Not Too Bad

There is important business at Chedwick University, where I serve in the capacity of Dean of Students. We are selecting our school mascot. At the time of this posting, the Chedwick University Eyeballs is running away with the voting with 67% of the votes cast. Since Ched U. has a liberal admission policy, virtually anyone can enroll for virtually anything at our virtual campus. So hurry and vote now. I'm getting a real education in the workings of a small business through my job at the hardware store. My prior work experience involved working at a very big corporation and a school district. The financial concerns at the former were huge in comparison to those of the hardware store, and irrelevant at the school. For instance, one of the important measurements for our store is the gross sale per customer. Our current number is a bit over twelve bucks per customer visit, meaning the the average customer spends twelve dollars per visit. Our target for this year is about thirteen dollars, so every additional item that we can entice a customer to buy is a big deal. My buddy, the Seafood King, asked me yesterday if I could get 20 units of a specific item for him, for his restaurants. This item retails at about thirteen dollars per unit, so that is equivalent to twenty average customer visits. Not a bad sale and something my boss will appreciate. Working is kind of fun when you have the ability to see how your individual effort impacts the store results. Mrs, Sneed has asked me on several occasions why I left a high-paying job, only to take one where I earn a third of my former salary? Not a simple question to answer. I could have stayed home being retired full-time, but that doesn't strike me as the very best way to spend my life. In fact, had the always hunky Randall Bing, my former boss at Tedious Systems, possessed the sense to take me up on my offer to work part-time, I probably would not have quit that job. But fortunately for me, Randall cannot think outside of his box. At Tedious, my efforts simply didn't matter to the people in charge. In fact, any success that I had was despite the incompetence and meddling from headquarters. Tedious was chronically the mode of burning the furniture to heat the house. Costs were constantly being cut, headcount being reduced and workloads increased. No matter how hard I worked for my customers, it was all for naught if the next guy in line didn't do his job. And often the next guy had left the company and hadn't been replaced. Do more with less was a tired refrain. Some people have to buck up and put up with that shinola for financial or family reasons, but luckily I didn't. So, I left and have never looked back. The hardware gig on the other hand, is about as good a job as I have ever had. The employees seem happy and committed to making the store successful. I don't have to rely on someone else to do their job, the manager is supportive of me, she's competent and pleasant. Most importantly, I feel like what I do matters. I've heard more thank yous in the last two months, than I heard in thirty-eight years with Tedious. So, I make a little extra cash at a job that I like to do. Not too bad. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky