Its all Relative

I was in the UPS Store on Hennepin avenue the other day helping a friend mail a few packages when a young man who'd been standing in line behind us finally reached the counter and asked for some medium boxes. The guy working behind the counter looked at him, and then with as much attitude as he could muster into a single sentence said "Well, we've got a lot of boxes, and medium is kind of a relative term isn't it? I mean, we've got some that are 18x24 or some others too I guess. Like, what did you need them for?"

The guy has a point. What is medium anyway? And is medium to me the same as medium to you? But I bet you've asked some employee of some packaging company somewhere for a medium box.
A Related Question: How does medium box compare with stinky high box? Compare and contrast in 500 words or less.

Distractions

Here's some web-tractions courtesy of Joe Lou and the Rock. Enjoy...

Cheerleader Toss. Watch the video clip, then play the game!

Office Basketball. Figure it out.

Touch & Go

Its been a rough day.

The early read from my experiment at work has an inauspicious vibe to it. Essentially Mike's reaction was "Good luck with your future endeavors." So if you know someone who knows someone who's looking for someone to do this thing, now would be the time to mention my name.

Later that same day... I was sure that my computer's hard drive had crashed. My new computer. The one I bought after the old computer's hard drive crashed. I was beginning to think I was the kiss of death for all things computer related. The disk was making a lot of strange noises, and then the whole system locked up and just shut off. A couple of restarts later now, and everything seems to be back to normal, although I did take time to back up a few important files just in case.

Of course, all this is nothing compared to what a terrible day cupcake had or what an asshole Jason is.

If You haven't got a Penney, a Ha' Penney will do

This weekend, thanks to MB, I found out that despite my supposed position as #3 on the magical promotion list at the JC, the district moved as many as 6 people. You guessed it - I was not one of those people. This is getting out of control.

So today I took fate into my own hands and sent my boss a stern yet diplomatic email suggesting that it was time to quit leading me on and finally go all the way. Of course, Mike's reaction to my note tomorrow will likely remind me of this line form High Fidelity:

Sometimes I got so bored of trying to touch her breast that I would try to touch her between her legs. It was like trying to borrow a dollar, getting turned down, and asking for 50 grand instead.

So in the new couple of week I'll either be writing happily about how my bold move paid off, or I'll be pleading with all ye faithful readers to get your friends to get me a job.

Time will tell.

The sight is dismal and our affairs from England come too late...

The ears are senseless that should give us our hearing,
To tell him his commandment is fulfilled,
That Rosincrance and Guildensterne are dead:
Where should we have our thanks?

My parents were in town this weekend, and because I wanted to see the final production at the Guthrie Theatre's old location before they pack up and move to their fancy new digs on the river, I forced my parents to endure 3 and 1/2 hours of Elizabethan carnage.

Quickly now, name the three most famous theatrical productions in the world. What did you name? My list is 1)Grease 2)Romeo & Juliet 3)Hamlet. What's yours? You might be shocked to learn that neither of my parents have ever read or seen any production of Hamlet. Not even the infamous Kenneth Branaugh film version from the 1990s. I was.

At one point, near the end, as Gertrude drinks from the cup intended to ensure the early death of her handsome son, my father leaned over to my mother and said "The King put poison in that cup?"

Initially I became embarrassed - knowing that everyone sitting in the 3 rows immediately in front of my father had passed an unbearable judgment upon him. But then I recanted, and was actually rather proud of my dad. Here's a man, sitting though a production which surely was enough at times to bore him to sleep. Simply to satisfy the desires of his homo son. And yet, at the very end; through all of the messy olde English dialogue, my father actually had paid attention well enough to know exactly what was happening. Right on dad!

Having now seen Hamlet recently, I am reminded that it is a lovely play to perform , and an excruciating one to watch. Especially when the actor playing Hamlet is driving you mad with his perfectly symmetrical changes of inflection. I imagine the fellow is quite proud of his work as a Shakepearean dictator, but I do believe he's been looking through his very own pair of rose colored glasses. Whatever, the rest of the audience seemed to think he did well enough.

Audieu old Guthrie. And to the new: Surely, I'll be seeing you in the future, but this time I'll have to get in the car or take the bufth.

Girls Girls Girls

The Assistant Store Manager (ASM) at my store recently asked me to help her remove some, erm unsolicited, emails from her inbox at work. JCP typically has a pretty decent spam block in effect at all times, but lately I've noticed a few strange emails slipping through the cracks -- mostly from old listservs that are no longer utilized regularly.

But this was something else entirely. Because we advertise on Monster, the email addresses of the requisition contacts are vulnerable to spam. Sarah's poor inbox was filled with offers for Crazy Naked Chicks, Big Bottom Girls -Doggy Style, Russian Gay Porn, and the like.

Of course, there is little help I can provide to remedy the situation, but I sat at her computer and fiddled around for a while because I thought it was funny. Sarah can actually be a pretty dirty-minded individual, but you'd never know it from her demeanor at work. Because I have a more relaxed relationship with her than you might expect, I know of her occasional filthiness and got a kick of imagining her surfing the web for raunch at the office. After thoroughly examining the pornographic offers, I declared my services useless and walked away.

And then I found $5.

