Today is a day of joy!

Years ago, before the commercialized internet was anything to bother with, I worked in a Farmer Jack. While I was there, I noticed many inefficiencies, stupidities, and overall bad practices. I tried to convince the management of my points, but, probably due to my low rank, they were deaf to my attempts to shine the beacon of logic on ‘em.

So I was left to wait, wait for them to get schooled by the University of Hard Knocks! And, today I found the news that they have finally gotten that schooling. Michigan’s Farmer Jack stores will be sold/closed. I am vindicated!

A&P Confirms Talks To Sell All 66 MI Farmer Jack Stores

Here’s a quick rundown on the causes of death, which A&P will almost certainly never admit to, but that I saw with my own eyes and immediately spotted as bad practices!

1) Pandering to MONEY-LOSING “customers.” They were absolutely brainwashed that they “needed every customer.” They would not hear the truth–that people who routinely COST the store money ARE NOT REALLY CUSTOMERS!!! They are leeches! Yet FJ would cater to these people, who’d come in and, in various ways, end up costing the store money. Darned if I could convince the mgmt. that what they were doing was folly, even when I showed them the math that proved it beyond reasonable dispute!

Kroger (the competition), on the other hand, was well aware of the principle and never catered to the jerks. Rather, they (the people at the Kroger that was kitty-corner) told jerks that if they didn’t like shopping at Kroger, they ought to go to Farmer Jack. There is still a Kroger chain in MI. But very, very soon, there will not be a Farmer Jack. There’s the ultimate proof of which business theory is right!

2) Idiotic stocking decisions. Someone very high up made sure that certain items were never stocked. But Kroger DID stock those things. And when people wanted those things, they’d go to Kroger. AND do the rest of their shopping there, while they were at it. So even Farmer Jack employees often ended up going to KROGER!

3) Inefficiencies. The management had it set up so that WAY too much stuff needed their approval. For instance, fixing pricing errors over $5, exchanges over $3 [used to be ALL exchanges, but at least I convinced ‘em how ridiculous THAT was…by ignoring the idiot order and just exchanging all the cheap stuff. Then they saw how much nicer it was for them not to be bugged all day okaying exchanges of leaky milk containers and box-cutter-sliced cake mixes!]

4) Too many layers of above-store-level management!!! There were “store auditors” on at least 4 levels: Local-regional, state, national-regional, and national. And I think I forgot some! Of course, they all had contradictory, yet random, orders they’d give out, because they all wanted to think they were Some Thing Spe-Cial. *rolls eyes* And, said orders were almost invariably idiotic, too. One in particular cost the store what I’d estimate as $1000/week! And that was just one store.

5) Pennywisdom and Pound-Foolishness. The store mgr. would often refuse to okay the ordering of industrial-grade supplies. Did he think we wouldn’t need them if they weren’t there?! I think he really thought it would stretch longer. Typical broke-man’s way of thinking (even though he made 6 figures…weird, huh!) Well, customers don’t like a dirty store, and neither does the Health Department. So we cleaned the store with the retail stuff, right from the shelves. Remember that a big store, due to its size and foot traffic level, uses in A DAY what would last a household a whole month! So saving $5 on some cheap by-the-5-gallon soaps, ended up costing the profit from the normally highly-lucrative cleaning supply department. The Capitalist in me still shrieks at the memory.

There were numerous other issues, too, which would have contributed. Not that I expect A&P to ever admit to any of it. In fact, for legal reasons, this is opinion, may not have applied to every single Farmer Jack store, etc. etc. etc.

But I am satisfactorily vindicated by the impending sale. Told ‘em so… :p

Note to Kroger: Better get your bunkers ready, because all those bad “customers” and crazies you sent FJ’s way will be coming back to you…

Technorati Tags: Farmer Jack Detroit Michigan MI mismanagement grocery stores

Since I’ve been old enough to give a hoot about the US Presidential elections, it had been pretty darned boring. I remember falling asleep for Carter vs. Reagan, Reagan vs. whoever was the sap that ran against him the second time, and Bush Sr. vs. Mondale.

