1305 McDuh

McDonald’s is going through some shrinking pains. Figures were down more than expected in February.  

Naturally, they had explanations or excuses.  The CEO put out a paragraph or two about how “customer centric” the company is and how they keep tweaking the menu and all such blah blah.

If you want to learn the real reasons for the downturn first hand, visit one of their stores.  Try for a remodeled one.  They’ve been redecorating at a mad pace lately and stepping into a remodel will give them the benefit of the doubt.

But that won’t last.

First, the lines are slower than ever now that they’ve doubled the drive through lines without adding significant staff.  

The menu has become so complicated, you no longer can order “burger fries and coffee.”  Well, you can.  But most of us don’t.  And even if you do, you’ll get the coffee dance.  Do you want cream?  Do you want sugar? Do you want a large, medium or small?  Do you want just plain coffee or decaf or one of their two dozen imitations of Starbucks?

Slow.  Painfully slow.

Everyone behind the counter runs.  That’s motion but not action.

Enough times to notice, the order comes out wrong.  More often than not, the order comes out luke warm to stone cold.

Use the menu, you need speed reading.  And very good eyes.  Of course, it’s not all their fault.  They have posted calorie counts that take up space.  Earth to McDonalds and all the municipalities that require lab results on menus:  Almost no one who eats there gives a whit about calories, fat, carbs, cholesterol, fiber, vitamins or any of the other stuff on food labels.

The latest line slowing tactic: “Build your own burger.”  You think you wait forever now? Wait until you get a family of four ahead of you.

You want health food?  Go to a health food burger joint if you can find one.

You want calorie counts?  Give people on line the autopsy reports and let them read them on their iPads and smartphones to pass the time while they wait for their so-called fast food.

The February downturn wasn’t all that bad.  It just didn’t meet Wall Street expectations, which often are based on … um … nothing.

And what about that “customer centric” thing.  A bunch of Korean Americans in Queens -- old people -- have “reached an agreement” with the local McD franchise owner.  They have been made to promise that they won’t sit around the place during lunch hour and hog tables after buying only coffee.

And the “restaurant” has posted signs in Korean, Chinese and English outlining the policy.  A local assemblyman, Ron Kim (D-Flushing -- shocking isn’t it?) intervened on behalf of the residents who have agreed to visit a senior center for their lunchtime get togethers.

How customer centric is THAT?

Shrapnel:

--Lower screen television graphic from Fox News: “Longest Spelling Be Ever?”  Spelling “be?” What are they hiring over on Sixth Avenue?

--Sometimes it’s tough to get those on-screen graphics right.  The most common times are when the spelling of a name isn’t well known, as Osama bin Laden wasn’t, for example, in late 2011. But graphic artists and the people who love them have to learn spell check has limits.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1304 Ali: Down for the Count

Muhammad Ali wouldn’t hit a man while he’s down. In fact, at the height of his adrenaline-fueled motor mouthing prime, it wouldn’t even occur to him.

But right now, at age 72, Ali is down for the count. The Parkinson’s is 30 years old and that’s older than many of his fans.  And the tabloids and a right wing roll of toilet paper -- digital toilet paper -- are having a field day with allegations from unreliable sources that the first time he won the heavyweight championship … the fight was fixed, though Ali didn’t know about it.

The city was Miami.  The date was February 25th, 1964, a Tuesday.  Young Cassius Clay, as he was known then, stepped into the ring to take on Sonny Liston.  

Liston outweighed Ali by about five pounds, or maybe eight… there are several versions of these figures. He was seven years older… or maybe eight, had two inches more reach and he looked a lot bigger.

By the end of the sixth round, Clay/Ali had pulverized the once unstoppable Liston.

And when the bell rang for round seven, Liston remained seated in his corner and the world had a new heavyweight champ.

Now comes the disgraceful fake newspaper Washington Times and it has the same Freedom of Information law rights as anyone else and uses them to go back into prehistoric documents from the J. Edgar Hoover days of the FBI. Back when there was a commie under every rock and Da Mob controlled everything in the country from the backroom of a penny arcade on the boardwalk at Coney Island.

Two big time mobsters are said to have bet on Ali against the gargantuan bullet proof Liston.  And those two mobsters got away with a nice payday.

Was the ‘B-I interested in shutting down the sports book? No. It was interested in shutting down the arcade and the guys who owned it. After all, what’s just one more bookie in a world controlled from that backroom.

“We think … we suspect …” there was a payoff, say the documents obtained by the Toilet Paper Daily.  The “documents” are musings of FBI agents looking for any tidbit to titillate Hoover.

