Minimum Wage Increase and Obama as Satan?

I remember, clear as a sunny day, that when I worked @ the Spring House from fall 1986 to fall 1992, it was a very big deal when I got a raise. I remember my hourly rate went from 3.90 / hour to 4.10 / hour. The $.20 rate increase was a result of me working hard while I was at work. I had shifted from being the host of the dining room to a brand new position that Lester created for me where my job was to, essentially, float around the restaurant and get what needed to get done "done" so that the operations of the restaurant was smooth. If that meant making up syrups so that the waitresses could simply grab their orders, I did that. If it meant filling the bread drawer and rotating the bread, I did that. If it meant clearing a table, I did that. I also remember Lester walking by me one morning with a bus tub and saying, "I can keep busy, can you?" I didn't always agree 100% with Lester, but I will always appreciate what he did for me in this regard.

I mention this as there is now a push to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 / hour. With great interest, I read how the Congressional Budget Office has analyzed the proposed minimum wage increase and that it will cost 500,000 jobs. While I don't agree with an across-the-board blind wage increase, I find it interesting that the CBO can figure out how many jobs are going to be lost. I wish I knew how they came up with 500,000. Why not 450,000? Why not 600,000? I have no idea how to do the math to figure it out. I hate math. I also think that it's possible that teenagers working in a restaurant, like the Spring House (before it closed) shouldn't make $10.10 / hour. And why is it $10.10 / hour? Wouldn't the math be simpler if it were a flat $10 / hour?

40 hours / week x $10 = $400.
40 hours / week x 10.10 = (let me get my calculator) 404.

Is it worth the extra $4 / week to do "more complex" math?

Alex had his next-to-last basketball game last night. Iowa City West lost. When Alex was on the court, he didn't touch the ball except for a couple of rebounds.

The Iowa Hawkeyes men's basketball game @ Indiana was postponed because part of the roof fell.

There's a new movie coming out called "Son of God" and I saw in this article that there were scenes cut in the movie because the actor was was cast as Satan looks too much like President Obama.

1 of 16

I vaguely remember this sort of challenge back when I wrote songs. Yes, I was a songwriter. I had visions of being in an all original music band, preferably hard rock or heavy metal, and playing songs that I wrote. I had visions of one of my best friends being my drum roadie, my band headlining the Cedar Rapids, IA, concert hall (US Cellular Center), and 'making it' in the music industry. Teaching high school English was going to be my fallback in the bizarre case that being a rock and roll drummer somehow, inconceivably, didn't work out. I was going to play drums, I was going to have Ludwig drums, Zildjian cymbals, Pro Mark drumsticks, and Remo drum heads. At the time, no one was making clear shell drums, like mine are, and so Ludwig was going to start up production again, just for me, just for my band, and I was going to have a huge double bass set, even though I can not, to this day, really play double bass. That was the plan. That is why I filled 18 spiral notebooks, of various sizes but a few were 200 pages, with songs. I feverishly wrote songs on place mats when I worked at a restaurant. I wrote so many songs that I can only vaguely remember writing some of them - the rest don't seem to have made an impression. I was going to write my heart out and leave it all on the pages. I was going to make my dream of being the next Billy Joel or Sting come through. I was going to write the equivalent of "Operation: Mindcrime" - the great concept album by Queensryche. I was going to write lyrics that would make Rush's Neil Peart think, "Wow! Great lyrics and he plays drums too!" I was going to earn the respect of all these musicians I admired - Lars Ulrich, Tommy Aldridge, Alex Van Halen. And then, I was going to meet the ultimate musician - Eddie Van Halen. He was going to invite me to an audition because Alex was unable to tour due some mysterious ailment. We were going to play arenas around the world - Michael Anthony on bass, Eddie on guitar, me on drums, and David Lee Roth on vocals. That was the plan.

Funny how plans change.

Nearly every thing I wrote about in the first paragraph did not happen. I never will play the US Cellular Center. If anything my friend will be the one in the band and I would be the one setting up his drums. I will never meet any of the musicians I mentioned above. The only thing that is really relevant is a dim memory that I used to write a lot of lyrics.

And, one time, I challenged myself to write a lot of songs in 16 days. That's the whole point.

Bet you thought I didn't have a point...

I KNEW Stevie Ray when he was 14

Well, not me, but PT, a member of Techwr-L did. I read PT's e-mail and it stirred a memory of a different time in my life.

