Whack-a-Mole, part two.

In an earlier post I mentioned that the general manager had been speaking publicly about his plans to "whack" or get rid of some real losers we have at my workplace who are really dragging down the organization.

Yesterday afternoon I had to work with two of them at the front counter during one of the busiest times of the week. I only have two words for them -- SLOW and STUPID. Normally in a workplace situation I ignore the incompetent people, letting them draw management scrutiny away from me and on to themselves while I go about my business.

In this case however, their incompetence really got in my way, and after having to see grumpy customers all day looking daggers at me wondering where their food is because my helpers were slow morons, I finally had to turn to the manager and beg for someone to help me who knew what they were doing. Lowly and subhuman as my job is, I still take pride in giving my best efforts, and when other people screw me up it really bothers me.

One thing is certain -- whenever I regain my place in management again, I will be absolutely certain to avoid hiring teenagers. If I hire any teens at all, they will have to be perfect enough to walk on water. There are precious few of those. I used to criticize our competitor for hiring mostly people from his ethnic group, but now I understand why. His people work hard and they learn quickly, while American middle class white teenagers are lazy, slow, stupid, and dishonest.

As much as I don't want to admit that, it's the gospel truth.

Here's Your Sign...

Bill Engval is one of my favorite comedians. His most famous catch phrase is "here's your sign..." It refers to the act of putting a sign on someone's back that says "idiot," when they say something that sounds normal, but on further analysis reveals how stupid they are.

For example, I overheard this conversation in the drive through today:

Customer: "about the bacon and cheese baked potato -- what comes on it?"

Cashier: (silence)

Cashier: "bacon and cheese, ma'am..."

My mental response: "well ma'am, it comes with diced and sauteed porcine filet, with lightly braised fromage zests, garnished on the side with cream gently aged in cultures, as well as congealed milk solids."

(trans: bacon, cheese sprinkles, sour cream, and butter.)

HERE'S YOUR SIGN.......

Grumpity Dumps.

I've been feeling really crummy the last couple of days.

My home life is really bothering me, and mortality is staring me in the face, mocking me with fiendish laughter about all of my life's failures. I'm feeling the torment of some desperate needs I've had for many years that have gone mostly unfulfilled. At age forty two, everywhere I look I'm reminded about all of my most humiliating mistakes and failures, and I feel terribly, terribly alone in a house full of people.

Most of the time it's all merely a dull ache in the background, but the last couple of days it's been like a giant stone pressing down on my shoulders.

We're A "Hi-Tech" Company

MonkeyBusiness Management Secret #27

"WHACK-A-MOLE"

This term refers to the practice of newly installed management to go through an organization's ranks and whack anyone off the payroll they don't like, often for mundane reasons like "he talks too much," or "he plays video games at home."

Once this is accomplished, management goes through a hiring spree to appoint people they think will support them and their regime. Management thinks they are "cleaning house," or "revitalizing the organization," or "infusing fresh blood," yet they are sadly deluded. Like the global Communist revolution in the 20th century, basically all that happens is that one set of inept idiots gets replaced by another set of equally inept idiots.

A new manager is in charge of the restaurant where I work. He is committed to turning the place around, but doesn't see that our lower numbers are due to a heavy increase of competition in the area over the last couple of years. More establishments have moved in, and customers have more places to choose from, not to mention the fact that gasoline prices are sky high, so fast food goes by the wayside in most people's budgets.

This manager repeatedly talks to us about who he wants to get rid of. Even as the other manager is in the process of being transfered out, this new one is already making plans about who he wants to whack, and keeps mentioning it in public. He's either incredibly stupid, or he's playing a subtle game of intimidation.

I know full well what his game is. Homey don't play dat. I'll do the best that I can to keep from getting whacked, but this place isn't the only job in the world.

A Word Of Advice.

There is a certain college fraternity back East that uses this motto:

"Wer war der Thor, wer Weiser, Bettler oder Kaiser? Ob Arm, ob Reich, im Tode gleich."

(Which translates thusly: "Who was the fool, who the wise man, beggar or king? Whether poor or rich, all's the same in death.")

It's part of an initiation where the candidate stands in front of four skulls, at the feet of which are laid a crown, a sword, a rough bag, and a priest's hat. He is asked whether they are the bones of a king, nobleman, priest, or a beggar. As he cannot decide, the president of the meeting says to him, 'The character of man is the only thing that is of importance."

