Scoundrels

Alot depends on the yard manager, but many of the larger caryards will keep a pool of umbrellas for that "extra mile" of customer service. This is because when it rains there are still alot of people who come into the yard with an umbrella of their own. Providing one for their use will not only make them more comfortable, but provides a convenient excuse for the salesperson to approach the customer uninvited and endeavour to work their way into a sale.

However, you will always get points where the customer insists on browsing alone for a bit longer, but wants to continue to avail themself of the umbrella. That's still good, because they'll come back to the office to drop it off, giving us a second line into probing for opportunities to make that sale.

Don't get annoyed, you're in the yard because you want a new car, right?

Anyway, what gets me, is that there are some people who don't bring the umbrella back. They keep it. And when I'm out and about, away from the yards and I see a person using one of those umbrellas, it burns me up.

It also means that the cheapskate yard I was at stopped providing umbrellas so I had to begin bringing my own. Believe me, I watched those ones like a hawk.

Sliding off the face

Ouch sorry for the extended absence. I always wonder how bloggers could just 'drop off' for several weeks, even months. And then when they say they're getting back on the wagon, much like I am hoping to say here, they then fall off again a week later.

Well I think I understand it a bit better now. Maybe it was writer's block that turned into a little bit of apathy, maybe it was just life. But hope to be getting back into routine again.

Milk tea

I've only started thinking about it in recent months, despite all the years that I've drunk regular breakfast tea with milk. I don't add much, just enough to colour it to a dark brown. But I do like my tea strong, so often I'll leave the tea bag in the entire time that I'm drinking it.

But I'd recently only started thinking about how milk affects the brewing (steeping) of the tea when we ran out of milk at work, so I had to drink tea black a few times. Now, leaving the teabag in for more than a few minutes resulted in very strong and bitter tea.

I'm a bit confused as to how this works, as a quick Google search turned up results saying that milk in itself does not stop the tea brewing. It's only the cooling effect of the milk dropping the water temperature and hence slowing the rate of brewing.

But I don't add much milk, and I've had cups of tea where the bag has remained in for over 30min and it is still no where near as strong as 5min of black tea. So I didn't really get an answer to my question from the internet, but I did learn that apparently milk is reducing any health benefits of the tea, so I'm supposed to be drinking black.

I guess that is kind of an answer.

Like a dog

Every now and then I remember why dogs love sticking their heads out of car windows. Although the whole looking into the wind thing does confound me a bit.

One of my friends used to drive trucks for a recycling company, and this was way before wheelie bins were around. Both the recycling and garbage were collected by different trucks that used runners who would grab the stuff from the curb, throw it into the truck and move on. Essentially the truck would just be slowly driven down the street while one or two runners would race between curb and truck constantly.

I joined my friend for laughs for a few months. Every friday morning we'd have to be at the depo by 4am to collect the trucks, squeeze into the cabin as we drove down to the start or our route, then the next 5 hours would cover a couple of suburbs. During the route, as a runner, we didn't go back in the cab, we'd either be hurling bundles of recycling into the truck, or seated on the rear step with a firm grip on a rail while the truck hurtled around to the next section of the route.

Halfway through the route, peak hour for the masses would start, and there was weird thrill in sitting on the back of a 5 tonne truck, the cold morning air whipping by and the ground just barely out of reach, while everyone else was bleary eyed and preparing to face traffic.

Oddly, I had an office job in those days as well, and the recycling gig was just for fun. So when the shift was done, I had to shuffle into the office to finish my friday and make up the lost hours.

Still miss those mornings though.

Trash and Treasure continued

Ok, so continuing with my attempts to sell stuff since last weekend, I have now had 5 people contact me making enquiries, and this includes the fellow who bought the lenses from me last weekend.

In every case, none of them volunteered their name. In all of their communications, whether by phone or SMS, they all defaulted to being anonymous. What is with that? Can anyone explain to me the culture today? I only got the name of the guy who bought the lenses when I outright asked him what his name was.

It isn't like I want proof of ID, I just think the fundamentals of etiquette are getting lost. They also aren't using 'please' or 'thank you' any more either. That all just seems weird to me.

... and makes me less inclined to entertain discounts as well.

Trash and treasure

Been clearing out some old junk from the spare room, last weekend. Came across a small pile of camera lenses that I'd accumulated when we'd gotten our DSLR. Back then I had visions of utilising a small arsenal of lenses for different settings to achieve perfect pictures. But well... that didn't happen. I'm just not motivated enough to lug all that equipment around these days.

So decided that rather than throw the unused lenses in the bin, I'd try my luck on Gumtree. Within an hour of listing, all 3 sold. Had me a little astonished, so I'm trying to sell some old exercise gear, but that has been online now for 4 days and no buyers.

Just goes to show that some of my junk is still junk.

Selling for a reason

Owning a supermarket is fairly good business. Sure, there are factors to consider to ensure that the store is accessible and is not in a location where competition is excessive, or the population density very low. But people need to eat, and the vast majority can't eat out every day, so they'll be visiting a supermarket reasonably often.

An ex work colleague now runs one, and he tells me that it isn't all easy money. Between shoplifting, outright break-ins, managing a moderate sized staff of low-skilled labour, the extended trading hours, 7 day trading, and not always being closed on public holidays, means you end up being faced with some potentially costly challenges. At the end of the day though, you can find it to be a good revenue stream if you have the commitment and mental resilience.

Oddly though, not every supermarket is guaranteed, and this became obvious to me today when I was wandering through the one near my work. It used to be a Coles outlet, but certain segments of their range constantly had items which were being discounted because they weren't turning over fast enough. Eventually Coles had enough and about 2 months ago, sold off that outlet and it was picked up by IGA. The IGA is now struggling a little as I see their stock changing slightly to try and work out what the local demographic wants. Bakery and dairy seem to be amongst the toughest segments, and I'm curious as to whether the new owner is now regretting their purchase.

Seeing as I'm grumpy enough with a 9-6 desk job in airconditioning, I'd be more unbearable if I had to deal with that aggravation. So no self-employment for me...