Essays, Journal

Thoughts on Aughts

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There’s an old man who comes to the gym in the mornings. He has a walker with an oxygen bottle, and bears visible scars from open heart surgery and a pacemaker implant. Monday morning I loosened up in the hot tub, and the two of us talked.

I learned that he had his first surgery in early December of 1999. I was reminded of my bout with myocarditis that same month, and how, as I lay in the Intensive Care Unit at UVRMC, the rooms around me were full of what I have come to call “gray people.” Their skin was literally deathly pale, and I assumed that the majority of them were going to die there.

I asked where this man had gone for treatment back in ’99, and he told me he was at UVRMC, and spent most of December in the Intensive Care Unit.

One of those gray people not only survived, but did so for a full decade at current count.

The last decade has been huge for me. I started a new job, rose to prominence, and then quit to do the same thing again. I created Schlock Mercenary, and Sandra and I had two more kids.

All of this in a decade.

I don’t know what my elderly friend at the gym has done with the ten years the doctors, God, and/or the Fates gave back to him, but I’m sure they are precious.

Whine about the “aughts” if you must, but as we begin the second decade of the twenty-first century, know that at least two of us are really thankful for the last ten years.

Journal

I was sure I’d related this before, but Google couldn’t find it…

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Short version, cutting to the punchline as quickly as possible:

My mother-in-law sent us a plush nativity, complete with wise men and a camel. Its job was to sit under the tree and get played with.

About five years ago my son was playing with them, and from the other room I heard “Wap! Him dead! Now my take camel!”

That poor wise man was apparently unwise enough to get ambushed by some other toy (a Hamtaro, if memory serves.)

Journal

Tip your waitress!

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Or waiter. Or sushi-chef.

I’ve only got anecdotal evidence supporting this, but the impression I get is that with tighter economic times people are eating out a little less, and tipping a LOT less. The restaurant managers I’ve spoken to (I know a few, yes) have said that average tips have dropped from around 18% to around 10%.

Sure, sure… a lot of us look at tipping as a way to reward excellent service, and will withhold a good tip from a lousy waiter or waitress. But that’s not what’s happening here. What’s happening is that a lot of us don’t want to give up eating out, so we’re cutting back on our tips.

Two things:

1) Be the guy (or gal) who tips well. Start at 20% and round up. Factor that into your budgeting.

2) Crummy service? A low tip just says “I’m cheap.” Unless the service is absolutely execrable, it’s not really your job to discipline your server. Tip your server well, and then call the manager over and complain. If it was really that bad you’ll probably come out further ahead than if you’d skimped on the tip. If not, well… you don’t want to eat there again.

My friend Bob has a great policy when he eats out with a large group. He hands the unsuspecting server a $20 at the beginning of the ordering process and says “I want to make sure this is a great experience for everybody… including you.” At the end of the meal he strongarms the rest of us into tipping a solid 20%. Funny thing… when Bob’s around we ALWAYS have a great time at the restaurant.

But you don’t have to go the extra mile. Just make sure you don’t skimp. Waitresses and waiters are feeling the crunch at least as badly as the rest of us are.

Essays

$250,000 per Job? Only a little bit too expensive.

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If you’ve been following the news, there are lots of people screaming about how incredibly expensive the stimulus package was, and how it didn’t create enough jobs for the money spent.

I’m not a fan of stimulus, nor big government, but I do know how to do math like a capitalist. An employee costs a lot more than just salary, and I haven’t seen much reporting in this vein.

Let’s say you’ve been given stimulus money to hire somebody. GREAT! Do you start writing them paychecks immediately? No. You find work for them to do. Let’s go on to say that the employee is (as many of them are reported to have been) a construction worker. How much is it going to cost to put that person to work? Well… you have to have land on which they can put a building, materials to put up the building with, and tools for them to use. Some of this you might already have, but with stimulus money you’re going to go buy MORE of it so you can grow your business and (here’s another form of the word) STIMULATE the economy as a result.

Pulling numbers out of my butt: if twenty guys can build a subdivision of 40 homes in a year, and the homes cost $120,000 each to build, you’ve spent just short of five million dollars creating 20 jobs, at a cost of $240,000 per job.

You also created forty homes (in a depressed real-estate market that is saturated with defaults, foreclosures, and short sales, but I digress…)

Also, somebody out there sold you a whole mess of lumber, nails, concrete, PVC, etc.

Sure, if all we wanted to do was feed people tax money we could do it much more efficiently by just dumping the entire stimulus package into the existing welfare system. But that doesn’t stimulate the economy, and it provides incentives for the wrong sort of behavior.

Again, let me say that I’m not a fan of the stimulus package, not as implemented, and not in principle. But the math I use as a good capitalist who wants to be able to create jobs tells me that the critics of the stimulus package are being very loudly dishonest in their criticism.

(Note: If you gave me $240,000 and told me to create as many jobs as I could, I would hire a writer, two line-artists, and a colorist and create graphic novels out the wazoo. If the books sold well, I’d be able to keep my employees. If not, well… they worked for a year, and we all had a good time with taxpayer money. DO NOT SEND ME TAX DOLLARS IT WILL ONLY END IN TEARS.)

Writer, Illustrator, Consumer