Just in case you were wondering

Ouch! I just had quite an experience that I would like to share with the world...I'm a big believer in listening to advice from others. I mean, I consider the source, so if a homeless guy advises me to invest in Enron or something, or like when my mom told me "Don't worry, just charge the hell out of your Sears card when you get a new house--everyone does that and just pays it off over time" (okay, on that one, I actually listened and paid the price).

My buddy brought me some cool stuff from Africa, including a Masai "beat yo ass over the head" club (If I EVER figure out how to put pictures on my Blog, it will go right here ->)



For some reason (here in Texas, we have a joke: What's the last thing a redneck says before he dies? A: "Hey ya'll, watch this!") I thought--what would a Masai head-beating club SMELL like?

The answer is...it smells kinda like campfire smoke, also like Masai BO (I've now seen pictures of the way they carry this club tucked into their pants, which I'm trying to forget), and...hmmm...something else....

RHINO ASS!

So just in case you were wondering, just take my advice and visualize it rather than experiencing it.

Kinda Funny...

So, a real fun thing for me to do is after I finish typing my blog entries, I just hit "Next Blog" and see what happens. Usually, it is a blog from someone in Japan, Mexico, or someone who thought it would be a great idea to post a bunch of crap about insurance or investments--yeah, dude, I'm gonna get financial advice from blogspot, just because you're cool...

So I stumbled across one (I didn't save the link like a real doofus), about a woman who is blogging her sex life with her husband. So, I creepily read the first entry, which at first seemed sweet, then I was kinda like I wanted to close the page but it was like looking at the sun or something, I just couldn't stop even though I didn't want to. Then I was like, holy shit! This lady's into all kindsa kinky stuff!...So I inadvertantly read "true life" porn--oh, well. It's kinda weird, too, like it wasn't explicitly worded, but was just what she was feeling, so it felt even more personally invasive. Anyway, it creeped me out--bigtime! What a prude. The worst 2 hours of my life--just kidding! Maybe 3 minutes.

But here's the kinda funny part. I took my 5-year old on a little field trip yesterday, and we had a couple of very funny moments.

We sometimes play this game called "what's the magic word?" Of course, it's "please", but just to jack with his head (like I heard one person say one time that they were going to teach their kid the colors all incorrectly just to see what happens), sometimes I make him guess it and make it "abracadabra" or "open sesame" or something else fun.

So, I bought him a hot dog and a bag of skittles which he picked out, and me a burger and a snickers bar. I set the candy in the middle of the table for when we were finished eating. Anyway, Ryan did the old ninja trick of taking one bite of each end of the hot dog and kind of wrinkling up the bun and announcing that he was finished eating--I don't blame him, because I think it's been rolling around on that machine since Clinton left office.

So I told him: "Ryan, you need to take 2 more bites of hot dog"

Ryan: "What's the magic word?"

Me: "Ryan, please take one more bite of hot dog"

R: "Nope, that's not it..."

Me: "Abracadabra"

R: Nope!

Me: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

R: (laughing) No!

Me: another 10 guesses

R: (no)

Me: (reaching out and picking up both the snickers and skittles) "I guess I get to eat both snickers and skittles today"

R: (pausing thoughtfully): "That's It!", and he takes another bite of hot dog.


So, when we're leaving, we have parked in an area where a million people are crossing the street, and we have to sit and wait for every single one of them to cross. Anyone that doesn't have kids, at a certain age you realize that they are very sensitive to tension and moods and stuff like that, and I could tell that Ryan was impatient to go. He was back-seat driving from his car seat by leaning out into the middle aisle and watching the people come and go across the street in front of me, and of course, I wasn't revving the engine or anything crappy, but I was eager to get out. That reminds me "The Age of Innocence", there's a great line: Americans are always in a hurry to leave the theatre...

So, as we are about to go, here come two very slow walking people right out in front of us just as it was clearing up.

Ryan, in his best New York cabdriver accent: "Well, whaddya know! Two morons!"

I thought that was hilarious, but then I thought "you know, I really ought to be a little more careful about saying negative things in front of my 5-year-old.

So, Fran read some of my writing. I knew she would hate it, because she emotionally HATES that job that I had and the owner of the company and we had a traumatic ending to that whole thing with an assasination attempt and suicide bombing and snipers and government witness protection and the whole thing (okay, maybe not really all that, but it was still bad). So, to her it would be like reading a warm, fuzzy story about Hitler--there's just no way she's going to like it because it was just too emotional and she can't separate herself from the crap that happened.

But here's something useful she did tell me "I hate your parenthesis problem"

Me "What problem? I thought that was kind of funny and a good way to put unrelated comments."

F: "I feel like I'm reading a novel at the airport and some retarded dude comes over my shoulder and yells 'Hey!' every 2 minutes! I can't focus on the main train of thought. It makes me tired while I'm reading it."

Me (sheepishly) "Oh, okay."

I was going to end this by tying it to the original paragraph of this entry, but....I don't think so this time...

Another blog on the fire

Anyone following along will see that I've had a pretty weird week with some negative moments. I'm going to put another one (notice I don't say, the last one--seems like there have been 10 or so "episodes" this week)--this one is controversial, so it could just be that I'm crazy. I'm also going to just lay it out there and some of you guys (particularly one person) will know the players involved, but I'm not going to hold back.

So I sent a gift to a person that I don't know very well, which made me quite nervous. One of the items was a book of Walt Whitman's poems that reminded me of this person--I am not a huge Whitman fan but I could have qualified for a minor in Literature except my University didn't award minors, and one of the obscure classes that I took focused on Whitman's poetry for about a month. Well, this person reminded me of 2 of Whitman's poems: Song of Myself (about individualism), and O Captain My Captain (Which is about Abraham Lincoln's assasination, but uses metaphor about Lincoln as the leader of the country, a respected individual, etc. But this person is actually a Captain, so I thought that was cool--Also, I put a joke in there about ignoring the line in the poem "Fallen cold and dead".) Anyway, the poem has a fantastic cadence to it and is fun to read--I would type it out here but the book is downstairs right now...

Side note: Mike's Drumbeats is actually a play on perhaps 3 things: 1) I kinda do my thing differently (aka different drummer) 2) I actually played drums in school and 3) "Drum Taps" was Whitman's book of poetry about the Civil War (I think his first book), and some of my things are supposed to resemble poetic language.

So, in this class, I was supposed to analyze Song of Myself, which I quoted in my letter...blah, blah, blah...so it is somwhat stuck in my brain.

When the person gets the gift, they call me and say "You must be a fan of Dead Poet's Society"--it was really (not my imagination) worded like they were "busting" me. Huh? Then I realized that both of these poems were referenced in the movie (good thing I didn't include the dagger scene from Shakespeare)(or sign it Carpe Diem!--see, I do remember the movie)--I haven't seen that movie in....a long time...but I did like it, in a B-movie kind of way. I love Robin Williams, who has the same birthday as me, and who has done both his share and my (untouched) share of cocaine but is funny as hell.

So, I kind of went through some trouble to come up with something personal that could possibly be meaningful, and this person seemed to interpret it as me being pretentious and snobby and trying to act like I know something about poetry (I confess, right here and right now, that I know precious little and have never read a single Edgar Allen Poe poem and I didn't think Thoroeau was very good, etc.--I was, however, a charter member of my elementary school's library/poetry club by memorizing Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", which I cling desperately to as my one tie to culture--that and my collector's item pink flamingo collection in the front yard).

Another interpretation: This person is self-absorbed and acted that way for some reason that has nothing to do with me and didn't consider that they were coming across as ugly...hmmm I think I'll take that one.

Anyway, I was really trying to be nice, but now I feel rotten and defensive about it and look at myself and think "what a pretentious bastard--why would you send a book of poetry to someone that you don't know? Maybe you WERE trying to make someone think you are 'literary wizard' when you are a 'science lizard'"--okay, just put that in because it rhymes and have no idea what that means.

Here's another one: Maybe next time a Whitman's Sampler instead of a sample of Whitman!

And another: I guess my gift horse just got a root canal!

Just FYI everyone-I won't be turning my blog into "true confessions" any time soon, but I wanted ya'll to know what was going on with me this week.

See ya!

Excerpts from an Email Exchange (no, a different one)

So, another conflict from this week. I'll try to leave it just my emails because who knows...I was going to sign up for professional coaching--this class needed "volunteers" to work with so they could get their skills up to date. The person that I originally talked to was very competent and insightful, and then I got my "assigned person"--read on...

Hi ***:

I am very excited about the possibility of the coaching process. I think it would be very helpful to get an outside source of knowledge to help me with my future professional and personal goals--I'm a big believer in goal-setting and personal development, but I've only been doing this with myself all this time...and the price is incredible in this case!


Email #2:

Hi *****:

I wanted to follow up with you about this briefly.

I've been contacted regarding coaching, and it's kind of bizarre--the guy
who has contacted me has really rubbed me the wrong way each of the 3 times
I've talked to him (about usually mundane things like "when are you
available?") I felt like he was "big timing" me, condescending (how does he
know I'm a loser? He doesn't know me yet! :)), and really didn't have any
means or desire of accommodating my busy, somewhat unstructured schedule.

So....I'm going to blow him off (tomorrow). I feel confident that, since
we're friends, you wouldn't want me to put up with that, right? :)

Anyway, I wanted to give you the courtesy of letting you know. Don't know
if I could work with someone else or not--I'll ask him--I'm sure it is my
fault as I (with my willy-nilly ways) probably require dealing with someone
with a little flexibility.

Otherwise, I hope you are doing well--I received your packet and it is
extremely professional!

Mike !

