There will be glories

Saturday, 15 May, 2010

10:33:02 PM

I am sitting here on my laptop, well not sitting on the laptop but you get the idea, enjoying a Royal Jamacian. The cigars of course, I am not entertaining royalty. Heck about the only chance I would have of entertaining royalty in my apartment is if it was accompanied by a firing squad, and since I am not up for execution tonight (at least I don't think I am but one never knows) let's just all agree it is a cigar and nothing more. As for where the cigar came from, well we will get into that.

First off, this isn't my first attempt at blogging this week, I was actually going to glog game 7 of the Penguins/Canadiens series (see the video section for how that game turned out) on Thursday night. I was all set up in front of my computer, I had done significant pregame rambling and was about to get all excited to posit was would be considered my uninformed musings of the game's progression. Since I don 't have cable I was going to use a website that has proven to be both a blessing and a curse for me, that being channelsurfing.net. A blessing because it has allowed me to watch live sports feeds without having cable but also a curse because it has proven to be a troublesome website at times. For instance, prior to game 6 of that very same series I was talking to my friend Rich, who recently acquired a laptop and was looking to see if he could watch the game on his computer as well. I directed him to the site and wouldn't you know it, the site was down. I couldn't get into it to save my life, though if my life ever reaches the point that it is reliant on reaching a specific website just pull the plug on it and me and put us both out of our misery. Game 7 wasn't nearly as bad, I had managed to get access with no problem and started watching the game as well as adding my own brand of witticisms, Then the feed goes offline. Luckily the website had links to 4 different sites for the game, so I pulled up another one and it is working for a while, then the picture starts getting all stupid. You all know the problems with some digital feeds, the picture starts getting all blocky and frozen and at this point I just gave up. I didn't want to have to glog and bounce from feed to feed all game long, all the while trying to monitor a couple other sites to make sure my stats were correct for the game, so I just stopped. Funny thing was I ended up on a third feed that brought back some really cool memories for me, even if the majority of people who were watching it would not have felt the same way. Seems I had picked uip a version of the Versus feed, but meant for a foreign audience and when the network was supposed to go to commercial here in the states, with the alternate feed they stayed with the game. Not that anything of worth was happening during those breaks, the commercials are generally scheduled during breaks in the action so no real game action is missed, but you could hear the play by play guys talking to each other about what they wanted to bring up during the next segment of the game. It was very much like when I used to have a press pass to cover the games, people in the box making note of certain things to bring up in their newspaper stories, or questions for the post game press conference, the inside baseball stuff that would have no interest to the general viewer of the telecast but was fascinating to myself.

Anyway, if you haven't watched the video the Penguins ended up losing 5-2 and that puts a wrap on hockey season here in Pittsburgh for another year. And with the Pirates being the Pirates baseball isn't much of a sell here, so we are sportsless until football season and then we get to relive more of the Ben Roethlisberger drama all over again. The outpouring of disdain for him is quite telling, but we will see just how long it actually lasts. On one hand you now have Facebook groups for people who wish to send their Ben Roethlisberger jerseys back to the Steelers; I actually joined the "I wasn't raped by Ben Roethlisberger" group, other people are hawking their wares such as Dumb and Dumber t shirts with Tiger Woods and Ben on them, still others selling Ben Rapelisberger jerseys and even Sports Illustrated got in on the act, running a cover story that was basically 6 pages of people saying that Ben is just an entitled jackass. I can't complain, we sold out of our first batch of those mags in one day at work. Ben being an ass is good for business. That being said, sports fans are a fickle bunch, and all it would take is a good performance or two and all would be forgiven. Think I am kidding? Look at Michael Vick, who did real prison time for dog fighting, and for all of the talk of PETA organizing protests of his games and blah, blah, freaking blah, by week #2 of the NFL season all was forgiven.

