On bacon dust....

I love Five Guys Burgers and Fries.  If you happen to be in a part of the country that doesn't have them then you don't know what you're missing.  The fries are the best I've probably ever had and are cut right there in the store.  When you go in they have a blackboard telling you where the potatoes come from.  They give you a very generous portion of fries too; a regular fry is enough for two people.  In addition to the great burgers and fries they give you free peanuts; I love a place that gives you free peanuts.

Something that is disturbing about Five Guy and every other burger joint these days though is the bacon.  I don't know what kind of advanced technology was deployed to do it, but the bacon is unbelievably thin.  So thin if fact that if you mash a piece of that bacon between your thumb and forefinger it turns into bacon dust.  We're not talking bacon dust the consistency of sand, we're talking bacon dust the consistency of talcum power.  In addition to advanced slicing technology, they would just about have to use some kind of advanced polymer to keep the bacon molecules together during the cooking process wouldn't they?  The technology that goes into creating that bacon is probably beyond my comprehension.

Now I know that the roast beef at Arby's is sliced at least as thinly as the bacon at any fast food establishment, but with roast beef you are getting a stack of meat, not just a slice.  Put a single slice of Arby's roast beef on a sandwich and see how satisfying that meal would be.  My guess is that like a meal at a Chinese buffet, you would be hungry again 30 minutes later.

The only way that they could possibly get bacon any thinner is to turn it into paste so that you can spread it.

Obviously they slice the bacon so thin to reduce their costs; I'm sure if they could cut a tomato like that they would already be doing it.  As we speak scientists in Geneva are probably working out the tomato slicing problem and will soon be introducing a method to cut them as thin as a piece of paper too.  And then of course the Chinese will be printing stuff on the bacon, making it like a fortune cookie.

Like I said, if you mash a piece of that bacon between your thumb and forefinger the resulting bacon dust is the consistency of talcum powder.  Does this bacon dust present a health concern?  Are we soon going to be hearing about fast food workers suffering from Bacon Lung?  What is the long term impact of being exposed to bacon dust?  Maybe it's just paranoia, but I swear that I breathed in some bacon dust during my last fast food visit and I haven't felt the same sense.

On fingers....

I consider myself an expert on fingers and their relative worth.  About six years ago my left index finger got into a violent disagreement with a table saw and lost.  I haven't used that table saw since; once they get the taste for blood you might as well throw them out. 

When I first bought that table saw the first thing I did after it came out of the box was disable all the safety features.  I felt that the guards got in the way and apparently I was right; they got in the way of my finger and the saw blade.  That little lapse in judgment cost me and my insurance company two surgeries, dozens of physical therapy sessions and tens of thousands of dollars.  More importantly it cost me my life long dream of being a hand model.  What I got out of that little adventure is a finger that looks like a hot dog  left out in the July heat for a week that no longer bends.  I can't tell you how many people have mistakenly accused me of pointing at them; people apparently don't like being pointed at.  For several months immediately following the accident I had to hear people singing :

          "Where is pointer, where is pointer?"
          "On the floor, on the floor."

Being a bit of a smart aleck myself I appreciated the humor. 
After my accident I learned the value of a good index finger, particularly when it's on your dominate hand.  I could no longer thread a nut, typing was tough and I couldn't pick my nose to save my life.  It's amazing though how resilient people are and how quickly they can adapt; I can now pick my nose with all of my fingers, and my thumb, can type better than ever, and just use my other hand anytime I'm doing something that requires fine motor skills, which isn't often.

Yes, I've learned that a good index finger is a valuable resource and I wish that I could pick up another one to replace the one whose existence ended so tragically and senselessly.  If given the chance I would trade both pinkies for another index finger.  Pinkies are totally worthless and just get in the way.  Unlike the pinky toe, which provides balance when you stand or walk, I'm not aware of anything that the pinky brings to the table.  Mine have minds of their own and hit the tab or enter key well before I want them to.  I can do without them.

In 2008 Trevor Wikre, a 280 pound senior right guard for Mesa State College severely dislocated his pinky, leaving a shard of bone where his pinky once lived.  The surgeon told Wikre that they needed to insert pins and that the recovery time would be 6 months.  It being his senior season, and not caring about the hand's equivalent of the little piggy that went wee wee wee all the way home, Wikre opted to have the pinky amputated.  Many people criticized him for having it amputated so that he could play football, but it's not like it was an index finger or anything.

We have the benefit of hindsight and know that his team went 0-3 the rest of the season; I looked it up.  So hindsight being 20/20 he probably wishes he had that finger back.  I guess the moral of the story is that if you're going to trade a pinky for football, you better be playing for a good team.  What's interesting is that Mesa State was 7-2 prior to the loss of that pinky and were on a 7 game winning streak, then took their 0-3 dive.  Maybe pinkies are more important than I thought.

