Sho nuf

Think of what it would be like to shop at Walmart and have the employees treat you with the respect and customer-focus you find at Chick-fil-a. Then know, long long ago, that's how it was.

Past Meaning

Was remembering back to the calmer days past, when Nightly Business Report was a public TV production and Paul Kangas would report the M1 money supply, calculated by the St. Louis Federal Reserve. The M1 moving up or down was seen as an indicator of economic health. Up meant money was available to invest, down showed investments made and economy less liquid. Radical up could mean investors holding cash, out of uncertainty.

Don't hear of that indicator any more, maybe because it has been made less meaningful. It's more of an indicator of how the Treasury is printing money and selling debt. The M1 in 2000 was around $1.2 trillion. Now, it's $3.2 trillion.  Perhaps now more indicative of dilution of the dollar's value, so not desirable to report by the likes of today's business reporters.

I doubt that Jim Cramer, Stuart Varney, or their cohorts could offer the meaning of periodic M1 changes in any understandable, less than 25 word explanation.

Reflections

Was thinking back to a $30 million contract with a consultant who was going to lead our company to a new level of efficiency and effectiveness. This is corporate mumbo-speak for cutting a target number of positions from the organization, without letting us know the target, in case we come up with a plan to exceed it, for which the consultant would take immediate credit for exceeding expectations and probably gain a performance bonus.  The consultant led teams of company representatives, while we struggled with program and process design, then developed a plan for staffing and slotted existing employees in those positions.  Those not slotted at the end of the process were offered transfers to other functions and/or severance.

Things went fine, until several of us noticed an extended absence of our consultant leader.  In searching, we found him and his assistant in a nearby office, having a heated phone conversation with their home office over a bounced expense report.  So, here are representatives of a consultant who are intended to lead us to a "higher" level of performance, and their own organization fights over expense accounts.  And this in a consultancy filled with employees who probably travel 90% of the time.  Do these people really then represent someone who you would expect to lead a multi-national corporation through a $30 million exercise and a suitable return on investment?  Sadly, they were nothing but paid agents standing in for a group of spineless managers who were unwilling to simply make some hard management decisions.

Which leads to our current slate of political candidates.  Is this really the best we can do?

Life's Lessons

"You can have your food.  You can have your sex.  But, there's nothing more satisfying than a good $h!t." - Fred Hetzel, Night Desk Manager, Planet Bowl, circa 1970.

Fred often lectured the concourse boys (janitors) at the bowling alley.  There was one concourse "girl," whose claim to fame was an often demonstrated ability to bite a hole in the bottom of a beer can while simultaneously pulling the ring tab, allowing her to down the entire can in one smooth motion.  I don't remember ever seeing Fred talk to her.