Speaking of work, I believe in my last real entry I had mentioned that Ed was coming back from Florida and I expected an ass reaming, just because he and his son have very different ways of doing things, and I have been doing things Brian's way recently, trying to keep costs under control, weeding out product that wasn't moving, keeping vendors from getting too upset with us and what not. Costs aren't as big a concern for Ed, so I got chewed out for not having some products, which I argued didn't sell, but that fell on deaf ears, and how some of the stuff on the floor was laid out, why I didn't have more of this, or why didn't I have that type stuff. Also I got caught, and I readily admit I was wrong in this regard, in that I have been late to work a little too much. Not that I wasn't working 40 hours a week, usually I was working more than that, but my 7-3 would turn into a 7:30-3:30 type of thing. It was something I expected to be lectured about and Ed lived up to my expectations. And all of this was within his first hour back that we worked together. I have to admit I was thinking to myself that this could be a helluva long summer.

Things started to turn around a little bit in that first meeting however. I was told that I could pick my schedule, but whatever I picked I had to stick to, I basically have first dibs on when I want to work and everybody gets scheduled around me. I stuck with my 7-3 shift, ideally it is the best, I go in when I otherwise would be doing nothing and usually still get off with plenty of time to do the things I like to do.

Excuse me one second, I have a couple of things I need to take care of and I will be right back.

Okay that is all squared away. I figured while I am doing this my desktop should be doing something, so I opened up the Scratchix app on Facebook and fired up my autoclicker so it can automatically scratch tickets for me, even if I am not sitting there. I rolled up over 1200 tickets and burnt a few of them off earlier (about 800) and and now just looking to get rid of the rest of them. I actually won $2 with the earlier ones, doubt I will be as lucky with these. I also had to fetch my iced tea and my lighter since my cigar went out. Plus I had my little note to myself on my desk that I figured I had better pick up, it is just my tally of money since the last change meter update. I have to keep track because otherwise I would forget, there are only so many numbers I can keep in my head at any one time, so the quicker I write these down the better it is on my cranium. As for the change meter, it continues to go up, ever so slowly. Another $1.57 puts it to $165.75 and while I don't expect a year like last year I am pretty confident I can at least get $30 out of it this year.

Back to the story, after the initial ass reaming things went very well with Ed that first week, though it seems like there is never enough hours in the day to get everything done that he wants done plus do the things that my job mandates. For instance, the very same Monday that I got chewed out we received a grocery order, which meant there were plenty of totes lying on the floor of the store waiting to be checked in and put away. This is one of my more important tasks, something that I certainly wouldn't leave to anyone else. Usually my attitude about doing things at work and delegating tasks is that I would just rather do it myself, that way I am sure it gets done. So here I am getting ready to start checking in an order and putting it away and all of a sudden Ed wants me to start doing an inventory of some out of date product in the basement. One would think that since it is out of date and not going anywhere, after all we can't sell it, this would be a project that could have waited versus the more pressing concerns of getting the new stuff put away, but then if I do that first I am almost disobeying an order. So off I go to do what I would have called side work versus the more pressing matter at hand.

That being said, the first week went okay, at least until Friday when I was called into the office again. This time it wasn't to be yelled at but to be asked if I would work register on the following Monday, since apparently a couple of people requested off the same day. Since I know the registers somewhat I was asked to fill in instead of my usually stockroom duty. I am not by nature a people person, finding me with people skills is harder than finding Waldo on the back of a box of cereal, but I took to the request as sort of a day off for me, usually the weekends see the coolers get neglected and I end up busting my ass to compensate for it, plus we have two orders that come in that day that I don't have to do if I am on register and not on the floor. So instead of the woe is me attitude I usually have, I opted to celebrate the occasion by telling the crew that I would buy pizza on Monday. And I did. One of the places I sometimes order from when I am at home, Giovanni's, is actually downtown and closer to my work place than my apartment, so I figured I would give them a ring on Monday and just have them deliver over to us. Plus they run a special where if you by a large specialty pizza you get a free medium cheese pizza. So I sprung for a large Hawaiian (I love ham and pineapple on pizza) and we got the freebie to boot. Little did I realize that I would start a trend. The very next day Amber decides to order for everyone, she gets the seafood pizza and the freebie, Wednesday Wayne orders the large meat lovers pizza and the freebie. Later that day, Rick, who works our coffee bar and does the ordering for our paper goods and frozen food stuffs finds out that his lottery ticket he bought for the afternoon drawing hit for $2500, so he is buying lunch for Thursday, a sandwich ring from the Boulevard Deli (see the links section kids, that stuff is there for a reason) and now we have went from rarely ordering to having lunch for 4 straight days. To make matters even better Thursday, one of the guys from Fat Tommy's stopped by, as Ed is looking to expand some of the things we carry and Fat Tommy's is a place downtown that we may end up doing business with. They ended up sending free samples of sandwiches and pizza as well, and now I can say after 4 straight days, I am all pizza-ed out.

