As the Burger Turns part 6

You know what old people don't have? A time clock!

July 2nd, 2020 at NOON! Dammint. I told you I don't have a time clock.

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

So anyway, I have been coughing a bunch the last two days, mostly because I smoked for 35 years or so, have COPD, and occasionally my lungs make sure to let me know how damn stupid that decision was. I'll tell you what, you know that in your own head conversation everyone always has where they talk to themself or somebody asks them "Do you have any regrets about how you lived your life?" or "If you could go back and change something about your life would you change anything?". I always used to hear everyone say one of two things mainly, either it was the old standby "No, I wouldn't change anything ", he said stoically, because the "sum of my experiences is what made me who I am", he said stupidly OR "I would pick several stocks I knew were winners and retire", something like that.

Sometimes there was the occasional regret about a car accident or something unpredictable that happened, but I don't think that counts. The answer is usually not to get married or not have kids or any of that because then they wouldn't have their beautiful children, blah blah blah. Well, I would change something in a heartbeat, I would have smacked the shit out of that idiot me that started smoking. I would have taken that 14-16-year-old idiot off into a corner and given him absolute hell. I would have made him a believer, trust me of all the stupid things I ever did in my life and there were a few standout doozies dumbass things, smoking by far was the most idiotic. 

Anyway, on to the show.

Yesterday as I read what I posted, I am going to leave it like I said it, but I really didn't like the direction it took. It sounded a bit whiny to me, sort of like I was blaming everybody else for my life, like whoa is me I had it so bad, boo hoo hoo, and that just isn't true. I was trying to go for more of a "Well, you know, that happened, as I fell off the sidewalk", sort of vibe, and I think it missed the mark a little bit. It was more of an introspective kind of thing and I think I just tried too hard or got too descriptive or something. Oh well. 

Keep this in mind in future writings that I firmly believe that I was in charge of my own destiny, that I was responsible for me, that I am accountable for what I did or didn't do and occasionally it turned to shit and it was always as a result of something I chose. I've never blamed anyone for what my career was and truthfully, I had a blast. It was pretty fun, I got to travel. I met a ton of interesting people and watched a lot of cool things going on. I saw a lot of my friends get promoted and become very successful people, and on occasion, I had the unfortunate duty or viewpoint to see the wreckage where they crashed and burned and left a big pile of burning wreckage where their career once stood. I've never asked a single person to feel sorry for me, and that is surely not my intent in writing these blog posts. Capiche`?

Anyway, I first started with Steak `n Shake in March of 1974 and my last day working with any kind of association to them was in October 2014. There were a couple of times where I left to do some other things and then somehow made my way back into the fold. Like in the early 80s for about 2 and a half years or so, I drove a tractor-trailer with my Brother and we hailed various things for North American Van Lines. I left the Indiana Division in September of 1997, mostly because my ex-girlfriend got me involved in a lawsuit she filed against the company after we had broken up. I hated the insinuations made by the attorneys and the lies she told to cover her tracks, so I just chucked it and said my goodbyes. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bitter, not at all. I still miss them as they were a huge part of my life for a very long time. Ask my wife she will tell you I never left working there, as she hears me all the time at night in my sleep, getting somebody a Togo order, taking out the trash, or ringing out a guest at the register. It used to happen a lot, now I work about 2 shifts a week. I still run great food costs and still don't give a shit about their labor budget 40 years later. 

I don't miss the work though, what I miss is the people. I made a lot of friends at work and if you were to look at my Facebook profile, there is about 330 "friends" and I would guess that about 150 of them had an association with me through Steak `n Shake. I really have the most associated friends from my last Franklin Rd crew, there is a lot of very special people in that bunch right there. I think I could walk into any shell of a store, use that crew from then in that store and run the crap outta that restaurant. Not for long probably because hell we are all old people now, but for a lunch hour? It would be the best lunch those customers had ever seen. I firmly believe that.

I feel like I had a good long run at Steak `n Shake, worked for them in several different capacities, learned a ton of things about managing people, making money, running a business, being successful, and a whole host of other things. I got to travel, worked in several different kinds of situations, rolled out programs, won about every award at one time or another that they had, lived in two different states, and did a virtual ton of heavy lifting for one reason for another to make other folks rich. 

That's what you do in American business, you work really really hard so some other guy can become a millionaire. I once heard E.W. Kelley say to a group that he made a lot of people at Steak `n Shake very wealthy, and I remember thinking to myself "Every one of them is 6 feet tall, or athletic or both". Not one of them had a problem with their lips bumping together so eloquently as I had! I figured at least I knew myself and I was at peace with it. I think I have always knew myself better than anyone else ever purported to, even with all the interviews and training sessions I attended over the years where there was a concerted attempt to identify your "type", like management type, for example, I think I know me better than anyone. I should I know I spent a lot of time talking to me asking myself "What in the hell are you doing now?", whenever something got twisted sideways.

Also, I had already found out about how they felt about my choice of the first wife, my ex-girlfriend was suing them and somehow she had dragged me into her mess, so hey!! I was batting a thousand. Yay! Overall though, I have to say, I was very happy to have worked there. I made a lot of money, had a lot of autonomy, didn't have it as rough as a lot of other folks did and didn't have to spend my whole career on the Northside of Indianapolis, which would have been a drag, so I can't complain too much. In my opinion, they should have bulldozed that whole bunch in the Northern Indianapolis territory and just took them south and forgot about all those rich snobs up there who didn't want their kids to do such menial work but didn't have any problem running your back and forth for more napkins, more straws, more butter and so forth. 

