Having one of the best days I've had in a while actually so what I'm doing right now is just riding the high. Enrolled in trade school a while ago and haven't exactly been what I would call a natural at the program but started on using a plasma cutter today and it went really well. Cut out a metal nameplate, and planning out my next project for it now. Also got to see a draft copy for a upcoming collection that one of my poems is in so that was nice.
Bored, so I tried to create my own fake Vietnam Zippo. I was going to post my efforts but the results were... not good. I have new found respect for the ebay scammers who make them. The process is not as easy as I’d imagined, to say the least.
Spending a large part of the day batting work back to people who think they can dump their work on me "Hey moose I think this for you to do" "Nope, that's your teams responsibility... I only deal with my already monstrous workload, sorry." Then you get the sob story "well you see our team is very stretched due to covid/brexit/etc... so we don't have the capaciteeeee" Oh my why didn't you say... of course you're the only team to be impacted by the pandemic...how silly of me, its not like we're working at 75% staff or anything
I'm at roughly 50% staff. 25% of that gap was designed and engineered out of the system, but the other 25% is just gone into the aether. Unlike you're business, Moose, I choke off the work flow and shrink things in line with staff levels. I think I'm going to preemptively close on Mondays (we're already closed on Sundays) to deprecate an additional 16.6% from the system and narrow that labor gap to about 10% or so. That will give me a little wiggle room. Never thought I'd find myself in this position, but I'm taking steps to actively REDUCE business because we literally do not have enough food to sell to all people who want it. We figured out that we can serve maybe 600 heads a week instead of the 800 we've been averaging. So I reduced the last reservation time from 10pm to 9pm, combined a few smaller (deuces) into 4-tops to drop the party count from 25 to 22, cut the flow rate 12 heads every 15 minutes to 10 heads, and pulled 3 bar stools to drop from 18 to 15.
Followed everything but this. I enjoy your posts about your business. Inside baseball stuff fascinates me. I suspect there are as many people whose dream is to open a restaurant as there are those who 'are going to write a novel', and as many never realize their dream.
Flow rate is basically the amount of reservation covers (heads) you take for any particular time period. With the reservation software (Open Table, which is Skynet if you don't fiercely govern it), it will take only 10 people for each 15 minute interval. So if a 2 top and a pair of 4 tops book at 6pm, that's 10 heads (instead of my previous limit of 12) and 6pm is then closed off to reservations, forcing new bookings into the 6:15 time slot. Each table is allotted 2 hours, so there is a constant shuffle between the number of heads allowed per time slot and the number of available tables to park those heads. Say for mathematical purposes that every table is a couple and they jam the book starting when I open at 4:30. The flow rate would allow only 10 heads (5 couples) every fifteen minutes until the tables are gone. 4:30 - 5 tables 4:45 - 5 tables 5:00 - 5 tables 5:15 - 5 tables 5:30 - 2 tables (because that would be 22 total with no real estate left) Now the book is closed until that two hour allotment is up. Meaning 5 tables will become available at 6:30, 5 more at 6:45, and so on. I can adjust that 10 cover per 15 minute interval to anything I want. 12 is my normal standard, but I've done 14 before to see what happened. It was chaos... ungovernable chaos. We're essentially reservation only and book out weekends 2 - 3 weeks ahead of time, so if I don't keep my hands around Skynet's throat, the books will overrun with guests I can't reasonably serve. And I always have to keep a table or two in my back pocket for VIPs, politicians (the ones that can approve or deny your governmental needs in a heartbeat), NFL players, etc. Once football season starts, the visiting teams playing the Patriots all stay in Providence because it's much closer to Foxboro than Boston is. So if the Eagles coaches or the Ravens defensive line want to come in, you better have a spot ready for them and a charming apology for the civilians that will have to wait a little bit. Yeah, Covid cured that for me. I was ready to open my own spot, but then all that happened. And the ensuing labor and supply chain crisis, which has been a thousand times worse. I kind of said to myself, "You know what, Homer, you get to play restaurant owner, make all your own decisions, make your own schedule, have virtually no interference from the company bosses, and get to go home to your wife and liquor cabinet without having to worry about paying bills and mortgaging your future. Not a bad fucking deal at all!"
