The meat parade...

Look, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a Brazilian steakhouse, but if you haven’t do the following. Don’t eat for about 3 days. Find a local Brazilian steakhouse. Go there on the night of the 3rd day of fasting, and wear some loose clothing. Here is the concept, and as far as I can tell, it’s brilliant. They start you off with a kick ass salad bar, and then from there you have gauchos walking around with spits of meat giving you whatever they are serving, and however much of it you want. It’s gluttony at its best honestly. The day I got back from Maine post Christmas feasting, we went there to celebrate my friend Chad’s birthday, which was actually on the 3rd, but hey, who’s counting really? It was a few days ahead of time that we went there, but damn, just damn. I had been warned about this place by The Chad and The Alex beforehand, as they had attended this particular venue before. As I mentioned, it was gluttony, but damn fine gluttony. Some of the meat courses we had included lamb, pork tenderloin wrapped up in parmesan and black pepper, bacon wrapped filet, prime rib, ribs, top sirloin, sausages, and a bunch of other stuff was in there as well. I have thus re-named this place The Meat Parade, because that’s what it is. A parade of meat all so tasty and delicious, it’s hard to stop eating. I don’t think my stomach has gone down since that day, but then again, it’s kind of large these days anyway, but I digress, this didn’t help it much. The price wasn’t that bad either. For 2 of us, with a tip added into the bill, we rang up at around $85. Or maybe it was $87, but whatever, it was kick ass, and a shit ton of food for that amount of money. Hell, I’ve paid $100 for a dinner for 2 before, and it was horrible. Oh, and that included a few bottles of wine and some other drinks as well, so overall, once again, not so bad, not so bad at all. If you’re ever driving through Greensboro, NC, look up Leblon, Brazilian Steakhouse, you won’t be sorry. That’s my little restaurant review for today. You’ll leave full, you’ll leave happy, and oh yeah, you’ll be back. That should be their mantra maybe. Or their advertising slogan. I wonder if I can copyright that shit?

I know that I write about this stuff a lot, but work, damn work. It’s been a hell hole again, but, I think, and I stress the “I think” part, that it’s going to slow down here for me in the next few weeks. The program that I have been slaving over for 60+ hours per week sometimes (and I’m one of the folks who is possibly working the least at times – there are people working on this program who have been putting in 80+ hour weeks lately), has been approved for production by the customer. Yes, Ford approved something for us. Which is a freaking miracle, I guaran-damn-tee you, especially in this case. The big payoff though was that the customer, that being Ford, was especially happy with what we’ve done with this program, and the grunt work that the entire team has done. Sure, the program, and the work has frustrated me, and annoyed me to no end, but, I am extremely proud of a lot of the people that worked on this thing with me, beside me, and late into some nights, and early in the mornings. I would like to do something for them, especially the folks on the floor, and I might try to do something, don’t know what for sure, but something. They deserve it, and the customer made a special trip out to the floor to shake all of their hands and to say thanks, that was pretty nice, and I know that it meant a lot to the people that have been killing themselves on this thing. The bad part though. There is another program behind the one we just finished up (one that I’m not involved with for the most part, but I know I’ll get pulled into it because I have the “knowledge” now) that is even worse off than the one that we just finished, which means… The people that just finished off this one program get approximately 0 days off, and they’ll be back putting the nose into the floor again next week. As I said, that program, not mine, but the guy that does have it, well, sometimes he’s a little slow doing things. He does a good job, but there are a lot of times that he is not so good at multi-tasking, and what he has ahead of him is going to require a lot of that, and since I have already been through it, I’ll get the nod from the boss to jump in and help I’m afraid, but I will not be staying there late into the night. I’ll help, but when the little hand on the clock points to the “4”, and the big hand is on the “12” I’ll be sneaking out the side door with the rest of the shlubs. I need a damn new job. I never did look for new ones when I was home for Christmas. Yeah, never got around to it. Maybe this weekend, the resume will get a polish, and get sent out again to some people. I need out of the there. It’s bad for my health. I’m out of shape, haven’t had time to get back into shape, and well, it’s making me feel worse. It’s bad enough that I hate it there for the most part, but my fitness has suffered greatly, and when I’m not fit, I don’t feel at my best. I’ve got to get back on it, and I will. I’ll be putting in some good work this weekend on the bike, and on the running trails of Chapel Hill as well. Yeah, I keep saying this, but alas, I’ve got to do it, just buckle down and do this shit.