Email #3:

*****, *****, *****...

Of COURSE this is no reflection on you whatsoever as I know how professional
you are--I am not embarrassed at all because I had pure intentions, and I
know you do to, so please don't let it be an issue at all. I sincerely
appreciate the opportunity.

I hope you are smiling at this point...

So, I will detail exactly my impression and hopefully you will laugh at it,
because I haven't even gotten off the ground.

I got a call from my prospective coach on Sunday night--actually Fran
answered the phone. The incoming call said "private number", which we
almost didn't answer because we thought it was a telemarketer. Just FYI--I
find that a little off-putting to begin with. Okay, so I don't know his
name--it's written out in my car and I don't want to go get it, but it's
something like Christopher---I'll get it for you tomorrow.

Even though it was my daughter's birthday and we were probably going to have
cake in a couple of minutes, I was really excited to talk to the coach, but
the way he was wording his comments was somewhat condescending, not exactly
but as if he was saying "I'm going to impart wisdom on you, when will you be
ready?" Now that I'm typing that I realize that he uses very formal
wording, so my internal interpretation is that this isn't someone that I
want to share very much personal information with.

So, I told him that we had a lot going on, maybe we could talk tomorrow. He
asked what time, and I said "tomorrow afternoon". He asked "What time
tomorrow afternoon?" and I said "unfortunately, my schedule is a little
wacky--let's try for 1:00 or so". He said "okay, so I'm going to call you
at 1:00 tomorrow."

Well--of course, I missed his call. Now, does that make me a creep for not
valuing his time? Maybe. I called him back within a few minutes but he was
like "well, too late. I shall call you back promptly at 11:00 tomorrow."
So this was starting to tick me off, because my schedule is just not created
that way (which I alluded to with him but seems to not have sunk in). In
order for me to be available at precisely 11:00, I have to block off quite a
bit of my productive time of the day (like from 10:00 on--when I go in on a
sales call, a lot of times they last quite a while).

So...then of course, being the cretan that I am, I missed his 11:00 call
because I was in a meeting with the National Sales Manager who wanted to speak with me about possible promotion possibilies
and the meeting got started late. So I called him back at 11:05 and
apologized for calling back and told him I was eager to speak with him and,
seriously, he was very flippant and said "Well, it's not going to happen
right now..." Like he had 4 minutes blocked off to speak with me! This
really reminded me of an executive that I worked with that always demanded
full control of all meetings, no matter what--he would never let someone
"call an audible" just because he interpreted this as someone trying to get
the upper hand in a relationship--this whole thing felt a little contrived
and insincere.

So, this may be somewhat petty, but alarm bells are just going bananas in my
head telling me that dealing with me is beneath this guy and I don't care if
the coaching is free, my time is also valuable and my thoughts are pretty
valuable as well--I don't just open up my life strategy to any yo-yo that
comes along. I am pretty good at reading people quickly and I just don't
think this guy and I are a good fit.

Now, in the theoretical world, it may be valuable for me to hear the view of
someone with perhaps a more analytical perspective. I tend to be
expressive, maybe a little impulsive, and sometimes don't see the forest for
the trees because I'm driving full force. However, this strict analytical
personality and I have come in contact a few times, and usually it is a
recipe for disaster.

*****, I'm an open book as far as you are concerned and you are welcome to
ask any question that occurs to you. I realized that this is a training
deal so no harm, no foul, and believe it or not, I have the guts to talk to
this guy and tell him constructively the way I interpreted our brief
interaction--Just think, I could make him thousands of dollars from not
losing clients! If I was him, I would try to interpret it as "he never gave
me a chance", "he was defensive about missing our appointments", or "he was
distracted with a lot of stuff going on", but trust me that I'm more
objective than that.

Thanks a lot for your concern--I do want to put you at ease, though, to
please not worry about it at all--I'm smiling about it-really! One of my
philosophies is to respect myself and my instincts because they have served
me well, and, unless I completely read you and ***** wrong, you guys are the
same way!

I hope you don't think I'm flaky or overreacting :)!

thanks again!

Mike

Email #4

Hi *****:

Sorry to be going back and forth like this, but perhaps it is valuable input
for your class.

Yes, my job is relatively unstructured which is both a blessing and a
curse--but either way, it really is that way.

Some of my customers really insist on exact timing, but that is
approximately 1%, so it doesn't really harm my overall productivity. This
also lets me fill in the gaps of time and be ultra-productive. I typically
have 20 customer contacts, 30 Emails or more, and about 15 incoming calls
per day, and keep a task list of about 100 items.

However, some people just DO NOT mesh with this, and I think Christopher and
I are that way.

"Call an audible" relates to football--when the play is about to start, a
lot of time teammates are in position anticipating the other side's move.
Right before the play starts, a designated player can yell out instructions
to other teammates telling them to change their reaction to the other side's
formation. It is a sophisticated and coordinated reaction and requires
multi-dimensional thinking.

I sometimes use it as a euphamism in business for reacting quickly when
things don't go according to plan. In my opinion, problem management is key
in dealing with external customers because 1) stuff happens and 2)
perception is reality--if you can let the customer perceive that you are
able to adjust to handle the situation and are calm about it, they realize
that you are taking ownership of the issue and they don't panic either.

In the case of meetings, the guy that I had previous experience with would
NEVER let someone change the circumstances of a meeting at all as a "show of
power"--he felt that if a person changes location, time, etc. they were
taking control of the meeting, and he would counter with an alternate
location, time etc.--it is a valid psychological tool to keep dominance of
the meeting-and I think it works, too. I detected a twinge of this in my
dealings with Christopher, which my ego could handle--it just annoyed me because
my schedule is crazy.

Just FYI--since I do it all the time, I think it's kind of fun to analyze
circumstances and relationships, and this has not turned me off to coaching.

Getting even more honest here: I wonder if the fact that this was kind of
the low-cost version of coaching might have biased both of us. ie. Perhaps
Christopher was less tolerant of me since I wasn't a million dollar client
and perhaps I didn't value being prompt since I wasn't paying $300 per hour.

So...that's where we are...Talk to you later! Thanks for the concern ****
but please just go close the big customers and don't worry about me! have a
great day, and I look forward to seeing you and ***** again soon--we always
have a nice time with you guys but we've had a wacky year and haven't gotten
together with many friends recently...

Mike

So...I know, I suck and I blew this way out of proportion and now it is laid open for everyone to see that I am a bozo.

Have a nice day!

Let's delete this blog

Okay, I've kind of had a down week. Very productive, but I'm in a pretty pissed off mood and I've been pissing off everyone I've come into contact with, so, yes, it's me.

So...I'm sometimes impulsive and do stuff like delete my whole blog just because I'm pissed off...but I'm not going to do it today.

Based on to some reactions to my writing, perhaps that would be the best thing--in fact, I think I'm not going to write THAT book and maybe have to start over--I guess that was just an easy way out...

Anyway, so I totally bitched someone out in an Email, which, of course makes great documentation. Here's an excerpt: "perhaps there is a 5 minute "look-in-the-file-behind-my-desk solution to this question instead of a "let's-run-Mike-all-over-town-for 2-hours solution". Is that really THAT offensive? So, the manager calls me on a "mission" to tell me how that's inappropriate, but I gotta get one more dig in "Hey, maybe your telephone call should be to the other 12 sheep in our company who are shuffling all over town because they don't challenge this administrator who needs to wipe her chocolate-dipped oreo-eating fingers off before she handles any more of my shit." Seriously, this is what I said "Maybe you should be more outraged by people who are supposed to be front-line producers who don't object to these people who shift the burden of administrative tasks to them and take them right off the front line. Someone who gives me tasks that have me running all over town to track down serial #'s that are in the file behind them is offensive, because it interferes with my already packed schedule. If other people have holes enough in their schedule to insert such non-productive tasks...hmmmm."

Well, I got to make my point, but, knowing he was on a mission, acknowledged that I should watch my tone so I don't sound like I'm attacking people personally (and no, I didn't use the oreo fingers thing (but it IS true!)).

So, as you can tell--perhaps it is best if I don't write right now...

Framework

so Here's what I'm going for with the next Chapter: Chapter 1 is kind of an intro and flowery interpretation of what I was all about at the time. Probably need to go back and add a little more to it. Chapter 2 is really just started, but it is supposed to be a personal history of Greg, his dad, and the company without getting too dry. So, I think it's time for a light-hearted situational glimpse of some of the cast of characters through a dialog interaction.

While I'm at it, let me chart out what's on my mind:

Chapter 3--Meeting Sharon then having the meeting with Sonic, reading employee manual, Steve M., Gaspar, Greg and the "payment".

chapter 4--Immediate success and then the rut.

Chapter 5--Ed and the establishment of the Business Services Department

Chapter 6--Gar and Nancy

Chapter 7--Driver Stories

Chapter 8--The Potato Factor

Chapter 9-Applying Cost/Benefit to Everything in sight

Chapt 10--A business Plan

Chapter 11--Legal and Accounting woes

Chapter 12--In pursuit of technology

Chapter 13--Me and Ed

Chapter 14--The Beginning of the end

Chapter 15--Summary

OK--this is oversimplified and the titles are really just to trigger my memory.

I would like to get as many of the memories down as possible to begin with, then go back and clean it all up, making all the lies consistent ( ;) ) including all the name changes. Fran saw that I renamed the company owner Greg and laughed for a complete 3 minutes yesterday, so I'm wondering if I should keep that.

Again, this story has to have more than just experiences and stories, but lend insight and true humor (not 3 Stooges humor).

Someone read the story and said it was "highbrow"--I wonder if that's good.

