Snowball Or Avalanche?
By 'Snowball' I don't mean the cocktail, I mean a small ball of snow being sent downhill from the very top of the piste, accruing more and more snow along the way until it becomes a positive behemoth. That kind of snowball. By avalanche I mean a few pebbles displaced at the highest col on the mountain, which, by the time they reach the valley floor, are the initiators of one hundred thousand tons of rock travelling at sixty miles per hour. Art!
For in today's Intro we are going to be dealing with the trifling sum of $0.75, seventy five cents in the South Canadian currency, in a tale as old as greedy managers trying to steal staff wages, so from a century ago in Europe but tomorrow in South Canada. Art!
We are told that the eatery involved was 'Café Donuts', which is a way of avoiding being sued, as there is no such chain in South Canada. The likeliest choices are Dunkin' Donuts, as above, or Krispy Kreme or Randy's Donuts.
ANYWAY the tale is related by a friend of the protagonist, whom we shall call DOnut Dan, for he worked in the donut and coffee place.
Here an aside about franchises. Dull but necessary, I'm afraid. 'Funkin' Donuts' licences their brand to a franchisee, who has access to their training materials, operating manual and large-scale advertising promotions. In turn they have to adhere to the rules and maintain the brand, also running and financing things on a day-to-day basis. They also have to turn over a certain percentage of their profits to the franchisor - 'Funkin' Donuts' in this case.
Any franchisor will keep a verrrry close eye on franchises being run, because the one thing they ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT TOLERATE is damage to their brand. Art!
Brand damager manager
This is Mike Coupe, former head of the Co-Op, who was caught on an open microphone singing 'We're In The Money' before an interview. It went down verrrry badly and it took a couple of years before the Co-Op managed to put it behind themselves. Conrad knows, I was working in HR for them at the time.
ANYWAY back to 'Funkin' Donuts' and DOD. FD was run as a franchise, along with another location, by Jim. Which we will say is the acronym for 'Jackass Idiot Manager', hereafter JIM. Art!
Because JIM was a penny-pinching bottomhole, he kept telling DOD to total the till amounts after clocking out, thanks to - see 'Bottomhole' above. When DOD protested that this was still working, JIM promptly fired him. Well, he is JIM after all.
When DOD got his last paycheck, JIM had docked him $0.75
BATTLE WAS JOINED!
JIM refused to pony up the $0.75, so DOD and a colleague contacted Labour Standards - hence possibly this is in New York, as their state labour board is the 'Division of Labour Standards' - who challenged JIM, who in turn refused to pay up.
Labour Standards took him to court. Art!
Close enough
JIM's court preparation amounted to forging fake pay records, which were immediately busted when DOD and colleagues produced pay stubs and bank statements. Surprise! JIM had to pay DOD the $0.75, plus hundreds of dollars in stolen wages to ex-employees, a fine imposed by Labour Standards and everyone's legal fees. Ouch.
That was just the wage theft case. Unlucky - or stupid- JIM also got charged with fraud and falsification of documents.
It gets worse.
Recall, if you will, that JIM was running two 'Funkin' Donut' eateries as a franchise. Art!
Recall that these two eateries were held as a franchise. 'Funkin Donuts' found out about the court case and were highly unamused. They revoked the licence, which meant JIM lost the restaurants, building and land they stood upon.
It gets worse.
FD sued JIM for damaging their brand, and predictably, since they had very deep pockets and he didn't, they won. The sums involved were so large that he had to sell his house to settle them.
It gets worse.
His wife left him. Presumably being homeless and penniless with no prospect of any income for the near future put strains on the holy bonds of matrimony, or she was fed up being married to a bottomhole. Art!
Before all that, DOD responded in court to JIM having to pony up the 75 cents in court.
'You know what? It's only seventy-five cents. I don't even want it,' and he gave it to another ex-employee.
Sick burn, as the yoof say.
What On Earth?
My news feed does throw up oddities at times, and today was one of those times. Art!
Conrad doesn't have ANY concrete that requires crushing, either in a full-size crusher or a miniature one. When have I ever, ever, ever posted an item or Intro that suggests I need or want a crushing machine?
Plummet Airlines
You may not care or be aware that the Ruffians have a very limited number of Tu-22 strategic bombers in working order. These are the airframes that daily send cruise missiles to blow up churches and kindergartens in Ukraine, and other strategic military targets.
How many they have is open to question. At least 50, perhaps as many as 60.
HOWEVER - O that word again! - the number of aircraft actually able to deploy at short notice is likely as low as 27, upper bound, or 9, lower bound. Art!
A 'Backfire' in conventional flight orientation. The orcs stopped producing them in 1993, so the ones currently flying are enabled to do so by cannibalising others for spare parts, and since Operation Spiderweb these airworthy planes have been pushed hard to carry out missile attacks. Maintenance is poor and erratic, especially since the aircraft technicians have been sent off to Ukraine as meat-wave fodder.
Yesterday, one of them carried out a test flight after undergoing maintenance. How did that turn out? Art!
Almost as badly as possible; one engine failed and when the crew turned back to their airbase, the second engine failed, leading to the bird going into a vertical dive and disintegrating on impact. The aircrew ejected and now have to come up with an excuse not to be sent following their technicians to the Z-line, as they no longer have an aircraft. Ooops.
More Ungentle Shoeing
Nobody seems to be posting awful pictures of Mopey Dick - I re-discovered this insult whilst looking at old BOOJUM!s - at the G7, for which you may be grateful. There is the embarrassing Billy No-Mates photograph of him standing alone as everyone else communes and networks - Art!
One suspects Full Diaper Syndrome. There's an even more humiliating one inside a conference room. Art!
THEN! I found a wonderfully awful photo of him looking sweaty, bloated and dishevelled, which, if Art will do the honours -
You can see the true extent of his baldness. Thank heavens this is from the side, not the front, and we are spared his hideous turkey-wattled neck!
Conrad Begs To Differ
Rather contrarily. Here's what Jeff Bezos has to say about AI.
I am also convinced that the service my Enormous Anonymous Employer offers to claimants making phone calls will replace you us humans with an AI phone service. You'll get a call-tree and then a recorded voice reciting our scripts. Art!
Although Your Humble Scribe has been told he was assumed to be AI anyway by certain callers.
Finally -
Going out with another Biercism. Thank you so much Ambrose Gwinnet!
"Mouth, n: In man, the gateway to the soul; in woman, the outlet of the heart."
No comments:
Post a Comment