Lowe Budget

I was looking for a parking spot at Lowe’s on a busy Saturday recently and finally thought I found one up close to the door only to find out it was reserved for the Employee of the Month (EOTM). That is one inexpensive employee benefit. It costs Lowe’s nothing other than the sign. Brilliant!

On the other hand though, I’m always kind of disappointed when I see that spot empty, knowing that the EOTM won’t be working when I go inside to shop.

A nice alternative here would be to perhaps eliminate the EOTM parking spot and replace it with a bathroom stall reserved for the EOTM.

If the restroom only has one stall this perk could be particularly incentivizing.

 

The Big Dance

 

Some observations on some of this year’s participants in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament:

•        Mississippi State against Michigan State – Who thought up this confusion? MSU against MSU? How many of you selected MSU to win this game?
•           James Madison U – I assume this is a bunch of little guys. See post dated February 20^th.
•           Wagner College – Are they a music school? Richard Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries” would be a really cool fight song. And you could have Robert Duval come to the games and yell out his famous, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning!!” over the music.
•           Stetson U – These guys should wear hats during warm ups. I’d tune in for that. Fight song could be theme from “The Jetsons”.  
•          St. Mary’s – Could warm up to “The Bells of St. Mary’s” by Phil Spector. “Run that Chevy Down!”. Give it a listen!
  

Did I ever mention that I took a marketing course in college?

Small Print

 Do you ever get one of those FedEx type envelopes delivered at work and you can’t find a name on it. So you don’t know who to give it to? You look and look and look, you get your reading glasses, and finally you find a name in teeny tiny itty bitty print. I mean we’re talking itsy bitsy .01 font. And there it is. The name.

That name is Bill Sender. We get lots of packages for this Bill Sender guy. The problem is we don’t have a guy at work named Bill Sender. Never have. I’ve never known a Bill Sender. I had 450 kids in my high school class and we didn’t have a Bill Sender.

I think next time I go to an event where you get to fill out your own name tag, I’m gonna be Bill Sender.  I bet a lot of people come up to me and offer me packages and stuff.  

Psycho Alpha Disco Beta

I like renting cottages where they provide the fun rainy day materials. You know: puzzles, books, games, stuff like that. You never know what you’re gonna get. Chances are the puzzles are missing a piece or two, so you gotta do the other puzzle to see if your missing pieces ended up in that box. And you’re running out of table space and you can’t do the second one on the picnic table ‘cause it’s raining…

One time we played Scrabble at a cottage only to find out letters were missing. There weren’t any s’s if I remember correctly. And we were missing some vowels. What kind of sick person steals letters from Scrabble?

Speaking of letters, remember Alpha-Bits Cereal? Post stopped making it. It always tasted stale. I think people used it to play Scrabble and then put the letters back in the box.

At least Alpha-Bits had vowels.  

Fish Tank

Did you hear about the fishing contest where the winners got caught putting lead in the fish to make them weigh more so they would win the contest? Yeah, these guys are looking at jail time – and they have to give back their trophies.  

I know they won some money, and they were sneaky dishonest and all, but jail time for a fishing contest?  That seems a bit extreme. No Houston Astros went to prison for the garbage can lid cheating scandal. Maybe they can set up a less strict prison for these fish crime guys. Maybe with some fish-themed punishment: Make ‘em eat those fish that’re supposed to be bone free but they still have bones. Or make ‘em eat anchovies every day.

Put 'em in small cells and pack 'em in like sardines

 

Give me Just a Little More Time

Leap Day came and went, didn’t it? If you’re on salary, you worked an extra day last month. If you’re a teacher, you worked an extra day in February but the school year will end a day earlier in June.  If you’re an hourly employee you got paid an extra day in February. Confused yet? If you’re retired your fixed income had to last one more day last month. That’s not so bad ‘cause February’s the short month anyway.

But now, we’re ten days into March and they’re taking back one of the hours they gave us in February. Wait. What? They gave us 24 hours but now they want one of the hours back. C’mon. Net it out, man. Just make the extra day 23 hours. Is that asking too much?

Personal note: It only took me two miles to change the clock in my car this time.

"Tear Down this Wall!"

I ran cross country in a high school. We ran in invitationals from time to time. One of the invitationals was held at a restored fort along the river; it was the first race ever at that location. The layout of the race was a difficult one involving running around the fort two times. Coming up the hill on the west side of the fort was pretty steep as I recall. Our team did well. I did OK – I remember winning a ribbon that day, and no, it wasn’t one of those participation ribbons.  I should add that, unlike the walled city of Jericho in the Old Testament, the walls of the fort did not fall down when we ran around it. 

Maybe if we had brought along our high school marching band that day things would have been different.