Not all of the news was good on Thursday however. About a half hour before my day was scheduled to end I get called to the office. This normally doesn't mean much, almost any task I am asked to do outside of my normal stuff begins with a call to the office, but as I got there I could tell this was different. Ed was sitting at his desk while John and Dee were watching film from the security cameras. From where I was standing I couldn't see what they were watching, nor did I really want to, that type of stuff is well above my pay grade and unless they want me to look out for a specific person or persons coming in the store then there is no need for me to see anything on it. Ed begins by asking if I can do a favor for him, if it would be possible to stay till 11pm. Mind you my day starts at 7am so it was going to be a 16 hour day if I agreed to it. Ed said that I may not be needed, and if I wanted I could leave for an hour and go get something to eat, he would buy me lunch but with all of the food that was floating around the shop that day eating was out of the question. Instead I just grabbed a chair in the basement and read some of my book while I waited to see what was actually happening.

Jen, who normally runs the second shift, called and said she was going to be late, she wasn't feeling well but was still coing in. When she arrives she gets called to the office, and it turns out that she gets fired and that is why they need me to stay. Apparently what had happened was that a couple of people that used to work for us, Dana and Destiny who now work downtown with a cleaning crew in one of the office buildings, had come in the night before. Since everyone pretty much gets along, it isn't unusual for former employees to sometimes stop by so there is nothing out of the ordinary by their presence in the store. But what happened later was the kicker, as apparently Jen let them have some merchandise for free. Now on one hand I have sympathy for Jen, she is a single mom with kids at home to worry about and by and large was a good employee but on the other I understand the position Ed was in. If he caught this happening once, how many other times did it happen without his knowledge. And I really have issues with why Dana and Destiny would ever put Jen in such a position to begin with. They had worked for us long enough to know better, but they literally had nothing to lose, they were getting free stuff and really nothing bad could happen to them, since they were no longer employees of ours.

The end result was that I ended up pulling a 16 hour day, and after leaving at 11pm, had to turn around and be back for 7am on Friday. I couldn't really come in late either, obviously first and foremost because of the lecture I had gotten the previous week and also because we have a Coke delivery on Friday and they usually come very early in the morning, so I can't be coming in later and miss the truck entirely. And to make matters better, or worse depending on how you look at it, we were supposed to all go out after work on Friday, to the 110 Bar, and my first employee related outing since my evening I still can't remember.

All goes according to plan for the most part, though I was pretty tired, but trudge on I did when I got another call to the office, this one a little different, Ed handed me an extra $100 for filling in the night before. I didn't expect that, but I figured I at least had some drinking money for later. Later in the same shift, after getting the Coke order put away and Friday's grocery delivery checked in and put away, and breaking down another section that Ed wanted to rebuild I was called into the office once again at which time I was asked to go through a new order that came in and price the items in it. Ed has a tendency to order from a bunch of suppliers, lots of odd and ends and quirky type things that we probably don't need but aren't neccessarily bad to have. Like last week a UPS delivery came in and inside it was a bunch of things including lighters shaped like fishing poles. They are the type of lighter you might use to start a grill or something, but they weren't an item that we needed per se, just sort of a novelty gimmick that may or may not sell in the long run.