Then something happened. A ray of “Oh, make it entertaining for crying’ out loud!!” came down from heaven, and shined itself on the Clinton vs. Bush Sr. election. The angel Perot showed up and added spice to an otherwise dreadfully dull process. This forced the other candidates to get interesting, or fade into obscurity.

And with this, elections changed for the better. Better politics? Dubious… better issues? Nah… Better interest-value for time spent? Absolutely!!

Since then, elections have all had SOMETHING interesting…even when that something sucked. In 2000, the chads were hung. 2004, the Diebold machines were…suspect.

So what’s on the agenda for 2008? Who knows, but the warmup has begun.

Dennis Kucinich has filed a motion to impeach Vice-president Cheney! ROFL While he makes some good points, it’s an obvious publicity stunt!! Especially coming on the heels of some other proposal of his–one to ban handguns. It’s like the guy has decided he’ll do ANYTHING to get on TV! Yeah he’s probably looking for votes, but branding himself as the “far-out candidate” is unlikely to work beyond getting a few extras. Obvious vote-fishing isn’t too impressive. Sure, all policians are fishing for votes, but they try to be more smooth about it…you know, as if they really give a hoot about what they’re proposing~?

Well, whatever comes of it, at least it looks like it won’t be a dull election. Politicians have at least realized that boring the nation silly isn’t exactly appreciated by the electorate either…

Tech tags: current events Dennis Kucinich Dick Cheney impeach impeach Cheney politics 2008 US election

Occasionally the question is posed, “why don’t you teach piano like us?” This is because my family has a lot of music teaching in its background and its current occupation list.

There’s my mother, and there was my grandma, and there is my aunt doing it as well. This trio of masochists would sometimes all try to con me into following in their footsteps. But I’ve studiously avoided doing so, like the plague!

Without further ado, here’s the top 9 reasons I’m not to be a music teacher:

1) No retirement. I’ve yet to hear of a piano teacher going off to a happy, leisurely retirement. Rather, they tend to leave their studios in a box! Why? There’s not enough money in it!!

2) Raw Tones. All musical instruments sound awful when attempted by newbs. And, students are newbs. Otherwise, they no longer need lessons!

3) Jerks. I grew up listening to stories of people who I would have kicked out of the studio by the second week. From attitudes to idiocy…I’ve heard it all.

4) Idiots who Won’t Practice and then blame the teacher. This special brand of jerk deludes that they will become a maestro by osmosis. Worse yet, it tends to take 2 or 3 years before they realize that it isn’t going to happen. And when they do, it has nooothing to do with the fact that they never looked at their instrument from one week to the next!

5) People who want to constantly mess with their schedule. They’d have you running around like a chicken with its head cut off if they have their way.

6) If you take a week off, the money stops! Same if the students take a vacation. So you’re basically stuck on a treadmill of doom.

7) There isn’t enough money in it! This bears repeating. People delude that $25 per 1/2 hour = rich. WRONG! What they forget is that for most of the day, nobody can come. They’re either at work or school. So it’s really $25 per 1/2 hour, for only 2 or 3 hours a day! And not every day of the week, either! Woopdedoo! And don’t forget taxes, incl. self-employment tax. And the cost of the studio room/building, musical keyboard, etc. So it amounts to about $12 per 1/2 hour. With no health insurance, etc. either! Woopdedoodedoodedoo!!! You can make more than that putting nuts on bolts!

Primma donnas. The only students who seem to put in enough practice to end up sounding *really good,* are also insufferable prima donnas who need to be slapped hard and repeatedly. I don’t know if this is just bad luck for the area, but I really doubt it. I’ve heard this complaint from many teachers. I couldn’t stand it for two nanoseconds!!

