Multiply 365 Day 229 - Spoiled

If ever there was a doubt about how much I am spoiled at work it was all but removed this week. It is almost embarrassing how well I am treated, and for me to point it out is probably saying something. I would not say I am a perfect employee by any stretch, I regularly make mistakes. But usually if I do screw up I tend to own it, state that I screwed up and move on. I know many people that when they are called on the carpet for what they have or have not done, tend to get in the office and argue the point with Ed or start the defense of what they are in trouble for by saying "Well (insert another employee's name) did this ,,,,," as if that somehow addresses the concern being brought up at that point in time.

Maybe it is my willingness to own my mistakes, maybe it is a superior work ethic or maybe it is a recognition of how many things wouldn't work without me, I don't know, I just know that if ever there was a week to show how spoiled at work I am, then this was that week.

It should be noted that for many people this week it was not a good week to be an employee of Smithfield News. Part of that is due to the added pressure Ed is going through in trying to get his other business project off of the ground. If ever you want to make your own personal life miserable, try starting a business in downtown Pittsburgh and dealing with the city workers in charge of issues permits and what not. Failed government bureaucracy at it's finest ladies and gentlemen. Then there is the issues we do have with our current employees, and there are a few. Add in the rising costs of what we do and a belief by some that seem to think that the store is just made of money and have no understanding of a bottom line. Needless to say, for many this week Ed has been a handful.

But not for me, for me I have been dodging the proverbial shitstorm with Keanu Reeve's "Matrix" like ability, minus the bad acting. Instead it has been a relatively easy week for me. I just go in and bang out my tasks and all is good.

The spoilage I guess started on Monday. Ed came in and told me that there was a radio in his car, his wife couldn't get the CD player to work, so if I could fix it it was mine. My first though was "Great, I am now going to be burdened with broken down electronics that don't work." I am not that kind of a fix it guy. So I just pretty much forgot about the radio. It wasn't until Wednesday that Ed reminded me of the radio and said that if I wanted it it was in the trunk of his car. Since I had to run a couple of things out to Dee's car I figured I might as well grab this radio also. I get it out of the trunk and it is a nice radio, a Sharper Image CD alarm clock radio with detachable speakers. I think, since we usually listen to the radio in the basement while stocking coolers, I will at least test it out, if it doesn't work I might at least be able to make use of the speakers in some way, shape or form. I plug the radio in and the tuner works just fine. Not that that was an issue, the issue apparently was with the CD player. So I grab a CD and I notice that the CD doesn't mount on the wheel in the CD player on the inside, if you place a CD on it, it just falls off the mount. Then I recognized the problem, and it wasn't a manufacturing issue. Rather the design of the CD player is such that you just lay the CD against the plastic cover opening of the player and when you close it, it snaps the CD into place. That was it, that was the big defect in the CD player. So I basically got a new radio for nothing. It wasn't broke at all. I even explained this to Ed and his words were "I already bought a new one, so you keep it."

If that were the only thing I got this week, I would call it a good week, but it wasn't, not even close. Later that day, Ricky, who owns the building in which Smithfield News is located, is in the office and tells Ed that he can't use his Steeler tickets for Thursday night and offers them to Ed. Ed in turn offers them to me, which I accept. After all, I have never been to Heinz Field, the last Steelers game I was at was back in the days of Three Rivers Stadium, many, many moons ago. Apparently there are two tickets and Ricky will be dropping them off on Thursday. I think, okay, well I am not going to ask anyone to the game yet because I do not have the tickets in hand, if the worst case scenario happens and Ricky doesn't come by on Thursday, then I haven't promised someone a game that we can't get into. As we are sitting in the office that day though, Ed is talking about the tickets and he says the only stipulation is that I get to work on time Friday morning, with the game being an 8pm kickoff it wasn't going to end until late. Which for me isn't a problem, I am usually up later than 2am on most week nights anyway.But almost as soon as Ed utters those words, he recants them. Literally he just looks at me and says come in whenever you want, just work 8 hours, you want to come in at 9am, just work till 5pm. Now given how much he has been ripping people about being late recently, the fact he is just telling me to make up whatever schedule I want is shocking, even to me. Not that I abused it,f or the record I showed up about 10 after 7am and worked until 3:30pm, barely any different than any other day I work.