I did find out that there was this position at the old workplace that is still open and it might be something that could be looked into for me, but honestly, I don’t think I want the hassle of it. It would be like being a lackey to some folks that I don’t really like to begin with, so that might be something to not look into. The reason I bring it up, is that the guy who was doing that job, and has since moved into another position within the company was getting paid, get this, $79,000 / year to do what, I have no idea. As far as I could tell his job was to run meetings and make timelines for new programs. As far as I could tell, that was what he did. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not naïve enough to believe that those 2 functions were the only things that he did, but I used to sit in the same cubicle as him, and between calling meetings, being in meetings, and being on conference calls, and writing timelines for stuff, that’s all that I ever saw him do. As I mentioned before though, there are 2 guys that he sort of worked with and in conjunction with on lots of things, and they treated him like a piece of dog shit. I know that if I were in the same position that he was, and those guys treated me like they did him, someone would most definitely get punched in the throat. I would get fired, so maybe, just maybe, it’s not even remotely a good idea to even think about that position. Also, everyone that works within that certain group is basically looked upon as dead weight (I look at them like that as well), and actually, most of them are. We did get a new plant manager this week though, on another subject. I don’t really know him, but he seems like a good guy so far, but then again, he’s only been there a couple of days. We’ll have to let him be there for a month or so before I can pass judgment. I don’t know how I could get worse than I had before. I liked our other plant manager, as a person, and someone I could debate with, but as a plant manager, let’s face it, he kind of sucked ass. You wouldn’t know, but you’re going to have to trust me on this one.

In talking about the new plant manager, it’s funny to watch the people in the office and how they’ve changed their attitude completely with this new guy. Sure, you want to make a good impression with the new boss and all, but the ass kissing going on, hell, I can detect it easily, and my ass kissing detector does not function very highly, mostly because I refuse to do anything that even appears to be ass kissing, at work at least. For example, I was sitting in a meeting today with my customers, and the rest of the leadership team from the plant in there as we were wrapping things up for the day, and the actions of my boss, I was chuckling to myself in my head. I hope he can see this, and if he is as perceptive as I think he might be, he’s is sensing this BS as well. I think my boss is honestly worried mostly because with the last plant manager, she could essentially do whatever the hell it was she wanted. I’m thinking that she won’t be disappearing at lunch for 2 hours anymore, or taking off for a half of a day to go and eat lunch with her kids at school without taking a vacation day (which she did 4 times in the 2 weeks before Christmas), and she won’t be skimping on her vacation days either. Meaning, last year, it was sometime in October before she took an “official” vacation day, but the woman had been out of the plant more than I had been in there I think by that time. And believe you me, she made it known far and wide within the office that she was “finally” taking her first vacation day of the year, and that she still had 4 weeks to burn before the end of the year, and she didn’t think that she’d have a chance to use them all before the end of the year, and so on and so forth. Which is insane really. If you took all of the half days that she used to hang out with her kids at school, entire days she took to go on field trips with her kids, entire afternoons she went to lunch with her husband, her days would have been used up 10 fold, but since nobody made her accountable, well, she just kept on doing it. For now though, she is on her best behavior, and I’m enjoying this. The old school network is dead, this new plant manager is not within the ranks of the people that have been there forever and grew up in that town, and well, I think it might be good for the plant. This, as I mentioned before, remains to be seen. I think I’ll try to make friends with him though, always nice to be good buddies with the big cheese, well, maybe not buddies, but be congenial, you know. I won’t be my usual stand-offish self is what I’m trying to say. I also told the outgoing plant manager that if he needed a new crony over there in Durham working with the big big cheeses to give me a call. Like I said, always good to have friends in high places somewhere along the line. Now if I could only get them to send me over to Europe to work for a couple of years, or something along those lines. Now, that would be sweet. I mean, we can all dream can’t we?