The Ronda Kaye Collection

As a hardcore music fanatic, one is always seeking a fresh angle with which to appraise the landscape of all that has come before. Recent circumstances brought just such an opportunity into my lap, in the form of a community wide yard sale sweeping across some tiny country town some thirty minutes north of here. Though stumbling along aimlessly past many a tent and table, traipsing without success across lawn after lawn, my eyes eventually land on an otherwise innocuous CD case, which might as well be glowing gold with the promise it suddenly represents.

Blue and grey are the actual colors of the case, though, upon which is written the name Ronda Kaye in black magic marker, followed by, presumably at some later date, a last name in red ink. We might pontificate at great length about the hopes and dreams embodied by the last name in red ink, but this is not the occasion for such measures. Were I a poet it seems likely a connection might also be forged here between the hopes and dreams embodied by my desires for what this case should hold, and that suggested by the last name in red ink. It could make for a beautiful passage, but, again, this is neither the time nor the place.

It would also be disingenuous to suggest such poetic leaps were occurring to this author while caught up in the moment. Nothing so lofty would transpire this glorious day. The reality is I observe a $5 sticker slapped onto the front of this CD case, and rifle through it once, swiftly, a flip-book-type motion that eats up approximately 1.7 seconds, and instantly raise my hand to flag down the dude pacing back and forth behind the picnic table, as I then nod repeatedly and grin and point at this object of my wanton desires. Clearly not clued in as to the magnitude of this bounty he possesses, this oblivious gatekeeper doesn’t even bother to get off the cell phone he is busy chatting into, he merely snatches up my five spot and keeps on marching.

How have so many folks, hundreds if not thousands of them, drifted by the table this weekend and failed to snag this item? I can’t even begin to speculate. At a glance, the case not only features maybe a couple dozen compact discs, but also an absolute slew of movies on DVD, a smattering of video games, and even some workout videos. But of course, even if they’re not the most valuable items on evidence, it’s the music which interests me most of all, and that which we shall be considering here. They are also what leads me to describing this find in as extravagant terms as I can muster. Hence, the official word is that I “acquired the Ronda Kaye collection,” and furthermore that this purchase was made “at auction,” where I emerged victorious by “placing a five dollar bid.”

So let us now consider The Ronda Kaye Collection, the first of what is surely countless academic pieces to come analyzing this crucial historic find. Feverishly, for about the next three weeks which followed securing this collection, I listened to these offerings in the order I came across them, sequentially, while driving around town in my truck. They will be presented in that same order here. It’s also interesting to note that, while all of these artists are name brand acts, with one exception I had never listened to any of these albums all the way through before:

Heavy Metal – official movie soundtrack

The Cult – High Octane Cult

Radiohead – Hail To The Thief 

Christina Aguilera – Stripped

Buckcherry – Time Bomb

Seether – Disclaimer

Korn – Korn

Marilyn Manson – Mechanical Animals 

Fall Out Boy – Take This To Your Grave

Johnny Cash – The Legend of Johnny Cash

Def Leppard – Pyromania

John Mayer – Any Given Thursday disc 2

Metallica – S & M disc 1 

Collective Soul – Hints, Allegations, & Things Left Unsaid 

Jason Mraz – Waiting For My Rocket To Come

Matchbox Twenty – More Than You Think You Are

Rage Against The Machine – Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium 

A picture is beginning to take shape of ol’ Ronda Kaye here. The available evidence would seem to suggest a metal chick, liked to do a little bit of partying, nothing too extreme. And then – of course, one would have to consider the possibly inadmissable DVD portion of the collection to conclude such – she eventually settled down with some kids. Lost interest for the most part in the music of her early 20s, hence this fire sale. Without further dithering, however, let us begin to analyze this find:

1. Heavy Metal official movie soundtrack

Though the disc itself proves too scratched up to properly review, it turns out that when ripping this collection for posterity, the songs play fine on my desktop PC. This would seem a strange scientific phenomenon, if beyond the scope of this piece. At any rate, it doesn’t much matter as half of these songs are already quite familiar to me. The Devo tune is a nice find, although the Cheap Trick and Blue Oyster Cult offerings are worse than expected. The Trick cut in particular sounds like some cobbled together studio scraps, with the intro being the best part of the song. 

2. The Cult – High Octane Cult

I remember when the surviving Doors were cobbling together a lame reunion tour in the early 2000s, and people were outraged that they’d chosen Ian Astbury here to replace ol’ Jim. At the time, I thought this was weird, and couldn’t understand why fans were up in arms about this particular selection. He seemed to have the pipes and the Cult were a perfectly respectable hard rock outfit during the 80s. They even had somewhat of a comeback hit song in like 2001 or something which I recall hearing often then, lending him at least as much relevance as they had at that moment.  

But now I think I understand. Listening to this album all the way through twice, I initially couldn’t figure out why it seemed to kind of suck, a lot more than expected. This is after all a compilation of all their singles up to that point. Finally I realized the problem is in fact Astbury. He sings every song in identical over the top fashion, with the same tone and intensity, a stunt which becomes a bit overbearing before long. You can only hear a word like “resurrection” stretched into approximately 18 syllables so many times before hitting the skip button. 

3. Radiohead – Hail To The Thief

This is the aforementioned lone exception of an album I’ve listened to already, albeit just once way back when it came out. For years I’ve been stating that this is their worst effort, although that’s probably not true. It’s a little better than I recall, and surely tops, for example, Pablo Honey. Still, though they wouldn’t admit it, this feels like a calculated retreat back into guitar rock, which many fans were demanding after their electronic curiosities Kid A and Amnesiac. The only problem is those albums had actual ideas, good or bad, while inspiration appears a bit lacking on this one. 

4. Christina Aguilera – Stripped

This has to be the surprise of the Collection, a set jam packed with a ton of good songs and plenty of variety, to boot. Two or three of these tunes I’ve heard on the radio, but don’t exactly listen to this kind of music, thus most of it is unfamiliar terrain. If this were a playoff tournament bracket or something, she would be squared up against Radiohead in the first round – is it possible that a stunning upset is in the cards already? That notion isn’t as ridiculous as you might think. 

5. Buckcherry – Time Bomb

From about 2000 to 2006, FM rock stations had a serious problem on their hands. These hard rock outfits would manage to launch major hit songs, often ones which would have crossover appeal, even, yet the groups in question were so anonymous you couldn’t keep them straight. You had no idea what any of these people looked like, the band names were so generic you instantly forgot them, and the singers all kind of sounded the same, too, as did the music.

Buckcherry, to their credit, did not suffer these problems quite to the extent their peers did. I saw them open for Kid Rock during this time period, and remember thinking at the time, you know, if nothing else this lead singer gets it. He looks the part of a rock n’ roll frontman and has memorized the moves. You would certainly remember having seen him and can even pick out his voice on the radio. I also happened to catch this character, Josh Todd, at a later date on some sort of tour documentary TV show, and it occurred to me then that this was basically a total dweeb who made a point of learning how to act like a rock star – which kind of makes my case, that many of his contemporaries should have done more to distinguish themselves, too. As it turns out, Time Bomb here is far less memorable than some of its fellow classmates who just so happen to find themselves in the Ronda Kaye collection. Yet you still have a more vivid mental picture of Buckcherry anyhow, which also makes my case.

6. Seether – Disclaimer

As chance would have it, up next in the collection is precisely one of these hard rock bands I’m talking about. Without question, this disc is about three times better than the Buckcherry offering above. But you’ve also already forgotten their name about three seconds after sliding this CD into your stereo. Even having a few hit songs hasn’t remedied the situation, and you can’t pick the singer out on the radio. For example I couldn’t have told you they were the ones responsible for that Broken duet with the chick from Evanescence. That song is on here twice, actually, once with and without her – the first person to guess which version is best can have my copy of this album. 

7. Korn – Korn

This was a fairly big deal at the time, when these guys burst onto the scene. Like them or not, they did kind of spearhead this new strain of metal, whatever you want to call it. And remained one of the few tolerable practitioners of it, as well. Actually, it’s somewhat difficult to believe this thing came out clear back in ‘94, an artifact buried years ahead of its time. Some of this stuff is catchier than you would have any right to expect. Unlike many of their offspring (or even that guy from The Offspring), Jonathan Davis occasionally proves he can actually sing, too. He is only screaming or growling the rest of the time for effect. Then again, listening to this makes me wonder if there isn’t such a thing as melodic screaming/growling, too, because he does seem even better at this than most of his contemporaries. His little crying jag near the end of Daddy is also an odd idea I don’t recall ever hearing before.

As for the band, there are some inventive pieces on here, although they are in general aiming for more of an industrial groove than sprawling solos or anything else showing off their chops. That whole tuning down thing too I think makes it kind of interesting at times to discern whether it’s a guitar or a bass playing something. And that studio chatter at the start of Clown is a nice change of pace, allowing their personalities to shine through a little bit. I suppose it does get slightly repetitive by the end, but overall, a very strong debut.

8. Marilyn Manson – Mechanical Animals

An enjoyable album with some pretty solid songwriting. Listening to this makes me wish the leader of this ensemble had focused more on music than he did publicity stunts over the ensuing years (Billy Corgan, no stranger to goofy shenanigans himself, apparently warned Manson about this, too, clear back in the late 90s). I’m sure in Brian Warner’s mind it has worked out better this way, but I would not agree with that assessment.

Two of the five original members from their debut album are already toast by the time this third LP comes out, but you can’t really say it matters much yet. I would consider this the group’s highwater mark, at least based on what I’ve heard from their catalog: the songs here are mostly memorable, the playing imaginative, the lyrics clever. But I don’t really hear much if any of this alleged “Bowie” vibe that every single magazine review mentioned back in the day. Some of the stuff, like Posthuman, sounds more like Rob Zombie could have pulled it off – and no, that’s not really much of a selling point. I Don’t Like The Drugs (But The Drugs Like Me) is not only jolly good fun and an amusing song title, it was a somewhat major hit at the time, which unfortunately everyone seems to have forgotten about (although it appears to still be a popular strip club selection) (not that I would know anything about that). Elsewhere, “I’m as fake as a wedding cake,” is a good example of Manson’s nimble wordsmith abilities. The chorus of User Friendly brings with it some compelling ambiguity, because you’re not sure how to interpret this bit about “someone better” coming along, if he’s speaking of himself or his partner. Fundamentally Loathsome features a simple jazzy groove you never would have expected, and is like a blast of fresh air at this point in the proceedings. Bonus trivia: that’s Manson himself playing drums on The Dope Show. 

9. Fall Out Boy – Take This To Your Grave

It’s safe to say they haven’t quite hit their stride yet on this early set. The main culprit here would seem to be repetition. Even hardcore fans surely listen to this for the first time, and for the initial handful of tracks, they’re nodding along to it, they’re thinking, hmm, okay, not bad, boys! But then you begin to realize that all of the choruses sound exactly the same, centered around some slight variation (and even this is charitable) of Patrick Stump belting “whoa oh…whoa ah oh ooo oh!” And meanwhile the music is also too similar from track to track to make up for any shortcomings in this department – amusing song titles and namechecking some dude named Chris can only take you so far. For the uninitiated, I would say sample tracks #2 and #3 and then move on.

10. Johnny Cash – The Legend Of Johnny Cash

Though I’ve never listened to this particular greatest hits batch, the songs assembled here are far more familiar than anything else in the collection. And even so, there are a few surprises. The standout track, which I’m familiar with but never studied in detail or anything, is possibly I’ve Been Everywhere. All you can think of listening to this is, holy Jesus, can you imagine trying to sing this thing? Although unless I’m missing something, he appears to have skipped North Carolina entirely. And if Dayton was his only ever Ohio pitstop, let’s just say he basically hasn’t seen that state, either. 

 

11. Def Leppard – Pyromania

Based on the comments I’ve heard throughout the years, the official “book” on this album, as well as the songs I’m familiar with, I’d always assumed this was more of a pure rock effort than their later studio concoctions. Except it turns out the whisper-shouting backup vocals and mechanical drum sound and, presumably, guitar chords built on the mixing board by stacking one note at a time were all already in place here. This was a Mutt Lange production, after all. Don’t get me wrong, though – none of this is necessarily bad. Opener Rock Rock (‘Til You Drop) does sound like a lame AC/DC reject, with plodding robo-drums before Rick Allen even lost his arm. But from here the effort gains serious steam, although I don’t agree with purists who lump this in with their early stuff and dismiss everything from Hysteria onward. These two albums are sonically similar, and while the classics on here are top shelf, taken as a whole I think Hysteria still has the slight edge. Die Hard The Hunter sucks for the most part whenever Joe Elliott is singing, though the instrumental stretches are cool. And of course Rock Of Ages is great and all, even as I’ve always wondered if it was really necessary to reiterate a Neil Young lyric just three years later.

 

12. John Mayer – Any Given Thursday Disc 2

People with otherwise reliable musical tastes have been telling me for years that John Mayer is a surprisingly good guitar player. Yet, even though I will admit to liking a few of his singles, let’s just say evidence of that has not been forthcoming. And I’m not entirely convinced this set proves that case, either. While there are two guitarists listed, himself and some Michael Chaves character, any theoretical killer chops seem to be absent. It probably doesn’t help that this CD kicks off with an 8 minute version of Why Georgia, one of his more dreadful offerings, immediately followed by the even lamer Your Body Is A Wonderland. A couple of unnecessary covers in some “1983” medley and way too long takes on everything else round out this underwhelming release. On closing track Neon, the band does at last generate genuine momentum, although it’s questionable whether you really want to hear drum and bass guitar solos at this point. Perhaps the missing first disc was better? Glancing at the track list online makes me doubt this, but who knows. Then again, the guy has made millions of dollars and slept with Katy Perry. So one of us has figured some things out in life, and isn’t me.

13. Metallica – S & M Disc 1

This pair of consecutive, half complete live sets makes me think there must be additional pieces in the Ronda Kaye Collection somewhere. Collectors the world over salivate at this prospect, surely.

But I think the larger question presented by acquiring a Metallica disc in this manner is: should I mail them a check? What is Metallica’s stance on fans purchasing used CDs? Though I’m pretty sure of the answer to this, and suspect we might find them in the same Occupy Retail camp as Garth Brooks (who once looked into banning secondhand record stores from selling his music, in case you forgot about that), I think it’s useful to sort situations like these with a bit of fantasy imagery.

So let’s say you are strolling through the woods one day and stumble upon S & M Disc 1 lying upon the path. What is the correct response to this find? At the Lars Ulrich end of the spectrum, you must absolutely pay for any musical listening whatsoever, possibly for even just thinking about music, and should therefore mail them a check before even playing it; at what we might call the Blackbeard end of the spectrum, hell no you are not paying for this, all music should be free.

I think it’s safe to say, though, that reality – and the best attitude for the musicians themselves to adopt – is somewhere in the middle. Of course they should try to pull in whatever revenue they can from existing channels, and of course you would go after the company behind a piracy site, the same as you would someone printing up, say, bogus copies of the Black Album. But suing the listeners themselves is idiotic. You should really think twice about discouraging your fans from telling everyone they know about your music, and spreading it by every means at their disposal.

You would think they learnt their lesson from the Napster debacle, but no, that cease & desist they sent to a Metallica tribute band a few years ago suggests otherwise. As such this debate continues to fester in ways that surely do them no favors, either monetarily, or the standing of their legacy, or the chances that people will actually listen this music 100 years from now. Is this why you don’t even really hear their classic old cuts on the radio anymore? Does it distract reviewers to the extent they tend to rant about the band itself, with the actual music sort of an afterthought at this point? And how would these scenarios be different than Ulrich selling $12 million worth of famous paintings? Shouldn’t the original artists get a cut of that?

Moving on to what I have of this live album, I mean, yeah, it’s pretty decent. This was the whole Metallica-with-an-orchestra project and you kind of know what to expect. No Leaf Clover, one of their last major hits, still holds up well.

14. Collective Soul – Hints, Allegations, & Things Left Unsaid

I do vaguely remember listening to Shine and a couple other tracks off of this one time way back in the day, riding around in somebody’s car. As this band surprised a lot of people, including the author of this piece, by sticking to the airwaves a while and launching numerous hits (surprising factoid: I remember reading once that they had the most top 10 rock singles from ‘94-’01), they did start to grow on me ever so slightly.

Even so, I mean, this impression did plateau somewhere around the time that they were last heard on the radio. Shine I have always considered the most annoying of their hits, and that ranking doesn’t change any after listening to their entire debut. But among the more shocking finds on here, I would have to say, is that there are some really strong ideas you wouldn’t associate with such a vanilla band, in particular the guitar parts. And of course they’ve always had a knack for catchy tunes. But the problems Collective Soul is facing were always evident and remain so: hokey, way too slick production, and a drummer so robotic you’re not entirely certain it’s human. Excessive creativity was never going to prove much of a burden for them, either. Also, this strategy to have Ed Roland half whisper all the time, while I suppose it made their sound distinct, I’m not convinced this was the best idea in the world if they hoped to seem a little less cheesy.

Actually, I tell you what this entire album sounds like. Imagine you went to the movies to see some middling romantic comedy in the mid 90s, and the main dude everyone was rooting for to get with the girl, he played in a band. This is what that band would have sounded like, the music playing in montages and lip-synched to in bar scenes.

15. Jason Mraz – Waiting On My Rocket To Come

Anyone who has ever heard You And I or The Remedy on their local bubblegum station would be surprised to learn what a weird album this is. Listening to this makes me want to lump him into basically the same category as Train, whose career I also think was ruined to some extent by having hit songs. You get the feeling – and there’s plenty of recorded evidence to support this – that they were some fairly “out there” and original folkies at one point, who were slowly commoditized and sterilized by major label meddling. Which they may not have entirely resisted, true.

As such, the weirdness that continues to peek through is somewhat all the more amazing. So, yeah, you have the top 40 treacle, catchy though it is. Then you’re kind of scooping your jaw off the floor to hear the line “just a worthless piece of shit” in a later cut. Sleep All Day we used to hear on the Muzak at one of my old jobs, and I’ve actually been a fan ever since, would consider this a truly gorgeous song. Elsewhere, you have a little bit of white boy rapping, some jazzier stretches, plenty of the bizarre folk I mentioned, and off the wall lyrics galore.

There’s also a funny story to relate concerning this CD, which has nothing to do with my review yet seems ripe for inclusion. Erin’s riding with me to the home improvement store one day when I happen to have this disc cued up in the player, listening to it for this piece. It’s playing the last song, which she tolerates, but then the disc flips over to You And I. 

“Ugh,” she groans.

“Well, it’s better than Jack Johnson, anyway,” I remark, which was one of my intended topics at the time (*original intended opening comments: With this debut album, Jason Mraz has already proven he is better than Jack Johnson – which is no small thing. Well, no, actually it is. It is a very small thing. But it’s a start, anyway). 

“Oh, I’m sure,” she says – but then hits the advance button to skip to the next album in the player regardless.

We’re in the home improvement store maybe 15 minutes later, and Jack Johnson comes on the Muzak overhead…followed two songs later by You And I!! This was basically the moment where I knew this piece definitely needed written. This is his first album and I have to say I really dig some of it, although doubt to the extreme he got any better from here.

16. Matchbox Twenty – More Than You Think You Are

And this would be the album which Erin skipped to after Mraz made her queasy. “What is this, Nickelback?” she half joked, upon hearing the introductory riff. But no, a far sight better than those Canadian cheese merchants, I’m brave enough to declare…and also, in a way, I feel maybe the exact opposite of a Mraz/Train, or at least a band who didn’t ride that doomed express to its termination.

Since their later hits and Rob Thomas’s solo offerings tended to be lightweight pop, it’s easy to forget that when Push came out, these guys were basically considered another mainstream alternative band. And fought to some extent to maintain that designation, hokey though the results might have occasionally proven. But I’ve seen these guys live and am not above declaring they’re very good, also that I like a lot of their stuff. Concerts are a great equalizer in that they tend to speed up the dreadful slower cuts, while at the same time sanding down some of the cheesier flourishes – both highly beneficial elements to a group like this. As far as this disc is concerned, singles Unwell and Disease, both of which received quite a bit of airplay, are one perfect example of each scenario, though I struggle to get through them in album form. Although it is still really strange to think that they actively collaborated with Mick Jagger on that latter cut.

Bright Lights has always been one of my favorites of theirs. All I Need is a new one for me but it’s easy to picture this was a smash hit in other universes. Downfall rocks out mightily until this unfortunate gospel singer breakdown erupts out of nowhere – I guess that part’s clever from a composing standpoint but nothing I actually want to listen to. It’s the kind of track which makes me want to play around with an editing program and snip out that section.

17. Rage Against The Machine – Live At The Grand Olympic Auditorium

Just about every time I hear Rage Against The Machine, I am reminded of this one conversation I had with Big Paul, riding around in his truck in the early 2000s. The radio station had just played one of their songs, and then the DJ came on and said his little piece, describing RTOM as “heavy metal.”

“Heavy metal? I wouldn’t call them heavy metal,” Big Paul scoffed, “I would call it…revolution rock!”

This has always stuck with me, mostly because it’s hilarious, although also because of another thought it calls into question further down the road. At one point it occurred to me – and I’m sure I can’t be alone in this regard – that while nodding along with and maybe even thinking or muttering something along the lines of hell yeah, dude! to whatever Zach happens to be spouting, I wouldn’t say I generally have the first clue what he’s actually talking about, nor have I ever been inspired enough to find out. Does this make me a mindless consumer, the kind of sheep he’s railing against? Possibly. But my real question is: how revolutionary can revolution rock be if nobody knows what you’re singing about?

Anyway, on to the topic at hand, I had never heard of this CD before it wound up in my hands thanks to this Collection. Despite being a fairly devoted Rage fan in the 90s, they did pretty much drop off my radar after that. But the thing is, and while I know mathematically there’s a 1/17 chance of this happening, it feels fairly mind-blowing to have gotten to this last, out of all the albums reviewed here, because it happens to be my favorite of the bunch.

I think this is an amazing set, and furthermore, would probably recommend this to someone as an introductory primer before any individual album, or a greatest hits package. As I write this, I have read some reviews online, and the general consensus seems to be that most reviewers found the audio quality deplorable. That isn’t my impression at all, having spun this disc three times now in my own truck. I think maybe these lofty reviewers for popular publications are listening to the disc on the most top of the line stereos available. But is it possible revolution rock isn’t meant to be heard on premium sound systems?

Conclusion

The lesson gleaned from listening to all of these CDs is you can never just assume you know how good or bad an album is. It’s a lesson we can never stop learning, in a way. No matter how many times I remind myself of this, it’s a habit that’s almost impossible to break.

I suppose it’s unnatural to think we can ever – or even attempt to –  stop having opinions without complete knowledge. But one major pact I was able to make with myself one year, and this is much more doable, was to at least stop talking about albums I’ve never even bothered to listen to. This too is much harder than it would seem, though with practice it does get a little easier. The problem is, and I don’t know why music appreciation is much more geared this way than, say, books or movies or TV shows, but with music we’ve gotten to this place where more value is placed on espousing the “correct” opinion than on actually knowing what you’re talking about.

I’ll give you an example of a specific debate I had with someone, right around the time that I decided I was going to stop talking about albums if I’d never actually listened to them. We were discussing the band Anthrax, and I happened to mention that I actually thought John Bush was a better singer than Joey Belladonna. Not even necessarily technically better, only that I liked him more. My friend did the whole bit of chuckling and looking about the room to gauge if anyone else heard what this joker said, then told me I was crazy. And of course, not that Anthrax were ever a big deal or anything, but liking Belladonna better is “supposed” to be the correct answer here. And not that I was ever a huge fan of theirs or anything, either, wouldn’t even dare to claim then that I’d heard all of the classic old material – and actually I wasn’t even necessarily saying the John Bush material was better per se – but I came away from this conversation thinking that while maybe I hadn’t heard all the Belladonna stuff, I was convinced he had heard zero of the John Bush stuff. He was just spouting the fashionably correct opinion. And yet anyone within earshot who knows or cares about these things I’m sure came away thinking, well, that guy is a true fan, and meanwhile I don’t know anything about music. So in this climate, it’s not surprising that people have prioritized memorizing a bunch of correct opinions over listening to the tunes and developing their own, or even admitting that they don’t know. And this is just one extremely minor example.

Maybe now that things are swinging back full circle to olden times, in the sense that bands release a flurry of singles now, and albums are becoming passe, maybe this trend too will change. Possibly actually listening to the albums will gain currency once more, whereas now, as has been the case for years, I can personally testify, this approach will earn you the label of “not knowing anything about music.” Either way, I’m keeping my eyes open for another exquisite find such as this – or better yet, the remainder of the Ronda Kaye Collection.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Beer Tasting Notes Vol. 1

back of Dog Tag Brewing Can

 

White Street IPA:  a little too sweet, actually

Red Hook IPA: Smoother, less sweet, but almost not enough hops

KCCO Gold Lager: somewhat bland though might be decent as a summertime beer

Parallel 49 Salty Scot: much smoother & more delicious than expected. Usually these “gimmicky” beers have a weird chemical flavor, but not this one

Thirsty Dog 12 Dogs Of Christmas Ale: kind of gross, actually

Molson XXX – I’m pretty sure I haven’t had one of these since the late 90’s. Now we know why. These were marked down to 49 cents each at the Davidson store & I decided to scoop some up. The first sip was, “hmm…not that bad!” though this initial reaction soon soured. I don’t know what happened. But ½ of the bottle still sits in my fridge w/ the cap reapplied.

Weyerbacher Tarte Nouveau Session Sour:  this is beer? I’m wondering if they misplaced it from the soft drink aisle. Sharp citrus taste but not too sweet – surprisingly enough, this is actually good. The “session” part I think means you’re supposed to sit & drink a lot of them, though, & I really don’t see that happening.

Lonerider Shotgun Betty Hefeweizen Ale: pretty durn tasty. Smooth & rich. I’m usually not crazy about hefeweizens, so this is a pleasant surprise.

Wells Sticky Toffee Pudding Ale: some of that weird chemical flavor I was alluding to. Like a quart of motor oil with some nutty extract mixed in.

Brunehaut Organic Belgian Blond Ale: not terrible. Then again, I’ll tell you what this really reminds me of – it’s like 3:30am & you’re one of the last people standing at a party. You & a friend are quite hammered but have just found these, unexpectedly, in the kitchen, when here you’d been thinking there was no alcohol left in the house. And are now high fiving, observing that these are pretty decent.

After Party Pale Ale: sucks mightily. Like, what the fuck is this? As I’ve only ever seen this brand at Walmart, I have to conjecture they must have set up this “brewery” themselves in a warehouse somewhere. But pale ale it is not.

Dog Tag Legacy Lager: Pabst decides to join the craft beer movement, with so-so results. The highlight is definitely its cool packaging. Not bad, but do yourself a favor & pour this in a frosty mug.

Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout: A trifle more bitter than you might expect from a stout, but quite delicious. It also seems to pack an unexpected wallop, if you know what I mean – but then again, I’m kind of a lightweight these days.

RJ Rockers Bell Ringer Double Pale Ale: I don’t know why I bother with this product line. Everything I’ve ever had from this company ranges from middling to terrible. Looking at the label, I see this is made in Spartanburg, SC. For some reason this calls to mind that the only other thing I know about Spartanburg, having never been there, is that it gave us the Marshall Tucker Band. Would members of the Marshall Tucker Band drink this crap? Just thinking about it makes me laugh. So maybe that’s the ultimate test, the question one should ask oneself when considering a beverage. As far as a rating goes, eh, this is the best product I’ve had from RJ Rockers…but that isn’t saying much, trust me.

Go Tribe…Straight To Your Winter Homes!

            

Another year, another ho-hum Indians exit. Sigh. Last week this often magical season officially ground to a halt following a 5-2 loss to the Yankees. Though much has been made of it, and he was certainly not his usual robotic self, Kluber really didn’t pitch that badly, but he looked a little off at the outset and definitely didn’t have ace-like stuff. I suppose a day or two before the last game of a playoff series is perhaps not the best time to be working on your mechanics.

The last two games, these Indians looked sloppy and lifeless. This is the real culprit. Seven errors over those final two contests led to, I believe, seven unearned runs.  And I could go on spewing such factoids. Despite all this, however, and as much as it pains me to admit this, I think it’s definitely possible that the 2016 and 2017 Indians teams both played above their heads for most of the season. When you look at their roster this year, particularly when considering the amount of time that key guys like Brantley, Kipnis, and Chisenhall missed, it doesn’t look like a 102 win squad on paper, or a World Series bound team – and last year’s bunch was even weaker! Every time you’d watch them (both this year and last) you‘d pretty much think to yourself, of about 2-3 guys per night, “wow, this dude cracks the starting lineup on a regular basis? Really? Hmm, okay, I guess it must be working.”

So I think that, as great as a few players have been, they realistically should not have won 102 games this year, nor made the World Series last year. We should enjoy what they did accomplish and accept it for what it is. And on the flipside, concerning this year’s 0-3 meltdown to close out the ALDS, the Yankees were probably a little bit better than their record indicates. For instance despite all the raving about their bullpen, they were actually among the league leaders, if not the #1 team, in blown saves, in large part because of manager Joe Girardi’s often baffling approach to deploying his relief squad. And for at least the last two months there, it seemed like every night they would win, so would the Red Sox, thus they made up no ground. Let’s put it this way, we were all pretty much rooting for the Twins to beat these Yankees in that Wild Card game, because it was obvious which team had the greater potential for giving us fits.

Nonetheless, the Indians clearly picked the wrong time to go cold, particularly as the Yankees weren’t even playing that well themselves. A thought did occur to me near the end, though, as the announcers were pointing out Cleveland’s abysmal record in series clinching games: is it possible there is some sort of an Ohio influence seeping into their performance? They almost seem too laid back in these games. The fans are passionate, sure, when it comes to sports, but in general if there’s one personality trait linking most Ohioans in their everyday lives, it might be excessive mellowness.  Has this affliction spread to our sports teams as well? I’m struggling to think of too many guys – or any guys – on the current roster whom you’d describe as outwardly passionate. This isn’t everything, but there definitely wasn’t any urgency on display in this series, and you’d have to at least entertain the notion that this might be the missing piece. At any rate, beginning with ’95, where the modern playoff era begins, I feel compelled now to examine these efforts, and see if there’s any underlining pattern afflicting our beloved Tribe. Here’s a recap:

1995: Best record in baseball. Though these 90’s squads are thought of now as boppers, it’s surprising to note that this particular edition led the league in both batting average and ERA. Still, I don’t think too many people were shocked that Atlanta beat them in the Series. Fans were just stoked we got there.

Record in potential clinching games: 2-0   (1-0 vs. Red Sox, 1-0 vs. Mariners)

 

1996: Best record in baseball. Not quite as good as the previous year, but then again neither was Atlanta. The Orioles, a wild card team, knock us out in the first round before we even catch our breath.

 

1997: This definitely feels like one that got away. Curiously, the weakest record they would have during this playoff run, but they are up against another wild card team, the Marlins. Florida probably was a slightly better team than Cleveland. Even so, as any fan knows, we had the lead late in Game 7, only to lose in extras. Then again they were probably lucky to get past both the Yankees and the Orioles, with Sandy Alomar’s winning homer against the great Mariano as the enduring symbol of these upsets.

Record in potential clinching games: 2-2 (1-0 vs. Yankees, 1-1 vs. Orioles, 0-1 vs. Marlins)

Cumulative: 4-2

 

1998: The Yankees were an unstoppable force and it’s not surprising the Tribe couldn’t get past them. This basically went down as expected.