So Thursday comes and with it the day of the football game. The morning is relatively uneventful, nothing big happens. But around noon Ed has a meeting with a real estate agent for some potential locations for his new business venture, so he steps out with the agent and does his thing. Meanwhile Lynn Cullen stops by to say hi, which is funny because Ed keeps asking me to get the three of us to go to lunch together and now here she is and he is nowhere around. Lynn and I chat for a bit, she is getting ready to take a trip to Holland in a few days and wants to get together sometime after she gets back. I am cool with that, her and I haven't had time to do much of anything since we parted ways after the selling of WAMO AM and the breaking up of the radio band. She has been doing her internet show on the Pittsburgh City Paper webpage and I have been busy climbing the newsstand corporate ladder as it were. But we talk for a bit and then she leaves.

I go back down to the office, I had finished putting together our grocery order and was getting ready to phone it in when Dee says that Ricky dropped off the tickets for the game and she came over to my desk and gave them to me. Cool, so I have two tickets to the game, about 6 rows back in the 500 level, near midfield. Nice seats, they run about $90 a piece. My mind starts wondering who I can get to go to the game, I think maybe my friend Rich or my uncle Fred would be the two most obvious choices. Then it almost gets strange. Dee says to me, "If I didn't already have plans with my nephews tonight, I would go with you." This would be funny but I didn't ask. Not that I hadn't thought about asking, but I had already figured it would be better if I didn't. We still haven't hung out outside of work together since I dropped the blog on her, save for one instance with two other employees, so I was thinking that while we get along very well at work, maybe that avenue has since been closed. Or maybe not. Or maybe it was just a preemptive thing on her part, to stop me from asking before I did. I don't know and refuse to overanalyze this particular point, I have Steeler tickets in my hand. Though I did joke with her that if she goes to the game, she would then be allowed to come in late for work. But she said that rule only applied to me, not to her. Not that it is a big thing, I am there before her every day anyhow.

So I have got the order called in, I am working on some invoices when Ed comes back from his meeting, he has a bag with him from Joseph A Bank, a clothing shop that has a few stores downtown. A little bit on the pricey side, at least for someone on my income, but then Ed tends to use bags like that to carry stuff. I have my backpack with laptop slot I always carry, Ed can always be seen with his paperwork in something like a Bed, Bath and Beyond bag. So to see him with a bag from Joseph A Bank could mean he simply switched bags for his paperwork, or maybe he went shopping after his meeting. Then he drops the bag on my desk and says this is for you. Four polo shirts, and while Ed said he got a deal on them from the clerk and admittedly I saw later that night that those shirts were marked 60% off, the price tag on each one was $69.50. Like I said, Ed said he made a deal with the clerk, enough of a deal that he basically said the clerk was stealing from the store, but just assuming he got the advertised discount, it still would have been a $111.20 purchase that he just dropped on my desk out of the blue.

So let's review, I got an CD alarm clock from Sharper Image which I am sure wasn't cheap, 2 Steeler tickets that ran $90 a piece, Four shirts that should have retailed for another $100 and oh, by the way, when I got paid on Wednesday I saw that Ed just wiped out my charge sheet, which may have been $30 but still. It's why I never understand why people don't bust ass there. Sure the hourly wage could be better but if you do you job well and actually act like you care about the business and not just treat it as a place where you put in your 8 hours and go home, there are definitely rewards to be had. People wonder why I do 6 days a week and recently did 20 straight days, there is why. At the end of the day, Ed will take care of the people that take care of him.

Okay, enough of that, we got some pics from Thursday as well. So get your crayons and your pencils, it's Picture Pages time.

On my way to the bus stop to go to the game I stopped to take this picture of Forbes Avenue heading into the Pitt campus.  It is probably just me, but I did the way the Cathedral of Learning just looms over this street in the background.

I got off the bus on Smithfield Street downtown, due in part to the traffic nightmare that was created by the combination of a Steeler game that night and more movie stuff going on with the Batman movie filming in town.  I work about 5 blocks down this street on the other side and no, I am not going back to work, so I will turn and go in the opposite direction.

Any wondering what kind of Batman fever has gripped some segments of the populace here need only go to church Sunday mornings to be reminded.