Upon graduation, the candidate is given a grandfather clock, to remind him that time waits for no man.

In simple terms, the lesson here is that when Death finally comes, it isn't going to matter a damn bit who you were, or thought you were, in life. Everybody rots in the ground just as fast as everybody else, so it's best to get over yourself.

Often in my working life I have had to deal with people from corporate offices of what ever company employs me at the time. Each time I have to do this, I dread it intensely. Corporate people have often treated me in ways that I would never treat a customer. It's gotten to be proverbial -- how dare I disturb them in their thrones above the clouds? Because I'm a peon trying to talk to them, obviously I must be faced with something I'm too stupid to handle, therefore needing their grand corporate vision.

Let me give all the corporate people of the world a piece of advice. It doesn't cost you any extra to treat your subordinates with the same consideration you would give a valued customer, because when the worms are eating your dead body in the coffin, they're not going to give a flying f* what the nameplate on your office says.

MonkeyBusiness Office Lingo #12

"thumb-butt"

A simple term; it refers to a person who remains completely idle while coworkers are struggling desperately to keep up production.

Ex: "all morning he's been standing around with his thumb up his butt." OR: "don't assign that to Johnny, you'll never see it finished. He's such a THUMB-BUTT."

Here's How To Deal With It.

Mortified.

Ok, time for me to 'fess up. I'm going to tell you the real reason why I didn't make it in management, back in the day when I was on my way up and the future looked promising.

This afternoon was exceptionally busy at the restaurant. Corporate has been coming down hard lately on the local managers to bring numbers up. Tension and stress has spread throughout the store, conflicts are rising, and morale is falling.

It's one of those situations where corporate executives are completely incapable of grasping a basic principle of production theory from Economics 101. I'm referring of course to the "law of diminishing returns," which basically says that there always comes a point where pushing harder and faster isn't always better, and the production process suffers if that threshold is exceeded.

In layman's terms: "haste makes waste."

In any case, we're all going bonkers as a result, and everyone in the crew argued all morning. The grill man gave me all sorts of flack, and the customers were all in a real pissy mood. Right in the middle of lunch rush, right behind the register, I got struck by an anxiety attack to end all anxiety attacks. The walls were caving in, and I felt like I wanted to die. When the rush was over I begged to go home, blaming my allergies and sinuses. I was too ashamed to tell them the real reason.

At home it took me all afternoon and lots of medication to work my way down from feeling like I'm crawling the ceiling.

There are always the nay-sayers who will tell me to buck up and deal with it, pull myself together and get on with things. That only adds to my embarassment. I only wish it were that simple. I'd give the world for it to be that simple. They should thank God that they never have to deal with being totally debilitated like that, in the middle of public.

"He jests at scars that never felt a wound" -- Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2

More than once I have lost a promising position because of it. Daily I deal with the shame of professional failure, as well as the shame of being totally helpless to cope when these things strike.

MonkeyBusiness Office Lingo #11

"VORTEX"

Every work-place has at least one.

This is always the person who stands around and does nothing while everyone else is running about desperately trying to get their work done, desperate to escape him.

If somebody is unlucky enough to get sucked into the attention sphere of a "vortex," they'll find themselves trapped for ages, listening to idle prattle that doesn't amount to anything, while having to watch their productive minutes and hours waste away into nothing, like stellar matter being sucked down into a Stephen Hawking style black hole.

(In fact, I think that Stephen Hawking even mentions human vortexes in his physics books, remarking how their rapacious sucking power cannot be quantified by any kind of mathematics known to science.) (Just kidding.)

Even the fast food industry is not immune. We have a "vortex" at the restaurant where I work. We were exceptionally busy this afternoon. The manager finally had enough of listening to the vortex while watching him do absolutely nothing during the rushes. The manager finally sent him home. I went back to the manager and groveled at his feet, thanking him profusely for getting the vortex out of our hair.

The rest of the afternoon was mercifully, blessedly quiet.

MonkeyBusiness Management Secret #26

"FEES"

For some strange reason I like to browse the Britney Spears headlines once in awhile, just to see what she's up too, since there's never a dull moment in her neck of the woods.

