The best tools

Manic yesterday, depressed today. 

I attribute a lot of that to something that happened yesterday.  I caught the remodel manager, and a construction worker, measuring outside our stockroom.  The manager made a big point of ensuring the worker measured the outside of our stockroom.  Why would you do that?  We need access! 

I worry it goes to the whole deli issue.  No postal facility in America has hot food, save Maryland, which has a donut shop contract. They only got that because of the anthrax. 

However, people always want what they don't have.  They want wi-fi.  They wanted flatscreen TVs.  When they got them, they wanted "better" cable packages and more televisions.  Now they want them in every breakroom.  The manager bought a couple of Keurig coffee makers.  Now they want them in other breakrooms.  They have a huge locker room with thousands of nice lockers.  But people want the upper locker. 

Even though they have a dozen hot food locations within a mile of the plant, they want a snackbar.  A hot chicken place opened about 5 years ago.  Even with the building population and thousands more in nearby apartments, they couldn't make a go of it and went out of business.  Postal Snack Bars are unprofitable.  When we had the snack bar, we lost, on average $1000 a month keeping the place open.  That was during an excellent economy.  That's $17K I would have put towards our mortgage. 

I hope we were good to our employees.  They seemed happy.  They also had stable hours and weekends off.  It was good for them, but awful for us. 

I mean, I have to give the devil credit.  If you want to injure me, bring this up.  The anxiety will eat me alive. 

It's one of the best tools he's got. 

I told this to the construction foreman (not the spiritual stuff), and the remodel manager said "You just didn't know how to manage it!" 

He had been pining for his little breakfast ritual, he said, a breakfast special he got at the other place, decades ago, every morning. 

Make a new ritual at the McDonald's a mile down the road! 

Instead, I replied, "If we (3 managers total at this location) were 'bad managers', how come they don't have a single snack bar at any location in the US?"  Implied, I'm sure they could find one good manager in the whole country.

He scoffed at me and stomped off. 

It gets better.  A few months later they had a meeting with our supervisor, requesting a few items.  One, full sized candy bars were "too expensive" at 90 cents.  Have you bought a candy bar lately?  I did, at Kroger.  It was a dollar, plus tax, so $1.08.  They cost nearly $2 at a gas station.  They wanted us to sell candy bars at the "old" prices of 60 to 65 cents.  That's our WHOLESALE cost. 

As I remind people on occasion "I'm here to make money".  Our boss was totally disgusted. 

Our response: we raised prices to a dollar. 

Then they mentioned wanting a deli.  I hope the big boss takes that all in context.