The Waiting

My most recent trip to the airport, like every trip to the airport, once again had me blown away at the phenomenons known as Starbucks and Chick-fil-A.

I’m not a big fan of Starbucks. They only have one item I enjoy, which I was exposed to by my wife. However, once I found out it had more calories than my average meal, I decided to stick with regular coffee and solid food.

It’s generally pretty cool, if not socially acceptable, to rage against the machine that is Starbucks. I don’t get a lot of sideways glances when I tell people I’m not a fan.

Despite Starbucks’ continued popularity, many people like to pretend they would rather get their coffee from the dirty-dreadlocked-earth-tone-wearing, all-natural-non-deodorizing-deodorant-scented, local, hipster coffee shop than the wildly successful chain responsible for the coffee craze taking off.

People, however, usually get a shocked look on their face when I tell them I’m not a fan of Chick-fil-A.

After all, Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays. Their corporate purpose is “To Glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on all who come into contact with Chik-fil-A.”

It is only $10,000 to buy into their franchise (if you are selected). Their entire marketing model is ingeniously targeted at families of all ages, and their ability to make you feel like family while feeding you fast food.

Plus, they have cows holding clever signs.

In reality, I do not actually hate either of these companies, I envy them.

Simultaneously, though, they show me yet another thing about people I find shocking. Rather, I should say unappealing because it is not too big of a shock.

As I sit and write this, I am within spying distance from both a Starbucks and a Chick-fil-A. I am sitting directly across the corridor from the Starbucks and about 100 feet from the Chick-fil-A, also on the opposite side of the corridor.

Both of these iconic American institutions are overflowing with patrons. I’d say at least 35 people are in line for Starbucks while Chick-fil-A is easily at the 50 person mark. These are just the people waiting to place an order. I am not even counting those who are waiting for their order to be fulfilled.

Chances are, people will be waiting for their coffee and chicken longer than it will take me to criticize their terrible life choices.

These two companies are corporate geniuses. They have somehow developed a way to get people to wait in line for their food and drink, as though they are waiting in line for an amusement park ride, concert, or entry into a professional sporting event.

I see this daily as I pass these restaurants while driving. Their drive-throughs and parking lots are overflowing. I immediately have two reactions: First, I envision the dollar bills cascading out of the pockets of the business owners. Second, I scoff and shake my head at the lemmings in line.

Even on my days off, with nothing to do, I wouldn’t want to waste my time in lines this long for coffee or fast food, but to do this at an airport, where people are already forced to stand miserably in line for every step in the travel process, it amazes me they have so many customers willing to add one more long line to their day of waiting.

Their customers are so loyal, they will not only suffer through a longer wait, but do so to pay more for these products than at rival locations selling similar goods.

I have experienced both places and can’t stomach the wait or justify the price difference, never mind the combination.

In fact, the last time I was on a trip with my darling wife, and she wanted Chik-Fil-A, I was so appalled by the line, I lied, said I wasn’t hungry (which is basically never true) and had my own mini-boycott as I spotted there waiting for her food.

Sure, I later collapsed under my weak will power and ate her leftover waffle fries, but I chalk it up to my hatred of wasting food.

Where am I sitting and contemplating these strangers’ life choices? A restaurant with a minimal line. They sell coffee and chicken sandwiches, as well as a variety of other items. The line is about 3 people deep and moving quickly.

Can-Coon

I was on the road pre-dawn this week and spotted the nightly activity of a local raccoon.

All I could do was laugh and think…Florida.

What a crazy place. Every joke they make about “Florida man” seems to be well earned, at least in the central Florida region I have been lucky enough to visit.

To be fair, I wasn’t even in Florida when this happened. But, I was immediately warped back in time to Can-Coon’s house.

Can-Coon actually lived outside the house with his family of five. He was, as you may have a guessed, a raccoon.

As many of my sales calls go, I was at the house of an elderly woman. She was vibrant and alert, but her husband was ill and dependent on a constant supply of oxygen.

Momma Coon was his wife and now caretaker. It seems she had been so for quite some time.

This was a midday call on a sunny afternoon in Florida, not the nocturnal setting in which raccoons are usually spotted.