I am unpacking one of these type shipments, it has everything from deodorant to waiter's corkscrews in it, I read off the item number and how many we got, Ed verifies it on the invoice and then gives me a price to put on it. As we are working our way through the invoice we are interrupted a few times, various vendors and work related issues when Ed asks me if I smoke cigars. Now I am not connisseur by any stretch of the imagination, but a good cigar every once in a while is a nice change of pace so I say yes, I smoke them from time to time. I was hoping that he was going to offer me one of the cigars I had brought downstairs from the humidor the other day, we received a box of Olivias and I was part of the reason for that. We had a customer come in and ask if we carried the Olivia Series V, which we didn't but upon reading up on it I found out it had won Cigar of the Year is some magazine or other so I emailed the company about carrying their product. This was months ago, and apparently a rep came in and talked to Brian but I never followed up on it, the cigars cases are usually handled by either Brian or Ed. As it turns out we did get a box of cigars from Olivia, sort of like a trial pack, 6 cigars in it of different types and it was laying in the bottom of the humidor, unopened and unpriced. I noticed this when Ed had me do a cigar inventory a few days before, so I brought the box downstairs and asked if we had prices for them and if no one wanted it, I would buy the Series V cigar that was in the box, just to try it. When Ed asked me if I smoked cigars I figured he had a price on that cigar and was going to sell it to me, but I was mistaken, instead he tosses me an entire box of Royal Jamacians and says that is for filling in Thursday night. This on top of the $100 he already gave me. We have those cigars priced at $4.50 a pop and the box has 27 in it, which brings the total we could have gotten had we actually sold them to $121.50. Not too shabby for pulling a 16 hour shift, I got paid for the extra time plus and additional $221.50 in cash and prizes, far better than the departing contestant who gets a year's supply of Rice A Roni.

I managed to get out of work on time, but all of the side work I had to do for Ed meant that I didn't get the order for Monday placed, so my 5 day week became a 6 day week, albeit the Saturday shift was about two hours and I could come in at my leisure, which is good because I ended up going to the 110 after work Friday and while I didn't get all kind of stupid drunk, I had a nice buzz going and managed to do fairly well on the dart board. I am not sure if I even lost a game. At first we were shooting singles, then teams, but it didn't matter. I wasn't throwing great, but making enough shots when it mattered that I was winning. We stuck to playing cricket, which is probably my favorite dart game. The object is relatively simple, close everything out and have the most points at the end in order to win. You shoot for the numbers 15 through 20 on the board as well as the bullseye and in order to close out a number you must hit it three times. The outer thin ring on the dart board counts as a double (two hits), the inner thin ring is a triple (three hits) and the rest of the wedge for a number counts as a single (one hit). You score points by closing out a number and when at least one other person hasn't closed it yet hitting that same number again. So if four people are playing, all four have to close a number out in order for no one to be able to score points off of it, if three people have closed it and one hasn't yet, those three can score points off of the number. Usually I try to close everything first and then go back and see if I need any points and if so, what numbers I can use to get them. I have played people that do the opposite, they try to roll up a bunch of points and then go about closing things, to each their own I guess, but my strategy seemed to work for me on this occasion, because I kept winning. Which is better than the stories I was getting from my last trip there, apparently one of my blackout periods included playing darts and I was so wobbly that eventually they put a chair at the throwing line for me. Me being Mr. Cool decided to turn the chair around so the back was facing the board, sit on the chair on my knees and brace myself against the back of the chair while throwing and proceeded to tip the chair over in my drunken stupor. Someone want to again remind me why I drink? This trip wasn't nearly as bad, I had two Bloody Mary's and then cut myself off and went to Heineken instead. Not quite sobriety, but not parting the Red Sea type miracle to get home either. The more I hear about that night and don't remember the more I get creeped out by it. The only plus to it all, is that when I am drunk I am far from a sexual Olympian, hell I wouldn't even be a sexual Special Olympain at that point, so at least no one can call me all Maury Povich like screaming "You are the father" into the phone from my escapades that night.

Well, again I better put a wrap on this. It has creeped into Sunday and then some and I have a project I would liek to work on, plus I feel the need to enjoy a nice long shower on my only day off before returning to the grind come Monday. Toodles.