Another weird thing--as I start working out the details of the story, other things come to mind. for example, in chapter 2 I detail that I went to Greg's office and Admador was driving a forklift. Well, I remembered (in the shower) that the reason I went to the office was that Fran and I were invited to come to the warehouse and look at some furniture that was for sale. It was all new furniture, but I was certain that it was hot. In fact, I held up one of the warranty registration tags to Greg and asked him "So... would it be a good idea to fill this out and send it in?"

He didn't answer. I was wondering if he didn't answer because it was hot, because he was offended that I insinuated it was hot, or because he wasn't sure if it really ever does anything to send in a warranty registration card except put you on a mailing list, and so he was wondering if it really was a good idea. Another possibility was that he wasn't listening.

Fran and I had a windfall and decided to get a new sleeper sofa and chair for about $500 (this was right after we got married and was our first official furniture together and, sadly, they are right in front of me in our loft right now as I type), and I was visiting Greg's business to pick them up in a truck. Amador decided to load the sleeper sofa in the truck for me with the forklift and accidentally punched a hole in the fabric in the back of my precious new sofa with a forklift fork. I was very surprised and a little irritated. Then: awkward silence. They thought I was going to take the damaged couch anyway!

Then Greg came out of his office and we found another couch exactly like the one that was damaged and we hand-loaded it into the back of the pickup truck, along with the recliner. This was my first introduction to a freight dock , and I was somewhat surprised by the lack of efficiency.

Now: Is this good to add into the book, or does it kind of contradict what I describe as Amador? I know he was a hard worker, but he was also bull-headed and tried to get by with as little work as possible--the reason he was trying to load with a forklift is that he wanted to stay sitting down in the forklift and not have to get out of it. This is a phenomenon that I've observed with other forklift drivers, too, though--the get a weird feeling of invincibility where the insist on using the machine for everything when it may be easier to get out...But is that interesting?

Another incident that I remembered at that location is working out a report with Greg, our first analytical report. Something funny there: Greg was trying to project expenses if he grew the business. One customer was offering to let him increase the number of loads for a volume discount, and Greg was trying to decide if it was going to be worthwhile. He gave me some of the financials and asked me to multiply them by 30% increase in total sales. So, this is how I got my job with him. He wanted me to make the calculations and then he would privately analyze them and make mental adjustments for projections that he thought wouldn't hold up at a constant percent increase, for example: rent. If we get 30% more volume, our rent doesn'tt go up.

So I asked Greg: "What expenses relate directly to an increase in volume?" Greg, surprised: "Driver wages, Gas&oil, probably maintenance, but not at the same %"--so I broke up the financials into fixed and variable expenses and projected the increase that way. Then I asked him about the productivity of the new business--is it average or more than average? Blank, thoughtful stare. He really had no clue. I asked him a couple of other questions, but they were carefully worded not to put him on the defensive about how little he knew about the true level of productivity in his company. In fact, he truly believed that it was impossible to track due to the complexity of the specific circumstances of his company. The reason for this was that there were dozens of variables that can enter into the equation such as the fact that, for maximum efficience, delivery drivers were mixed with multiple accounts' deliveries. Also, they typically spent some amount of time on the dock loading, then some time delivering, then some time writing up paperwork when they get back. Traffic, waiting time at delivery locations, fueling every day--those things added so much variability that it couldn't be calculated.

But, since we weren't publishing a treatise on cold fusion, I managed to get satisfactorily close to the real number by isolating one or two drivers that were dedicated to that account and calculating their productivity from their logs over a few days. It turns out that this account lent itself to be more productive than average for the company, so I plugged this into the equation and it turned out looking like a great deal.

Greg took the increased business and it changed his company, enabling him to add more trucks. From my standpoint, it was a taste of production analysis in a raw environment. No good data available and so it was necessary to be very creative to track down something to calculate with.

After I started working for Greg, he developed a pattern of behavior where he got less and less tolerant of any assumptions, to a completely unreasonable and unhealthy level. I did my best to point out to him that a variance of 1-2% wasn't significant in this type of calculation, and even tried to teach him about statistical standard error by drawing curves and showing him statistical distribution. A few times he insisted that we go through and analyze each data point individually, a painstaking process that once turned a 20-minute report into over 100 hours of research--the difference in the numbers ended up being 1-2% from my projections.

Later, when he would ask me to generate a production report, I started saying: "Well, I think I can get a 90% correct answer in about 5 minutes, a 95% correct answer in 20 minutes a 99% answer in about an hour, and a 100% answer by tomorrow." During that time, I was very focused and had assigned myself quality control duties just to help keep the billing moving and fill in the gaps where we were lacking. It was frustrating that some of these reports would be generated with excellent, interpretable data, and Greg would either not look at them for several weeks, leaving the data outdated, or, if it did not support the decision that he was considering, he would get mad at the numbers and start questioning assumptions. Overall, although it was probably a healthy dialog to have, the tone would get combative and I would be stuck defending my calculations and assumptions.

25 Things on my desk right now

Okay--anything to get out of cleaning off my desk, so here goes:

1) A bongo drum that I just got from my friend when he came back from Africa--Cool!

2) A carved wooden dolphin

3) 2 mousepads-but just one mouse

4) A malachite box filled with....let me look...coins

5) An arrowhead

6) 2 fossils, 3 geodes, and 2 random rocks

7) a picture of a mouse being zapped by fluorescent light which I kept because the mouse is on its back and it reminded me of the movie "fire in the sky"

8) a rubber "croakies" holder for sunglasses which makes me look like one of Jerry's kids

9) a gray Swingline stapler that is at least 50 years old

10) a cracked ruler (still works)

11) A printed out copy of some of my blog stories with a red pen clipped to it

12) 2 mini-am/fm radios with no batteries-one from a box of razors, one a giveaway from my company

13) a 2004 Dallas Cowboys schedule (that's going directy in the trash)

14) a "to-do" list that I wrote up 2 weeks ago, haven't added anything to it since then, and haven't completed yet

15) a green pyramid pawn to a very small chess set that I got in Monterrey, Mexico that has since been scattered to the 4 winds by various nephews and nieces. I bought it in a small store when we hired a cabdriver to drive us around for $40 for a whole day (a ripoff)--we were there to see a Dallas Cowboy's game, had free tickets, and got to hang out with Jerry Jones for over an hour--I also have a picture (somewhere, not on my desk) of me wearing Jerry Jones' Superbowl ring which was taken on that same trip)

16) a receipt for bowling with Ryan and Gar 2 weeks ago

17) a partially-used matchbook from Chamberlain's restaurant (NOT an endorsement)

18) 8 golf tees--6 free short ones which I don't like because I tee the ball up ridiculously high, most with chunks taken out of them, and 2 long tees which I do like--accumulated from multiple games when I came home and had them in my pocket.

19) a bullet (30-06)(strangely, I don't have a 30-06)

20) 4 dead batteries (1 9V and 3 AA)

21) a nametag (mine from God knows where)

22) a blue plastic CD case (no CD)

23) Stationary that came as a gift from my grandmother in a box of monogrammed handkerchiefs (reaching over it to type)

24) a book of checks (I have 5 books going right now in different places)

25) 2 pictures of my kids, including 1 picture of them with Santa (unframed)

Under my desk:

1) a small pair of blue/silver zip-up shoes, suitable for a 5-6 year old little boy

2) an (unused) kleenex

3) a blank yet wrinkled piece of photo paper (4x6)

In front of my desk:

Strangely enough, I am painting my old office which usually has my rather large deer head on it. I had to take it off and lay it on the stairwell ledge, so know it looks like a possessed deer is emerging vertically from my stairwell--it's quite unsettling.

Oh well, better get back to cleaning...

Hey Don!

Dude, stop sending me links to better blog sites, asshole! Yes, I know I don't have any pictures on mine--haven't you been reading?

I'm going for volume, here, trying to test the theory about monkeys banging on typewriters eventually generating Shakespeare....

I get it, I get it! Room for improvement, yes...

Chapter 2

As long as he could remember back in his lifetime, Greg Castillo was discontent. Despite his best efforts, age 35 had come and he still had not realized his dream of having enough cash on hand to do whatever the hell he wanted to do whenever he wanted to do it, and no strong prospect that these days were close to arriving. A full-time firefighter, Greg had become a true product of his upbringing which had brutally taught him not to be pretentious with others despite his capabilities. He had made excellent grades in school, was responsible, and had a vision that was not common to the otherwise average group of friends from high school that he was still running around with 20 years later. He had come from poverty, and it was important to him to keep that in his mind and appreciate everything he had done to this point. Being very self-conscious, he was aware that he spent a lot of his time "slumming" with his buddies, but felt uneasy in other groups. He transferred from one junior college to another for a couple of years and his academic success was slight and discouraging-he knew he could do better, but had poor study skills and other things on his mind: Twenty-five years later he still has the makeshift beer-can trophy for winning a beer chugging contest, and he played both basketball and baseball, earning a tryout from the Kansas City Royals as a pitcher. None of his friends of family earned college degrees, so to Greg this was an unncessary step, and one that could make him stick out as dangerously--besides, one of the consistently reinfoced themes from his neighborhood was the smart yet uneducated man who succeeds in business, outthinking and outworking all those "college boys".

Greg loved telling tales from the "hood" with themes of how people would do anything to earn, or preferably swindle, a buck from someone else. If you could work both of them in together, even better: Greg used to love to tell the story of how he and his dad would put on old clothes and "bust batteries" out at an illegal junkyard on Saturday mornings, cashing in the lead for a couple of bucks on the side. But most of all, Greg was subconsciously torn between protecting the legacy of his illiterate, poverty-stricken father, who struggled to provide for his family and improving himself and pretentiously exposing his father's shortcomings. His mother told him "Be careful about who you pass climbing up your career ladder, because you'll have to see them all again when you're falling back down."

Amador, whose name literally means "lover", did his best to live up to his name, much in the way that American Indians believe that a name determines destiny. He had 7 children with 4 different women, and would tell Greg "That's nothin'-you've probably got brothers and sisters running all over France and Germany from the war!" He had lied at age 16 to enlist in the army, and an old, somewhat blurry picture of him remains hanging in their hallway, the uniform hanging bulkily off his bones, his hair touseled like a young boy, and a huge grin on his face--I have no idea how he could have fooled anyone into thinking that he was old enough to go fight.

But making children was the only sense in which he was a lover, because, other than that, he was a hateful, abusive, womanizing, bigoted man. He was an alcoholic for much of his life and physically and verbally abusive to everyone in his household. He loved to exclaim "God Damn!" before starting a sentence to get the attention of those around him. He was cartoonish-short, squatty yet broad-shouldered, completely bald, dark-skinned, and wore thick-framed glasses. Years of hard living had made him very conservative in his movements, a combination of being mentally weary and physically worn out. Greg loved him wholeheartedly and found his faults endearing, as most sons do in the presence of outsiders. One time, when describing his father to a customer, Greg acted out how painfully his father had to labor to sign his own name, "...but he did it." In another story, one of Greg's friends, Gaspar, told us about a time when he was eating with Amador in a restaurant. As a beautiful woman walked by in a short skirt, Amador, who could no longer turn his head, reached down with both hands, grabbed the chair seat, and lifting and twisting, turned the entire heavy wooden chair against the floor, making a loud squeaking sound: "errr, errr, errr, errr," as he turned the chair to watch the woman walk by. Gaspar said they all laughed so hard--partly in embarrassment because of all the noise, and partly from Amador's exclamation: "God Damn!"

I remember vividly one of my only times to see Amador-I walked onto a freight dock and saw him casually driving a forklift with a huge cigar in the side of his mouth and a 11-year old boy riding on his lap. I only met him a couple of times, but on that sunny day in May of 1992, he was just taking his grandson for a ride. Although at the time he was the owner of Greggo Zip Express, he didn't acknowledge my presence on the dock at all. Later, Greg told me that his father had no respect for people who "worked inside all day", and thought that such people didn't earn an honest living. Obviously, at the time I had no idea of the impact that this man and the company he created would have on my personal destiny. It also didn't occur to me that Amador would be dead within 2 years, or that twelve years later that same 11-year old boy and his young wife would be imprisoned for life for his third armed robbery of a post office.

Amador had worked for a large national freight carrier for 25 years after he got out of the army. He joined the teamsters and loved to hang out in the union hall, drink coffee and smoke cigars. Seniority had enabled him to select from among the prime routes, so instead of hustling all over town all day making multiple stops, he had 2 large deliveries to make each day at locations where he was able to wait for several hours, drink coffee, and play dominoes. He always had side businesses going, buying and selling things that came his way, reclaiming battery lead--anything to get as much money as he could into their family's budget. Although they lived in poverty in the once prestigious but now aging Oak Cliff section of Dallas, Texas, they were always clean and tidy, and had an averaged-size house in good order. And at about 5:30 every day, Amador switched from coffee to beer.

In 1977, the freight carrier folded, and Amador saw an opportunity. He and a partner established a small local delivery company consisting of an old truck which he drove around town making deliveries. Over time he set up a small office with a secretary who would take orders and act as dispatch and bill the customers. Amador was a steady worker and was extremely dependable to meet delivery obligations, so he developed a good reputation for high quality, hands-on service and his business grew because of this reputation. Greg was in high school and remembers picking up small loads and delivering them in the car before classes, earning $100 per week. By putting together a small, loosely organized network of reliable people who could help with deliveres, truck maintenance, and any other job that needed to be done. Tolerating no failure, Amador successfully maintained his business for about 10 years, making more money that he ever had as a teamster and remaining humble in his success, keeping the old truck running and not even considering replacing it. Over time, he bought his partner out and allowed himself to momentarily be proud of sole ownership. For professional services such as tax preparation and the occasional legal issues that inevitably arose, he did as he had learned--he loyally stuck with the people that he and his partner had started out with. Indeed, when twenty years later I questioned why our legal counsel was 60 miles out of town when Dallas is overrun by a horde of lawyers, the explanation was that, since Amador's partner lived 60 miles out of town in 1977 when they went into business, and had handled the establishing of the corporation, he had hired someone from the town in which he lived. Amador stayed with him until he died, and then Greg had kept him even after that--perhaps since this lawyer knew about his illteracy and no explanation was needed, as long as Amador could carefully sign checks to pay him.

In 1987, Greg was made a partner in the business. Within five years, Amador's health started to deteriorate and Greg had the accountant calculate all the assets. He then wrote a check for the net worth of the company and had papers drawn up to transfer ownership to Greg, which Amador agreed to. Although the papers were never executed, an issue that would later result in a string of troubling yet funny confrontations, Greg assumed ownership of the company. By doing this, he gave himself permission to not pursue college any more, justifying it by pouring his focus into developing his "family busines". Also by this time, Greg had accrued 15 years seniority in the Dallas Fire Department, which provided a steady income which enabled him to take risks with his newly acquired company.

don't forget to add these funny things:
Solemn, almost reverent about his dad. The dignity of hard work.

Greg had to buy the company 2 times because he never filed the paperwork, and then he still didn’t file the paperwork so it is still 50:50 in his and his mom’s name—his wife doesn’t even know this

Greg also bought his parents' house 2 times also because he paid his mom for the house then she took out a home equity loan which he had to pay off and then officially buy the house from her. His logic was that she needed money and he could either just give her the money and lose it all or give her money for ownership of her house and let her enjoy the money that his dad had worked his whole life to earn. Then she went around, acting “big time” and spent it all and he ended up having to keep writing her checks anyway.

Greg's bros and sisters thinking they were part owners of the company because they were ignorant and thought their dad owned it…and thus their mom owned it—she used this to get favors from them. Greg never told any of them that he had bought out his dad. They are selfish and conniving anyway, so this drove a wedge between them all. And they all have different mother/father combinations anyway.

Greg's wife Marisol and how she absolutely hates the company. She wouldn’t call him through the company phone lines, never walked through the doors, didn’t participate in the (very few) company gatherings.

The name change—in order to make it sound more professional, Greg changed the name from Greggo Zip Express, Inc. to GZE Transport, Inc. In the meantime, he tried a couple of other things, like GZE Transportation, GZE Express, GZE Delivery, and had stationary/cards/billing/truck signs made up with various combinations of these things—because he didn’t want to be wasteful, he used all these varieties of the name until they were used up, so we confused the hell out of all of our customers—it reminds me of the Beverly Hillbillies doing things that they thought would impress the city-folk that would just show how ignorant they were—we made tons of mistakes like that trying to put on an appearance of being “big time” but actually looking like we didn’t know what we were doing.
Multiple co's—this can get confusing so just list them out:
GZE Transport, Inc.—Local Delivery
Triland—Long Haul and Hazmat transport
Skyline Leasing—owned equipment and leased to the other companies
GZE Logistics—bus company (which I created and ran)
Eventually, Logisticorp—an LLC was our holding company, controlled assets, billing, etc.

Amador still telling people he "owns this SOB" and walking around with a hammer threatening to whack somebody when he got mad, and, later, when he was out of it.

intrastate authority and the 5 families—In Texas before deregulation, there were only 5 “family-owned” companies that had intrastate authority, which is the ability to travel across defined “zones”. Greggo Zip could get away with violating this sometimes because it was so small—they ran drill bits down to the coast for a lot of money in the ‘80’s. But as they got bigger and tried to go legit, they ran into the authority issue. Greg naively tried to take on the 5 companies with authority and even testified in a state hearing to the railroad commission, but it wasn’t until about 10 years later that it was deregulated. In the meantime he made enemies which we had to turn around and partner with in later years.
Also, go back and add some more imagery and parenthetical notes.

Chapter 1

The night was damp....(just kidding-see "Throw Mama from the Train" )(okay, don't watch the whole thing or you may get sick).

In October of 1995, I had just turned 25 years old after completing my college degree. My plan all along was to go to medical school, and I had made so many sacrifices along the way up to this point just to get through college. Just to give you an idea, I made a weekly plan into which I packed: 40 hours at a crummy, monotonous, yet reliablly consistent job at a call center, 15 hours of classes, countless hours in a lab setting doing independent research, 10-12 hours commuting in Dallas traffic, and, most importantly, time with my wonderful wife, Fran (which I actually scheduled because it was a very important thing to me)--sleep got inserted wherever it fit into the equation, but I don't remember being tired at all during those days.

Although the faced-paced, busy tempo of my life was dictated by this schedule, I remember very clearly driving home from school one evening after a 15-hour day and experiencing a feeling of euphoria sweep over me-an overwhelming sense of being content with my life. I was in my 10 year old Honda with 235,000 miles, in which the dual-carburator system never properly worked and which I had spent exactly equal the amount in repairing as I did to purchase it five years before--I was irrationally in love with this cherry red car and had nicknamed it Margo--a name which was a little too sexy to have been selected completely at random and one which made Fran dubiously jealous. It was a running joke between us that, when Margo inevitably broke down and forced me to take a precious vacation day to sit in the garage while she was being patched back together, Fran would wink at me just to let me know that she was aware that my "other love" had unceremoniously dumped me on my ass again. But on this day of contentment, Margo was smoothly purring and as I drove along in Arlington Texas by the GM auto plant I saw reflections of a particularly beautiful sunset from behind me which coated an otherwise industrial scene in a golden glow against the thick, high clouds and spectacularly backlit the otherwise common flock of thousands of grackles which moved like a cloud over the road.

