Just when your kids start to become interesting, they get their own lives. My son (30) and daughter (27) have a myriad of things going on everyday, so we have to schedule ahead to do things together.
My daughter and I had arranged to take today (a late summer Friday) off to go paddling and it worked out perfectly. It was sunny and warm, and we had the lake just about to ourselves.
When my children were young, I intentionally planned camping trips, canoe outings, and other activities that got them away from the computer and VCR, and left them little choice but to relate to their parents. That worked well in their younger, formative years, and the proof is in the pudding. They were less enthusiastic in the teen years, naturally, but could still be enticed with more exotic adventures.
The college years? Forget about it. The same was true with the immediate post-college era, as they spread their wings.
But, we managed to strengthen the connection after that. It helps if you can get out of the parent mode.
When they’re young, you wonder if they have any sense, forgetting your own lapses at that age. As they mature, it doesn’t always become apparent to you that they’ve developed any. It takes a conscious effort on my part to hold the advice, unless asked.
My ex and I have had this conversation several times. A lovely woman, she can’t stop being mom. It often grates on the kids, who take it as criticism.
With my daughter, it’s been especially hard for me to butt out. She has a razor sharp mind and was a National Merit Scholar in high school. But, she chose a major in college that I saw little value in, and thought it a waste of her intelligence. We had a few heated discussions about that.
I recalled having a similar discussion with my father. He threw up his hands and went out to the yard to plant a sapling. I stomped around the house a little bit and then went out back to make amends. I stood in silence, trying to compose my words, as he pounded a stake into the ground beside the tree and proceeded to wrap a thick, insulated wire around it and the tree to provide support.
“You know, I’m not a kid anymore.” A lot of sixteen year olds have probably said that.
“Do you know what I’m doing here?”
“Yeah, you’re bracing that tree.”
“That’s right. It helps to keep it growing up straight. Every year, I come out here and unwrap the wires to see how well the trees stand on their own. If they look like they’ll lean or get damaged the first time they’re tested, I rewrap the wire. But, a day comes when they show they’ll stay straight on their own, and I throw away the wire. Until then, I keep the wire.”
After graduating college, my daughter pursued her chosen field. I kept my grumbling to myself. After a couple years, she got bored. What do fathers know?
Not sure what she wanted to do, she took an entry level job with a large company. I thought it was more to finance her avocations than to plot a career path, she didn’t ask me.
She was promoted before the year was up, but still didn’t seem challenged. Another department recognized her abilities and lured her away with a promotion. Things were looking up.
So, we’re paddling and enjoying the day. We’re having a great time and I ask how her vacation day reserve is because we should do this a few more times before it gets cold.
“Bad news and good new, dad. Bad news is that I’m going to be slammed for time after Labor Day. Good news is that I’m getting promoted into strategic planning.”
Time to throw away the wire.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Hotels
I was in car with someone who had a local station on the radio. They were interviewing someone who had started a web site on hotel bed jumping. People send in pics of themselves jumping on the beds. I said a prayer of thanks for satellite radio.
Years ago, I was in the hotel business, partnering in mid to low price range properties, east of the Mississippi. I came to define a hotel room as a place people go to do things they wouldn’t even consider doing in their own homes. If you haven’t been in the business, you probably have little idea what people will do. There were times when I questioned if the damages were created by humans.
The worst business was softball tournaments. There’s something hardwired in the mentality that demands getting drunk and trashing everything in sight.
The most distasteful business, from my perspective, was “Maggos.” This was the staff’s term. I referred to them as slavers.
The ads begin running in the job classifieds in the spring, targeting adolescents. They promise a summer of free travel and fun. The companies running them are magazine subscription sales agencies of a somewhat smarmy ilk.
These agencies sell door-to-door, quoting prices on a weekly or monthly basis to keep the cost perception low and load up the buyer. They zero in on less educated consumers in lower class neighborhoods.
Once the unwary teens are recruited, they are packed into a van driven by their handler. They will be taken cross-country, spending a few days in each town. The teens are stuffed to capacity into cheap hotel rooms. They are awoken early in the morning, driven to a street corner in a bad neighborhood and dropped there for the day with a sales quota and threats for not making it. They spend the rest of the day wearing off shoe leather in the summer heat and are picked up on the corner much later in the day. The lesser producers are chastised and ridiculed in front of their colleagues. Their handler provides meals, which consist of small portions of fast food or deli lunchmeat.