 Clinching games: 1-0  (Red Sox)

Cumulative: 5-2

 

1999: If we weren’t already wringing our hands about the Yankees in ‘98, then this is without question the year where we start to see that proverbial window closing. Though everyone else in the universe seemed to know that the Tribe’s real flaw was starting pitching, i.e. lack thereof, GM John Hart was obsessed with sluggers and thus added still another one, in the form of Roberto Alomar, as his only big offseason move. So yes they score 1000 runs during the regular season. And yes they are knocked out in the first round of the playoffs.

Clinching Games: 0-3 (Red Sox)

Cumulative: 5-5

 

2001: This was either the epilogue for the original run or the short lived beginning of something new, take your pick. A lot of new faces but still a bunch of guys remaining from the ‘95-97 crews. The Mariners set the AL record for wins and were heavy favorites. This Indians team was more of a scrappy veteran squad, plus they no longer had Manny Ramirez. In 2002 they will shutout the Angels on opening night, drop the next one, then win 10 in a row. So we’re thinking, oh yeah, high fives, here comes another monster year. Then they lose the next 8 and begin tearing down the team.

Clinching Games: 0-2 (Mariners)

Cumulative: 5-7

 

2007: The only playoff team this middle run managed, although you have to mention ’05 in any discussion about choking. That squad was a young one which wasn’t supposed to accomplish much, but they gelled really fast. Got within one game of first place in late summer and still basically had a wild card sewn up, until going 1-6 the final week. In ’07 they had their best chance to win in 10 years. Tied Boston for the best record in baseball and would have smoked Colorado if they could have just gotten past the Red Sox.

Clinching Games: 1-3 (1-0 vs. Yankees, 0-3 vs. Red Sox)

Cumulative: 6-10

 

2013: This team kind of came out of nowhere. A few big ticket signings were brought on board to compliment a young core, though they weren’t expected to contend right away. Improbably enough, though, they win their final 10 games and need every one of them to clinch a wild card spot. It’s the first year of the new format – two wild cards, squaring off in a single game – and the Indians not so shockingly pick this moment to collectively slump.

Clinching Games: 0-1 (Rays)

Cumulative: 6-11

 

2016: Finally, another strong, legit contender! Unfortunately the #2 and #3 starters both wind up on the DL in September and miss most or all of the playoffs. In light of that, and also almost no Michael Brantley the entire year including the postseason in its entirety, we should consider this an overachieving squad. Then again they do drop the last 3 games of the World Series.

Clinching Games: 2-4 (1-0 vs. Red Sox, 1-1 vs. Blue Jays, 0-3 vs. Cubs)

Cumulative: 8-15

 

2017: Best record in the AL. Possibly one of the top 5 teams in franchise history. Unfortunately a sloppy and nonchalant ALDS dooms them.

 Clinching Games: 0-3  (Yankees)

Cumulative: 8-18

 

So since ’95, they’ve done unbelievably poorly in spots where they could clinch a playoff series. It’s even more appalling if you start with that final game of the ’97 Series: 4-17!!!! That does mark a clear line in the sand where their fortunes begin to fade. It’s almost as if the baseball gods, looking at ’95 and ’96 as the franchise’s greatest ever assemblage of talent and regular season results (rightly so, I must say), and giving them one final chance to get their act together in ’97, have struck them down forevermore. Just four playoff series wins since then, but an astounding four occasions where they have dropped the last three games of a series, needing just one win! Plus an 0-2 finish against the Mariners in ’01 thrown in for good measure.

But this notion of baseball gods is, of course, pure whimsy. I have a theory to promote here, after all. There’s maybe not much evidence to prove any “Ohioness” has sabotaged their efforts, though if not, then what is it? What is the official diagnosis of these premature exits? Have they choked?

I would argue that choking means to cave under pressure. There are many different reasons why a team might lose, though, which include overconfidence/lack of passion (this year’s bugaboo), and expected results skewing closer to “normal” the more games you play. Here’s how I stack up what should have happened vs. what did (zero equals a result matching what was expected; plus is better, minus worse on what I’m calling the Cleve-O-Meter):

1995: About what you’d expect.

Cleve-O-Meter …….0

1996: Any time you exit in the first round after posting the best record in baseball – to the wild card team, no less – then something went haywire. It’s important to remember the Yankees were not yet a dynasty, as they’d not yet won a single playoff series. There’s no reason to think the Indians would have beaten the Braves this year as they were unable to the previous year, but still, this was a bit of an underperformance.

Cleve-O-Meter…….-1

1997: It doesn’t matter how you got this far or that the Marlins were probably the better team. If you’re an inning away from winning the thing, and fail to do so, you blew it.

Cleve-O-Meter…….-1

1998: Nobody was getting past the Yankees.

Cleve-O-Meter…….0

1999: I remember being pretty fired up at the time that David Justice (“David Useless”) had taken himself out of at least one starting lineup because of, as I recall, a sore toe, and over Hargrove’s curious pick for battling Pedro Martinez out of the bullpen in Game 5 (Sean DePaula? Who? Exactly). The 0-3 finish also looks heinous to be sure. And yet, this is what happens when you still have a rotation filled with nothing but #3 starters, five years into this run, but your GM keeps stockpiling bats.

Cleve-O-Meter……0

2001: Losing the last two games of a series is not nearly as devastating as dropping the final three, particularly when your opponent won 116 games during the regular season. This team wasn’t going to be winning championships anytime soon. Let the dismantling begin.

Cleve-O-Meter……0

2007: Yup, this sure looks like a choke job any way you spin it. The Rockies were on fumes and would have been toast regardless of opponent.

Cleve-O-Meter…….-2

2013: Anything can happen in a one game playoff, especially when you had to win your last 10 just to sneak in the back door.

Cleve-O-Meter…….0

2016: I wouldn’t rate any AL team as having been the “favorite” heading into this. Still, it did feel a little bit ahead of schedule for the Indians to make it this far. But, again, dropping the last 3 games is pretty grisly (the last 2 at home, too – although as many have pointed out, this alleged home field advantage may have killed the Tribe; if in Chicago the last 2, no DH means no Schwarber in the lineup), with the added heartbreak of taking a Game 7 to extra innings for your second consecutive World Series.

Cleve-O-Meter…….-0.5

2017: An anti-choke of sorts in that they appeared to think they were still easy landslide favorites to win the whole ball of wax though down 5-2 in the 9^th inning of the last game of the first round. Choking would imply being too amped up to get the job done – I definitely didn’t see any evidence of that here.

Cleve-O-Meter…….-2

 

Honorable Mentions:

2000: They battled like crazy the 2^nd half and only missed the playoffs by a single game. Not a great team, and they also had Manny Ramirez drama to contend with, but they really gave it their best.

Cleve-O-Meter…….+1

2005: This would have been a +1 or even a +2 performance most of the year, but the 1-6 final week obliterated pretty much all of it. Good memories up to that point, though.

Cleve-O-Meter…….+0.1

2008: This season has a lot of parallels with ’99 in that you’re not even really sure what you’re rating, here – is it the play on the field or the performance of the GM? Sure, they’d underwhelmed a bit up to the trade deadline. But there’s Cliff Lee having a Cy Young season, and C.C. Sabathia only a year removed from such – and we all know what happened as soon as he was traded to Milwaukee. Detroit wasn’t exactly clobbering the division and Tampa Bay, the eventual left field AL pennant winner, was far from a powerhouse. I don’t see how the front office spends a half decade assembling a stable of young talent, gets exactly one competitive season out of them, then decides to blow up the entire team and start over when they’re just a couple of games back and you haven’t won a ring in 60 years.

Cleve-O-Meter…….-1

Conclusion:

So if I’m adding this up correctly, that’s a negative 6.4 on the Cleve-O-Meter, when comparing expected results versus actual. That sounds about right. 1997, 2007 (the one that got away, I’m telling you, which nobody ever talks about), 2016 and 2017 are the biggies. They definitely should have won a title and probably two, statistically speaking, despite completely mishandling that amazing group of guys from the mid 90’s.

You’re left with, then, asking why a team has so consistently underperformed in the playoffs, up to and including this year’s edition. Francona is a world class manager, and they should be among the best teams again next season, but their road will never again be this easy – and I can’t say his and team president Chris Antonetti’s comments following the Yankees debacle were particularly reassuring. In a nutshell saying they weren’t freaking out about this loss, and would continue doing just what they’ve been doing.

But I think this attitude is the problem. Watching these other four playoff teams still in the mix, each has one or more fiery personality given to pumping up the entire roster. The Indians have none of that. We have an ace known for resembling a robot and a talented young shortstop who likes to smile a lot. That’s about the extent of our noteworthy character traits. I’m not saying a rah-rah guy would solve all our problems, but it couldn’t hurt, and this includes the coaching staff as well. It’s easy to play armchair manager, so to speak, and wonder what these coaches do, exactly, when you’re watching Edwin Encarnacion come out of his shoes every at bat, regardless of the situation or the count, with his wildest Jose Canseco home run swing. Or you’re seeing guys slinging sidearmed throws back to the infield, as another enemy run scores, or swinging at pitches in the dirt but then taking called third strikes down Broadway. I would argue that none of this matters unless we manage to inject a little more passion into the proceedings. It couldn’t hurt, and might even be the difference maker.

The Failings Of Retail

Everywhere you turn of late, it seems there is another news bulletin about the impending demise of retail. Sure, people are always going to have a need to buy things, but as online behemoths like Amazon are really only just beginning to ramp up their global conquest, shopping as we know it might soon look dramatically different. And I know that a number of brick and mortar institutions are surely going to bite the dust. But as someone with considerable experience in this industry, I can testify that the greatest threat a traditional retailer faces isn’t from some online enemy — it’s from within the store itself.

Anyone who has ever been involved in this line of work, whether in a management role or not, has surely complained at one point that the organization would be just fine if you could only hire quality help. And to some degree, yes, this is always true. But from the outside, it seems obvious that the grunts cannot possibly be to blame for a company’s misfortunes. They do not — or at least they should not — exert this kind of pull. Any organization is only as strong or as weak as the people up top. And if that company is on the downswing, then this surely rests at the feet of management or ownership or both.

Obviously, none of us are without fault. We’ve all been that person at the end of a long day who didn’t feel like retrieving or making something for a customer, and told that shopper we were out of the item. If you’ve screwed around for one unauthorized minute out of a single day, then I suppose a loss prevention expert could technically claim that you were stealing time. But I’m not talking about our common human flaws. What I mean specifically are major blatant categories where upper management and ownership continually fail, as a matter of personal and often company sanctioned philosophy.

Maybe these pitfalls have been around for centuries, from the moment the first businessperson set up shop and traded animal pelts for a couple of dry sticks. But I’m guessing these are mostly modern phenomenon, ones which have gone increasingly problematic for physical retail outlets as internet companies have grown. At any rate, based on my own experiences with the industry, I know that they were issues twenty years ago and continue to be today.

1. Labor Shenanigans

This is a biggie, albeit one that any layperson could understand at a glance and therefore a problem you would think easily remedied. Let’s say your entry level position pays x. It is common for a specialist (cake decorator, meat cutter, et cetera) to be paid 1.5x or even 2x. Yet, as the x represents a wage that’s actually below industry standards, your company has trouble hiring entry level help. So guess what happens? The specialists wind up doing the entry level work. And yet those in charge of the purse strings refuse to budge on paying entry level help more.

I’m not saying a cake decorator or meat cutter should never have to wait on the counter. But when, for example, you have your store manager running a cash register for a significant portion of every day, then you know something is probably wrong. Either you’re paying that person too much, or, more likely, you’re not paying the entry level people enough. Now, the slick upper management types with all the answers will claim that this is exactly how they drew up the blueprint, but I don’t buy it, and in fact that rationalization makes no sense. In my years working with these retailers, I’ve witnessed countless operations that would have two specialists on the clock, but no entry level clerks, meaning you’re paying a meat cutter to wait on the counter all day, for example. And this would be a weekly if not daily occurrence! Or worse still, paying a specialist time and a half to wait counter because that person is well over 40 hours. But then when I point out that, you know, you could bump up the entry level wage a buck or two, and be much more likely to keep your lower rung help around, and you could have three clerks here for what you’re paying one chef to wait counter at time and a half, the answer is generally, “oooh hooo hooo. Noooo. We’re not paying new hires off the street that much.”

Which is itself a contradiction of sorts, payroll budget aside. All day long, in every meeting and every memo, you hear nothing but about how customer service is priority number one. But then at the suggestion that those tasked with serving the customers might be compensated a little more, massive chafing ensues. This doesn’t make sense philosophically, I’ve demonstrated above that it doesn’t make sense financially, and I would argue it doesn’t make sense from a production standpoint, either. You’ve hired a cake decorator to knuckle down and whip up these amazing concoctions, but then she’s constantly interrupted to shave a quarter pound of Virginia ham or dole out a half dozen wings from the hot bar. When your meat cutter is slicing one London broil steak, waiting on a customer, slicing one steak, waiting on a customer, then the quality and quantity of the work are bound to suffer.

This calls to mind the closely related topic of required lunches. I’ve worked with a number of retailers who insisted employees take an unpaid half hour lunch (many have claimed this is a “state law,” but that’s mostly complete nonsense unless you are a minor) because in their minds this is some clever strategy for stretching out the coverage. In my experience, however, all this does is throw a wrench into productivity right in the heart of the day. Forget for a moment the negative impact that this has, forcing a worker who’s in a steady rhythm to abruptly halt and go chill out for 30 minutes. Because these operations are so poorly staffed — again often as a result of having, say, two specialists on the schedule that day at time and a half, rather than one specialist and three clerks — this forced lunch business often means that absolutely nothing is being accomplished in the department for an hour or more, directly in the middle of the action. Let’s say you have two employees in the department around noon on a Saturday, which is a thoroughly likely occurrence, and that there’s a steady stream of activity on the customer front. Forcing these two to disappear for a half hour apiece means that’s a solid hour where nothing is being produced in the back room and nothing is being stocked out on the floor, either. Does this sound like a solid business model?

These skeleton crew staffing schemes also make any officially stated company handbook policies look laughably ridiculous. You know the material I’m talking about, the new hire paperwork which made you, as a freshly hired employee, all warm and fuzzy to note that this corporation really cares about your well-being and that, should you suffer any occurrence of diarrhea or even so much as a runny nose, then they definitely want you to stay home that day! Right. I’ve worked at a major “big box” retailer where my runny nose was dripping nonstop onto the boxes I was stocking, and yet my supervisor was visibly disgusted when I asked to leave a half hour early that day. Also, in five and a half years working with another corporation, I missed just one day, but suffice to say that in the wake of that one day I was basically treated like the scum of the earth. But then you’re expected to readily give up any scheduled days off, and come in on overtime, and this is no big thing — what do you want, a gold medal? — because there’s nobody else working in this place and we have no choice. Not to mention that it’s common practice for upper management to treat employees’ PTO hours like some kind of hilarious game, whereby these are penciled into the schedule, except then, hee hee, they are then crossed out every week, because we don’t have the staffing to permit you to enjoy these, you silly, 48 hour working specialist! But any company worth its salt is allotting for these hours in its yearly budget well in advance, and denying employees is a sure recipe for a disgruntled hence less productive workforce.

2. Misplaced Attitudes

We will be charitable in this section and chalk up much of this behavior to our common human quarks. I would also like to refrain from any mention of “power tripping,” although this is often what management’s collective antics suspiciously resemble. However, whether for that reason or a litany of others, you have to often wonder whether management and ownership hasn’t completely lost sight of what your company — what any company, as far as I know — is hoping to accomplish.

Much as we might like to pretend otherwise, dollars generated is the yardstick by which a retail enterprise is measured. But if transported here from another dimension and tasked with watching the average management figure for a few days, this information would come as a complete surprise to you. Certainly you would not glean such from the behavior displayed nor the speeches given.

To cite one example, we’ve all surely been present for the occasional fluke day where traffic and thus sales were shockingly, unexpectedly robust. Sometimes this is due to a weather condition (impending snowstorm, power outage, threat of rain) but just as often, nobody can explain it. And for most employees out there on the floor, as cogs grinding away in the machine, these occasions are strangely exhilarating. Though exhausted afterwards and possibly unwilling to admit it throughout, the variety this onslaught provides can prove a serious monotony-buster, and it’s rewarding to see product flying off the shelves as fast as you can throw it out there.

Then an upper management figure drifts upon the scene. With an almost pathological determination, they will more often than not snuff out any joy an employee displays concerning this situation. Attempts to marvel at how strong sales must be today will encounter a swift subject change. Because we are not here to high five over a terrific sales rush, we are here to point out that one hole on the third shelf from the top, second slot over. Do you see that hole? Great, now fill it. I’ll be back in a short while to check on your progress.

Sure, it’s never wise to rest on one’s laurels, but there is no good reason not to enjoy success as it is happening. On a similar note, who hasn’t sat through a dreadful Monday morning meeting, and listened to something along these lines, all recited by your company leader in a nasal, list reciting voice:

Electronics, you were down 1.7 percent over same day last year…shoes, you were up 2.3 percent…housewares, this was actually the strongest day your department has ever had in the ten year history of this company, so good job with that…umm, cosmetics, you were down .6 percent, garden center, you were down 1.2 percent…

Followed then by an endless, droning , 45 minute lecture on how the customer count has been static for about three years now, and you all need to be doing more to increase this figure.

Call me a hopeless renegade but if I’m any department head sitting through this nonsense, I would sincerely wish somehow that we could focus on the one relevant piece of information here, and chuck everything else. Certainly the guy we’ll call Hank, Head Of Housewares wishes a little more attention could be devoted to his historic day. And this doesn’t necessarily entail ticker tape parades or even so much as a gift card, but it should at the very least inspire a round table discussion, right at the top of the agenda, with everyone involved. Those minor ups and down versus last week or last period or last year, are most likely meaningless, particularly if — as is most likely the case — nobody is going to invest any kind of deep data investigation into the numbers, as they will only be numbers on some paperwork for the purposes of fleshing out this meeting (which were in any case probably emailed to and/or printed out for the department managers in advance anyway, none of which stops the chief from reciting them line for line) with what feels like a little substance. And for all the talk about customer counts that I have sat through in my lifetime, we’ve all sat through, there’s been nary an intelligent response delivered really as to what the people working inside the building are supposed to do to lure shoppers into the building. Work your damnedest to retain the current customers, yes, and build basket sizes and sales, absolutely. But outside of wearing a cow costume on the sidewalk, the only serious impact in customer counts is going to come from marketing. That’s their job.

This is the most glaring omission, this theoretical push toward increasing baskets and sales in pursuit of historic days, followed by management’s clinically deranged avoidance of discussing them when they happen. But it’s by no means the only…curious philosophy commonly found on display, far from it in fact. Some of what I am witnessing is a clear attempt to establish who is in charge, as if the employees aren’t already aware. Like the new hire I recently observed, clocked out and headed home, after the store has been closed for the night. He asks the manager on duty if she should follow, and lock the door behind him after he opens it…to which she responds, with a strange edge to her voice, “you don’t open the door! Only management can open the door!”

Okay, great. Should we perhaps contact a brass band as well to commemorate this occasion? They walk to the front door in lockstep, at which point, yes, she is the one twisting the knob. So technically the new hire’s question had been answered, albeit with a little more vehemence than he likely envisioned.

A more substantial instance of this mindset involved a corporation I was working with, which had just received a memo from the home office concerning how late the stores were keeping people at night. Doors closed at 9, but employees were often not leaving until 10:30 or 11. The reason for this, I ultimately concluded, was that the store management insisted on this giant dog and pony show after closing time, of making everyone stand around and wait while they conducted a walk-through of each department, one at a time. Surely there was a more efficient means for getting people out of there in a brisker fashion, and they knew it. Yes, perhaps a few minor details were caught as a result of this stunt, but mostly it seemed to result in folks, if not goofing off, or hiding, or simply standing around, then maybe polishing windows or sweeping floors for the 18th time to give the appearance of staying busy. The real kicker is that management, often trailed by a mini-entourage of direct subordinates, or other random employees asking questions, would frequently stop to straighten endcaps en route to the next department. But the store was closed!

Employees are not stupid, and generally know when you are screwing with them for the sake of demonstrating control. As one could imagine, workers jumping ship at these establishments was high by industry standards, another plague affecting labor budgets and therefore bottom line. Training new employees costs a great deal of money, in lost productivity, errors, and veteran workers pulled from their regular work to demonstrate procedures. And now that we’re on this topic, when employees do turn in their two weeks’ notices, please take the high road. This is another blight marring retail, on par with the runaway trend of landlords always finding some flimsy pretense for keeping a renter’s deposit: otherwise reputable companies where, the instant someone puts in a notice, tell that person to not bother returning for the remainder of their shifts. If the employee is new or has a track record of poor attendance, okay, I could see that. But when you pull this sour grapes stunt with an established worker who is moving on, all it does is engender bad blood, and set the table for getting hosed yourself down the road. Once the workforce catches on that this is becoming the new standard, guess what, they’ll probably keep their future jobs a secret and simply stop showing up at the last minute.

Of course, erroneous attitudes aren’t limited to store management, or the board of directors or ownership. I remember sitting through a major meeting where one department head was arguing with great passion that we needed to raise our profit margin on the pets section. Reason being? The product was selling too well and they were having problems keeping up with stocking it. Everyone else sort of laughed this off, but I was thinking that were I running this company, this person would have just eliminated any hope of ever being promoted. That one argument was a self-installed ceiling. As always, you have to ask yourself: what are we really trying to accomplish, here?

3. Rule Mongering

I don’t mean this article to read as a total hatchet job against upper management. Certainly, I have worked with my fair share of leaders in the industry who were bright and did tremendous jobs. However, retail corporate culture does tend to encourage and promote creative thinkers a lot less than an average person of decent intelligence who is really good at following rules. This has its plusses and minuses. You probably have fewer concerns with a dutiful policy follower adhering to company standards. However, on the flipside, they tend to not be great at filtering priority and interpreting urgency down to their employees. So what you end up with is a huge focus on rules for the sake of rules.

Some of this behavior might closely resemble that in the previous section, a need to exhibit control. But I really think much of it is really just this, a blind panic for enforcing often unimportant rules. You can read it like an uncontrollable nervous tic upon their faces. I remember one shift worked in a store where, after panicking over an employee calling in sick for a busy department, on a day they were absolutely slammed, management experiences some momentary relief when they find another worker across town who’s willing to drive over after his own shift ends, and help out. At which point this store director rips into him for daring to appear with a hooded sweatshirt on underneath his uniform shirt, because he is cold. Needless to say, that employee never helped out this other location ever again. I even have some firsthand experience in a similar situation myself, a day where, years earlier, I had agreed to pitch in at a distant location…and running into some disgruntled middle management figure there, who was in no way my superior at all, grousing to anyone who’d listen that I was supposed to be wearing a collared shirt.

So while these antics are counterproductive in the sense that they contribute nothing and only serve to irritate employees, still others are far worse by directly maiming the bottom line. The most common example I see is a hysterical adherence to some corporate issued schematic. Though well-intended, and theoretically backed up by plenty of research, there will always be occasions where it makes more sense to deviate — like for example, if you are completely out of a product, and expect to be so for quite some time. If it’s a featured sales item, it might be wise to hang an apologetic sign of some sort, to head customer complaints off at the pass. But leaving holes intact for days on end because you’re waiting for one product and one product only to arrive and plug that leak is idiotic.

I’ve witnessed sets that looked like checkerboards, as they contained nearly as many blanks as filled in spaces, which intentionally remained such for four days because certain products were continually scratched from deliveries. I’m sorry, but no. Fill those spaces up with something else instead. Even if that only means expanding out on what’s already there, for appearance’s sake alone, this is still a significant improvement. Sometimes you might chalk these gaps up to laziness, but just as often I’ve heard store management, and even higher up zone figures, demand that the holes remain until product arrives. The equivalent to this for online shopping would be for Amazon to decide to leave half of their home page blank because certain hoped for deals never materialized. Would they ever allow this to happen? Of course not. They will use that space to promote something, as would any company with a shred of sanity.

There is a corollary flipside to this phenomenon, too, which usually concerns end caps and other huge displays, in situations where every store was auto-shipped product as part of some major buy-in. The company received a terrific price break for buying mass quantities of something from a particular distributor, and so this line is going to be featured at some hot featured price for x number of days. Usually stores can continue to re-order product for a little while at that price, though not always. At any rate the sale price is running in every location for a fixed time frame, and as this has been advertised, there’s not much anyone can do about that.

But where companies screw up is also dictating that every store must dedicate a certain amount of display space to this item, and leave it in that prominent location until the promotion ends. The problem with this approach, which you should be able to appreciate with the naked eye, is that some locations are going to sell these items at a brisker pace than others. So what ends up happening is that the higher volume stores must begin reordering the product at regular price at some point to stock these huge displays. Now, you could certainly argue that these locations should instead transfer product from the slower ones, where those items are languishing. Even in the best case scenarios, however, this is never going to happen even half the time. A store that’s just killing it in the heart of Manhattan is unlikely to investigate whether the Birmingham, Alabama outpost can’t give the stuff away, and it might not make any sense logistically to facilitate that transfer even if it did. Instead, in the most extreme examples, these stores are reordering the product at a higher cost than the hot advertised retail, because they’re not permitted to downplay the sale, move the stuff elsewhere, or cut down on its display space. You can put a sunny spin on the situation by calling these items “loss leaders” if you like, or whatever, but the reality is that they are now underwater on these products, a problem compounded in that these are your busier stores.

Not every issue in this category can be laid at the feet of corporate demands, however. Sometimes you just have to chalk it up to a store or zone’s leadership exhibiting a little too much enthusiasm for meaningless or at least non-urgent rules, usually of their own creation. That day where you’re setting your all-time record for sales in the houseware section? Yeah, this might not be the time to start nitpicking about conditions. Or the guy wearing the hoodie, or as you commonly see, pick this as the day where you absolutely must hassle the help about an upcoming health department or weights and measures inspection. We can debate the motivations which lead management to behave this way — and I’ll withhold my opinion for the time being — but whatever the case, one of their primary functions is to pump a team up and generate some excitement for increasing sales, maximizing profits. And yet in the world of brick and mortar retail, you see the opposite occurring almost I would say more often than not. Fist pounding pronouncements which produce the reverse of what was intended, to frequent comical effect.

One of the more amusing examples of this concerns a high volume item which is produced in-store and takes a great deal of time or effort to crank out. Yet is one which either the store or district manager has decreed must be filled to a certain level at store close, every night, without exception. It might surprise many to hear this, but guess what eventually begins to happen when management is excessively tyrannical about this topic? Employees start making up plenty of the item, during slower moments earlier in the day, but then leaving it in the back room for as long as possible. The last thing they want to do is to put this product out, or to actually sell it. If you’ve demanded that they have ten elaborately decorated Disney princess sheet cakes out on the floor when the lights go off at 9pm, usually under the auspice of “making sure we’re ready to go in the morning,” and it’s 8pm and they have exactly ten in back but none on the floor, then they’re gritting their teeth and hoping the situation holds for the next 59 minutes or so and nobody notices. Under extreme situations of duress, they might even tell an inquiring customer that they are out. Avoiding your wrath has taken priority for them over making a sale. I’ve worked with enough companies where this was happening to know these probably weren’t isolated flukes, and that it’s surely an epidemic all over the place when dealing with ridiculous edicts.

Some unfortunate rule making does result from the exact inverse however — not from a supervisor’s heavy handedness, but rather due to their caving in the face of a whining workforce. This is most applicable to the subject of scheduling, usually when handling the always touchy nights and weekends issues. I can offer for you a firsthand parable about a seafood department where there were three veteran employees who worked well together, and at 40 hours apiece, this broke down to one closer, one opener, and one midshift on Friday, every week. The department manager wanted every Sunday off, in part to coach his son’s football team, and took Wednesdays as his other, for it was the slowest shift. Another guy wanted two days off in a row, leaving only Monday and Tuesday to accommodate this request. The third guy was given every Saturday and Thursday off to fill in the blanks, and for roughly six months, this system worked beautifully. It was a happy, productive, and profitable department.

But what inevitably brought about its downfall, as you can imagine, had nothing to do with business reasons whatsoever and everything to do with employees in other departments demanding that management put a stop to this. Various individuals in, say, the grocery section were bellyaching that it was “unfair” that a couple of these seafood guys got a weekend day off every week, and the same one at that. Obviously these characters couldn’t seriously expect that their nine person crew or whatever would all also be awarded a weekend day off every schedule, as this was an impossible request. Instead of explaining this to them, however, that every department presents a different set of circumstances, and possibly suggest that they transfer to seafood if they didn’t like it, store managers instead told the seafood gang they would have to start randomizing the schedule more.

This is admittedly a much slighter discussion than the one involving night shifts, however, where what has somehow become the default industry model doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Somehow, a mindset has seized retail whereby it’s also considered “unfair” to schedule people to work nights. Circling back to the topic of those specialists you have hired to perform a specific function, more often than not, that specific job entails working first thing in the morning, if not hours before the store opens. But to appease the whining masses, many operations have a policy in place that everyone must work one night shift a week. Thus you now have, say, dedicated pastry makers being paid extra to do nothing of the sort at least 20% of the time. Some places even go as far as to demand that departments split up the opening shifts evenly, an even more disastrous policy. One major grocery chain I worked with insisted on this policy, much to the bewilderment of head butchers who were opening one day, closing one night, and pulling three midshifts per week…all the while arguing with an upper management brigade who couldn’t understand why payroll was up and productivity down. Management would be far better served explaining to their entry level employees that the specialists have been hired to perform specific functions, and need to work certain hours to accommodate this.

4. Role Comprehension

But of course, the reason a lot of these rules exist is that management and ownership don’t really know what’s going on inside a department. Grand pronouncements give them a shorthand method for viewing at a glance whether a store is on track — or at least, this is what they like to believe. But this is perhaps one of the most pervasive myths afflicting owners and executives, the notion that they are acutely aware of who does what, and the inner workings of particular programs which make this happen.

I have heard that Steve Jobs’ personal philosophy was that every Apple employee should know how to perform every role. Whether or not this is actually true, I can’t say, but it sounds like a good place to start. This wouldn’t have to require upper management figures brushing up on the finer points of every single program used by their companies, but detailed knowledge of how work flows, through whom, and how long this should take — in other words the rudimentary details of every person’s daily routine — is essential. Yet whether through arrogance, inattention, or a dismissive attitude toward this level of comprehension, I’ve worked with few organizations where anything of this sort transpired. Even those who feel they are paying attention and have a keen awareness of every employee’s productivity often could not tell you how long this task took former workers, or those in similar roles at other stores, and just how effective their own team members are. It reminds me of my favorite ever observation, in response to a company adamantly opposed to letting its office people work remotely.

“But then we wouldn’t know if they were actually doing anything, or just screwing around,” the VP had objected.

“Well, I hate to tell you this,” I replied, “but you’ve had people working here in the office, and you didn’t know if they were doing anything, or just screwing around.”

Which didn’t exactly sit well, though it happened to be true. This company believed it had a firm grip on the productivity of its people. Everyone looked busy enough, so what could possibly be the problem? Well, upon further investigation, among other horrors, they had a pricing coordinator who’d never bothered to learn Excel, was therefore punching in new items and weekly flyer prices by hand rather than uploading files; another pair of employees, asked by the CEO to determine which PLU numbers were being carried in each of the stores (for those not in the know, PLU numbers are found on produce, bulk bins, and other items without a barcode), spent untold days walking around and writing everything down by hand in notebooks instead of taking the time to learn and run a few simple reports; and in general there was a widespread epidemic of department heads calling in or emailing orders rather than scanning items via the relatively new, expensive, and start of the art inventory management software.

Technically speaking, none of these examples count as “screwing around,” although there was plenty of that going on, too. More to the point, however, none of the key figures up top knew any of this was happening. Worse still, when presented with these findings, I’d wager that more than a few didn’t understand what I was talking about, and those that did in general tended to laugh or shrug off the dollars wasted by these antiquated methods: well, these are the employees we’ve got, what can we do? At least they’re working.

But at least these shortcomings, however major, are inefficiencies caused by a lack of executive knowledge. More detrimental and just as common is the aforementioned corporate arrogance, the attitude that they and they alone know what this company needs, how things work, and therefore they require no input from any of the people tasked with actually handling this stuff on a daily basis. Let me clarify that by no means is the purpose of the piece to illustrate that I believe I have all the answers, either. On the contrary, whatever your role with the company, consultant included, you have to fight this very tendency that I’m railing against here. When a business first brings you aboard, you want to forget everything you think that you know, listen, pay attention, and only then maybe see if anything that you’ve done in the past applies to this particular company. And this is exactly the way management figures should operate, but they rarely do. Nearly all of us — upper management and ownership included — only truly know one or two disciplines in a field really, really well, and would be better served deferring to others’ expertise the remainder of the time. Possibly even in those subjects we know best as well.

It always cracks me up when the same executives who were days or weeks earlier saying they knew who was working diligently and who wasn’t, will throw their hands in the air, if a time comes that they have to replace someone, and cry “well, I didn’t know what this job entailed!” should the transition inevitably prove a little less than smooth. The most memorable example of this I can think of is a company I was working with who decided they were going to fire their controller of over 20 years’ standing, at about 5:30pm on a Friday, to the surprise of virtually everyone else in the company. Surely the board did not enter into this decision lightly and had to have taken their time arriving at it. However, no immediate replacement was instituted, as the bosses casually went about recruiting one. Meanwhile, it wasn’t much more than a week before checks began bouncing left and right, to vendors, utilities, child support agencies, insurance companies, even the owner himself. It took a month to sort out this mess, up to and including freezes placed on deliveries of goods. Finding a replacement might be one thing, but it was obvious nobody had bothered figuring out what the controller did, exactly, before firing her. They had no idea she was the one making the bank deposits!

These were established bosses committing a major blunder, and admittedly an extreme example. But you see similar gaffes on a regular basis, all stemming from the same basic attitude — and perhaps none is worse than when a new CEO or president is brought aboard, often followed by his inevitable old crony battalion being hired as well, and announcements about complete overhauls. You know the guy I’m talking about, the one who somehow determined in two days that everything you were doing was junk and he was replacing all your existing programs with those he’d been using at his last company. Without, of course, the input of those currently working at the present company and seasoned in dealing with this stuff.

I can think of one great instance of this phenomenon, involving a newly hired director who, along with a handful of “industry guru” types he brought along with him, enacted a series of major changes over a number of months, often launching into these with baffling arrogance and inefficiency. For example deciding on a new primary distributor, shipping a ton of new product to the stores, along with a team of the distributor’s people to hang new price tags as they’d agreed to go with this supplier’s suggested retail on everything…and yet meanwhile, nobody had bothered to tell the stores that this product was arriving, and possibly worse still, nobody in pricing had the first clue that this new retail arrangement was in place! Thousands of shelf tags were on the shelves which did not match what actually rang at the registers. It wasn’t until store employees called pricing to say that the retails were “wrong” in the system that pricing even heard about this policy change. Needless to say, customers were not happy, and these stores continued their downhill slide.

When confronted with examples like these, the management team would typically do the whole bit where they’d hold up their hands like stop signs and whisper, “okay, okay! I didn’t know how these things work!” But when I would kindly suggest that if this is true, then maybe they shouldn’t go around making such grand pronouncements without involving the people who would have to enact these changes, or that they should possibly even stay out of daily operations entirely, this tended to not go so well.

Sadly, I would say this isn’t an isolated example, but emblematic of the industry as a whole. Obviously there are always going to be some folks who get off on walking around telling people exactly how things are going to be done, whether they know the first thing about the subject or not. But this is just one symptom of a major sickness. In my experience, there’s a huge breakdown in retail between what’s discussed up top and what actually happens at the store level. This is the basic flow chart for significant decisions, enacted way too often for way too many brick and mortar retail operations:

1. Bigwigs decide on major course of action without consulting any of the departments beneath them (IT, logistics, merchandising, receiving, pricing, et cetera)

2. Departments are only informed at last minute, or even after the fact

3. Departments are nonetheless only now asked if:

a) They would recommend doing it this way and

b) If they can make their part of this happen pronto

4. Departments reply that:

a) No, they would not recommend doing it this way and

b) No, they are not going to be able to make this happen right this second

5. Bigwigs counter with:

a) Accusing them of having negative attitudes, and/or standing in the way of progress

b) Too bad, drop whatever you’re doing and make this happen right now anyway

6. Departments nonetheless are the ones taking the fall when things inevitably go haywire

Even if nothing this extreme is happening at your particular operation, there are a whole lot of smaller recurring themes which probably are surfacing, and just as surely rot you from within. All stemming from this same basic concept, of folks not really knowing who does what — and not just management, but everyone. It negatively affects you when it comes to unbalanced compensation, for overpaying some and not paying others enough; it negatively affects you in the form of misdirected complaints, when employees are wasting a bunch of time notifying IT about erroneous clock punches, or people are asking the pricing coordinator to fix the internet, or random office employees are blamed for printers not working at the stores (sadly, yes, these are all real life experiences I have dealt with); it negatively affects you in that the complainers often set the tone for the entire company. You have surely heard the phrase the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and this is why. When upper management has no clue who does what and how things work, if you have five people quietly hitting it out of the park, but then one person constantly going to the bosses with a series of beefs, then his version becomes the accepted truth; it affects you negatively when someone might technically know his job, but not a particular application of it — for example, a wholesale company deciding to open its first ever retail outlets, and leaving the exact same management team, with no experience in the latter, intact to run both legs of the operation. Who then can’t quite wrap their heads around the various problems this creates, for example, reacting with not quite the appropriate urgency retail demands when the internet went down (taking out cash registers and credit card machines, among other functions), and why a three or five or even twenty-four hour wait for IT help is unacceptable, and why the retail arm wanted its own tech team; it negatively affects you when, in a tendency that’s the opposite of but just as common as the much maligned micromanagement, when you have a boss that can’t be bothered with details ahead of time, but then wants to constantly demand changes halfway through a project. All because he doesn’t know how things work and can’t understand why it might be disastrous to decide at the last minute, say, to keep those deli scales from the store you just acquired, maybe, even though they aren’t online and don’t connect with your current stores’ deli scale network of ingredients, nutritional facts, PLU numbers, and prices.

Most of all, it affects you negatively when smooth talkers who can’t back it up with action are promoted to or hired for key positions. A basic knowledge about the entire operation — or at least a willingness to swallow some pride and pick the brains of those below them — has to start at the top of a company, or else the entire enterprise is doomed. I’m always amazed at how far some individuals get in an organization when virtually everyone beneath them has known for years that they do very little. Walking around with a serious expression at all times can take you very far, and perfecting the art of colorful jargon is even better.

Ownership, the board of directors, and whoever else is in charge of making these decisions would be well served to take a hard look and ground themselves in some realism, all the while brushing up on the basic knowledge of who does what and how things work. One company I dealt with recently, it was clear within about five minutes of meeting the guy, had a president with the maturity of a six year old. But wow, he sure could whip up some colorful pie charts, and the dude definitely knew how to spin some serious industry speak. Ownership had been blown away by these qualities, over a slew of internal candidates and other external ones, many of which surely would have proven a lot less disastrous. One could only conclude that they’d never done any serious research into whether this person knew what he was talking about, mostly because of the gaps in their own knowledge. On a similar note, ask yourself why someone with a boatload of credentials is chomping at the bit to travel halfway across the country to work for your company, particularly if he’s bringing a whole crew of cronies with him. Maybe your tiny operation is going to be the next Amazon, and sure, it’s great to have ambition, but this probably isn’t going to happen. Therefore take a serious look at your business and ask yourself why this would ever realistically happen, if this character is seriously the next Jeff Bezos.

Conclusion

So this is a somewhat concise summary of the problems I see plaguing traditional retail today. Without getting into a political holy war, it’s worth noting that our government is debating this very problem. We currently find ourselves in a climate where an established retail chain like Macy’s has bit the dust, and meanwhile, online juggernaut Amazon has swooped in to purchase Whole Foods. One proposed solution is the elimination of automatic overtime pay for anything over 40 hours a week (the suggested tradeoff, laughable to most hourly employees I know, is that they would be given more PTO hours — which they would definitely, absolutely get to use, with no managerial interference whatsoever!) and yet I don’t think this is any kind of answer at all. The grunts are not the problem. Neither are the internet kings who continue to gobble up larger and larger pieces of the consumer pie. Yes, they are a threat, but for retail to obsess over this challenge and ignore their own failures is akin to wringing your hands over the fact that the sun is someday going to explode, and therefore concluding you no longer need to eat. Unless these enterprises right the ship up top, and get their own houses in order, brick and mortar retail will continue to be a declining industry.

The Many Faces Of Ronald “Stinky” Bing

 

The Stinkness Monster

Stinkhis Khan

Professor Ronald J. Stinklethorpe

Chief Chunkamunka

El Stinko Grande

Enstinkalopod

Stinkichi

Captain Ronald Stinkbeard

The Sweetest Binky There Ever Was

Stinkacabra

Stationary Objects

I was stopped not so long ago for the 5^th time in the past 9 months by a cop in the greater Charlotte region. In each instance I sit behind the wheel accused of an identical crime, this being – scofflaws and hooligans beware! – the unholy, unimaginably heinous act of…driving around with a Stationary Object In Violation Of The Law.

To put this into context, let me explain that I am talking about a motor vehicle violation. Four of these five stops have resulted in my being issued a ticket in the amount of $215 apiece. But I haven’t suffered a speeding ticket in 18 years of driving, and no DUIs, no other offenses outside of one debatable at fault accident in 2000. A couple minor mixups involving the current insurance laws. That’s it. Yet this driving around with a Stationary Object In Violation Of The Law, now, this is some serious business.

So what am I talking about, specifically? This would be the matter of the all-important Vehicle Registration. Yes. In this state, the Vehicle Registration is tied in with the Yearly Inspection, the dog and pony show that has determined, thanks to some mysterious, faulty switch in my car’s mainframe for a year and a half now, that my Check Engine light will randomly flash on, though I can’t establish why, and therefore I am to be denied passing the Yearly Inspection.

Never mind that I have receipts from three different mechanics who can’t quite figure out what’s going on, here. It might possibly be related to a computer chip known as the Powertrain Control Module, but even they couldn’t guarantee shelling out $1500 for the chip would solve this problem. Never mind that I, living in central Iredell County, have been driving to downtown Charlotte for work five days a week for almost two years now with this infernal Check Engine light on, though it doesn’t seem to affect the operation of said vehicle in any measurable way, shape, or form. The car that is functioning fine otherwise, aside from this annoying orange light and the matter of the $215 tickets.

My objections to this nonsense flow out in two primary directions. The first of these is the one most folks would probably latch onto immediately, that being the fact that I hardly ever see anyone being pulled over in the Charlotte region for any reason whatsoever. I actually sent a “tip” to the police department’s website shortly before this began that they could sit and nail people all day long doing a good 20 MPH above the speed limit on I-77 northbound between exits 19 and 28, netting enough speeding tickets in a month to pay an officer’s yearly salary. But in the past 9 months, the only person I’ve seen pulled over along this stretch, despite driving amongst countless idiots who’ve ridden bumpers at 90 and executed triple double lane changes back and forth, from left lanes over the exit ramp and back again, all in the space of a quarter mile…has been me, for the unthinkable act of this expired registration.

Which brings us to the second point. I refuse to believe, until confronted with evidence otherwise, that even the most out of control driver in Charlotte has been issued 4 tickets in the last 9 months. Where are you, sir, and if you exist, could you please step forward? I would be highly charitable to describe the average driver in this region as anything above extremely bad, but the police never seem to pull anyone over. So what are we really talking about? Why has this Expired Registration attracted so much attention, more by far than your garden variety, doing 90 in a 65 speeder?

The reason is, on the surface, that this is a Stationary Object. We can all appreciate the thought process here: “durp? Merp! A merp durp durp!” And by now everyone has seen that guy making the talk show rounds, turned down for the police department as a result of scoring too highly on his IQ test. But these considerations are by and large not even what I’m talking about. Common sense would, after all, seem to indicate you’re much more likely to stumble across a broken window than to witness someone breaking it. No, the real issue at hand is a philosophical one.

We have now reached a point where your average trooper doesn’t care about some jackass zipping past him doing 80 in a 65. These same dudes who are pulling me over for expired registration were, chances are, sitting right there observing as countless impatient morons flew by, and didn’t consider it a big deal. Might even go as far as to say that hassling a fellow over a little excessive throttle is akin to nitpicking, almost like a nagging mother and therefore nothing with which any self-respecting officer would concern himself. Whereas, see, once you get into a past due registration, now you’re talking about a blatant disregard for official government paperwork, son.

As a society, we’ve reached the point where certain hot button topics closely resemble emoticons, or cave paintings or totem carvings, in that they have become such weighted symbols, that their simple appearance extends hysteria far beyond the ground that any rational discussion could cover. You’re probably never going to see a campaign for Drinker’s Rights gain much traction, or the raising of the legal blood alcohol level anytime soon, and this is surely all for the best; but at the same time, I don’t get why that topic induces such frothing at the mouth, even if the perpetrator in question is ten miles from the nearest vehicle (or on a tractor, or bicycle, or in the drive thru at McDonald’s) to the extent he’s incurring massive fines and jail time and his life is basically ruined before he’s technically caused any harm to anyone…and yet any nimrod can weave in and out of lanes at breakneck speeds, riding everyone’s ass, slamming his brakes when an abrupt course shift requires it, flying up exit ramps with an eye to divebombing back into the general population, but the worst he is ever going to acquire is a figurative slap on the wrist and tiny fine. It’s because no one has conjured a catchphrase to describe this phenomenon, no zealot has stepped forth to create a movement. So nothing happens to him until after he causes the 12 car pileup. But of course by then he and everyone else affected would be a Stationary Object.

We get so numb that we fail to even stop and consider what these nuances even mean anymore, or feel helpless to combat them when we do. What is a car registration, anyway? What purpose does this serve, apart from lining the DMV’s coffers? The license plate announces to the world specifically which vehicle you are driving, and the VIN is there if the need arises to dig a little deeper. Anyone with the power to run your plates, safe to say, can pull up any and all relevant information right along with it. A valid driver’s license indicates that I am personally fit and entitled to be behind the wheel. In many states, this one included, you are required to have your car inspected on a yearly basis (another fee, of course) in order to certify it is road ready, and to top it off we here in the Carolinas also must cough up an annual sales tax, on our paid off jalopies of decreasing value. Still we wander like zombies to the bureau’s window, or click buttons in a stupor online, and fork over our hard earned cash for The Registration, a ceremony replete with flags and a brass section. Nothing must trump The Registration, even if those entrusted with protecting and serving us are the only ones capable of grasping the true significance of The Registration, an arcane tradition far beyond the understanding of us simple folk.

If only we private citizens – the ones allegedly in charge, ha – were able to return the favor for traffic related Stationary Objects that we found unacceptable, to set tickets floating upstream, so to speak, in a two way torrent. One recent trip from Charlotte to Asheville was especially maddening, though illustrating in perfect fully rounded fashion much of what I mean. I’m already resigned long past the point of railing against the traffic situation around Charlotte itself (shorthand version: jackass mayor pushes a pointless downtown trolley through that nobody else wants, citing a “budget surplus,” earns himself a pretty hysterical Secretary of Transportation appointment for the one thing at which he was absolutely the least qualified; trolley naturally runs over budget, as lawmakers now cite a “budget deficit” for actual roads that people use, and approve toll lanes to pay for these; meanwhile gridlock appears more atrocious by the day), yet the drive beyond this point represents a flawless microcosm for all that we find maddening.

Even allowing for the inevitable afternoon crash that had traffic plugged up for ten miles along I-85 (surely caused by one of those lane weaving numbskulls inspired by having read How To Drive Like An Impatient A-Hole and Arrive at the Same Time Anyway shortly before taking the wheel) and forced a diversion to some state route, my trusty little map app was still touting an arrival time three hours distant, and yet it still took almost five. Much of this was due to a puzzling stretch along the mountainous wilderness of I-26, where we are first treated to a single digital sign bearing the legend CONGESTN AHEAD, and nothing more, as traffic creeps to a virtual standstill. An hour later we are still wondering what this is all about, in the absence of any additional explanation. Finally, within eyesight of a spot where the interstate closes down to a single lane, there is at last one orange sign with the familiar wordless image advising us of such, the two black squiggles of a straight line, then another curved one merging in its direction.

Would it not have made much more sense, considering that there is apparently no budget for further signage, to switch the two existent ones? And can we not collectively fine whoever is in charge of this idiocy?

But I believe I glimpse the root problem, and can offer a simple solution before the dialectic devolves into a riot. The only reasonable explanation is that whomever is responsible for these decisions must not be a motorist him or herself. Nothing else makes sense. And so perhaps we should appoint fellow drivers, people who have actually been behind the wheel of an automobile, to posts requiring these monumental verdicts. If doubting these claims, consider this beauty of a sequence as we approach Asheville:

 

1. Sign posted that “Max Safe Speed” is 50 MPH
2. A couple of those orange signs with squiggly lines indicating that the lanes are about to zigzag.
3. The first definitive sign announcing that we are nearing interstate 40…in half a mile
4. Followed by a sign explaining that interstate 40 westbound was in fact to be accessed via the left hand lane.

 

As any motorist can plainly see, massive brake slams soon ruled this region. Bebopping clowns with no regard for any of these advisories may have in fact skated through better than any of us, well versed in these antics. If you did happen to induce a fatal collision, though, well then naturally this would have been your fault, and not that of those posting such stupid Stationary Objects. But even if guilty of such, be glad you weren’t doing 7 MPH drunk on a riding lawnmower along the shoulder…or driving around with The Registration out of date, in which case you’d have some serious infractions for which you must atone.

 

 

A Novel Suggestion For Mass Media Types

I’m not typically inspired to offer straightforward commentary on world events, at least not without a healthy dose of humor, but the recent rampage shootings in San Bernardino have brought to the surface a topic that’s actually been bugging me for quite a while now. In this particular instance – at least as of this writing – the names have not been released, though you know it’s only a matter of time. And this is the problem. My suggestion for those in the business of delivering news to the masses is this: stop glorifying these monsters.

Soon, every major media outlet in the galaxy will be breathlessly intoning the names of whomever was responsible for these heinous crimes ad nauseam. But this is really only a façade, this pretense of caring in the name of keeping the pot stirred up. It’s all about the ratings (or what you perceive to be influencing the ratings, anyway – I’m still not convinced people tune in to a specific news program because they and they alone offer the juiciest dirt). Let’s pretend for a moment that every time you aired a segment on one of these horrific school shootings, or spree killings, or other random attacks, that your viewership inexplicably plummeted to 1/10th of what it customarily is. Would you still be broadcasting these pieces? Of course not. So let’s dispense with this fiction of caring and call gossipy sensationalism out for what it is.

Am I suggesting you should not cover these crimes at all? Well, no, not exactly. But one manner in which mass media can make a positive impact, I feel, is to stop releasing the names of these animals. Whenever some hate filled racist shoots up a church, or voices-hearing psychopath does the same to a movie theater, or anything similar, the illusion of glory is often part of what drives these maniacs to commit such heinous acts. So let’s yank this platform out from under them. For decades now it has been virtually a unanimous practice for anyone airing a live sporting event, to cite one analogous example, to refrain from broadcasting any footage of a random spectator dashing onto the field. I fail to see any sound reason why the same policy couldn’t be applied to random senseless crimes. Often it’s the same networks adhering to a policy of refusing to glorify some streaker at a golf tournament, yet an hour later leading off their 6 o’clock news with a segment turning some highway sniper into a household name.

I haven’t heard anyone ever suggest taking this editorial higher ground, however, despite rising terrorist threats around the globe, a seemingly ever increasing spike in the number of school shootings and similar attacks from one year to the next, and the venomous fervor with which both sides of the gun control debate present their case publicly. And I’m not idealistic enough to suggest any such proposed measures – whether mine or anyone else’s – would ever eradicate these massacres completely. But if doing so could even make an impact of 1% to the good, would this not be worth it? Another, far slighter concern, too, though one which also concerns me, is the extent to which we are guaranteed the right to a fair trial in this country, that whole innocent until proven guilty business…and yet your life could potentially be ruined by the mere accusation that you’ve done something, as countless have been when their identities were plastered all over the news, only to later find themselves exonerated.

At any rate, to summarize the issue: you’re not that concerned, so please dispense with pretending you are. Nobody cares or remembers in retrospect which news program was the first to “break” a particular story, and thus your fears of being scooped are unfounded. Even if you were being scooped, but could make some sort of positive impact by being the one network/newspaper/online media source to take the higher ground and refrain from releasing names, would you not do so? And if the answer is nay, doesn’t this kind of circle back to my point about not really caring as much as your feigning? Maybe I’m missing something here, but I really don’t think so.