It was on this day that I privately celebrated the things that I had already accomplished in my life, remembering that there were times that I wasn't sure which path to take. At the time while driving slowly along that unremarkable stretch of road, I knew that "right now" was a substantial moment and feeling I would take with me for the rest of my life--it was just so poignant. I recall writing down at a young age that, if I made $90,000 in one year someday, that would be my definition of career success (I also listed the ability to stop during the day at any point I want, go to 7-11, and buy a coke and a candy bar--that inspiration came to me from seeing that my dad seemed to never want to leave his office where he worked as a salesman). Of course, I hadn't arrived at that income yet, but it wasn't so far away that it was unreachable-especially if you added our incomes together. Although we lived in a one bedroom apartment, it was in a nice area and, over the past 4 years of our marriage, Fran and I lived a relatively happy life in which we occupied our time visiting family, taking vacations, visiting museums (sometimes visiting museums while on vacation), and otherwise filling the hours that weren't consumed by our busy schedules. Fran worked in downtown Dallas for a bank, processing payments from trust accounts. We had money in the bank (but also money owed on loans and credit cards), but overall we were financially secure and I had a vague sense of invincability that comes from the ability to walk into any given store, plunk down a piece of plastic, and walk away with whatever you may want (and the satisfaction that comes from not exercising that ability too often).

For some reason, that stretch of road and the light and the birds and the car are all clipped together and filed away in my memory and available to relive in my thoughts at any time. It was a moment of "peaking", though not in an overall sense of my life, but more of a peak of local time and space. Also: satisfaction, but, more than that, self-awareness and listening closely to an internal voice that told me that I was a good guy and deserved the happiness that I was feeling. That strong internal voice has always served me well throughout my life, even as a child, and I trusted it implicitly to serve me. Everything had really worked together for the best possible outcome to this point, or so I thought at the time... Of course, I had taken seven years to graduate from college and some of my freshman class from Baylor were already in medical school where I had hoped to be. But unexpected financial circumstances in my family had caused me to make the decision to move to Arlington, get a full-time job, and slog my way painfully through college on the "pay as you (slowly) go" plan, at the same time earning a valued Bachelors of Science degree along with what has turned out to be equally if not more valuable components of my education: work experience and a sense of self-respect and accomplishment. Additionally, I got a big ego boost from having always been the resident "whiz kid" at my job (my nickname always seemed to be "the brain" or "the kid" wherever I went, because I was an overachiever, and sometimes my work could have a sort of show-off tone through "overdoing" things, but overall I always seemed to be ahead of my time), where I had been promoted multiple times and, despite my young age, had earned a surprising amount of respect and regard from our local and even corporate management. Accomplishments in my job had gotten me special priviledges, and this had mapped out the next move of my life.

My background in science and math had developed my analytical abilities, but in a ironic twist I was cursed with being an above-average, but not spectacular student (much of this was probably due to my busy schedule which enabled me to only study key points without the luxury of rote memorization of facts, which in a science curriculum is a necessary step to achieve top marks--this remains something that embarrases me today because I felt that, although I was a solid B student, I ultimately performed under my personal expectations).

My true strengths came from being able to assimilate very practical applications of my education into "real life" settings, and in some inexplicable way despite very little business training, I had come up with many innovations including developing an entire program of statistical analysis for the company which had changed our workflow processes and dramatically improved production. Furthering that success, I had taught myself computer programming for a year for the purposes of computerizing these changes which greatly and measureably improved quality of work at the middle-management position (labor savings of a quarter million dollars over 4 years). This was a position which I had studied since my promotion at the age of 19 made me the youngest middle manager in the history of the company, and I had grown within this position to learn extremely valuable counseling, coaching, and documentation skills. By strengthening both my analytical and personal skills, I developed insight into the workings of business that enabled me to see patterns of cause and effect that other people apparently could not, and I had the leadership and management skills to institute change effectively. These accomplishments certainly contributed to my momentary buzz of euphoria.

Two months later, I awoke in an oddly uncomfortable scene and wondered if I could turn the clock back a few ticks and get a "do over" like we did in an elementary school kickball game. The scene was now a dimly lit and chilly office in a trucking terminal off a side road near downtown Dallas, Texas. Under the premise of working quickly to finish graduate school, I had left my celebrated job at the call center after six and a half years and gone to work part-time for a "logistics company", named Greggo Zip Industries with the promise of having "flexible hours" and "the ability to work from home". This was a huge risk that Fran patiently yet skeptically tolerated. She knew Greg, the owner, who had been a friend of their family for many years. She knew about his family's reputation for rough living and personally did not think too highly of him, and she was worried about the stability of the job as well as how Greg and I may interact.

In my upbringing, trucking companies were the kissing cousins of outlaw biker gangs-truckers were a group of dangerous thugs with sawed-off shotguns, coke-bottle spittoons, and they drove like maniacs while hopped up on amphetamines.

But, since I had done some work with Greg before, I felt very secure in being "hands off" as far as the truckers were concerned and was looking forward to spending quiet thinking time at my "home office" (aka desk in the living room).

The setting that I left was a company run by women, with six females of the seven managers of the company. The one man that was in management was hand-selected to be the most incompetent, bumbling ass possible and he was hired after a survey of the company had shown that many employees questioned why all the managers were women (about 90% of the employees were women as well, so I was very surprised that this came up as an objection). The company was, as mentioned, a call center which had a strict set of rules for every job function. It thrived in volume processing of incoming calls and data entry and verification. One remnant of this company's rules is that I am an irrational stickler for punctuality in employees. Of course, this is critical when you are getting hundreds of calls per hour and staffing is of upmost importance, but perhaps not as critical in other applications--but it became ingrained in me and I couldn't let it go--at my previous company you were fired after 3 tardies of 1 minute or more in a 3-month period, and I tried to let that go, but had a hard time.

It would turn out that working with primarily men would be a significant departure from the female-affected atmosphere of the call center as well. I was used to fiercely subversive, silent political battles that took place behind closed doors. Rumor and inuendo actually affected policy. Fran and I met at the call center, and we got called in and negatively documented because people felt "uncomfortable" seeing us sit next to each other in the breakroom (In perhaps an ironic stroke of revenge, I asked her to marry me in that same breakroom). It's my strong feeling after working in both settings that women in the workplace can be much more vengeful than men, who seem to be able to settle differences and move on in a more predictable, work-it-out fashion than women (of course there's a gamut, but this is a general trend). This reminds me of a "Far Side" cartoon by Gary Larson, where the wife ameba says to the husband ameba "Stimulus, response. Stimulus, response. Don't you ever think?" (But my favorite "Far Side" is two polar bears standing over an igloo and one says "I love these things--crunchy on the outside and a chewy center!".

For the next 5 years, "Logistics Company" became my fancy way of avoiding telling people that I worked for a trucking company, and on that day in December of 1995 I sat with my feet crossed under a filthy platic folding chair waiting to go in to meet with the owner to find out exactly what my responsibilities were going to be. I sat at a desk on the other side of a window, trying very hard not to look directly at Greg while he sat behind his desk, which was covered with piles and piles of neatly arranged papers. Every possible inch of space on the desk, floor, and window sill behind him was covered in little piles of paper, and I had a vague, forboding fear that the key to my success at his company would lie within those piles somewhere, because I was supposed to be improving the efficiency of the company, and whatever was in those piles could certainly not be in the process of being handled efficiently. I don't think every piece of paper in that room could be touched by the same set of human hands on the same day. I had been in the office before, mostly for brief meetings as I worked as a consultant for Greg over the previous twelve months, easily and quickly preparing small reports which I collated from random scraps of data. I had helped him put together a critical proposal for a customer, putting artistic touches on it including a beautiful cover and graphics, printing it in color and taking it to have it bound, which Greg thought was unnecessary but I thought was absolutely necessary since, according to him, the future of his company rested on the contract. So when he got the contract, I assumed that the future of the company was safe and finally decided to take him up on his offer to come to work for him. I felt that I had insight into his mind from my previous dealings with him. He was subtly creative, open to suggestions, and highly valued my experience and intelligence. Although he didn't say so, he insinuated that he thought I was naive, which I was, and on the side of being intellectually elitist, which I wasn't. I showed him some of the innovations I was making at my previous company, and was surprised that he followed me easily as I took him through the changes on deeper and deeper levels until I finally lost him (sometimes I wonder if it's deeper and deeper levels of bullshit explanations for simple changes, perhaps reading way too much into the profoundness of these changes as they can usually be boiled into elementary terms; Now, instead of putting that piece of paper here, you put it over here...really, not too deep).

Meanwhile, in the meeting: Bursts of uproarious laughter. Violent, loud, vividly-worded swearing with amazing creativity in the word selection--things I would have never thought to put together and refuse to record on paper. In my puritanical mind, this was a huge red flag. Cursing meant that you didn't have the vocabulary to express what you really meant to say, so you just go for shock value. It was a brutal verbal assault to get the upper hand of a discussion. In the company I had just left, I remember being personally outraged when the office manager once cursed during a meeting, and now I had just heard one sentence with the "f-word" used as a noun, verb, and adjective! I made the decision there not to worry Fran about the humanity that I may be a witness to. I certainly didn't want to worry her about violence and profanity. Later, I would think to myself that I should make a checklist of the 10 Commandments and cross them off as they are broken in front of me. Somehow, though, she knew what was going on and I was always a little defensive of the fact that she disapproved of my new job and, as I developed into a more effective manager, felt that my skills were wasted with Greg. Once I had been with Greg for a while I became very protective and idealistic about what I was trying to accomplish--I felt that I had an opportunity, although fleeting, to experience raw leadership, business management at both its most basic and complex levels, achieve independence, and actually accomplish something. With Fran it always seemed to boil down to nothing more a dubiuos cast of characters in a seedy setting, and the sooner I could get out of it, the better. I now think we were both right about many of these things.