Probably the absolute worst time I ever had as a General Manager was when they assigned me to 635 E. Carmel Dr. in Carmel Indiana. I knew that place was going to be a pain in the ass when on my first day there, I walked in the door with my fountain operator, a 16-year-old kid who was driving the family car, a brand spanking new Mercedes 4 door. For his 16th birthday, they bought him a used car, a 5-year-old Bentley, as his mother said "Kids are hard on cars, so we thought, his first one should be a used one." Man, I couldn't get transferred out of that dump fast enough. It was truly, the only job I ever had that I actually hated. Staffing wasn't difficult or hard or a challenge in Carmel. It was nonexistent. The only way I ever got enough people to work there was to somehow figure out a way to import them from Indianapolis. There was no staffing a restaurant from the people that lived there. It was the stupidest thing I ever saw. 

I had been through a lot of changes at the company but I think (and this is going to sound dumb, I know), the one I liked the best was when we switched from accounting cycles controlled by the calendar to ones that were the exact same 28-day cycle every month. Instead of the first day of the month being on the 1st of the month, which could be a huge pain in the ass if it was also Saturday, your first day of the month was always Thursday and every week ended on Wednesday. It allowed for better planning, better inventory control, better ordering, more consistency in measuring results, and a whole bunch of other things. It made my life as a GM much easier. 

I knew a lot of people didn't understand it and a lot of them made jokes about how they were now all controlled by "periods" whether they were men or women, but I found it to be a better way to do business. I think this probably sounds goofy, but you have to understand, these folks at SnS had the PAPERWORK!, and it made a difference whether you were trying to do it on a Friday third shift to close out your day on Saturday the last day of the month or on Good old Wednesday. Ain't crap going on Wednesday. 

I used to be the first one every week to get my paperwork done, and after a while, every district manager I had would have me collecting his weekly numbers because he would have to go unscrew somebody else's head on quarter ending inventory morning. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Also, I was probably the laziest GN they had, so anything that made my life easier I was all for it. I mean, I worked, I sweated, but I didn't like to do the same thing two and three times or spend all day looking for a problem I created, so I would figure out how to stop it (whatever it was) from a reoccurrence, and life was happy.

The other thing that made life better was to change paydays to go with the cycles. No more paying people on Friday. Man, I hated the job of handing out paychecks on Friday. It was a design flaw in the program, I had a busy restaurant that really never stopped all Friday long because we didn't train our customers that we only had help between 11-2, you know the old blast us from noon to one and then dead all afternoon. I despised giving out paychecks, and especially on Friday and especially right after the lunch hour. Also, no matter how hard you tried to make the rules stick there was always two or three salmons swimming upstream making the day a mess, sending their teenaged girlfriend in to get their checks, mom or Dad coming by to get it, and then the inevitable confrontation and I'm the asshole because the rules say only the employee could have their paycheck. I'm telling you, it was a huge thorn in my paw for a long time. 

Then there was always the person who would come in at 3:30 to get their check all happy and bouncy and then try to call in sick at 5:00 trying to say something they ate made them sick. Oh man, you want an extra day off next week? Your normal two days off and now the one you called in this week because you had money? Man, that would just make me see red, I mean this day I do about 25% of my whole week's business and most of it tonight. You think I need you on Monday if you won't show up on Friday? AARGH. Anyway It usually worked out, but I was a nutcase on payday Friday until the company changed it.

After I left them, I almost went to work for the newly re-formatted A&W company and would have until the guy disclosed that he was taking out a loan to pay my salary. That freaked me out a tiny bit and I put the brakes on that. Hell, I had four children and a wife to take care of, I can't work for you and worry about you making the loan payment to pay me or some such sort of goofiness, I just thought, man you need a much younger, much stupider man to do that job. As it turns out I was right, you did need to be younger, more able to take a beating, working longer hours, more days in a row, had to be way more disposable than I wanted to be, etc and several people flamed out trying to keep up with it. I wasn't that guy. 

Shortly after that, I went to work for Shoe Carnival as a manager trainee and learned to sell shoes and spin the wheel and run a register. It was a blast and I had fun there, but mostly what I did, was spend half of my paycheck every two weeks buying shoes, because I got a discount! That was fun. I'm the kind of guy who never worries about having a job, not too much. I'm a survivor, I land on my feet and never stop looking and never stop trying until I get where I want to be, so it didn't make me any less of a man. I've never been that guy whose whole persona, whose whole life was wrapped up in their title or what kind of car they drove or how expensive their clothes are or any of that stuff. I have always just wanted to go to work, do my job, then go home and play with my kids. If you were to describe my persona, the one thing you could definitely say was I was wrapped up in my kids. To me, going home to my family was the most important part of my day. The rest of it was just how I got to do that. 

Then in the fall of 1997, I ran into some two of my oldest friends, who had opened a franchise of Steak `n Shake in Chattanooga TN. They had opened one huge store near the mall, had opened I believe 3 others, and were looking to open the 5th unit in Cleveland TN, in a few months. We talked and then talked and then I went to Chattanooga for a visit. It is a great town, I love the area, it was 500 miles from Indy so you could get there in one day, and they offered me a position with their company. We sealed the deal with a popsicle (inside joke). I began my career with them on April 1st of 1998 as my first real District manager position. Granted it was a smaller pond, and Its harder to hide in a smaller pond if you screw up, but for the most part, it was a very good move for me, for my family and although I didn't stay with them for many years, I think it was a beneficial relationship for both of us. If you know her, you know who I am talking about, If you don't just let me say, the restaurants she operates are some of the best Steak `n Shake stores that are open on this earth even now in the midst of this COVID-19 mess. I would wager they run better than any corporate store even with all the problems there are in running a restaurant right now. I'm proud to have been a small part of her organization. I miss her more than anything else about Steak `n Shake.

Oh and by the way, I love one of the owners too, and yes my wife approves. (not that way you doofus, she is my friend!)

Later Taters, more tomorrow
-BigMike