Multiply 365 Day 219 - Dollars and sense

Okay I think I have all of the niceties squared away. Pandora is up and running, though not without me wasting most of my skips before getting anything decent (“Pump It Up” by Elvis Costello) to get the blogging underway. For future reference to the fine people at Pandora, I have absolutely no desire to listen to Matthew Sweet in this or any other lifetime.

Also on the docket is food, which is forthcoming. I decided that day 2 AC (after Curtis) called for a little dining in. It also called for dancing girls and a live band, but time constraints kept those things from happening. Maybe I should get some people on speed dial to celebrate the next firing at work.

Then again, that may not be all that appropriate. After all, the economy is apparently in the shitter. So disposable dollars for such things as dancing girls may be hard to come by. (Future bloggers take note, this is how I get from relatively meaningless shit to what I wanted to blog about. Pretty clever huh?)

Yes, apparently the full faith and credit of the United States has been downgraded, from its previous status of “you may borrow more money to pay off the interest on the money that you already owe” to “we wouldn't trust you getting a washer from Rent A Center” right about now. Check cashing places are looking at our government and saying, “I'm sorry, but you will need additional ID before we will consider cashing “that”.”

The financial markets are in a free fall, while everyone in Washington is all like “But we came up with a plan”. Trust me when I say McGuyver could have come up with a better plan using nothing but a paper clip, rubber band and a straw wrapper. Let's see if this doesn't just about sum up the plan right here, in exchange for extending the government's ability to borrow through 2012, a commission will be created to come up with places where the government can make cuts in spending in the future. I think I saw this plan on a Popeye cartoon once, when Wimpy said he would gladly pay you Tuesday for a burger today.

Of course there is no plan on how Wimpy will actually raise any money, just that Wimpy might not eat as many burgers in the future, as long as he can eat one today.

Maybe that makes me the idiot in the room, but that seems to be the fundamental problem. Whether you want to call it the phasing out of tax cuts or a tax hike really doesn't matter to me, semantics being what semantics are, they carry little value outside of being sound bites. But at the end of the day there is a significant segment of the population who just doesn't pay their fair share. Warren Buffet hit the nail on the head years ago when he suggested a system is flawed when his tax rate is less than that of his secretary. Not that I can blame the well to do for trying their damnedest to pay as little in taxes as is humanly possible, it is something that we all would do if we could, it is just that there are far more tools at the disposal for the head of Exxon to get out of paying taxes than there are for the person working the register at Walmart.

But what gets lost on the well to do, while they are all awash in their new found creativity in avoiding paying taxes is that they do so at their own peril. Because that money will have to come from somewhere. And if it doesn't come from them then it is going to come from people who are not as well off, also known as their customers. And what happens when people have less discretionary spending? The obvious, they buy less stuff. So while there is a short term gain for the top percentile of earners to sit back and say “woohoo, we don't pay taxes again this year”, it is a deal with the devil, because those people you rely to make you money, your customers, are now buying less of your shit. So your short term savings is a longer term cancer, one that eats away at the very viability of your business.

It is at this point where someone will say, “Matt, you are not an economist. What do you know? Why don't you just sit down and shut the fuck up?” To which I would say it doesn't take an economist to see the obvious, only someone who is looking to do more than fill a 5 minute segment on a 24 hr news channel with two people who just want to bitch at each other. Makes for great TV, not so effective at actually informing the populace though.

But the evidence out there is fairly obvious. Rarely has a tax cut or dropping of the tax rate resulted in the growth it was suggested it would bring. If it had, we would all be awash in cash from the Bush tax cuts to begin with and there would be no need for this blog. Instead I could be writing on how ineptitude has rejoined the Pittsburgh Pirates, much the same way the swallows come back to Capistrano every year. But when our economy was doing well and we actually were running a surplus was when the tax rates were higher under Bill Clinton. Sure, some of his success came from cutting of discretionary spending and I have no problem with entitlement reform and budget cuts (sorry NASA, but I am tired of the sob story of how you can't launch a 40 year old vehicle into space again, but the last time the shuttle program was relevant most people actually thought Milli Vanilli sang their songs) but anyone who thinks that all we need to do is cut our way to fiscal responsibility obviously didn't read the previous paragraph. Government, in even its smallest form, costs money and that money has to come from somewhere. So the question is, should that money come from people who do or don't have it? I think all we need to do is look around us at the result of having people who don't have money continue to be the sole payers of the nation's mortgage and realize that it probably isn't a good plan.

Multiply 365 Day 218 - Addition by subtraction

 

Let's start by getting a little housecleaning out of the way first. It has been better than a month since I did anything with the change meter. Part of that has been just other things getting in the way, and part has been that the change meter really hasn't been all that productive for me. But at some point I guess I have to add to the total, and there is no time like the present. So without further ado the newest add to the total is $2.95 bringing the grand total to $306.70. I guess the next benchmark will be the $400 plateau, but I don't see that happening before the end of the year. Hell I will be lucky to get there by this time next year.

I did pass the 1/3^rd point on my quest to get the 8 GB MP3 player on mycokerewards. The prize is at 1500 points, I am in the ballpark of 540 or so, and while I have maxed out in any one week, I have been adding decent amounts of points every week, despite the fact I don't even drink Coke. I just keep finding caps or twelve pack codes, usually I find at least one a day and I haven't taken a walk to go look for them in ages. They are just on my normal path going between work and wherever else I end up going.

I even picked up a new freebie this past week. I had signed up for something on Facebook a while back, a chance to be a product tester for discountofficeitems.com. I really expected nothing from it, the idea they were going to give away free stuff I am sure brought people in droves. Of course the freebies don 't come without a stipulation, that being you have to use the item and write a review of it in order to continue to receive more freebies. When I hadn't heard anything (not that I was anxiously awaiting anything) I had all but forgotten about it, until I opened the mailbox the other day and found a free dry erase marker in there. Now me being all about things that are free, I went ahead and took the marker to work (where there are a few different dry erase boards I actually do use, so it has a practical application) and have since wrote a review on it, though there really isn't much to say about a solitary marker. Unless it sucks and is all dried out when you get it, but this wasn't and it seems to work okay, so I went ahead and wrote my review and will now wait patiently for my next freebie offer.

I am still tinkering with mysurvey.com too. Not that I am anywhere close to cashing out there, I am sitting on about $2.75 right now and need $11 before I can get anything from the prize catalog. But that application is more a matter of patience, you never get a bunch of surveys to do all at once, but you can pick up a few bucks here and there, and unlike some services you do get paid for every survey, even if many of them are only a nickel or dime. I still have managed to get over $400 dollars worth of stuff from them since I first signed up many moons ago.

And lastly of course we know that I recently got another $5 Amazon gift card from Swagbucks that I gave away on the page. I am pretty close to cashing out for another one, I only need maybe 10 points or so, which I should have by tomorrow night at the very latest. Check that last statement, after doing a couple of searches I did get the last remaining points for my next gift card. And unlike the last one I am keeping this one for myself, after all I am only about $40 from a Kindle, which would make a decent Christmas present for someone, just not sure who yet. Maybe me, lol.

Okay, I think all of the requisite house cleaning is out of the way, Pandora is fired up and it is time to get to the real blogging portion of today's episode.

Today marked day #14 in a row at work, I am starting to again see the light at the end of the tunnel (though I thought the same thing last week until Thursday) but at least I was handed another nugget of wholesome goodness that made my work life a little more tolerable.

One of the guys on my crew was a guy named Curtis. The thing is, I didn't work with Curtis all that much, usually he was on the evening shift (3pm-11pm) whereas I am there from 7am-3pm most days. And on those days when Ed would put Curtis on my shift, we would almost always send him to our other store (Universal), if for no other reason that to get him out of our way. See Ed would put him on my shift in case I needed help, but in my eyes Curtis really wasn't much help. So it was far easier to send him to our other store than to have to deal with him. Because despite the fact that Universal is a small store (5 coolers, and almost no product stocking on the shelves) somehow Curtis would find a way to turn what should be a relatively simple project into an all day adventure.