Wondering if I should be concerned by the amazon scam I’ve had thrust on me on a couple of occasions. Each time the call comes immediately after placing a genuine order with amazon, telling me I’ve been charged £359.00 for an iPhone 7, and that I need to press 1 if I didn’t place the order. Of course I never do, but it’s the fact they seem to know when I’ve placed an order that concerns me.
Be worth changing your amazon password just in case and clearing all your cookies and temp files and potentially running something like malwarebytes just in case... you can't be too careful. However theres a high chance that its a cooincidence
Persevered with my fake ‘Nam Zippo. The lettering was just too difficult by hand so I got it done at a key-cutting place. The map I did myself and it’s not great. Anyway, it passed a few hours. I just need to give the case a few dents here and there.
Killing a few minutes on writingforums.org while waiting for a Zoom class on freelance writing to start. I don't know if I really want to go down the "content writer" career (or side hustle) path, but I figured it would be good to learn something about it.
Yeah, the freedom to work as much or as little as you want is one of the big attractions to me. Today's class was pretty interesting. We did a high level overview of the industry and looked at several of the bigger job boards like upwork and fiverr. Tomorrow we'll look at the nuts and bolts of pitching and setting rates and working outside those boards. I'm glad I signed up.
And now I'm writing up a critique of a song for a friend of mine. After 20-some years of trying to get a decent band together, he finally gave up and started recording things himself (He's put together a nice home studio over the years). Pretty good stuff, and it's definitely got me wanting to take my music seriously, too. I need more time to do ALL the fun creative stuff!
Just got back from a nice dinner that my work let me throw on the company card for doing a decent job. Found a nice lighthouse restaurant overlooking the bay. Fried calamari as an appetizer with an amazing dipping sauce (wish I could remember what was in it). Main course was chilled clams, mussels, half a small lobster, shrimp, and oysters in the half shell on ice. Dessert of a fine crème brûlée. Softly played classic beach music over the overlook porch where the table was at. Comfortable sunset walk next to the shore to finish it off. A fine evening to say the least.
Why not? Maybe not this year, or the next, or not till you're in your twenties, but it could happen. And happen again. Meanwhile, you're living your life and collecting material. That's the main thing. Stuff happens to you and you learn to step outside yourself and ask, "Why did I do that?" Or with the other person, "Why did he do that?" Then you get to thinking, "What if I invented a couple of characters who did something like that, not the same, but close, and then this other thing happened, and then maybe something different went down over here and--- " And you're off to the races. Have fun with it.
Oh, yeah. Can't go wrong with the raw bar tower. Throw in king crab, a couple of shots of vodka on the top rung, charge $145, and call it a day!
It was only $84 for this one. They had one with a full lobster and I think some dungeonous for $158, but that was a little outside what I needed anyways. Add the dessert, appetizer, and tip though and we're getting close to that price at $130.
Well, I may be wrong in saying that I won't EVER get there, but the anxiety of writing a novel is very overwhelming.
Start small. I complete my first novel this year. Im 27. In high school, i wasnt really thinking about writing novel length pieces because i knew i had the ideas but not the "know how". You wont believe how many notebooks i had where i started a "novel" and gave up. Short stories were fun. Fanfiction was fun. They are also good ways to hone your skill and find your writers voice. In middle school, my friends and i did "art trades". Someone would start a story or draw a picture and put it in the others backpack, and we'd expand on it. It was the best thing in the world to me! We ended up coming up with an alien plotline with a bunch of teenage aliens escaping from Area 51 to track down other aliens on earth to rescue them from the evil government Just enjoy writing for now. Writing novel length works will come eventually