In retrospect, the scene in the refrigerated office resembles "The Godfather", and in my internal voice I was Fredo, impatiently waiting and a little ticked off while people filed in to meet with and kiss the hand of the Don while Fredo's mother tells him in her thick New York accent "You wait on line to see your brother like everybody else!" If I knew how close to the truth that would end up being (on my second day of work, I was asked to “wait around til tonight while someone brings in a ‘payment’”), I wonder if I would have sat under that flickering fluorescent bulb for 3 hours wondering whether or not this fell under the heading of "flexible hours" or "my time". If I had a realization all at once about exactly what I was getting into, I wonder if I would have stayed around to experience it all--somehow I think I would have because it was an eye-opening experience, a challenge, often funny, and certainly unusual (like the Chinese curse says: "May you live in interesting times..."). But maybe that's a blessing as well.

If they asked me, I could write a book....

So, I'm half-ass tempted to write a book about my misadventures and coming of age at GEI working for Greggo. 'scuse me while I work some of this out...

It would be parts of the following:

Winnesburg, Ohio (various clips from various points of view)

The Sound and the Fury (funny scene available told from an idiot's point of view, thief's point of view, lazy person's point of view)

Secret Life of Walter Mitty(self-aggrandizing)

The Twilight Zone (can nobody else see those monkeys?)

Partly a misdirected morality tale (watch out for the left hook)

The Freshman (crappy movie but funny premise)

Opening scene: waiting on line to see the Godfather and kiss Michael Corleone's hand (If only I knew what was in store)

Random, funny scenes, some of which were just funny/ironic and some of which taught me lessons and provided interesting observations.

"Office Space" on steroids...

Kind of Capote-esque vivid language with lots of word imagery--some of the things that happened were so absurd (like our bookkeeper with the broken teeth that would superglue them back in and the way she would eat a sandwhich like half of her head would fold around it like a muppet-poor thing-and the fact that she was shaped like a troll and where do you go to buy troll-clothes? I don't think she knew where either because of what she wore, which amounted to stretchy pants and a hu-mon-gous shirt (she had 2 shirts--one tweety bird and one tazmanian devil--so I guess the answer to the question is you go to the Warner Bros. gift shop).

Questions: 1st person or 3rd person omniscient author?
Is this really interesting enough?
I can't believe I'm considering this--This job really sucked to an unprecedented degree--is that what makes it so funny because I feel so strongly about it?

How much would I have to change the names, etc. to protect the criminally negligent?

Themes:
1) The office was ALWAYS the wrong temperature--this would be funny to work in as an ongoing joke but never refer to it directly. Also had: rats, fire alarm problems, the sprinker going off, disgusting dead rat melting over time above your head stains on the ceiling, birds flying into the window every day, birds flying into the office, 4 telephones on peoples' desks, Greg's ever-growing mound of crap/paper/memorabilia/paraphenalia
2) The evolution of Greg as a character. Admiration, propping him up. Then he kind of was a figurehead in the position with misguided ideas that kept taking us off track. He evolved into a more powerful position, enforcing his flawed ideas and we ended up clashing over the direction of the company and our personality styles ended up driving each other crazy.
3) Ed as the anti-Christ figure. However, damn it, there were shards of truth in his crap philosophy that made him a dangerous political enemy to make. I didn't actually go after him, but was set at odds with him by virtue of my inherent power as VP. The shards of truth were carefully placed to give him credibility, and it was surprising how many people he fooled...until it all came out.
4) Johnny Brown as the epitome of Greg's beaurocratic fantasy. Hilarious irony, but will it play out well on paper? It's actually not too deep a concept because the guy was such an ineffectual idiot. Kinda funny because we identified him as this pretty early in the game but Greg thought we were covering our ass and not letting this unappreciated, brilliant guy move up in the company because we were guarding our job. Johnny went over my head directly to Greg and obtained more responsibility of the simplest variety which he could not process because our company was so small that no one in a position of responsibility was a cog in the wheel, with clear-cut, defined roles.
5) Money problems abounded and the crazy things we did re: bank, etc.
6) Equipment problems
7) Funny people and stories: Robert, Earl, Manual, Steve, Gar, Nancy, Teresa, Gaspar, Asmus, Osorio (literal translation: Place where bears are kept--and that's what he smelled like!), Cervantes, Jamie, Christina, Helen, Rich, Mary, Murry, Alan, Selman/Selmon (even he didn't know how to spell it), Zavala, Chity, Gooch, Suzanne, Bob, Flipper, James H. and his midget-arms
8) Overall, a good theme to develop is how I went into the company with a certain set of expectations and perhaps a naive, puritanical attitute. Was exposed to hypocrisy, treachery, corruption and incompetence that perhaps I had been shielded from in other companies--eventually forced to deal with these issues because I was in charge. Evolved as a person and as a manager and came out the other end perhaps a little more grounded and even jaded to some of the craziness.
9) I think it is a funny device to use deadpan descriptive language to detail very mundane, low, common things. If something needs to be described in gritty terms, maybe use more dialog to flesh that out.
10) Try very hard to also flesh out Greg's point of view in contrast to me/assuming the role of omniscience. I think the opposing opinion is healthy and should be provided as truthfully and unbiased as possible.
11) Gar's role--I think it would be best to make him a semi-idealized "side-kick"-type personality rather than emphasize him as a separate faction, which is really what happened, especially when he started living with Nancy. By highlighting the separate faction part of this, it actually makes me appear to stand alone and perhaps causes a credibility issue with the reader, whereas if there is at least one consenting opinion it provides a little more ready "buy-in". Overall, though, I think Gar was on my side and in our retrospective conversations he has told me that he was wrong about some of his objections. This, although the truth, would overcomplicate the story and gives me a headache just thinking about it. On the surface, Gar voted with me in general.
12) The customers' bewildered viewpoint would probably be hilarious to examine as well.
13) Storytelling device to examine and decide upon: Is it funnier to tell the story chronologically or skip around via themes?
14) Here's what's not funny: A tell-all book written as a defense of my actions. That is boring as shit and nobody cares. I think it's funnier to show my flaws and lessons and huge mistakes and their consequences. I can take it! What kind of makes it funny is that, in general, I had pure motives but funny/tragic things happened. Here's an example: Nancy looking up the embezzlement stuff--she didn't want to see it, so she missed it. I fought every urge to review it in front of her because I thought it would be demoralizing like I didn't trust her after everything she did, and couldn't find it when I tried to find it after hours. As a result, $10k more got embezzled that night and it was my fault.
15) Empowering people and then having them submarine you in hilarious, unpredictable ways--but not giving up.
16) Will people be patient for the history and explanation of how the companies' are set up, or should that be glossed over?

Note: If this is just a story about a company then it really isn't worth telling--everybody has to deal with politics at work and that isn't a new concept. It has to be contemporary, funny on a few levels, but also provide some insight in order to work.

For God's sake don't make an ass of yourself

It's rare that I love a complete movie. But here are some: Rudy (aka story of my life), Casablanca, Ben Hur, Groundhog Day, The Sting, Run Lola Run, About A Boy, The Matrix (just the first one), The Godfather (and part II is good too), Raiders of the Lost Ark, Grosse Pointe Blank (soundtrack is great), Field of Dreams. (Purposely left off this list because they're too chicky: Sense and Sensibility, When Harry Met Sally, Remains of the Day, Persuasion) (Purposely left off the list because the movie actually sucks but somehow my Y chromosome makes me watch: Top Gun, Star Wars (actually Empire Strikes Back is better).

but my brain is cursed to randomly absorb snippets of books and movies and play them back to me at odd times like a possessed VCR that comes on by itself, fast forwarding, rewinding, and then playing in a random unpredictable order.

One time, it was absolutely brilliant--we were playing "Crainium" with a group of friends from church and the question came up about how many lines are in a sonnet--now, I know Sonnet 60 because I had to learn it for school in Junior High. I actually learned it while others were reciting it for the class because I forgot to study the night before. Somehow, though, this got put on the VCR tape and the tab was broken off--it isn't going anywhere. I even went and learned a couple more.

Sooo...while we were playing the game and my team got this question, I very discretely said the sonnet to myself (no, my lips didn't move) but counted with my fingers. When we got the answer correct and amazed everyone (what can I say, they are a bunch of goofnuts that went to Texas A&M for 4 years), one of my friends demanded that I tell him how I knew--If I was a complete ass, I could have stood up and in my best mocking Garrick the Elder voice delivered the sonnet. But I got a little shy and just told him that I knew one. When the game came back around to us, I knew the next answer, which was "pointillism", a type of painting with tiny dots that was part of the impressionist movement (which I have studied and am a huge fan) (My brother Patrick regarding the Renoir print on our wall: Is that original?) Okay, I feel a little bad about putting that down here.

So, I had amazed and astounded everyone in the game, and my team won because another guy was able to whistle "Back in Black" by AC DC and I knew what it was, so I was the star for the day. Then my buddy demanded that I tell him that sonnet...in front of everyone. So I very quickly and red-faced rattled it off. Then he asked if I knew any others, which of course I did because I had memorized "My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun" because I had a phase where I listened to Sting before he got way too jazzy and now gives me a headache (Here are some good Police/Sting songs: "Walking on the Moon" (baseline is fantastic--at first I said "baseline rocks", but then I sound like a cheesy DJ), "Message in a Bottle", "Sister Moon", "Little Wing" (a Hendrix song but Hendrix can't sing). "So Lonely", maybe something else but let's move on....

