on the shoreline. At least two bags were recovered. No word on sex or identities or how many bodies.
   
   Probably a coincidence there is civil unrest there too.
   
   Yeah, that's it, a coincidence.
   BigMike

Hey Dumbass Atlanta is on Fire

Sunday 06/21/2020 at about 5:30 a.m. because sleeping is for dead people

Eat pineapple on your pizza I could care less you weirdo. I won't do it, but whatever,

So, as old and out of touch as I am and as unprogressive as I must be and as an ultra weenie nonliberal as I must appear I cannot seem to grasp something about these protest movements that quite frankly make no damn sense to me at all. I suppose it may make sense to some pimple-faced mama's boy who lives in his parents' basement and spends all day drinking Mountain Dew Code Red who has been schooled in the ways of the protestor by the bleeding heart liberals of twitter, but I don't get what they are trying to accomplish. I'm not sure that they get it either because the points of view being expressed are all over the map and have so many permutations going at the same time that the only thing about any of it that makes any sense at all is the looting. Looting I do not agree with, but I understand. There is a diamond bracelet in the window of the jewelry store, there are no cops, you smash the window and steal it because you can. I don't agree with doing so, but I understand it.

What is the end game these people have envisioned? As brilliant as they seem to be and as hard as I try to see the finish line of this chapter in American life, I'm having trouble trying to figure out just exactly what all of these screaming morons hope to accomplish by burning down buildings, breaking every piece of glass they can see, spray painting everything they can reach and pulling every statue and monument down that is in every city park in America. Coherently, if I had to put a name to it what would I call this strategy, and what would be the purpose? Marching down the main street in a bigger city or maybe all 8 of you standing in front of the fountain in my little town peacefully protesting, chanting Black Lives Matter and end Police brutality at least has a sound message attached to it. You are agitating for a change in the system that exists. I get that, makes perfect sense, is coherent, doesn't stand a damn chance in hell of changing things in any state legislature in America, but at least I get it,

If I start with the end goal in mind and work your strategy and logic backward, not only do I get lost in a maze and also covered in a fog of weird strategy, because if the stupidity in the city of Seattle WA, is the ultimate goal, then something is totally warped and FUBARed about the way you are going about this. If I understand the goal you've stated you are protesting against armed police who shoot you at every opportunity, so you set up our own police free society (called C.H.O.P.), that is surrounded by walls, collects dues from residents (if they want to stay in the zone) and is patrolled by armed but untrained citizens who shoot each other at the slightest provocation? When things burn because arsonists are having a heyday, you cannot call the fire department, because your armed forces guarding the zone, will not let the trained first responders into the zone, and business (for example) will just have to be sacrificed for the greater good of the people under the protection of your occupying force. Is that about right? What did I miss?

If the end goal is to remove the police departments then was the end strategy to have roving gangs of street thugs with handguns and fully automatic AK-47's control the roadways? Was the idea to deny white people access to these areas because you are only looking to kill each other? When nighttime happens (like every day), is the end goal to allow a street war to happen every day where people get shot, bleed, and die for your cause (even if you cannot verbalize it?)

If none of this is your ultimate goal, the pray tell just what in the hell are you, idiots, trying to prove except to possibly be certain that everyone in your area either cannot get insurance anymore because it is too dangerous or to raise the rates so high that no one can operate a business anymore for the same reasons? Is the ultimate goal to make everyone in these roving gangs virtually guaranteed employable as private police or security because you now know that the actual Police will; come nowhere near this place?

In my view, all of these actions are treasonous and should be dealt with by the National Guard. Everyone involved in these activities belongs in federal prison, for a very long time. Where in the hell is the State Police? Why hasn't the Guard been activated? How long do everyday citizens have to be held hostage before someone acts? Where is the Mayor of these cities? What happened to the Governor? I mean MY GOD, people are shooting and looting and this phrase is the only thing any of the leadership has gotten right about this mess from the beginning!

The bullshit started in Minneapolis MN and it exploded from there. It should have been stopped there and it could have been If the Mayor or the Governor there had made a call and had the balls to have gotten the National Guard involved on day one. Protests would have been allowed and rioting would have been stopped. Instead, he made some dumbass statement and pandered to the poor victims and cried on camera and unilaterally acted as if somehow the people had a right to burn down an AutoParts store. Instead of saying that those responsible would be held accountable and acting on that statement, he was all over the board and let it rot and fester until one moment it was a protest and the next it was a riot. I blame him for inaction and weak leadership.

Day after day the crisis has been fed fresh fuel by every incident that happens between the police and any black person without regard to their criminality. It is so much stupid nonsense and has been engorged by the emotional context whipped up by politicians kneeling at coffins, National Leaders wearing kente cloth, and now the shooting of a black man in Atlanta Georgia. Day after day politicians seeking to increase their national exposure at the expense of the police officers or cover their own criminal conduct have said and done whatever is necessary to place their portraits in the best light. Their conduct has been disgusting and makes me angry. I just wish to hell everyone in the News media would quit pandering to these two idiots in Fulton County and look at the facts instead.  What do they think is going to happen as soon as the case of this shooting makes it in front of a dispassionate judge? At some level, this will be dismissed with prejudice so fast it will make your head spin and these two idiots, the Mayor of Atlanta and this District Attorney are setting the city up for disaster when the public that has been rioting in favor of defunding the police (whatever that stupid phrase means) hears the charges have been dismissed. What is going to happen then? Gov. Kemp better think about staging the National Guard in Fulton County GA on that day.