On fall colors....

Spring and summer are my favorites times of the year, but I do love fall for the football and for the fall colors.  Here are my favorites from this weekend

On blogging....

I've really enjoyed doing this blog and already have the next 11 weekly articles written and auto-scheduled to post.  So if I were hit by a meteorite right now, those of you reading this would continue to hear from me for another 11 weeks. That has to make you extremely happy.  If you read one of my posts that says something like "yesterday I saw...", keep in mind that the yesterday to which I refer may have happened 11 or 12 weeks before the article was published.

I would continue to write articles for this blog even if I was the only one reading them because I've really missed writing.  When I was a little younger I thought that I might like to make my living as a writer.  In my early twenties I actually started to write a book and had probably a hundred pages written.  Right after I got out of the Navy I had an offer from The Sand Mountain Reporter to be a beat report, but by the time the offer came I had a job working with kids that I really loved. 

Sometimes I regret not taking that job because I would have enjoyed it and who knows what it might had led to.  But things happen for a reason and all in all I'm pretty satisfied with the way that things have turned out.  Who knows, maybe this blog will inspire me to start on that novel again.

On management by fear and intimidation....

I'm no Dale Carnegie and I'm not a Six Sigma ninja, let's just go ahead and get that out of the way right now, but I've attended many different flavors of management training, from Total Quality Management to Promised Based Management.  Everyone has their own management theory and many of them write books about them and make millions.  No I'm no Dale Carnegie, but I've been managing people for a little over 20 years and I'm here to tell you that you can toss out TQM, Six Sigma, Promised Based Management, and any other theory that someone who probably has no management experience has written about.  In this post I’m going to share with you my philosophy on how to motivate people and get the most out of them. 

Let's start with the overriding principle of my management technique.  What is the number one thing that motivates people?  Money?  Pride?  Recognition?  All three are good answers, but think big picture; what is the most powerful motivator of them all?  The answer of course is fear.  Fear makes you run faster, jump higher, it keeps you safe and prevents you from making mistakes.  Fear is what prevents you from speeding, but it's also what gives you that little extra boost of energy when you're being pursued.

Most management philosophies will tell you that you should manage fear and try to eliminate it; that fear is counterproductive and leads to discontent and lowered productivity.  This is simply not the case.  Instead, if you instill an environment of fear every action that your employees take will be guided by that fear, which will in turn lead to better decision making.  I you take nothing else from this post take this: lack of fear leads to poor decision making.  How many times have you heard someone say that Suzy acts that way because she gets away with it?  Basically what they are saying is that Suzy operates without fear.  When people think that they can make a mistake without ramification there's no limit to what they can screw up.

So instead of trying to manage and eliminate fear I try to create it.  One thing I do to foster an atmosphere of fear is to keep a list of employee names, both past and present, on the whiteboard in my office.  As people leave, either through natural attrition or by being terminated, I cross through their names.  To me it’s just a list of names, but to the people listed it’s an ominous sign that they spend hours worrying about.

When someone leaves the company I don’t tell my employees why, even if that person left to pursue a better opportunity.  Instead, I allow everyone to think that they were terminated.  I don’t actually say that they were terminated, you really don’t have to, I let those left behind draw their own conclusions.  If someone suggests that a person left for more money, more responsibility, etc., I just say that there’s more to the story in order to create a seed of doubt.

Calling someone to my office always makes them nervous and I always get a "did I do anything wrong" question, or "is this going to be bad".  When they ask that I don't allay their fears by telling them everything is okay and that we just need to have a friendly chat.  Instead, I respond with "it's best if we just discuss this in private".  If it isn't bad news and they say something like "thank goodness, you scared me" or some such nonsense I always tell them that they were right to be scared because next time the discussion may not be to their liking.

I pretend to leave stuff at the printer to scare them.  For instance I will create a fake email to a company Vice President saying that everything is ready for the move.  I only have to leave it for about two minutes before everyone in the building knows about it.  When asked about it I simply say something  about hoping that our improved performance will make a difference.  You would be amazed at how this increases productivity.  There is nothing that motivates a group more than fear that they're going to have to move, or lose their jobs entirely, if their performance doesn't improve.

Another method I use to foster fear is to close my door and act like I'm having a telephone conversation with someone.  I yell key phrases like "that is totally unacceptable", or "I warned you about the consequences of this before", or "if you had listened to me before this wouldn't be necessary", then I storm off for lunch.  If anyone asks I just roll my eyes, shrug and say something like “what are you going to do” and walk off. 

