B365V2.70 - Sure Jim, slam it up my ass

I would have gotten about this a little sooner tonight, but when I went to sleep the backup Batcave after work it started raining.  Which normally for me would be okay, I would pack away the tablet and wait it out, but whatever was falling from the sky or was on the beaches or what not, it made me feel like I had been rolling around in wet lollipops.  Everything was sticky, my hands,my legs, my tablet, my glasses.  So sitting there sucked so I made myself scarce by ducking into Burlington and buying more stuff that was on sale.

The day was not without an incident though ( what day in my life truly is ).  We got a letter in the mail saying Coke was going to sue us for unpaid bills.   Another problem related to the store formerly known as Gus Millers.  Way ack readers of the blog know that there was a time when we owned 5 different locations, Smithfield News ( us ), Universal News ( located on 5 th Avenue downtown, Oxford Development kicked everyone out of that building when they came up with a plan to repurpose the building with U S Steel as the anchor tenant, that plan has since been tabled and the building sits there empty ), Weiss Mart ( also on 5 th Avenue downtown, Ed's attempt to remake a second Smithfield News, it died about two years after opening ) Gus Miller's ( a newsstand located in Oakland, we sold it last April when we got a considerable offer for the location ) and a gift shop in the Holiday Inn in Oakland ( we pulled out when the tent became too high and they suggested they could do what we were doing, so we let them ).  Of all of the locations Smithfield does the most business by a large margin, though Gus Millers did a better lottery business when we owned it.

Our problems come from the sale of Gus Millers, we offered to help them out when they got started ( against my suggestion ), so they would order certain items through us rather than directly from vendors.  This led to confusion on a number of fronts, from our vendors who thought we still owned the location.  As a result GM was getting the pricing for their items based on our existing contracts.  Worse the location was being treated like SN in that we are on a charge account, we have 30 day terms to pay our outstanding invoices.  So the new owners of GM are placing orders and having them dropped off, the driver isn't collecting money, he thinks that they are on terms as well and the new owners aren't paying their bills.  Because the vendors claim they were unaware of the sale of the location, now they are coming after us for these unpaid invoices.   To me, continuing to deal with GM is like dealing with an ex, they are an ex for a reason, time to move on.  We have a store to focus on, it does nothing for our bottom line whether GM succeeds or fails, we got our money on the sale, let's move on.

Then Ed schedules a meeting with a new wholesaler.  Through the course of this meeting they decide that I will be placing orders on Monday.  I mention that I already have all of the weekend sales numbers that I have to do on Mondays and maybe we might want to rethink this, a complaint which fell on deaf ears.  The fact I already have a wholesaler order coming in on Monday and I will be buying relatively nothing didn't cross anyone's mind, but who am I to complain, as long as my checks clear I'm good.

Then I hear a familiar voice at the office door.  I wasn't sure who it was right away, I was busy putting together the sales numbers, but when I turned around I saw it was Mark from Full Circle distributors.  Mark is the president of that company and we were one of his first accounts back in the early days of his company.  Through the years we have had a pretty good relationship with him as his company grew from just Mark hustling sales accounts to being able to hire sales people and get some of he products he carries ( Bob Marley teas, Calypso lemonades ) into Giant Eagles around the area.   So for him to drop by and see us is a pretty big thing, given everything he has on his plate.  It turns out his salesman was sick and Mark was out doing the orders today.  So I walked though our order with him, and while I am doing this his says "You have the butt of a 14 year old girl."  Nice to know all of the junk I eat doesn't go directly to my ass, though I was wearing black baggy shorts and we all know how slimming black can be on us fat folks.

Well I better get out of the park now, I sat through one thunderstorm and I don't want to make it two.

(By the way, the title of the blog comes from something, if you can figure it out there may be something in it for you in the near future.)