Look, guys, we have to admit it, it is simple really. This is not utopia. The reality is that our society has way too many gangs, thugs, criminals, and low-level, provocateurs, to get rid of a single police officer. We are kidding ourselves if we think that social workers and inspectors that are unarmed and in unmarked cars are going to make a damn bit of difference in our bigger inner-cities where we haven't put any resources in decades. You are dreaming if you think that sending a social worker into a dispute in the middle of a lower socio-economic area to discuss the problems the groups are having will have any effect on gang turf, drug sales, street wars or strife that is fed by chronic unemployment and the lack of social services at every other level. It is political suicide to attach your name to programs like these where you are destined to see killings of the unarmed, non-uniformed officials become a common act. After that happens and you were unprepared for it, then what? You people are crazy who think this has a chance at success. It's Al Gore talking about midnight basketball and Hillary who is giving us the old "It takes a village" speech all over again, only this time it is packaged differently, by activists who have no vested interest in there ever being a solution because then who needs them?

We simply cannot leave the people to defend themselves. Its an ignorant idea and it makes no sense. On only the 3rd day of a Blu-Flu epidemic, there are videos on youtube showing hundreds of armed civilians roaming Fulton County starting running gun battles with each other. The video looks similar to war footage I've seen except none of the people shooting are soldiers, in any traditional sense. Then there is the idiocy in Seattle. Take a look at this
 ---> CHOP Zone in Seattle We are supposed to believe that this is a better way of life? Give me a freaking break.

In this fine video example that was furnished by our man on the scene, you will see a Blue Warrior in a tracksuit walk by with a "chopper" in his hands, which is an AK-47 and a few minutes later you will hear it shooting. This is what it looks like to remove the police. Is this what you are looking for? How stupid is this
 ---> Not Soldiers but in action exciting yes? What do you think the woman on the ground is thinking right now? You think she is saying to herself "I would love to report this to the police, but you know, Snitches get Stitches"

If you do not have a solid voter-approved plan in place, it makes no sense to take any action against the current structure of the police department that exists. While all of the marchers are trying to rile everybody up and make a point about how black citizens have been treated in the past, the actions taken by a few idiotic politicians are endangering the citizens of the present. What about future victims? Every single shooting victim from this day forward is preventable and has not one damn thing to do with defunding the police structure. It's a foolish concept.

If it is allowed to grow, people will die, it is just that simple and not hard to predict.

Politicians must lose the ability to make snap judgments on police action shootings. District Attorneys must not be able to circumvent established investigative priorities for the purpose of political expediency. Knee jerk decision making has to go away, at every level. Citizens should no more be able to affect the outcome of an investigation (or Al Sharpton) than the Mayor. It cannot be a political call to terminate a police officer just to satisfy the whims of a few radical ideologues. Black Lives do matter, but on an equal level to every other life, not in a superseding way. Blocking a highway is just not a protest, it is a criminal act. Can no one remember Reginald Denny? Do you wonder why no one wants to stop for your dumbass highway blocking maneuvers? Here is what happens when you stop for a crowd of rioters
 ----> Stopping for rioters- Dumb Idea

Municipalities that are their own brand of cutting edge knee-jerk reactions to "fix" their public safety issues are creating nightmares for their citizens to deal with. I really don't see how they think this will work? It's almost like they haven't lived in Detroit and Atlanta and Chicago and every other big city for the last 25 years. The fake news will show you more than 300 murders every year in Chicago alone, how does a social worker or further cuts to the L.A.P.D. solve this problem in Los Angeles?

It is nuts.

Some of the new "rules" that they have come up with are in plain English, IGNORANT. Some of them are bad enough to make me want to quit being a cop (If I were one, which I am not), because I would never be able to put my family in second place behind some of this stupidity. Some of them are so dumb, for example, one department is being told they can no longer use "deadly force" on someone who is threatening them with a knife. They are not even supposed to have their weapons drawn. WHAT? THE? HELL? Most gunplay happens within 7 yards. That's 21 feet, do you have any idea how fast someone can travel 21 feet and how long it would take to unholster and aim a weapon if someone did decide to attack you? This is the most arrogant misuse of public liability law I have ever seen.

Some of the new "Laws and Regulations" may make sense, some of them are just staggering in their stupidity. It's like they think police officers exist in a vacuum. In some areas already the Politicians have passed laws that say :

• Chokeholds have been banned in every form
• Done away with qualified immunity in some areas.
• Toning down the Militarization of police
• Banning so-called neck restraint techniques
• Made reporting Illegal treatment of detainees mandatory. Made it illegal to not report on fellow officers.
• Mandated the use, storage of body cameras, or dash cameras on police and made citizen accessibility a priority.
• They want to create a National Registry of Police Misconduct
• Banning of No-Knock search warrants
• and so forth

Ok, I get the need for some of these and agree with some of it. But to make an officer required action to be criminal if not taken is the same as the sentencing requirements that everybody is against everywhere else. Foolish. If you believe however that we need to do completely away with police departments then you are a fool. If you think some feel-good approach is a one-sized fit all solution then you have no business discussing this as your brain isn't developed enough to be in the discussion.

If you think a social worker can take the place of a well trained Police Officer in Domestic disputes then you need to call an ambulance, because you are delusional and you need to go see a doctor Quickly!!

Oh and Senator Tom Cotton? He not only doesn't understand the US Supreme Court or how it works, but he also doesn't understand the role of a US Senator either.

He is an Idiot too. Defund his dumb ass!
BigMike