When I worked at this one company there was a VP who I really admired and he was the basis of my Management by Fear and Intimidation philosophy.  I was a business manager at the time and we were blessed with the opportunity to discuss market results with him on a monthly basis.  He would scream at us frequently, say that we were incompetent and threaten our jobs.  He would move revenue from one market to another without telling us and then scream at us when we couldn't explain how we failed to make our forecast. 

Once on a conference call we could hear his kids in the background.  Without skipping a beat he immediately launched into a profanity-laced tirade on the inappropriateness of addressing him while he was on the phone.  This was a guy who lived Management by Fear and Intimidation, it wasn't just a philosophy for him, it was the guiding principle behind everything he did.   I wish that I had been given the opportunity to learn the techniques of this management style at the tender age of 8 and 10 like his kids did, but alas I didn't have a father figure around to teach me such valuable life lessons. 

On another occasion a manager was absent due to the death of an employee and this VP made someone call the manager and tell him that he had 15 minutes to get on the call or he could find another job.  He did allow the dead employee to take the day off though, so it's not like he lacked compassion.  I could give you a couple dozen more examples that would inspire awe, but suffice it to say that this guy was a tremendous influence on me. 

Was this VP pleasant to work for?  Heck no, but every single decision I made was done with the understanding that a poor decision on my part could render me unemployed.  As a result my work was meticulous and when it wasn't, I learned to blame it on others.  Ironically this always worked and our monthly conference calls turned into finger pointing sessions; blaming provisioning, billing, operations, anyone but ourselves.  Now that I think about it, maybe I need to go back to the drawing board and rethink this philosophy; I might get stuff blamed on me.

On political correctness....

It's sad that people in this country are afraid to say what's on their mind and have opinions.  If you don't support the policies of president Obama or are for tougher immigration laws you're a racist.  If you're against "the war" then you're anti-American or anti-military; the list goes on and on.  Just when you think that some public figure is about to stand up and thumb their noses at political correctness they hold a press conference or issue a statement crawfishing and apologizing for their statements.  When they do that they just lose credibility and respect.  Just once I would like for someone to stand behind what they said and tell anyone that attacks them to go to hell.  Or if they feel compelled to apologize because they hurt someones tender feelings, they should tell those people that they're sorry that they're crybabies.

On change....

I don’t like change.  Not one little bit.  I’m a status quo kind of guy.  I believe that if something isn’t broken there’s no need to fix it and if it is broken, you should just buy another one.  I become comfortable in my little world and I’m not anxious to do anything to change it.  Change is not always good, especially change that is made simply for the sake of change. 

I recently made the change to Office 2007.  Yes, believe it not, 4 years after its release I am now on Office 2007.  Part of the time gap is due to the IT policies of the company that I work for, but part of it is because I didn’t want to upgrade anyway.  So now that I have upgraded I have found, as I suspected I would, that a ton of things have changed.  The net result of these changes is that it takes me 30 minutes to do a spreadsheet that took 5 before.  Aw, progress! 

I knew where all the buttons and features were found with the previous version and now, until I get used to it, most of the additional time is used trying to find or remember where the feature moved to.  When I do get used to it, another upgrade will come out and the vicious cycle will being anew.  I have yet to find anything that Office 2007 does that the previous version didn’t do, not one. 

I have a well documented on-again, off-again relationship with Facebook.  There are many reasons for this love/hate relationship, not the least of which is the changes that are constantly shoved down my throat.  It seems that every time I log in I am being asked to switch to some new feature.  Being against change as I am, I ignore those pleas, but eventually they become mandatory anyway.  If they were changes that benefited me I might feel differently, but they are just changes for the sake of change.

Imagine if every time you got into your car the gear shift, steering wheel or radio was jazzed up and moved somewhere else.  Or if in addition to turning on the radio, the radio's power button also turned on your windshield wipers and it was up to you to pour over the owner's manual to try to figure out how to disable that feature.  How frustrating would that be?  Or imagine if every time you came home everything in the house was rearranged.  Your sock drawer is now your underwear drawer, your pots are now where your canned goods used to be, and your tools are now in the toolbox instead of being scattered around the house.  Would you be frustrated?

Computer program changes are mostly for those who like things to be pretty.  You know the kind, they had the fancy My Space pages with the pixie dust and glitter and music.  They liked to move things around, change colors, add little pretty widgits, etc., and for people like that there were entire websites devoted to explaining how they could change their page and add the cute talking kittens and such.  Or pictures like this:

People seem to like that crap and, I suppose, to each his own.  As for me Mr. Microsoft and Mrs. Facebook, add functionality if you must, improve features if you must, but total facelifts are, well, total BS.