We chatted for about 10-minutes at her kitchen table when, suddenly, I heard a light knocking on her sliding glass door.

There he was. Can-Coon. He stood on his hind legs, front paws pressed against the glass. Precious - in a dirty, rabies, trash-eating kind of way.

Momma Coon was excited to see her and tell me all about her.

Do you see her paw?

I looked down at the paw not pressed against the glass and noticed a swollen flop of a paw dangling from the end of its front right leg. Every once in a while Can-Coon would flop it up against the glass to knock again.

Fighting back the urge to verbalize my shock and disgust at this limp-wristed rodent, I inquired, ever so politely, if the raccoon was alright. Momma informed me his paw was the source of his name. When she first spotted him, it was trapped inside of a Coca-Cola can.

By the time it was removed, the damage was done. The paw remained a useless, swollen, flapping, piece of flesh he drug along with him everywhere he went.

From then on, she tended to Can-Coon, named him, and kept him fed, hence his presence at the door.

After a while, Can-Coon had a litter of baby-coons, and Momma Coon discovered he was not a he at all, but a female, and a Momma Coon herself.

Garage Life

As an apartment dweller (townhouse if I feel like being fancy), who has way more stuff than he should own, but cannot get rid of any of these essentially stored and rarely used items, I spend a lot of time rearranging my garage.

Last week, I celebrated the new year with my first session of rearranging items and filing away seasonal decor. I was filled with the joy of putting away decorative wreaths and climbing up and down a ladder, then playing adult Tetris with Rubbermaid storage bins of all different shapes and sizes.

During this highly enjoyable session in the garage, I looked to the ceiling and questioned why I didn’t just toss all of this stuff in the garbage.

As I did this, I saw my surfboards and flashed back to just over a year ago, when I ingeniously figured out how to get around my garage’s false ceiling which was preventing me from hanging my surfboards with my usual rope and hook system.

Instead of hanging them from the ceiling, I used the framing track for the garage door to create a web of roping, then laid the surfboards across the web for safekeeping until central Texas installed an ocean.

I was never a Boy Scout, but I am always prepared.

Towards the finishing stages of this when I️ was on my ladder, taping the ends of the ropes so they did not fray (safety first), I️ found myself near the garage door spring. I️ stared at it, contemplating how much tension was in that spring.

It’s a big spring. It is at least 3 inches in diameter. I bet it is ridiculously strong. It does, after all, assist the motor in opening the garage door.

Should you ever find yourself at this level of curiosity, I️ hope you dismiss it. The spring is strong. Mystery solved. Just know this. Engineers have already verified this before selling and installing it for use with a garage door. Your assistance is not needed for further research and development.

Do not. Do. Not. pull on the spring to see how much tension there may be.

Or...do what I️ did. Pull on the spring to check it’s masculinity. How strong are you string? Am I️ strong enough to stretch you further?

Like an old rubber band, as soon as I️ added a bit more tension, it snapped. Whisk, bang, crash, that thing shot from my hand and slammed against the wall.

It was loud. Gun shot, cannon blast, ceiling collapsing loud. I stood on that ladder in total shock, jaw dropped, gazing at this huge dangling spring.

Once I came out of my trance, I immediately made sure I still had both my eyes and was not impaled by any shrapnel.

Somehow, I escaped with a small cut on my hand.

Garage door: Out of Order.

Maybe’s for Days

I spent the last two days of 2018 and the first day of 2019 attempting to close old leads with a substantial discount offered by my company.

I worked those three days making phone calls for every viable lead I met with since August. I would have gone further back, but I ran out of time.

In my previous career as an educator and administrator, I would have been kicking back and relaxing, not working at all. I also would not have had the option to earn a bonus by working those three days, as is possible with my current position.

This is the problem with education. I’m a hard worker, as most educators are, but no matter how hard I work or how many hours I put in, my paycheck remained the same.

There is no bonus at any time for your dedication or efforts.

The only addition to your paycheck requires a promotion. Any promotion requires another degree. And, the “company,” in most states and school systems, doesn’t offer to pay for schooling, as so many other companies do.