If they had a case then, they’d have made the case then.  They certainly don’t have one now.

But unlike Ali, the Washington Times and the useless tabloids just can’t resist hitting Ali when he’s down.

And down he is.  With Parkinson’s, you don’t count in seconds, you count in decades.  And Ali is on his back on the canvas hearing the number three.  That means he has seven to go before he has to be on his feet or Parkinson’s wins.

Parkinson’s is going to win.  But at least give the guy a ten-count.

Shrapnel:

--American Idol keeps declining in the weekly ratings.  Maybe Fox will get the message and make this, mercifully the last season.  But Fox doesn’t receive messages all that well, though they did with the X-Factor.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1303 Sounds of Screams, Sounds of Silence

(KEW GARDENS, QUEENS) -- When you get here on the E train or the F and it’s one of those dark hours when it could be either last night or tomorrow morning, you think you’re on an urban movie set where they’ve left only the emergency lights on so nobody trips over something.

This is a good neighborhood.  Nice, well preserved ancient apartment houses, slick semi-modern middle aged apartment houses made of brick, not the all glass kind you find in Manhattan.

Yes, there have been a few muggings lately, a New York welcome to a befuddled new mayor and his befuddled new police commissioner.  But mostly, you get nothing more than a schoolyard bully you can chase off with a dirty look.

And things weren’t all that different 50 years ago tomorrow when Kitty Genovese walked into the courtyard of her apartment house at around 3 in the morning.

She would be 79 years old now if Winston Moseley hadn’t stepped out of the darkness and stabbed her.

The story has become part true and part urban legend.  Originally, the newspapers reported that she was stabbed several times in that courtyard while neighbors looked from their windows and did nothing.

Much later, much much later we learned that wasn’t the way it happened.  One guy stuck his head out of his window up high and shouted down “Hey, leave that girl alone.”

That distracted Mosely long enough for his victim to make it into the apartment lobby.  There she collapsed and Moseley finished the job.

She was 28. He was 28. She’s been dead for 50 years.  He’s been in jail more or less that long.

But this is the story that gave New York a big chunk of its rep as the place where nobody cares, where you take your life in your hands by just walking around a good neighborhood on your way home from work.

Except the papers got it wrong.  Led by the haughty New York Times which has since run the true story at great length.

There was no 9-1-1 system in New York in 1964.  Futuristic like the World’s Fair going on a few miles away.  Four years later they finished installing the emergency phones.  1968.

Kew Gardens’ bum rap became the whole city’s bum rap, a reputation that remains today when a perfectly sane country boy says “I wouldn’t go to New York.  People there have guns and I can’t.” Or a country law enforcement officer says “I go there if I have to, but it scares me.”

Kitty Genovese was an unfortunate and innocent victim of a mad man who set out that night, he said, “to kill some woman.”  

But the mistakes in the newspapers did more good than harm.  The wave of “We can’t act like those guys in Kew Gardens” has survived these 50 years as has the memory of a horrible crime at a horrible time.

It’s hard to believe anything evil happened in the shadow of the Edwardian brown and tan buildings, so ugly they’re beautiful… and those newer brick buildings, without any detectable style, though not unpleasant.

But with the change of police commissioners, the muggers, at least, are testing the waters with their toes.  And they’re likely to find the temperature just fine.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1302 The Code of Conduct

The story you are about to read is true.  Only the place has been changed to protect the guilty.

(BURGBURG, PA) -- In this small, unshaven central Pennsylvania municipality, things get a bit hot at the meetings of the Governing Council.

So, the burg fathers have proposed a code of conduct for their public meetings.  

You know about public meetings, right?  That’s when people get together and pretend they live in a democracy.  The real stuff happens in what they euphemistically call “executive session.”

That’s where the action is.  Except you never see it.  Then they take it to the public forum where everyone gets to vent and rant and rave and the pre-arranged decision gets made.

Did I mention the code of conduct was going to be optional?

What?

What does that mean?  You can’t lose your temper unless the other side of a debate is really REALLY dumb?  You can’t spit on the floor unless you really REALLY have to?

When you attend meetings you should wear a tuxedo, but it’s optional?  Bib overalls will do as long as you have a white shirt and tie on under it?

Maybe this is a case of “the smaller the municipality, the hotter the tempers.”  Or not. Check out the tantrum rate in Toronto or Taipei.

Burgburg’s mayor is quoted as saying the 20 pages of suggestions will build public confidence in the people elected to run the place.

A lovely thought.  But nowadays the only way people have confidence in a municipal government is when it complies with their every whim.

