Inspration

One of the major impetuses in creating this ‘blog was the amazing ranting of one of the sales managers here. We’ll call him Simon, and as I have written before, he’s the Yogi Berra of Seafood. We’ve been tracking the butchered clichés, mixed metaphors, and mispronounced words for a little over a year now and the document is now a full 23 pages. The list of Simonisms is now a major part of our office culture. He is aware that we’re tracking him (I think he gets an ego-boost from the attention) – today he let this one fly:

“If you’ve only got 10 Lbs of sand you can’t build a whole skate park…write that down”

But in reviewing the list I realize that he’s compounding his own work into even more convoluted statements. For example, he’s fond of using the clichés “That dog don’t hunt” and “The chickens have come home to roost” but last week he stated: “That’s a big issue, at some point that dog is going to come home to roost.”

Another of his favorite analogies is “don’t take your foot off the gas pedal!”

Example: “Don’t take our foot off the gas pedal or we’ll go into a ditch, then we’ll all have tears in our eyes”
And two weeks later: “If you take your foot off the gas pedal you’ll go in the toilet, and if you’re in the toilet you’re gonna lose money.”

I feel so fortunate to be in the company of this Sage of Seafood, otherwise, I’d be in the toilet, losing money with tears in my eyes.

Management Strategies

I actually witnessed a manager in this company state the following:

"That’s why I’m the most successful one here, cause I’m the biggest asshole!"

Let's see. Yup. That about sums it up around here.

If Only We had a Gopher

I would like to take a moment to apologize to the world for causing the death of Rodney Dangerfield. We had our golf tournament the other day; seems the damage caused to the course by the fishpimps was greater than that of both Caddyshack movies put together. It was just more than old Rod could bear.

I should have known it was going to be trouble when the guys in my threesome showed up with two espresso cup carriers full of bloody marys. Any hope of a competitive round was erased at the first hole, when my partner set up for a 50 yard chip to the pin and hit it 95 yards, smashing the sliding glass door of one of the condos that line the course. Fortunately, we absconded under the cover of a dense fog that limited visibility for most of the round. That fog also caused me to lose nearly all of the free range balls that I had stuffed my bag full of - yeah, the fog, yeah, that's the ticket...

At least we had a good time. The previous couple of years I've golfed with a bunch of guys who quit drinking. How is a poor, white boy supposed to get his drink on when he's surrounded by recovering alcoholics? This time we kept the cart girlies plenty busy. It's a miracle that we finished the round without major damage or submersion of the carts.

And to Mr. Dangerfield I'd like to offer a hearty "Gunga Na Gungana!"