9) Recitals. Anyone who’s had to be in one of these should know part of what’s bad about it from the student’s perspective. But what you may not realize, is that they’re a double-edged sword at best, from the teacher’s perspective, too. If you DO have recitals, the poor students will get discouraged and quit. If you DON’T have recitals, others will lose their motivation…and quit. So either way, somebody’s going to quit!

Just writing this gives me more appreciation for being in ONLINE businesses!

Technorati tags: piano music teaching self employment

Well, I guess things aren’t “okay” after all. Here I thought that spelling it out looked better, made sense, and *had* to be the correct way. After all, people often blow the spellings of everything else!

But turns out that it’s actually OK, according to this article on The Straight Dope.

They say it came about as part of a fad for “comical abbreviations” and that it actually stands for the weirdly-spelled, “oll korrect.”

I *knew* there had to be some wrongness with spelling in there somewhere!

Today it was a balmy 81 degrees HERE! Nice!

Usually the weather is still pretty lousy this time of year, with the buds on the trees forcing themselves into existence despite frost and even some sn*w.

But today it was nice! I was wondering where this wonderful weather had come from, when I saw that Sacramento California is only 60 degrees right now.

Bwaaa haa haa!! Looks like we swiped some of CA’s heat!!

Now, CA can’t be completely left out of the exchange. Maybe next year we will “let them have” some of our 20-degrees and snow in return

I was on this forum about 30 seconds ago, and there was a thread about the “best driving songs.”

So immediately I think of REAL driving songs, songs about the road, freedom, going where you want…and with a mood to match.

But they all list a bunch of METAL! Metal! What the heck?! Instead of a nice, relaxing cruise they want to end up feeling like they’ve been zapped in unpleasant places with an electric prod rod?

Nonononono. Metal is NOT music to drive by. There is only one kind of real driving music:

COUNTRY!

Truckin’ songs, to be specific. But some involve cars, hitchhiking, or even trains. THESE are driving songs:

Prisoner of the Highway
Drivin’ My Life Away
Roll on 18 Wheeler
18 Wheels and a Dozen Roses
Six Days on the Road
Take Me Home, Country Roads
Smokey Mountain Rain
Send Me Down to Tuscan

And a few that aren’t “about traveling”:

Third Rate Romance
Devil in the Bottle
A Country Boy Can Survive

As f0r who did these…I’m bad at names and would have to look ‘em up. So ask Google. Just remember–if it’s newer than 1985, chances are it is NOT the version I’m talking about!!

Yep, when I say Country, I mean the real stuff.

Usually when some gunman goes on a rampage, it turns out– un-PC as it may be to say so outright–that they were well and truly provoked. A case of years of bullying, finally paid back Carrie-style…or a long career ruined at the very end, just before retirement - 29 years of work + the future pension, laid waste by some evil supervisor who makes it truly unbearable to stay that one more year…things like that usually lie at the root of supposedly “senseless” mass homicides. In those cases, the killer obviously believes in revenge, revenge of the highest magnitude.

But this massacre at Virginia Tech doesn’t seem to have any of the hallmarks of the usual cases. The targets, at least those in the main bout of shooting, so far seem entirely random. It’s coming out that the guy’s writing “dripped with anger”–but apparently not caused by anyone in particular that he ended up shooting! The scene described is of him basically trying to wipe out everyone in that building. Yet they say he was an English major! But, he hit the engineering building?! I’m surprised he had enough emotion built up about an unrelated subject to choose that place to shoot up…

In any case, I’m concerned about the after-effects of this massacre in other schools–colleges and high schools especially. In particular, I can see innocent, budding writers who happen to be fans of the Horror genre being summarily referred to counseling or even kicked out of their schools…and what was considered merely “weird” now being looked on with unjustified fear. An article says he wrote plays that used weapons “[the speaker] would never have thought of.” So?! So does Stephen King!!

One of King’s stories (Desperation) has a guy get killed by a golf club–rammed through the skull of the target, stick-end first. Gross? Yes. Ultra–violent? Yes. Weird? Yes! A sign of a disturbed writer? Probably. But not a good indicator of whether the writer is going to become violent in reality.