Give them an “a” for effort.  They recognize they have a problem.  To the best of our knowledge no issue before the council has yet been petty enough to cause fistfights.

And we don’t expect any to arise any time soon.

But that “optional” part remains troubling.  You either have rules or you don’t.

Carry it a bit further.  Say, to the highway.  Speed limit, 55 miles an hour.  Optional. If you’re really REALLY in a hurry, we’ll take 70 or 75.

Or how about state laws:  The age of consent is 18. But it’s optional. If you really REALLY want to, it’s okay.

Or a federal law.  The local radio station here broadcasts at 970 on the dial and it’s illegal for you to put up another on the same frequency that’s too near.  Unless you really really want to.  Conversely, they have a limit to the power of their transmissions.  But one day, they may really REALLY want to reach Baltimore.

Or further still: The US Constitution says you have to do or you can’t do lots of stuff.  Make it optional.  

Shrapnel:

--I am time obsessed, and proud of it. But this raises problems twice a year when we “spring forward” or “fall backward” to or from daylight saving time.  There are so many clocks around here that we don’t always remember to set each of them.  And sometime in mid June we’ll stumble on one of them, and that will be very confusing.

--Twice yearly rant: it’s daylight savinG time, not daylight savingS time. As the mattress store says of its phone number, “leave the last ‘S’” off for saving(s).”  Please… pretty please… with sugar and honey on top.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1301 Read the Fine Print... or Else

The service contract for that electronic whatsis you just bought is not worth the paper it’s printed on, and certainly not worth what you paid for it.

Here’s why.  Most electronics come with a one year warranty.  The few that fail are likely to fail within that year.  But most won’t.  If it’s still running right after three months or so, chances are it will continue to chug along more or less properly for a few years.  

These machines have life expectancies, which manufacturers either don’t know or won’t tell you even if they do.

So figure three or four years for a computer, two or three years for a cell phone or a tablet.  If it runs longer, so much the better. But if it doesn’t you’re probably in need of a new one, anyway.

A washer or dryer is different.  There, you have to use your own judgment and, of course, you’ve done your research and know pretty much which brands are trouble and which aren’t.

Back to those electronics.

Read the fine print on the internet, not on the endless pages of blah blah that come packaged with the product.  Why?  Because you can search the document for keywords.

The LA Times recently reported the case of a woman who lost her  cellphone and the insurance company -- a subcontractor of a hateable and hateful carrier would not replace it.

The fine print gives the company the right to renege on what you think of as a pretty simple deal: It breaks, we fix it; it gets stolen, we replace it.

But it’s not that simple.

If the customer had searched the document for the word “coverage” she would have found that she was not in compliance at the time her iPhone was stolen.

The terms of coverage are scattered around the long document and you don’t get a complete picture unless you find every instance of the word.

Also, if you call or write with a question, remember the answer you get from the operator may not be binding.  It doesn’t have to be.

This holds true when calling any company or government agency about anything.

Example:  doing your own taxes?  Have a question for the IRS?  This will take forever. But do it anyway.  Call three different times, preferably on three different days. If all three answers are the same, bingo.  If two of them match and one doesn’t, the two that match probably are correct.  If none of them match, call a fourth time.

To remind:  Any keyword is worth searching… reading and remembering.  There are a lot of those weasel conditions in a lot of the agreements.

Your eyes will glaze over.  But keep a cup of coffee handy, or a piece of chocolate.  Keep the alertness beacon burning, because if it doesn’t, you will.

Shrapnel:  

--Target announces that its chief information officer has decided to resign following the big hoohah about stolen cards and pin numbers. That’s a gentlemen’s agreement… in this case a gentlewoman’s agreement.  No one at that level of corporate hierarchy “decides” to resign without a whole lot of help.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1300 Let's Start Some Wars

In case you missed it, there’s a war of sorts going on between Russia and Ukraine.  And preposterous as it sounds, there’s an outside chance we won’t get involved for a change, at least beyond funding. As soon as we figure out which side we’re on.

That’s going against the grain.  The room temperature iq types that recently staged a coup in this country already are agitating for us to get over there and show those knuckle draggers what’s what. Bring out the big guns, they say… from behind their desks in their senate building offices.

And for the first time in their lives, they may have a point.  But not just in this war.

We’ve become really good at international meddling and maybe we need to be doing more.

Why, the list of countries we haven’t fought for or against yet is astonishingly long. Think of the fun we could have in, say, Nauru, Malta, Paulu and other little places and set them on the path to The American Way.  And it’s not just little specks of land.  We could do a world of good sending troops to Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, Thailand, North Korea and Canada.