It sounds like I may have left education for money, but I didn’t. My last job had a great salary, and it’s exactly why I knew I had to leave. The money still wasn’t enough. The challenge presented by the job just wasn’t the challenge I needed.

At the same time though, most people who leave education don’t spend 13 years climbing the ladder before they abandon ship. They are jaded, burned out, or sick of the social abuse long before and find a less complicated career.

One thing is for sure though, in my years of education, I rarely meant any “customers” who hesitated to share their uncensored feelings. I would get an earful over the most trivial things imaginable. Somehow, receiving a zero for not turning in an assignment would become bullying by a teacher and 30-minutes of listening to a parent soapbox on the injustice their poor (lazy) child had suffered.

In sales, however, it is shocking how many people would rather lead you on than just be honest.

I guess these are the people who do not like confrontation, which is not something you encounter when dealing with people’s children.

Maybe it’s because of my first career; maybe it’s because I am from New Jersey; maybe it’s because I am pretty dry and straightforward in general; maybe it’s because I don’t remember growing up with a lot of Maybe’s. Either way, I am used to the immediate yes or no, and I respect it.

Either way, I certainly don’t consider a salesman asking whether or not you want to buy something a confrontation. It’s inevitable, especially if you invited him into your home to try and sell you something.

The question is pretty simple. The answer is even simpler: Yes or No.

I have no personal attachment to this answer. Sure, I want a Yes. My bank account wants a Yes. My boss wants a Yes, and the owner of my company wants a Yes.

But, I want an answer more than anything. Don’t give me the, “I’ll think about it.”

What a bunch of nonsense that is. Maybe the person saying it believes it; maybe they actually will think about it. In that case, they should come to the realization all they will be doing is thinking. They will think about it forever because the commitment is harder than the debate.

The reality is the “think about it” people drive me crazy. Maybe a more seasoned salesman could convince these people to buy, but in my shallow pool of 6-months experience, even when I convince these flip-floppers to buy, they cancel shortly after, wasting my time, their time, and countless other people’s time.

Resolution 2019

Welcome to 2019!

Day 2.

What is a new year without a New Year’s resolution?

Mine? To get on top of this blog thing. My resolution is to post once a week. My eye is set on posting every Wednesday. A little humor to help all seven of my readers make it through the rest of the work week.

Sure, I’d like to eat better, exercise more, have less adult beverages (or at least have them less days per week), and lose weight, like everyone else partaking in the resolution making, but I’m going to focus on something I can do while sitting down instead.

When I first started this blog, I thought it would be easy to post once a week. I even thought I would be able to write multiple posts in a week. I’ve been wrong before, and this proves to be another tick in the column.

To be honest, I have some other secondary resolutions as well.

First, I have to figure out how my wife surpassed me as a gym rat. This role reversal has me taken aback.

We both benefit from going to the gym and motivating each other to be healthier, and I’m certainly proud of her dedication and accomplishments from her newly adopted routine. She’s become my workout buddy and frequently comes up with new exercises to try.

However, life is a competition, and I’m not a fan of having less visits to the gym than her on those weeks I’m on the road, or moving in the opposite direction of her on the bathroom scale.

I’d also like to watch less TV, or whatever it is called in the days of Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now, and Prime Video.

We may not have cable at our house, but there is no shortage of opportunities to spend 10 straight hours wasting away on our couch, becoming infused into the cushions as my brain turns to mush and absorbs episode after episode of whatever binge worthy sitcom has become readily available through the power of the internet.

It occurs to me now that I should probably get back to handling those tedious nuances of being an adult, which I have neglected as of late. Things have fallen through the cracks, like getting my car and motorcycle inspected since it is closely approaching four months past due.

However, I blame Texas for this. They never sent me anything in the mail to remind me or require me to get this done.

There it is. The final secondary resolution:

In 2019, I will be certain to find the correct person to blame whenever someone, some company, or some government agency purposely causes me to miss a deadline, opportunity, or requirement.

Let’s start with the electric company. You made my last bill due on December 26. The day after Christmas. I accurately assign you the blame for my late fee.

Who’s next?