Soylent Green is people!

June 15, 2013

Good morning all.  I have to work later today, so I have time to blog this morning.  Yesterday was catch up day at The CVS.  I have hired two new people, which turns out to be quite the adventure with our hiring software.  The two new hires will bring much needed stability to my team.  I finished last week under 60 hours on payroll and am nearing 90 hours to the good for the month.  For you aspiring retail managers out there (God help you), this is not a good thing.  If your sales are down, then you should cut your payroll.  But if your sales are up like mine, and the company gives you X number of hours to use, do not use X-90.  This causes people in the forecaster department to think that if you can accomplish an 8% sales increase on X-90 hours one year, you can do it again the following year.  They do not assume that the missing payroll hours were made up by the salary guy that works there.  Salary guy is tired.

So there is your retail tip for the day.  Your welcome.  So yes, I do currently hold the floating trophy for our district for numerical results for the month of May, but it was not without more effort than it should have taken.  I am hoping that things level of for the rest of June and that July should be an easier month before August gears up for inventory.  Knock on wood, here's hoping.  Gotta keep forecaster person in front of their green screen predicting adequate payroll numbers.  El Nino or not.

Currently, my son CJ is sleeping.  This is significant because he has had an impressive summer thus far.  For example, this week he has gotten up every day at 6am to go running.  Summer in Cincinnati means humidity, so 6am is a much better time to go running than noon.  He runs a couple miles and does a "hill drill" at the high school.  This involves somewhere between 23 and 33 wind sprints up and down a hill at school.  You do them in sets like 35753 or 57975.  Not too easy.  He looks good though.  He is around 6' tall and 144 pounds.  Pretty lean.  I never looked like that since my height topped out at 5'10"  Not a lot of workout DVDs that will help you increase your height.  CJ even turned down pizza last night since it doesn't help you look better.  Good for him.

CJ has also spent a couple days helping the middle school kids put on a Summer on Stage program by providing instructions to the tech team.  At least that is what he thought he would be doing.  However, since no one signed up for the tech team, he has actually been the tech team.  This only involved three days of volunteering, but last night's show would have had no sound or lights had he not helped out.  Good for him.

Later today he has to work at the pool.  A lot of his coworkers were unavailable to work this weekend, so he is working a long day.  We double-checked the minor laws to make sure no minors were getting violated.  That is how long his shift is.  Everything is both hunky and dory, so I am letting him sleep in to be ready for this shift.

CJ has awakened.  He is dressed in workout clothes, so his dedication to the task is admirable.  Sounds like weight-lifting is on the agenda.  Good for him.

Finally, in this "all things CJ" update, he started his driving instruction classes this week.  These are four hour classes that you sit through leading up to the actual road instruction.  Class number one involved four hours of watching people wreck their cars, lie dead in the street, and interviews with their children saying things like, "I don't know why I will never see my parents again."  Kind of a scared straight version of driving instruction.  Sounds like the same videos they showed us 32 years ago.  Perhaps they intend to show them all the After-school Special videos including Cipher in the Snow, and  Soylent Green.  Perhaps not.

Oh, one more thing.  Did you hear the oldest living human died this past week?  He was 117 years old and was the only person left who had lived in three decades.  We have decided to make this our goal.  Who is with us?  CJ has a good chance since he was born in 1996.  For Beth and myself, we would have to live to be 135 and 136 years old.  Our "baby boy" will be 106.  Beth has assumed her health will be good as she declared to me, "I will not be changing your diapers!"  I prefer to assume some machine will be changing my diapers by the year 2100.  I will have to keep my wits about me though so I choose the machine that changes my diapers instead of the one that turns me into food.