So, I was forced to rattle off this other Sonnet which I had really learned to impress a girlfriend before I figured out that the Sonnet was actually about the fact that "my mistress eyes are nothing like the sun"--means that they aren't brilliant and sparkling--in fact, the whole poem is saying that she isn't beautiful, solaced in the end by saying "and yet, I think my love as fair as any belied by false compare". Well, the girl I learned it for wasn't that deep, so it didn't go over so well and I ended it with her (not because of that, but because she was a bitch). So I recited this, even having the quick-thinking wit to change "breasts" to "skin" (sorry, Bill) because it was mixed company and I wasn't sure, but I thought that some of the people there might have been Amish or something (not really, but so uptight you wouldn't believe it)...like what are we supposed to do? Not acknowledge that breasts exist or something? But my instincts kicked in so, thanks to that, I'm still a member of the church...

So the next day, I ran into one of the people from the nerd-party, who told me that she and some of her friends couldn't get over my brilliance (okay, maybe those are my words). By then, I had time to think and inflate my own ego, so then I DID purposely show off and recite, semi-mockingly, overconfidently, the ENTIRE dagger scene from MacBeth, because it had sunk in that these guys actually thought this was cool and not, as I think of it, a ghoulish freak of nature. Dumbfounded stare (but, overall, in a good way). Never invited to play Cranium again :).

If only my brain would act that way when I tried to learn organic chemistry for pre-med. Oh, no, that would be too practical. Hmmmm. maybe if I combined the two--"Is this an alkene I see before me? The double-bond toward my hand?" No, that would really suck.

But here's really what I wanted to get down today: a narrative by Alec Guiness from Dr. Zhivago (the movie, not the book):

...That was the first time I ever saw my brother. But I knew him, and I knew that I would disobey the Party. Perhaps it was the tie of blood between us, but I doubt it-we were only half-tied anyway, and brothers will betray a brother. Indeed, as a policeman, I would say get hold of a man's brother and you're halfway home-nor was it admiration for a better man than me. I did admire him, but I didn't think he was a better man. Besides, I've executed better men with a small pistol...

Yuri: "You're just as I imagined you--You're my political conscience!"
(I asked him didn't he have one of his own. So we talked about the revolution).
"You lay life on the table and you cut out all the tumors of injustice-Marvelous!"
(I told him if he felt like that he should join the Party).
"Ah, but cutting out tumors of injustice-that's a deep operation. Someone must keep life alive while you do it-by living! Isn't that right?"
(I thought then that he was wrong. He told me what he thought about the Party and I trembled for him. He approved of it but for reasons that were subtle, like his voice. Approval such as his could vanish overnight. I told him so...I told him what I heard about his poems...)
"Not liked? Not liked by whom? Why not liked?"
(So I told him that)
"Do YOU think it's "personal, petit-bourgeois, and self-indulgent?"
(I lied. But he believed me, and it struck me to see that my opinion mattered).


Great scene, with some recent personal relevance-particularly the last few sentences (in a good way).

Don't memorize this one, but it was a poignant scene.

Some further analysis:

1) A different concept of a brother than I have
2) I love the Russian pessimism about "get hold of a man's brother and you're halfway home"
3) Executing a better man with a small pistol...Hmmm. Well, this is interesting to me because it is kind of a Naturalism in Action--in other words, circumstances being as they are, one person gets the better of the other one despite what's fair. Read "The Open Boat", a short Story by Stephen Crane. Although, to me, the impressive part of of this short story is how Crane captures getting something stuck in your head and saying it over and over again "A soldier of the legion lay dying in Algiers...". This has happened to me a few times. Another good short story by him is "The Blue Hotel"
4) Living life while "someone else" cuts out the tumors of injustice. This, to me, is a wonderful metaphor for letting other people live idealistic lives and fight idealistic battles while others shamelessly turn away from this process and just enjoy things as they are.I love this conflict--at the time, the brother thinks he is wrong (implying a change of heart as he was older and remembering in retrospect). However, in Dr. Zhivago, it seems that the battle over idealism of a few sweeps away the entire country. Ironic that this is a departure from the czar, just another ruling party.
5) Interesting that Yuri is sensitive about his poems in light of the much greater issues at hand. Also interesting that his brother is so surprised that his criticism is so valued, and his negative feedback has such a profound effect on Yuri. Lastly, that he is surprised to see Yuri take his criticism to heart, and is flattered.
6) Kind of liked the use of "petit-bourgeois". Remind me to look it up someday and see what the hell it means.
7) Here's my secret: I've been sharing my writing with other people and pretend not to care what they think but I hang on their every word. I secretly suspect my writing is personal (meaning only interesting to myself and doesn't serve any public good), "petit-bourgeois" (meaning appealing to the French sense of humor that claims Jerry Lewis as a comic genius), and self-indulgent (meaning I'm going on and on about stuff that's in my head when other people think "enough already, we get it...")
8) Why does is brother lie? I suppose he is trying to motivate him to do what's best for the family's sake. But why not tell him the truth and then encourage him in what to do? Is this just an artistic touch put in to make the character interesting? This is the last time the brothers meet.

Maybe I could write a screenplay...

The Potato Factor

With all apologies to my family in Idaho--I actually coined this term about 8 years ago while I was Executive VP of SE(shithole enterprises), a strategic grouping of 5 different companies.

I woke up early this morning to get some work done--made some coffee and I'm hesitantly looking east out my window...with my binoculars (just kidding) (see previous post about my neighbor in her underwear). This is a funny story (at least it started out being funny in my mind), so I have to get it down somewhere...but a little history is required...

The owner of this company, Greg, was absent for most of the time and played an odd role in the company's leadership--he had another full-time job as a fireman and would actually take extra shifts for the money. Before I got there, he hired a lot of his friends and they would completely rip him off, so he was very paranoid that everyone was always ripping him off--this carried over after I came along and was something we always had to deal with.

Greg was truly a visionary and had found a small niche in the market that was "throwaway" business for other companies because it had low margins. Greg had some very creative ideas about making contacts, obtaining equipment, and bribing customer representatives to give us business, but he was also very good at representing our business as more than it really was (smoke and mirrors)--even to banks to obtain financing, which requires a poker face unlike any other. Greg's strategy was to keep our margin extremely low by renting an old building, having everyone use old equipment, old computers, unscrewing every other light bulb, having no benefits, etc.--about as bad as it gets...and then he hired me, which was a big risk since I unapologetically had a large salary demand. This was also a committment to change(improve), which I made clear before I came aboard.

My job was to fix the place--apparently Greg was inspired by an article about improving efficiency and really didn't know where to begin. I had created a job for myself at a previous company because I did an efficiency analysis of a particular workflow function and had written a program that had saved quite a bit of money and had a direct effect on the bottom line. They had rewarded me with unprecedented treatment including a private office, flexible hours, and little accountabiity (still don't know exactly why they did that). Greg found out I was doing this and offered me flex hours, more money, and the ability to work from home--that cinched it. I was trying to finish up a degree and needed this flexibility--but this was a huge risk for me to take since everybody knew that SE was a crappy company--the only deceptive thing was that everyone thought Greg was actually making some money doing it...

So I show up at SE and took 2 months to do an efficiency report in every function of the company. I was blown away by how we were bleeding money through inefficiency (there were several funny stories about people who superstitously carried out jobs that led to no endpoint) so I made several key recommendations. Of course, as in all B movies where this happens, a bunch of people got pissed and left, and not all of them were the right people that we wanted to leave, but I lived with it. Almost immediately I was made a manager so I could hire and fire and make changes with authority (I was extremely careful about making too many changes--I tried to stop the bleeding first through administrative processes before touching anything operational). Those were pretty lonely days--I didn't have too many people that I trusted there, and I didn't have a staff in place so I did all my own work from beginning to end, and had to learn a lot about clearly communicating my ideas to others. After another year I was Executive VP, the highest ranking officer in the company and, since Greg was always gone, I was the "go-to" guy. I even had the chance to hand-pick a good management team with a trusted IT manager, Gar, who was smart and could help me implement changes in administrative work. In the first year, we cleared a 5% profit. Doesn't sound like much, but the company had been on the verge of collapsing. The next year, 10%. The next year, 20%! I added a whole Limited Partnership at 36% margin! This was the only time that I got absolute control over all employees, financing, contracts, and supervision, so I claim this as a huge personal victory. When everything collapsed after I left, this LLP remains today as a money-maker.

But back to the Potato Factor. By now, Greg was very excited about his success as a businessman (a little sarcasm isn't too harmful to the point here, is it?), and started interjecting ideas into our recommended improvements. Of course, he was entitled to so this, because he owned the joint. But we hadn't been doing things without a lot of thoughtful planning, and it was pretty deflating that he gave so little regard to the massive changes that we had carefully made, and, in effect, didn't give us credit for the extremely creative means and loads of sheer effort we had used to bring this change about. Gar and I had actually started wearing workclothes to the office to be less threatening and we routinely scheduled days to ride along with all levels of our business, work alongside them, and listen (unbelieveably, at one point, Greg confronted us about being too casual at work and "goofing off" because we were working in these menial jobs!). By doing this we increased our credibility with all levels (although mid-managers were always very distrustful of us--mostly because they were very afraid of our discoveries). Our change philosophy was very nonjudgemental and we purposely incorporated ideas from all levels, sometimes unnecessarily, just to get some ready-made buy-in to our overall plan. It made people feel empowered which was a very efficient way to go about changing. We would then compare notes after hours at my apartment or at a restaurant--we would chart out workflow and calculate the impact of every change--and it worked!

Then came Greg and his suggestions. Unfortunately, Greg had fantasies about running a large corporation and had some very unrealistic ideas about what that would entail (champagne taste and a beer budget). Within this fantasy, there is so much redundancy that error becomes non-existant. Things become so automated that people can move from one job to another with almost no training. In effect, this fantasy came about because he feared relying on people (If you read the book "Social Style/Management Style", his personality style was an analytical--mine is an Expressive Driver. Even today, when I run into people who fit this Analytical profile, I have a hard time dealing with them because I think I'm just wired to drive that personality style crazy). I didn't see it at the time, but he feared relying on me specifically as well. Little did he know that my strategy was to create "checkpoint" functions for myself and then automate them into the process so the function is accomplished without me. That's the beautiful thing about having control of the entire mechanism from beginning to end--it was a business model that I could tinker with and (ideally, by keeping some variables constant and changing others) directly measure change in output. If only my education in accounting were more refined, I could have been really dangerous--but I have to think this situation would have been a dream for someone who really knew what they were doing.

I had been very successful in designing jobs to incorporate these functions (Thank God for my previous job which was Nazi-like about job descriptions and had a simplified workflow that lent itself well to discrete job functions. Also: they were big on organized training, employee documentation, punctuality (which I'm a little too uptight about still), and recordkeeping. Another thing I learned there is about working with minorities (I had only known about 4 people who weren't white in my life personally before I got my job there...)).

So here's a Greg suggestion: We have someone who attaches a job ticket to a signed document--about 500 generated per day. Why don't we create a log book at each level of processing, where the tickets and documents are counted and logged? That way, if the count is off at some level, it will be logged and someone will notice that the count is off...

Okay--here's the deal--the tickets are inherently a double-check (, dumbass)! If there is a ticket, that means that a bill needs to come in. Adding a count is redundant and doesn't ensure any greater accuracy--in fact, it is more likely a source of error in itself which decreases efficiency even more.

Enter the Potato Factor. Privately with Gar, I suggested the following: Why don't we install a large hollow pipe down to the basement which leads to a huge bin. Each time the sorter (unbelievably, a position which didn't exist until we designed it, by the way) prints a ticket, she takes a potato from a nearby bag and puts it into the pipe. At the end of the day, she goes down to the basement and counts the potatoes in the bin. This count must match the number of tickets and bills. Our straight-faced justification was at least she would get some exercise and then we could also hire someone to monitor the progress of potatoes during the day and keep up with production. It was a tongue-in-cheek suggestion to illustrate how random and retarded the log book suggestion was. But it really hit Gar in the funny bone, and he couldn't stop laughing about my paraphrasing of this issue...

One problem was that the level of person that would be content matching tickets and bills all day, every day for 8 hours would perhaps not be inclined to write down that she got an erroneous count. Plus--who is checking her to ensure that this step is done, and done honestly? I think that over time, jobs drift toward their most basic, skeletal components and lose the fluff that all well-intentioned job description writers originally intended--Also, because I know that it's extraneous...--say we got busy and this person had to stop and count their tickets--I may be inclined to tell them to skip that step for now and move on to something else more productive (although I would fight this urge to avoid sending the unintended message and preserve the integrity of our job descriptions)...Before long, there's an old, dusty log book sitting with the last entry from a month before.

Over time, "potato" became our codeword for introducing additional work with the empty promise that it increases overall accuracy. A sense of inappropriate redundancy or wasted effort when labor hours are precious. A finer point to make here is that sometimes you improve accuracy, but not to a degree that the equivalent energy/labor time could make somewhere else. Kind of like using "significant digits" in a scientific equation. It doesn't make sense to know that one number is 1.04323934323 and the other is "about 2" and then add them together and say the result is 3.04323934323. The variability of "about 2" makes your other, extremely accurate measurement insignificant...

I know this is about exciting as a root canal.

However, once we identified the problem, we were able to identify other "potato" situations as they developed. This is very likely to occur when a huge emergency problem arises which reveals a deficiency in a double-check process--people (especially managers) get disproportionally focused on the area where the random error was generated and overreact ("Well, we aren't ever gonna let THAT happen again!") A lot of times human error just overcomes whatever you put in place, like the time the sorter stuffed all the non-matching tickets and bills into a box that we found 6 months later. I always think of NASA and take a little comfort that the entity with the most profound redundancy still has these things slip through the cracks (isn't that a crappy thing to take comfort in?).

Well, this was a long way to go to get to the point, but I use the Potato Factor all the time now to ensure that I'm not just running around without effectiveness. Which is why I sent my Palm Pilot flying across the country :)--I was spending so much time trying to figure out how to make it do exactly what I want, and the process of updating my info regularly enough for it to be effective was costly (in hours, a precious commodity) and I was constantly outdated anyway because I'm always on the road. I realized that the return on time invested wasn't going to be worth it. I'll wait out new technology, I guess.

But now I can sniff out the Potato Factor from a mile away now, because we had developed such a clear model of it.

By the way, here's another superhuman trick I can do: I can instantly calculate the maximum calories for my money at any restaurant or fast-food place (and then I'm drawn to it like a moth to flame)--Hello, fat boy!

Another funny model we came up with is "Moo Bar". This came from Gar's nickname for a very gross employee that worked for us named Janie, who was about as dumb as a box of rocks. Gar and I were roommates in college, and among the funny things we used to do as a result of being completely poor was that we would steal 1 Moo Bar apiece every time we left the cafeteria (they allowed you to take an ice cream bar to go, but you had to (every time) appear to be opening it and about to eat it as you walked by the person at the front door.) Soon, our mini-fridge was packed with Moo Bars which we would eat when we ran out of meals on our plan. During one of our job process design meetings at SE, Gar was saying that we needed to make a job so well-defined and dumbed-down that a (minimum wage earning) Moo Bar could do it. If we could do this, we could "staff up" rather than be reliant upon specially-trained people who had us over a barrel since their job was so complex it made them very difficult to replace. It soon became a euphamism for a perfectly written job that was an effortless cog in the wheel with such cleanly written functions that it was fail-safe. Like perpetual motion-a beautiful work of art...and we did achieve it in a couple of cases.

Other Highlights from SE:

1. We had several poop incidents (perhaps we should really be named Shithole Enterprises, after all):
a. The guy who purposely pooped his pants because he didn't want to do a particularly hard job (we aren't talking Einstein, here)
b. The guy whose colon exploded (not good at all, actually)
c. The funniest one--the guy who had a tremendous, world-record-setting diarrhea (although who judges such things?) all over himself and made Gar call his wife to tell her so she would come pick him up. Ask me about that conversation sometime...I was there and it still cracks me up!

2. The guy who faked his own death. And then he came back. And then he really died (I think?!).

3. The guy who died and we didn't miss him for 5 days (what the hell kind of manager am I, anyway)? He was in a room with no air conditioning and his face reportedly rotted and slid off (after he died)--(By the way, this wasn't at work, although we had no air conditioning there most of the time, either).

4. The atomic fireball of death generated by my guys on the loading dock (aka-forklift driving off the dock and catching fire complete with flaming mushroom cloud and near death).

5. The manager of our company who embezzled $30k in a complicated scheme where he used a fuel card and had employees selling fuel for cash at the pump and then pocketing the cash (sick, huh?).

6. Our "front desk" girl who interviewed in a 3-piece suit and was very prim and proper (way overdid it and completely fooled me) and then came to her first day of work with cut-off sleeves and huge, black tribal art down her arms (I'm not being judgemental, but it was funny as hell). (Reminds me of the song--"The sign said, long-haired hippie people--need not apply"--then--"Imagine me, working for you?!" Taught me a lesson, though).

7. Finding out about dishonesty in ways my naive mind could never have imagined: kickbacks, bribes, prostitutes, coercion, blackmail, tax evasion. By the way, I NEVER participated in any of these things just in case you may be wondering.

8. Having to work with an actual genetic-freak troll. Seriously, she super-glued her teeth back together occasionally (yes, really). Another favorite thing that she did: Kept lifting up her shirt and scratching her (hot air balloon-shaped, pasty-white) belly.

9. Seeing toys stolen from a Christmas toy function for underpriveliged children ("they won't miss 'em").

10. Getting to go to several fantastic sites of vehicle wrecks on the highway to investigate accidents. In one case, our guy fell asleep and flipped over an 18-wheeler and the trailer was laying across the dark highway. Another truck came along and plowed through the middle of his trailer and emerged from the incredible wreck--drenched head to toe in prune juice from the load--but he was freaking out because he thought it was blood! (okay, he could also be freaking out from having just been in a horrible accident, too...)

11. Firing a girl who was really losing it at work and snapping at everyone, as well as not doing any work. She disappeared and showed up, completely incoherent and disheveled, 3 weeks later at her mother's house in Chicago after having gone crazy, sleeping in her car and driving all over the country.

12. Firing a guy and giving him very candid advice about what he could do to improve at his next job (Note: this is NOT a good idea in general). I actually called him at home and had him come in to be fired so I could look him in the eye and tell him exactly why (start with giving the finger to one of our 2 million dollar customer's executives). I knew that this was the kind of guy that went through life as a victim and I was going through a very idealistic phase about being up front and completely honest (I get that way sometimes--I know, give it up!). After spending an hour telling him exactly why he was getting fired, he hugged me and thanked me. (Once you're inside their head, it's all downhill from there!)

13. The time I desperately hired a guy in a hurry and sent him for driver training. When the trainer sent him on a test run 4 hours later, he purposely rammed his truck into a brick mailbox (sending it flying 200 yards). Later found out this was a scam that he was pulling at multiple companies (but he still got $20,000 from our insurance company and totalled our truck which had just been paid off).

14. Learning new, inventive ways to cuss. I still can't shake that wonderful habit.

15. The time I solved the mystery of the guy who stole one of our vehicles. To everyone's amazement, after a week I figured out where he went and tracked down our missing truck in an empty parking lot. Yes--I'm Sherlock Holmes!

Oh, I could write a book!