Even my favorite toy store, SW Randall, is in on the Batman act.  Usually they focus on lots of collectible items, things for train sets and doll houses can be found here.  I even bought my matching stuffed animals for Hope and I here many, many moons ago.  Ah, the good old days.  But the store front window is currently occupied by Batman, nothing but Batman.

You can tell it is a football night in Pittsburgh when there is a blimp flying overhead. They don't fly blimps over Pittsburgh for Pirate games.  That being said, it was a second tier blimp, not the Goodyear blimp, or even the Fuji blimp, rather it was the Direct TV blimp.  I think blimps have officially jumped the shark now.

My first shot of Heinz Field, from the 6th Street (Clemente) Bridge.  When I saw this with my naked eyes I thought it would be an okay pic, but the setting sun almost hiding the stadium I thing makes the shot cooler han it has any right of being coming from my camera.

The crowd filtering across the Clemente Bridge.  There are many ways by which one can get to the game.  You can opt for public transit, but given how bad traffic was I had given up on that option.  If you drive you can park there, but usually parking on game day runs about $20.  I don't have a car, so that is an option I don't have.  You can dock your boat outside the stadium, and you would be surprised the number of people that actually do use that option for what not an ocean front town, you can take a boat over to the stadium as there are a couple of boat services that will ferry people across the river, including the Gateway Clipper Fleet.  Or you can do what I eventually opted to do and just walk.

A fountain along the river walk.  After crossing the 6th Street Bridge you can walk along a trail that runs beside the river all the way down to the stadium, which is the path I chose to take.  About halfway to the stadium is this fountain that for some reason I opted to take a picture of.

The Majestic, the largest of the Gateway Clipper boats, dropping people off outside the stadium.

While the first football game was not played here, Pittsburgh can lay claim to having the first professional football game, as evidenced by this marker near Heinz Field.

I entered the stadium through Gate A, which faces the Ohio River.  After going through the security pat down (there was no fondling of the junk)and entering the stadium you notice you entered right underneath the scoreboard.

The concourse area inside Gate A.  Lots of picnic tables and foodstuffs to be had here, but being in section 535 meant that I was going to be 5 levels above this. So while this is a nice place to visit, I wasn't going to stay here.

I started climbing up the west ramp to get to my seats and decided I would take a walk over to the railing and take a quickie pic of downtown.

And making a full loop around the ramp, one of 5 to get to the 5th level, I decided maybe I better take a picture of the field as well.

The view of heinz Field from my seat, not quite midfield but pretty damn close.

And the view back down from whence I came, the scoreboard and the concourse area inside Gate A form my seat. 

Getting close to game time, the figure in the black shirt and tan pants would be none other than Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin.

The Pittsburgh Steelers take the field.

And the first play of the game.

After the Steelers first touchdown, a Antonio Brown touchdown catch

Make that two for two and the Steelers celebrate a second touchdown, this time a Hines Ward TD catch.

The Steeler defense coming off the field after intercepting Michael Vick a second time.  They would get three interceptions of Vick in the game.

Finally I had had enough of the kid sitting next to me, who was equal parts annoying and stupid.  Think George Bush on a cocaine and alcohol bender and you get the idea.  So it was either get up and walk around or throw the kid from the upper deck on top of the people below.  If I had thought it might shut the kid up I would have tossed him, but I am not even sure that would have shut him up, so I decided to walk around and take some more pics from the ramp, including downtown again.

A shot of the game from the ramp, just before Pittsburgh would take a 21 point lead and all but lock this game up before halftime.

Another shot of the Gate A concourse area from the west ramp, just as the crowd was beginning to file into the concession stands for halftime.

And lastly I had to snag this picture for Prissy (if she read this far).  One of the boats docked outside the stadium.  While there were plenty of people who not only took their boat to the game, but actually stayed on their boat and watched the game on TV (I guess they didn't have tickets but still wanted the tailgating experience).  I actually walked past a group that had a projection TV set up and a giant sheet attached to the side of their boat just to watch the game on TV outside the stadium.  That being said, there is only one boat I saw that was called "Bad KItty".  Enjoy Prissy.

And with that I conclude my Picture Pages.  Time to do a quick spell check and get out of here.  Night everyone.