That Requires A Bit Of Explanation
You see, I had bookmarked a Youtube Reddit saga about Pro-Revenge, which went by the title 'Destroy My Trees? I'll Sue For $1,000,000!', which concerned a Californian avocado farmer. This rang a dim and distant bell in my addled memories, so I checked past blog posts from BOOJUM! using the search term 'avocado'. I got a lot of hits thanks to having made 'Avocado and coconut ice cream', and then discovered that, yes, I had done the avocado farmer story before. Art!
To precis the story, a electrical utility company's power line was severed by high winds, fell on the farmer's fence and burned it down. He requested they pay $10,000 for a new fence. They refused, daring him to sue them.
He did. His wife was an attorney specialising in exactly these kinds of cases.
The court carried out it's own investigation, assessing the damage at - sit down now - $335,000. Moreover, in California, damage to agricultural properties is deemed especially egregious and multiplies payments by x3. So the utilities company forked over over $1,000,000. Or, to put it another way, x99 what the farmer asked for. Boy, I bet the power company dropped their own law firm like a glowing coal afterwards. Tee hee!
The link, if you want to know more.
HOWEVER - I did wait for 213 words until using that word - we're here for a tale told by FIeld Service EngineeR, hereafter FISER. Art!
FISER worked for a 'national retail chain' in South Canada, and never mentions their name, but they were a very large organisation, possibly Walmart or Target. He was essentially a travelling IT maintenance chap, keeping his supplies in his company truck. An amusing irony that he explained was that, as a corporate not retail employee, he had a small tranche of company shares, meaning he owned an infinitesimal part of the business. He contrasted this with the attitude of store managers, who did not have any shares but frequently thought they did, in fact, own the business. Art!
Without giving a total, and as an indirect reference to how important his work was, FISER's salary was x3 that of a store manager, and they are paid a hefty salary themselves.
SO! FISER got his working instructions for the day, which included replacing a server instore. Art!
A server
One important detail is that this server was located underneath a large table. Remember that.
When FISER turned up at the store, wearing his officially-issued company gear with logo proudly displayed, the store manager instantly took offence. 'It's My Very Own Personal Store Syndrome', as mentioned previously. I shall dub her IMVOPSS from now on, because I can. Being used to this, FISER explains that his boss wants him to change the server, a process that will take about an hour and cause the POS NO SNIGGERING AT THE BACK - which means 'Point Of Sale' and is the jargon for a register or till - will be down for 5 minutes. Art!
Towards the end of his job, FISER realises he's missing two cables, so he dashes out to his truck, gets them and returns to the server room, only to find that IMVOPSS has taken up residence there, in front of the server and has covered the table - I told you, that table is Chekhov's Gun in this tale - with her lunch.
She refuses to move and tells FISER to come back in an hour when her lunch is over, at the same time a panicking retail staff member bursts in to say the POS aren't working. You can tell that IMVOPSS is incompetent because she ignores this warning, as well as FISER telling her the registers will not work until he finished installing the new server.
Here an aside. Conrad, when working in HR at Sainsbo's, was there for a couple of times when the registers in stores stopped working. IT were then IMMEDIATELY on the problem until it was solved, because it affected the bottom line directly. Art!
That's me waving on the seventeenth floor
IMVOPSS gets irate, calls FISER rude and incompetent and demands to speak to his manager, so he hands over his company phone, after calling his boss. IMVOPSS demands he be fired, several times, because - er - interrupting her lunch break ought to be taken to the the ICC?
FISER hilariously explains that his supervisor is so far above her that she's complaining to her manager's manager's manager's manager's manager's manager. The phone call ends up with store manager abandoning her lunch, FISER doing his job and the tills going back up. Also, FISER's boss had rung the retail district manager; this is a manager one step above store manager who runs a group of stores over a geographical location, known as an Operations Manager here in the Allotment Of Eden.
As FISER is tidying up his kit, he sees the RDM going into the store.
As he gets into his truck he sees the RDM escorting the ex-store manager out of the store with all her things in a cardboard box. He stops the story right there, but we can picture the unpleasantly large grin on his face. No great surprise, really; putting your hour-long lunch break above generating profits, causing customer dissatisfaction and 'brand damage' - which big businesses absolutely HATE - is grounds for instant dismissal. Art!
Senile Sepia Sackbut Spirals
I really will miss Donold when he shambles off this mortal coil, because he's always good for creating content. Take this shot. Art!
In the middle of a meeting about global energy supplies, which is a serious matter, the confused elderly fat-ankled Donold got up and wandered over to the windows, exclaiming 'What a view' and 'This leads to the ballroom'. It may have a view, but that door leads to the garden. How to say you have frontoparietal dementia without actually saying it.
More Misery For Mordorvia
If I were to bang on about the current bad news for Ruffia it would take up two blogs, so I'll just mention this briefly. Back in December the orcs cut production of crude by 250,000 barrels per day, when their OPEC+ agreement allowed them to increase production. This reduction is tied into current difficulties selling to China and India, meaning that 30 million barrels, or over $1 billion worth, is stuck at sea in tankers that cannot dock and offload. Art!
Chart courtesy 'Beefeater'
Just to put that 250,000 drop into perspective, that's a loss of $8.75 million per day, and a total of $3.2 billion over a year.
Not only that, the long-forestalled Senator Lindsay Graham's sanctions bill is heading for approval, possibly by next week. It will impose a 500% tariff on anyone buying Ruffian oil. I have no idea why Fat Caligula is allowing this or if it will actually get approved. We'll see.
TANK!
Don't forget, BOOJUM!s founding charter declares that we shall discuss tanks, atom bombs and zombies. Here's the tank part. Art!
We are only in January, yet here is the Tank Museum pimping it's 'Tankfest' event of June. If this carries on as it did last year, these ads will be popping up for months. I WAS THERE ONLY FOUR MONTHS AGO!
Bah*.
Hmmmm although the weather in June is likely to be better than i
NO! Stay strong, Conrad!
Mister Assad May Get A New Neighbour
You remember The Chinless Twod, who was overthrown amazingly quickly in 2024, and who fled to Moscow, where he's been keeping a verrrry low profile.
We haven't covered the situation in Iran, which defect may be remedied shortly. It's not 'protests' any more, it's a revolution, and we here at BOOJUM! warmly support the overthrowing of the loathsome theocratic regime.
It's not just me, either. Art!
Apparently, according to 'Air Cargo Weekly' Ruffian Il-76 aircraft have been flying into Teheran since December 27th, and are assumed to be flying out the Iranian gold reserves so Khamenei has a bit of a nest egg. That gold is gone for good; even if the mullah's cling on to power Putin isn't giving it back.
Finally -
Ending with yet another Biercism.
"Zeal,n: A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth before a sprawl."
* This is only a mild 'Bah' as there is no exclamation mark.
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