Stuffing a room with browbeaten adolescents does not wear well on the fixtures. They take out their frustration and homesickness on the facility.
I encountered a Maggo handler who adorned himself in mirrored sunglasses, ten gallon hat and six-foot iguana draped across his shoulders. After witnessing him whipsawing a young girl into tears, I considered feeding his iguana to him. Wouldn’t be fair to the reptile. Maybe the other way around.
Rich kids were another problem. They couldn’t hold their unfettered parties at the regal homes of their parents, so they rented rooms. It wasn’t just the property damage that was the problem. Most of them did not think the laws of society applied to them.
One of our two-story properties was on the east coast of Florida. A young male, with a last name you would recognize, rented a string of second floor rooms with balconies. He and his toadies trolled the bars with their Porsches for young, unwary girls, and brought their catch back to the hotel. When one of them was uncooperative, the host tossed her off the balcony. Fortunately, some foliage broke her fall and she wasn’t fatally injured. The prominent family bought their way out of trouble and publicity, a scenario I would see oft-repeated.
Some of the business you might think to be bad wasn’t that bad at all. The “hot sheet” trade was rooms rented for a couple hours, often during the day or right after work. Properties consisting of several elongated buildings with parking at the door and out of sight from the road were popular for this. Surreptitious couples did not like hotels where you park out in front of the lobby, where someone might recognize a vehicle.
Then, there was the high end strippers, who worked toney “gentlemen’s clubs,” especially in Florida and Texas. They usually were on tour and needed a place for two or three months. The clubs like to keep fresh inventory.
These women were very pretty and trained in choreography. They came in quietly in the wee hours of the morning, got up at noon and sunned themselves by the pool until they went to work (not a bad draw for some other business). They were professionals and no trouble at all.
Partners tend to settle into roles. One of mine loved to negotiate a “steal” and wasn’t especially interested in ascertaining if it was a viable property. My role was to take whatever cats and dogs he brought in and make them work.
My partner bought a hotel on I-95 near Quantico, VA. I went over to assess the damage. I walked the property and then met with the manager. My message was succinct. The clientele was half drug dealers and half cheap hookers. Clean it up or we’ll never get any volume of legitimate trade.
His reply was equally terse. “Throw out dealers, for what I get paid?” Good point. He suggested I might want to do it, so he could see how. I wasn’t paying myself enough for that.
I had some contacts over at the Quantico training facility from the old days. Many people think they train just Marines, but the FBI and DEA also have their academies there.
I went over to the base and passed out free trial coupons they could use to house people in for training and other things. They sometimes had overflow. I returned to the hotel and told the manager to expect a flood of law enforcement trainees and a subsequent reduction in criminals. I had a hard time concealing pride in this creative solution.
A couple weeks later, I saw the influx of the coupons on reports and called the manager to see how it was working out with all the federal agents running around. “The dealers moved out, but we have more hookers than ever.” Your tax dollars at work.
While frustrating, the hotel business never fell short of interesting. It provided some pithy insights into human nature, especially among those who used this segment of lodging. We catered to young families, seniors, constructions crews and salespeople. Road warriors (traveling salespeople) look out for each other. Next time you stay at an inexpensive hotel, check under the mattress and you’ll probably see what I mean.
Years ago, I was in the hotel business, partnering in mid to low price range properties, east of the Mississippi. I came to define a hotel room as a place people go to do things they wouldn’t even consider doing in their own homes. If you haven’t been in the business, you probably have little idea what people will do. There were times when I questioned if the damages were created by humans.
The worst business was softball tournaments. There’s something hardwired in the mentality that demands getting drunk and trashing everything in sight.
The most distasteful business, from my perspective, was “Maggos.” This was the staff’s term. I referred to them as slavers.
The ads begin running in the job classifieds in the spring, targeting adolescents. They promise a summer of free travel and fun. The companies running them are magazine subscription sales agencies of a somewhat smarmy ilk.
These agencies sell door-to-door, quoting prices on a weekly or monthly basis to keep the cost perception low and load up the buyer. They zero in on less educated consumers in lower class neighborhoods.
Once the unwary teens are recruited, they are packed into a van driven by their handler. They will be taken cross-country, spending a few days in each town. The teens are stuffed to capacity into cheap hotel rooms. They are awoken early in the morning, driven to a street corner in a bad neighborhood and dropped there for the day with a sales quota and threats for not making it. They spend the rest of the day wearing off shoe leather in the summer heat and are picked up on the corner much later in the day. The lesser producers are chastised and ridiculed in front of their colleagues. Their handler provides meals, which consist of small portions of fast food or deli lunchmeat.