Why? Because I remember the day Stevie Ray died. I was working at the Spring House, a restaurant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Ken, the cook that day, was a guitarist/friend of mine. We had been jamming in my parent's basement that summer, trying to get something going. Ken was studying guitar to learn to play the blues. This was significant because we were trying to write originals instead of the Scorpions ("Rock You Like a Hurricane"), Dokken ("In My Dreams"), and Whitesnake ("Slide it In") material we had been trying to polish the year before. There was no one better than Vaughan in Ken's eyes.

We had a co-worker Fred, who some affectionately called Derf. Fred was a juvenile delinquent. He was supposed to be going into 9th grade but he had flunked 8th grade. He had behavior problems. He had issues with "truth." Fred was also a cook. Cooks got free meals. Fred would come into work and make five huge pancakes - it was as if he hadn't eaten since the last time he worked - and eat every bit on his plate. Fred had issues with "putting fake mice into the tip glasses of the waitresses who he knew didn't like mice." [Side note: the last I heard, he is currently in jail but I heard that from someone about 5 times removed from the situation.] Aside from all of that, Fred had bought two tickets to AC/DC and, because I told him I would drive him, he gave me his 2nd ticket. Fred also claimed that Motorhead was a lot better than Metallica and repeatedly tried to convince me his opinion was correct.

I was the cashier that day. The phone rang. "Hey," Fred said when I answered the phone, "Stevie Ray Vaughan is dead. There was a helicopter crash."

"Shut up," I replied. "Quit lying."

"No, really. He died."

"I don't believe you."

"Would I lie to you?"

"Yes."

"Not about this," replied Fred. "Bye."

And he hung up.

A customer came to pay his bill. I counted back his change in disbelief.

When the customer left, I walked over to Ken. "Ken," I said. "You won't believe what Fred just told me."

"What?"

"Stevie Ray is dead."

"Fred is a jerk for saying stuff like that."

"I think he's telling the truth."

"What? Really?"

Ken and I found out later that day that Fred was not lying. I think, in some way, it lit a fire under Ken's ass to learn more guitar and to take what he was doing very seriously. The music we put together that summer was some of Ken's best guitar work that I have on cassette.

It was a couple of years later that I ruined him. Ken was in Old Stew and he played lead guitar on Metallica's "Enter Sandman."


-----Original Message-----
From: Pro TechWriter
Sent: Friday, July 10, 2009 8:06 AM

I KNEW Stevie Ray when he was 14 (I'm from Dallas and have a friend who went to high school with the Vaughn boys).

Restaurant

In high school, I didn't like Mondays. It seemed to always be starting over with my friends and classmates as I didn't really see anyone on the weekend. I worked part-time at a restaurant and the weekends were the two days when I tried to work as much as I could. Even through college, I worked a lot of weekends. Working at a restaurant is something every one should do, at some point. You learn customer care skills and you learn that there are many types of people in the world.

Customer care skills are trial by fire. You are working in a dining room with a hostess who seats the customer. You then have to approach the customer and establish a 1:1 relationship. It's your job to make the customer feel appreciated. That means that if you were up late studying the night before, you have to suck it up and be pleasant. I used to waiter. I did okay, I think, from the perspective that I didn't have any complaints about me. Was I perfect? Of course not. I made mistakes. I'd write down eggs over hard and they'd come out over easy, the customer would complain and I'd return to the cook. I also had a customer who wanted a burnt English muffin, crisp bacon and eggs over hard. There were customers who would pay with exact change and there were customers who would give you a $20 bill and ask you to get their change for them - hopefully b/c they wanted to leave a big tip.

There are also very many different types of people in the world. Some treated eating out as a privilege. They were appreciative when you would bring them a refill of Pepsi without being asked. Others wanted to be treated like their feces had no order. I was their waiter and I was there to serve their whims. Finding a way to balance good customer service and your own personal life was essential. Sometimes it was difficult. A party of 9 comes in, accrue a large bill, and leave without a tip. A single guy would come in, order ice tea and sit for hours. My favorite was the group of ex-jocks who would come in and demand to sit in a specific section, regardless of whether that area was full or not.

I worked at that restaurant all through 3 years of high school and four years of college. I watched a lot of co-workers come and go. I watched a lot of drama and I watched the ever-changing pecking order. I watched people be trained and do well - I watched people be trained and freeze up when they were on their own. I think that is the main benefit of working at a restaurant - the relationships you build with your co-workers. The restaurant I was employed at was a family restaurant. It's still in business but it's been several years since I visited. I often think about the lessons it taught me.