Blogger 365 Day 324 - Like a boss

     Friday marked the first day where I ran the store pretty much with no assistance.  Ed stopped by on Thanksgiving for a couple of hours and when he left he said he wasn't certain if he was leaving for Florida on either Friday or Saturday.  Turns out he opted for Friday, leaving the store in my hands for the first of what will be many days, unless I get fired first.

     Brian made a cameo appearance, he showed up somewhere around 11:00am and by 12:30 he was already gone.  Not that he was needed, hell I wasn't needed to be honest, business is always slow on Thanksgiving and the day after.  I know that some places are busy with Black Friday specials, we just aren't one of them.  Our business is based on being a place to stop for people going to and from work (or for lunch while at work) and as the de facto grocery store for both Point Park University and The Art Institute of Pittsburgh.  Well, with both schools off and not many people working, that cut down on business considerably.   In fact I started late on Friday and still had my paperwork done around noon.  Starting late isn't going to affect my paycheck all that much, I got time and half on Thursday (plus an additional vacation day) while pulling an 11.5 hour shift, so a shorter Friday isn't all that bad.

     Just because we were slow doesn't mean I didn't have issues to deal with though.  One person called off, another showed up late and still another asked to go home early; our lottery rep came in, apparently we got a new one and no one bothered to tell me, so I talked to him about some issues we were having such as the fact I had stuff for a lottery promotion and no prizes to give away with it, prizes the lottery is supposed to provide.  Thankfully he had those with him, so that problem was solved relatively easily. 

     By 1:30 I was thinking all I would have to do is go to the bank and that would pretty much put a wrap on Friday.   Silly little boy that I am I should now better.  On Friday as part of the bank run we get the weekend change for the store.  Any additional 1 and 5 dollar bills we may need as well as a box of pennies ($25) and a box of quarters ($500) are always part of the order, sometimes we will add nickels and dimes as well if we think we need them, but the big thing we always get are the pennies and the quarters.  In fact usually the bank has those items pulled for us, knowing we will be in Friday to get them.  I say usually because Friday that wasn't the case, when I go to the bank our coins weren't pulled yet.  No problem normally, if they aren't pulled then they can go back and get them from the safe.  Except nobody had access to the safe.  Apparently the safe at the bank operates on a two key system, each employee is granted a key but not everyone has the same key, so in order to open the safe you need one employee who has one of the keys and one employee who has the other key.  The problem was that everybody who was at the bank Friday had the same key, the employees who had the other key were all off so nobody had access to the safe.

     That forced me to go back to work, sans most of the change I needed for the coming weekend.  Instead of going home, I was stuck calling other branches of our bank (they only have one branch in downtown) to see if I could get change from them instead.  The branch on the South Side said they had the change I needed, and thankfully they were open on Saturdays, so I had them set aside what we needed and picked it up as part of my Saturday shift.

     Monday will be the first real test though, everyone is back and it is business as usual, but with me in charge.  So maybe it is as usual after all.

Bloogger 365 Day 324 - Hating on the media (again!)

     By now anyone who follows the NFL in even the slightest has heard that a third party arbitrator has decided that Ray Rice should be reinstated to the NFL; that Ray did not lie to the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell when ray talked to the league about the night when he knocked his wife unconscious and that the league had no standing to punish Rice once (a two game suspension) and then a second time (suspended indefinitely) after the video of Rice striking his then fiance (now wife) was available for public consumption. 

     That doesn't mean that Rice has a job, his former employer the Baltimore Ravens, cut him so he is capable of signing with any team in the NFL, should a team choose to do so.  OF course signing Ray Rice comes with all of the baggage and media attention that comes with hiring a man who abuses women, or at least one woman.

     Still that did not stop one of the experts over at CBS Sports from pontificating just where Ray Rice may go, suggesting that the Indianapolis Colts might be interested.  You really should take a look at the article, its author, Jason La Canfora, makes an interesting case for why Rice might fit with that team.  Read the article very closely though, because if you look closely enough you will see something that is lacking.  Namely a single source that would even suggest that the Colts might be interested in signing Rice in the first place.  It is all just idle speculation simply to garner page hits and make some advertisers happy.


     But wait, it gets better.  After posting that article the same site posted this later on,  Report: Colts not interested in running back Ray Rice.  The thing is, there really is no need for this article because the idea of Ray Rice going to the Colts was never news anyway, it was just something one of your writers made up out of whole cloth.  

     This is one of the tricks that takes place nowadays, whether it be on TV, on the web or in print, a news organizations posits a narrative with scant evidence to back it up, and then when someone comments on the narrative in question, the comment is treated as news as well.  The news isn't about informing the public, it is about getting web hits and eyeballs to advertisers and nothing more, and the truth and actual reporting carry no relevance in that conversation whatsoever.

Maple Leafs @ Penguins 11/26/14

Pittsburgh 4  Toronto 3  OT

Blake Comeau - Hat trick (3 G)

Comeau's hat trick was his first since 2010