Some examples of how inept Curtis is, I mentioned earlier this year that our store was reset, that is the grocery provider came in, reorganized the shelving and retagged everything. Part of my job for those three days was to help with the reorganization of the store and make sure everything went back in a manner that would meet Ed's approval. Because of the size of the task, Ed asked me if I needed any additional help, besides Sammy who is always on the same shift as me. I said not really, I was pretty sure we could manage, but he scheduled Curtis for those three days as well. Curtis spent all three days building one shelf. That, my friend's, is government work. If that were the only example I could site I am sure many people would say that I am just being too hard on him. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. On Wednesday we got paid, and as is the case usually people from Universal will be sent down to our location one at a time so that they can get their check and not short hand that store by having all of the employees show up at once. Since Ed had Curtis on the morning shift again and I had once again sent him to Universal to be rid of him, he came back up to get his check. He left for Universal around 8:30am. He came back to our store to get his check at 1:30pm, and when he picked up his check he tells John in the office that he is working on the coolers at Universal. Mind you, he has now been there 5 hours and Universal has all of 5 coolers. A fact that was not lost on John and he made mention of that very fact. And on Friday we received a couple of deliveries from outside vendors that Ed sometimes deals with, CB Distributors and Pricemaster. Well I brought both orders into the office to be checked in, the CB Distributor order I got checked in pretty quickly but while I had opened the Pricemaster order, Ed told me not to worry about it yet, he still had to get the prices for some of the items and we would do it on Monday. So I take the CB Distributor order out to be put away until it was needed upstairs and come back into the office. Curtis comes in (back from another 5 hour tour of the coolers at Universal, no doubt) and Ed mentions that some of the stuff that was in the CB order needs to go upstairs right away and he starts mentioning items to go up and here is Curtis pulling stuff out of the Pricemaster box instead. I say, “That's not the right order, I have already checked the CB order in” but Curtis just continues to pull stuff out of the wrong box. Ed mentions some things he needs, Curtis is busy pulling out the wrong shit (because it was the wrong box) when finally I look at him and say, “Do you fucking listen?” I suppose it was one of those what you would call professional moments on my part, but if it was over the top nobody said anything, other than Dee who said “Way to tell him Matt!” Hey, at least it stopped him from grabbing the wrong stuff, so I proceed to go and grab the things Ed actually asked for and take them upstairs, and since it was near the end of my shift, went back to the office to pack up my laptop and get ready to head out for the day. I get upstairs and Curtis starts this spiel about how he didn't like how I talked to him, to which I said well if he would fucking listen that wouldn't be a problem, would it?

Enter Saturday, where Curtis was scheduled from 3pm-11pm and I guess at some point Ed came in the store and wanted to work on a few projects and asked for Curtis's assistance. Now I don't know how it all played out but apparently Curtis said something smart to Ed and Ed just fired him. I have a phrase for such a firing, it is addition by subtraction. But when I came in this morning I hear how Curtis got fired and I look in our charge book (the book where we keep our store purchases to be against our paycheck) and right on the front is a note saying that Curtis is no longer allowed to charge anything in the store. Yes, it did warm the cockles of my heart. Then, after I get the bank squared away and everything that needs done for being a primary (think shift manager) the phone rings and it is Curtis asking if his charge sheet has been pulled yet and I say yes it has. Maybe he was hoping to sneak in some purchases before word of his demise got out, I don't know but that was not an issue since his sheet was already gone. So our conversation ends and about a half hour later the phone rings again and again it is Curtis, calling to tell me he didn't want to get anything, he just wanted to know if Ed pulled his sheet, because that's the way Ed is and all. And then he starts in again about how I talked to him in the office the other day and I just said, “Listen, I am working here and this isn't helping me get anything done” and hung up the phone. Other than that little bit of nonsense though it was a pretty good day, at least by me being the de facto babysitter standards. I worked with one of our newer employees, Nicholas, and he seems to be decent enough. All of the bank numbers came out okay, which is huge because any shortages fall on me for that shift, and I didn't even have too many asshole customers, at least by our standards. At one point I had a couple that Nicholas looked at me and said I had the patience of a saint for dealing with them, but that was about as hard as it got all day. I have to go over one accounting issue with John in the morning, but other than that it was all good. Curtis being gone just made it better.

Now it is time for a nap, 14 days down, 6 to go. Let's hope the last 6 were as good as today.

Multiply 365 Day 217 - From the top

 

Hopefully I will get to bang out a few words here before my battery dies. Yes me and the laptop are on a road trip of sorts today, sitting in the friendly confines of the Squirrel Cage, with me snacking on a cajun chicken sandwich and fries with an iced tea chaser.

It is roughly 3:30pm and this is my first stop after work, which explains why I have my laptop with me to begin with. But it has been a relatively long day already so I might as well start at the beginning, if only I could remember where the beginning actually begins.

I gu8ess technically it would have been last week, when Ed asked me to make sure the basement got organized at work. He wanted a bunch of stuff priced that wasn't tagged, the shelves straightened up and stuff that could be brought up to the sales floor brought up. I am sure he would have been content if I had just delegated the work out to someone, but I am always of the notion that if you want something done right you do it yourself. So I said I would come in and do it. Of course by agreeing to that I was agreeing to 13 straight days at work, because the day I would have the most opportunity to get that project done would be on Sunday, so I would be working from July 25^th through Aug 6^th without a day off. Then people starting fucking up.

Probably the most important one for our story would be Stephanie, who made a habit of either being late on Sunday morning or just calling off. So on Thursday Ed asks me if I can come in and run the store this Sunday morning, which means my time without a day off now gets stretched to Aug 14^th at the earliest. And while it would be very easy for me to stomp my feet and bitch and moan about such a run, there are a few reasons why I haven't, at least not at work. First among them is the simple fact that I accepted keys. Maybe I shouldn't have, I know my life would be easier if I didn't, but since I did I have to assume the responsibility that goes with it, even if the other people who have keys are less than likely to do so. Second would be that Ed has been treating me well recently, almost too well in my book. I get why he is, not to be too egotistical or anything, but I am the best employee he has. I don't like to brag about that fact, but it is pretty much a reality. And while Ed and I would have much different management styles if I were in his position (I would be firing about 40-50% of our crew and starting from scratch) as long as he is going to retain the people he has it makes the bar relatively easy to leap over and be the best. And in that regard it works to my benefit.

On four different occasions in the last two weeks Ed has just handed me money. A couple of times it was $20, he would just tell me to take myself out for something to eat after work, a third time was just yesterday when he asked what plans I had for Saturday, besides coming in to do our order and I had mentioned that Clare had offered to take Sammy and I to breakfast. Now I know that almost every time Clare says she will go to breakfast with us she ends up sleeping in, or something else comes up and she doesn't go, but I had planned on going to Deluca's this Saturday even before she had made the suggestion, so for me it became a no harm, no foul commitment. If she went great, it would be a free breakfast for me (I bought the only time she went with us, every subsequent time she has said she would go she claims she will buy, but then she doesn't go) if not I was going to go anyway, so I already had money for breakfast for Sammy and I. Ed asks if it would be okay for him to buy breakfast for us. I say that isn't up to me, since I wasn't buying, Clare was but I would ask her. Not that I expected her to say no to a free breakfast but maybe she had it in the back of her head that she would be adamant about buying. There was no need for such a concern though, she was mor5e than willing to let Ed buy.

So I go back to the office and let Ed know and he asks how much breakfast is. Usually it runs about $10 a person, depending on what you get and how many people are going, so I tell ED it would probably be about $30. He wants an exact number and I say if it is over $30 I am sure I will have the money to cover any difference there may be. And now kids you are going to get a lesson on how ED talks and why I find him to be funny. He is probably just about as blunt as I am, I think it is part of the reason we get along so well. But Ed looks and me and says “Matt, If I am with a woman and she tells me I can fuck her but I can't ejaculate, then I don't want to fuck her. Now I am either buying your breakfast or I am not, so how much do you need?” So I say with tip and everything, probably $40. So he just pulls out $40 and says to go enjoy breakfast.

As it turns out, Clare didn't show up so Sammy and I had the free breakfast and the waitress got a $10, I didn't keep any of the money, Sammy got the Bionic Omelet (a 6 egg monstrosity) and I went with the grilled country chicken breakfast, both items are on the pricier end of the menu, on average they probably ran $12 each. Throw in the coffee and we had a $30 check, so I didn't make any personal profit from this venture, despite Clare's absence. The money was designated for breakfast and that is exactly what I spent it on.

There was also something that came up last week, a situation that I am not overly proud of, but I did ask Ed for a loan. Not that I expected him to say no, he rarely tells an employee that they can't get an advance on their paycheck but it is a job perk that in my 2 and half years of being there I have used all of three times. I am just not comfortable being in debt like that, and when I do go that route I pay it off on the next check, rather than break it up into payments as some employees do. So I get an advance of $50 against my paycheck, and on Wednesday Ed hands me my paycheck and as I am looking at it something seems odd. I can't put my finger on it, but something doesn't seem right. I did get a raise recently, so I am making more money, but it almost seemed like too much money. I look at the pay stub on my check and I see why. Nothing is taken out for the $50 loan. So I go talk to Ed and say I think you made a mistake, I owe you $50 and there is no deduction for it. I grab $50 from my wallet and go to pay him back and he will not take it. He just says to not worry about it, I earned it. So when he asks me to work an extra day, even if it means pulling 20 days in a row, it is hard for me to say no to him.

That being said, I went in this morning after breakfast (compliments of Ed) and tried getting caught up on some of my paper work. First I had another 5 invoices on my desk to break down, then I had to fix our deli menu again in the register system. We had some price increases on the sandwiches we make, and Ed recently installed a miniature fryer unit, something to make fries, onion rings, chicken wings and the like with. But none of those items were yet in the register system, so I had to add them as well, and then make a list of all of the SKU numbers being used so they could be punched in at the register. It was a time consuming task to say the least, and I am not completely done, I still need prices from Ed on all of the cut lunch meats and what they cost per pound, because most likely the prices on those increased as well. But all of the prepared foods and once again updated to their current price levels and all of the new items are added as well.

At one point during the madness I almost had a ray of hope that my work streak would be snapped. Ed called the store and said that Steve would be working on Sunday and I wouldn't be needed after all. A certain amount of relief washed over me, but it was quickly replaced. Steve had missed a few days, I am not sure what the actual malady was, I have heard everything from appendicitis to a hernia to hemorrhoids so I don't even know at this point, but whatever it was he has been out of action for a few days. But it looked like he wanted to get hours back and wanted to start doing that on Sunday. Cool with me, I wouldn't mind sleeping in. But then Ed called again (he does that a lot when he isn't at the store) and said that Steve hadn't gotten the required release from his doctor to go back to work, so I am back on for Sunday. I think I died a little inside. I mean even when they said Steve was coming in I still planned on showing up in case he didn't, but now there is no doubt that I am working on Sunday. So 20 days it is. At least for now, until something else goes wrong. And really that is a pretty distinct possibility at this moment. In the last 2 weeks we have had two people get fired (Debbie and Brittany), one call off for three straight days (Stephanie), another miss time because of marital problems (Kenny), someone get hurt on the job (Rick cut his finger on the deli slicer), another call off today (Belinda). Again you can see why it isn't real hard to be at the pinnacle of this mountaintop of distinguished employees.

Next week Dee is scheduled to be in Florida, where she will be training on another idea Ed has for the Weiss Enterprises Empire (he is looking into buying and selling gold and possibly opening a pawn shop) and is sending Dee to get some first hand knowledge from a business associate he has down there so we will already be short one person for the week, though at least hers and my jobs don't overlap all that much, so I doubt it will affect what is on my plate to a great degree. And I doubt that will be the only problem that will occur over the next 7 days, just the first one that I am aware of.

Oh well, my sandwich is eaten and I should pack up the laptop and head for home. I have a couple of errands to run before I get there, but I can't do that if I am doing this, so I guess this has to stop for now.