Of course that takes a lot of troops.  But fear not.  There’s a solution to that problem too.  Right now, there are about 1.4 million active duty members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Marines. And reserves in all branches total about 900-thousand.

That’s not nearly enough.

We need at least 100-million professionals.  Maybe 150-million.

Think of the added benefits:  Employment would rise. So would the economies of places where they have to reopen closed bases. Housing starts would skyrocket.  So would the stock market.

A huge increase in soldiers would bring a sense of order to the world of all those “responsible” gun owners.  Arms makers would be doing so much military business, they wouldn’t have the capacity to build all those assault rifles civilians use to shoot deer, school children, and other targets of opportunity… like guys who send texts while in a movie theater… or guys who play loud music outside convenience stores or hooded teens just out walking… and each other.

So score one for gun control and Mike Bloomberg wouldn’t have to spend a nickel, nor would Sarah Brady have to spend a bundle in postage.

News organizations would have to hire and train tens of thousands of journalists, hair and makeup people, technicians, producers, directors, lighting specialists and military analysts.  

Again, good for employment levels.

And this world war wouldn’t take all that long.  We’ve lost our talent for winning.

Shrapnel:

--What do we think we’re buying with that billion dollar bribe to Ukraine? For that matter, why are we involved in any way?  And can Putin really push a few buttons and cut off the gas supply to western Europe?

--The answer to the third question above is “yes.”  The reason? Czars, Commissars and now the evangelists of predatory capital don’t have to contend with the Russian version of tea bag obstructionists… they put the tea in a samovar of boiling water and nature takes care of the rest.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1299 Holes in a Swiss Bank

It’s so much fun to make fun of Switzerland.  After all, they have no navy, so they can’t retaliate by sea and their ground troops can’t get on their planes with those Swiss Army Knives and would be incapacitated by their weight and bulk even if they could.

We think of a tiny country where they invented cheese with holes, produce chocolate, go blind early making those oh-so-precise watches and claim to be neutral in wars.

Then there are the banks.

Secret numbered accounts.  Anonymity. The original place for tax evaders to hide money.

Lately, the banks have kind of shied away from hiding big bucks.  Or so they say.  But they are nothing if not resourceful. They went into the financial adviser business.

To do that, you have to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  Must have slipped the minds of the gnomes at Credit Suisse. They’ve just been slapped with a fine for that and it isn’t the size of a parking ticket, it’s $196 million dollars.

Still, shied away from hiding big bucks is not the same as not hiding big bucks and a Senate committee is investigating Credit Suisse with an eye to finding about $12 billion tax evaded dollars.

If collected, the taxes on 12-billion won’t exactly pay off the national debt.  But it’s still real money.

What the senators want is names.  Apparently they haven’t approached the NSA for that. Yet.  And they’re still waiting for a promised response from the bank.

Of course, if one bank cracks, they all go down.  And that giant whooshing sound you hear is megabucks fleeing from Switzerland for the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Ireland.

And they’re not traveling on cruise ships though they could well afford to, they’re traveling on fiber optic and the internet. (Switzerland doesn’t have cruise ships for the same reason it doesn’t have aircraft carriers.)

The IRS would like to stop playing hide and seek with American depositors.  So it’s giving a tax break to those who come forward. Nice. Especially when they would love to audit you to see whether you really made that two thousand dollar contribution to Save the Whales.

As for Credit Suisse, its chief executive, Brady Dougan says tax evasion is “unacceptable.”  Oh?  But then in prepared testimony, Dougan blames a few bad apples for the rot in the barrel.  “To our deep regret…” he says.  “In the past…” he says.  

Oh.  That means it’s all over, right? And the bad apples have been excised? And they’re sitting in the Swiss equivalent of Club Fed for the Gnomes of Zurich where they’ve set up consultancies?

Well… we don’t exactly know.  Swiss bankers don’t all have names.  Some have numbers.  Unlisted numbers.

Shrapnel Stuy Town Edition:

--Rest in peace Lee Lorch, dead at 98. Lorch was one of 12 original tenants at the Met Life owned Stuyvesant Town apartment mega-complex in Manhattan to force an end to a ban of black tenants. The company president had said in 1943 that blacks and whites just don’t mix.

--That’s not all president Frederick Ecker told the New York Post, then a liberal newspaper. He’d said letting in African Americans would cause property values to decline.  It didn’t and they haven’t.

Grapeshot:

-Stuy Town/Peter Cooper Village facts: 56 buildings, 11-thousand or so apartments, 25-thousand residents on 80 acres, on paper in 1943 and opened in 1947 on land once home to the ugliest gas storage tank farm in history.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014