Now that this jerk, Cho, went and actually DID something, coming up with a creative (and violent) way to kill someone in fiction will be considered something needing intervention. I think this would be a bad move. Writers can, and often do (remember how many horror books and slasher flicks there are!) think up all kinds of anger-drenched and gross stuff without any intentions of trying to do anything like that for real.

I hope school administrators, and the rest of the nation, will be able to keep things in perspective better than usual, and realize that this was a NUTCASE and that not all “angry” writers are mass-murderers waiting to go off.

On one of my sites, I’ve got a “flat rate” shipping setup. $8. US orders only. Says “US Orders Only” right on the shopping cart page, can’t miss it.

Did I mention, “US orders only??” Not, “US credit cards.” Not, “US billing address.” US ORDERS! As in, the shipment is to go to the USA!

But occasionally I’ll get some smart aleck who’ll try to order from somewhere else, and if the credit-card auth place lets it through, there it’ll be in my inbox–waiting for me to let them know that just because they can fool software doesn’t mean that anyone else is going to fall for it!!

The other day I get an order, and:
Credit card went through.
Billing address is somewhere like New Jersey…address matches CC…
Ship to: IRAQ!

IRAQ! Yeah right, like any shipper is going to come within 3000 miles of THAT place for 8 bucks!

That beats the one from Puerto Rico who tried to slide her way by on my other merchant site. She was a bit more gallous, though: She picked “US” as the country from the drop-down, and then put “Puerto Rico, PR” in as the city and state!

I think these people forget (or don’t realize) that there is a HUMAN (me) on the other end of that checkout form, who can read and understand what’s typed on it–and that said HUMAN isn’t some underpaid, overworked schlock who’s just going to throw the thing in a box and slap a label to Whereever on it just because an order appeared in the file.

I reached a new milestone with my State taxes this year. A 2-ounce envelope!

This was made possible by the addition of another Schedule C, among other extra forms this year. Each business has to have a seperate Schedule C. (IMO it’s a silly requirement, but…) And since, for easier bookkeeping, I keep all my product lines and endeavors as seperate businesses, I’m up to 3 now. And since the state requires a copy of the federal Schedule Cs (making 2 pages per), that’s a total of 6 pages of that.

So now I can’t just ship ‘em with a single first-class stamp and be done with it, they need extra postage. And of course, there’s no 2nd-ounce stamps just hanging around here, meaning it’ll take a trip into the post office to complete this year’s round of tax-paying.

Woop-de-doo.

It’s that time of year again: Tax time.

For some reason, lots of people get nervous and worried.

Personally I can’t see what’s to get nervous about…it’s pretty straightforward, considering the myraid of laws the IRS has to cover with just a few forms. Put the figures they ask for in the boxes. Repeat until done. The only hard part is the next step: Write the check. And, the empl*yed-types usually don’t even have to do that, since their taxes are pre-eaten out of every paycheck.

Now if the tax is more money than you’ve got, then yeah that’s a problem. But it’s not the problem people seem to get upset about. They get worried nearly sick over the possibility that they made a mistake!

I find this weird. Worrying about things isn’t going to change them, and may even cause so much distraction that *more* mistakes happen! Better to keep a calm head, and when the taxes are done, just ship ‘em off to the Feds/State and quit wondering about it.

Then, there are the tax-haters. Granted, the US Gov wastes a lot more money than I prefer. But a reasonable income tax isn’t something I hate. There IS stuff that is best done by the govm’t, IMO, and they can’t pull the money for it out of their butts…which means that taxes happen.

On the other hand, there are certain *types* of taxes I hate: Those meant for social engineering. Most of those types of tax aren’t in the income tax, rather they afflict the buying of certain items, in an overly-controlling attempt to dissuade such buying while not outright banning it. I think the government has no business trying to mess with such buying decisions.