Soul Asylum v. Baby Killer

Minneapolis native rockers Soul Asylum are playing in town tonight. Ben and the Rock are planning to obnoxiously request "Runaway Train" through the entire show. I am not going.

Instead I choose to spend my evenings with Sam Waterstone and the rest of the Law & Order gang. Tonight's episode: baby killer parents. The parents of a baby allow their child to starve to death. Both parents seem equally liable, but the prosecution chooses to go after only the mother - having the child's father testify against his wife during the trial. Controversial ey?

Come to think of it, there's a sad connection between runaway train and this dead baby episode of L&O. I'm not sure who's got the better end of the deal, me or the Hawkavillas.

Rep's Ahoy

Today I had a visitor at work. Bob, the Midwest Market Development Representative (MDR) for the Rockport shoe company, stopped in to say hello. On a Sunday. Before Easter. Turns out the kid just graduated from UW Lacrosse, has been on the job for 3 months, and is living in Chicago. Somewhere near Lincoln park.

Reps are a strange breed and I was surprised to see such a young pup toting around the requisite fancy briefcase filled with useless stuff. What Bob is realizing, as he makes his initial rounds across this great middle west of ours, is that he has the most useless job in the world.

Seriously.

Modern merchandising 101 here:
These days, sales managers in retail store are exactly and only people who manage sales. We are not people who buy merchandise to sell. We are not even people who decide how to present the merchandise that someone else decided to sell. We are essential just the worker bees that move someone else's product and someone else's presentation out the door. Oh, and we deal with angry customers and employees as well (but I digress).

Now imagine you are a rep coming into a store to talk to a sales manager. What kind of information might you want to obtain? What is selling well? What is the inventory position of the store? How is the store presenting my product? As it turns out, the sales managers are only particularly useful for determining what's selling. and useless for the other two.

Sure, said rep can see what the display looks like, but if you've been (all)inside one JCPenney(or Target, or Nordstrom, or Macy's, etc, etc, etc...zzz) you've been (all)inside every JCPenney. Mr./Ms. Rep may also determine the inventory level, but again without communication with the people who actually buy your merchandise this information is not particularly helpful.

So here's a brief overview of my conversation with Bob, the Rockport Rep:

Me: Hi.

Bob: Hi. Blah blah blah this merchandise would look great if it were all on the same table, right up here on the aisle.

Me: Well Bob, I would love to put your stuff right up on the aisle, but I have to follow my company's planograms and they are pretty picky about exceptions.

Bob: Yeah. Boy it'd be nice if you had some different graphics.

Me: Wouldn't it? Unfortunately, I can only use graphics approved by the home office.

Bob: Yeah. How's your inventory?

You get the point. Sadly the new guy didn't so I decided to have some fun with him and make him walk through the stockroom with my resident complaining employee Don. Don loves reps because its a great chance for him to vent about all the merchandise he could supposedly sell if only our stupid company would send it to him. When I left the two of them, Don was explaining his wife's foot problems and how she really feels comfortable in Rockports.

Now, forget everything I told you about this dynamic because Bob is a fake rep. His job is basically to help the real reps come up with leverage to use against the big, bad buyers. You know, the people who actually make the decisions? Not just the pawns.

04/05/06

The district office administrative assistant pointed out that my birthday had a sequential vibe this year. Frankly, before she mentioned it, the sequence hadn't occurred to me. If only I'd been born 20 year later - that would have been even neatyer. When I mentioned this to my mother she told me someone on the radio had mentioned that at 1:23 the time would be 123456. I think that one is a stretch, but I'll yield to the ultimate authority on time/date/numerical sequence issues: Jerry Springer.

Thanks to Nancy and the Rock for the thoughtful E-cards; MB for the cheesecake and express gift card; Chad and Justin for the ITunes download giftcards; and a special thanks to Drew for whatever it is he got me. Joe, what did Drew get me? I am under the impression that he sent it to you...

That's a Spicy Weekend

Fear not PoE readers, your faithful guide has not abandoned ye. It's been a crazy weekend filled with lots of drinking, working, smoking, and otherwise unhealthy activity.

Saturday night was 'Workies Night Out' in celebration of Amy's 27th birthday. Incidentally, I will be turning exactly 27 years old tomorrow. I'll spare you the Saturday night event recap. Suffice to say I may have over-extended myself.

***Murderapolis***

My fair city used to have the shameful reputation of hosting more murders per capita than New York City. Thus the coincidentally funny nickname. The shamefulness of having more p/c murders than New York City is debatable. There are now something like 8 million residents in the New York metro area, so for NYC to have the highest p/c murder rate there must be a lot of killin's going on.

Minneapolis has cleaned up its image significantly, but now we've had a spree of gun violence that has people feeling less safe here in the grand middle west. Of course, the two recent shootings are only attracting attention because they occurred in places white people generally frequent. The violent crime rate in North Minneapolis could rise 500% and most people wouldn't notice, but that's a different conversation.

I saw Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Ryback walking the downtown streets Saturday night, after the Friday evening shooting, reminding us all that he thinks the city is perfectly safe. That's despite our State's conceal and carry law which allows residents to carry concealed weapons into places like Walk-Mart or St. Catherines of Eternity unless expressly prohibited.

Also, can we stop whining about it and just build the Twins a new stadium -- 11 years people, 11 years!