Lately, Ms. Spears' attorney is arguing in court that K-Fed's attorney fees are too high, and that Britney is not a blank checkbook. (Court rulings say that Britney has to pay K-Fed's bill.) Rather than the $900,000 K-Fed's attorney is charging, Britney's attorney says the fees should "only" be about $175,000 -- $190,000 (give or take.)

If there is one lesson I learned from that little tidbit, it's this: I should have gone to law school.

It only goes to show that if you are an "expert" of any kind, especially an educated one, you can charge whatever the hell you like for your "fees." Print some business cards, call yourself a consultant, whip up phony reports with impressive looking numbers and graphs on your spreadsheet program, have KINKO'S print and bind it, and then deliver it to your client with your invoice for any kind of ungodly sum you can think of. It helps if you scan the dictionary every day to find as many big, ten-dollar words as you can. Use them in your spiel, to make it sound like you really "know."

Hell Hath No Fury...

Hell hath no fury like four young women getting on each other's nerves while working the drive through and grill together on a Sunday afternoon, with one of them pregnant, the other one loosing a boyfriend, the third being totally new, and the fourth dealing with a painful back injury.

Luckily the manager had me work the front counter this afternoon, but I had the pleasure of listening in on the fireworks as they exploded in the kitchen. All day the girls had their claws out, ready for battle, and battle they did. The girl on the grill started to give me flack, too, but since I have a fondness for the ladies, I let it go and went home after my shift. They're all "my girls," so I just chalk it up to being one of those days.

The manager wasn't happy with them because their bickering interfered with good customer service, so he repeatedly had to call them into the office and straighten things out. I had to apologize to the customers a few times for the disturbances.

Interestingly enough, I'm feeling the Spirit of The Sabbath, enough to want to use what Cedric, my alternative spirituality friend, taught me how to do. As I write this, I've been visualizing and affirming for peace in my workplace. I realize this runs counter to my usual pissy, cranky, swearing self, but that's one of the beauties of being bi-polar. Today I'm feeling generous, so I'm praying for peace and healing amongst my co-workers.

Revelations.

I've made frequent mention of my buddy Fred in previous posts. Fred worked over at Wal-Mart about the same time I worked at Target. Many times we would talk shop over a coffee or soda at the Starbucks in my store. Not too long after I left Target, Fred left Wal Mart. Interestingly enough, right after I found a "replacement" job in the food industry, Fred went to work for one of my company's competitors, as well.

Once in awhile I'll visit Fred at his place. The weather has been bitter cold lately, and Fred likes to put a couple of beers out on the porch for a couple of hours in the late afternoon to chill them up. On days like today they can get downright frosty. I'll sit with Fred while he sips a few.

Fred told me a couple of interesting things about what goes on in his restaurant. One of my favorite menu items that his employer has is their chili. That is, until Fred told me that they use the old, crusty, unsold meat patties from the grill. They boil them in a pot of water for awhile, strain them, and mash them. Then they put it in the chili. NOT good eats. During cold weather like this, people line up to the door almost just to buy some. They just rave about it. Not me.

One of the interesting things about the fast food industry is the characters who work there. It's sort of like the The United States Army or the French Foreign Legion. They accept all the misfits and malcontents who have no place else to go. My workplace is no exception. Single moms pregnant out of wedlock, recovering alcoholics, ex convicts on propation, women fighting each other about their shared exes, mobile disc jockeys working the grill between gigs, immigrants with no English, anorexic high school athletes, cashier girls with hickeys the size of Toledo...you name it, we got it.

It's sort of like a certain clown character we all know, posing with a menu in one arm, holding aloft a shake in the other, with an inscription on his feet: "give us your poor, tired, and huddled masses." (Only in this case they'll get exploited with minimum wage.)

Learning The Lingo.

Today my fellow front man introduced me to a couple of fast food terms.

The fry vat had to be emptied and cleaned out. When that was done, I found a large pile of shriveled, rock hard, deep jet-black looking things the crew had left sitting on the counter. My front man explained "we call those little darkies."

"Let me guess -- the raw, frozen, uncooked pale white fries in the bag we call little honkies." My front man confirmed my estimation.

"Dude..." I chuckled. "That is SO wrong! Lightning is going to strike, you know...."