Stuffing a room with browbeaten adolescents does not wear well on the fixtures. They take out their frustration and homesickness on the facility.
I encountered a Maggo handler who adorned himself in mirrored sunglasses, ten gallon hat and six-foot iguana draped across his shoulders. After witnessing him whipsawing a young girl into tears, I considered feeding his iguana to him. Wouldn’t be fair to the reptile. Maybe the other way around.
Rich kids were another problem. They couldn’t hold their unfettered parties at the regal homes of their parents, so they rented rooms. It wasn’t just the property damage that was the problem. Most of them did not think the laws of society applied to them.
One of our two-story properties was on the east coast of Florida. A young male, with a last name you would recognize, rented a string of second floor rooms with balconies. He and his toadies trolled the bars with their Porsches for young, unwary girls, and brought their catch back to the hotel. When one of them was uncooperative, the host tossed her off the balcony. Fortunately, some foliage broke her fall and she wasn’t fatally injured. The prominent family bought their way out of trouble and publicity, a scenario I would see oft-repeated.
Some of the business you might think to be bad wasn’t that bad at all. The “hot sheet” trade was rooms rented for a couple hours, often during the day or right after work. Properties consisting of several elongated buildings with parking at the door and out of sight from the road were popular for this. Surreptitious couples did not like hotels where you park out in front of the lobby, where someone might recognize a vehicle.
Then, there was the high end strippers, who worked toney “gentlemen’s clubs,” especially in Florida and Texas. They usually were on tour and needed a place for two or three months. The clubs like to keep fresh inventory.
These women were very pretty and trained in choreography. They came in quietly in the wee hours of the morning, got up at noon and sunned themselves by the pool until they went to work (not a bad draw for some other business). They were professionals and no trouble at all.
Partners tend to settle into roles. One of mine loved to negotiate a “steal” and wasn’t especially interested in ascertaining if it was a viable property. My role was to take whatever cats and dogs he brought in and make them work.
My partner bought a hotel on I-95 near Quantico, VA. I went over to assess the damage. I walked the property and then met with the manager. My message was succinct. The clientele was half drug dealers and half cheap hookers. Clean it up or we’ll never get any volume of legitimate trade.
His reply was equally terse. “Throw out dealers, for what I get paid?” Good point. He suggested I might want to do it, so he could see how. I wasn’t paying myself enough for that.
I had some contacts over at the Quantico training facility from the old days. Many people think they train just Marines, but the FBI and DEA also have their academies there.
I went over to the base and passed out free trial coupons they could use to house people in for training and other things. They sometimes had overflow. I returned to the hotel and told the manager to expect a flood of law enforcement trainees and a subsequent reduction in criminals. I had a hard time concealing pride in this creative solution.
A couple weeks later, I saw the influx of the coupons on reports and called the manager to see how it was working out with all the federal agents running around. “The dealers moved out, but we have more hookers than ever.” Your tax dollars at work.
While frustrating, the hotel business never fell short of interesting. It provided some pithy insights into human nature, especially among those who used this segment of lodging. We catered to young families, seniors, constructions crews and salespeople. Road warriors (traveling salespeople) look out for each other. Next time you stay at an inexpensive hotel, check under the mattress and you’ll probably see what I mean.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Diebold voting machine controversy
This morning, I'm listening to the radio and an "expert" is ranting on the alleged conspiracy and security dangers of Diebold voting machines. He claims intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the company, pronouncing it "die-bold." Call me a skeptic, but if you possess inside knowledge, shouldn't you know how to pronounce the name? ("dee-bold")
But, I believe there is a more pertinent question. For decades, Diebold has been a worldwide leader in ATMs and other banking equipment. They own over 60% of the U.S. banking market. I heard no significant outcry about trusting their equipment with hundreds of millions of our account numbers, passwords, etc. over these decades, with many billions of dollars at stake. Why think security and ethics will be different with votes?
But, I believe there is a more pertinent question. For decades, Diebold has been a worldwide leader in ATMs and other banking equipment. They own over 60% of the U.S. banking market. I heard no significant outcry about trusting their equipment with hundreds of millions of our account numbers, passwords, etc. over these decades, with many billions of dollars at stake. Why think security and ethics will be different with votes?
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