The prototype for Gabby Johnson was George "Gabby" Hayes of Roy Rodgers and Hopalong Cassidy fame.
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Get off my LAWN! "Grumpy Old Farts"
- Thread starter B-string
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- Oct 22, 2015
- 21,167
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- I am an affiliate for Ari Cap.
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I was transferring gigabyte sized files yesterday. I noticed that my internet speed was down, it isn't much better today. There may have been technical issues compounded by unprecedented internet traffic these days,
Sorry to hear that the wolfman was given the clap. That song really had a great sounding smoothness. Covid makes me think of Life in the Bloodstream. A good one from So Long, Bannatyne.
- Oct 22, 2015
- 21,167
- 257,027
- Disclosures
- I am an affiliate for Ari Cap.
"Don't it ever get sad when you go out on the road?
oh, there was one time in Minneapolis.. when I thought I had the
clap for sure"
"Don't 'cha better get a shot from the doctor
what the road ladies done to you"
oh, there was one time in Minneapolis.. when I thought I had the
clap for sure"
"Don't 'cha better get a shot from the doctor
what the road ladies done to you"
- Oct 22, 2015
- 21,167
- 257,027
- Disclosures
- I am an affiliate for Ari Cap.
ayup, there's bear out there but they don't come in Odin's yard!
Maybe they've heard of the neighbourhood lady with the epilator. A bare bear would feel cold in the woods.
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We had a 25 HP Johnson on our first boat-in the 60's. "Johnson" wasn't used that way back then. In fact I can't remember hearing it as a euphemism 'til the mid 90's.
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There are different theories as to how Johnson became slang.
Steam locomotive engines had something called a Johnson Bar. It was used to control the flow of steam by moving it back and forth. The lever on the left is a brake.
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D
One of my fav t-shirts from back when was a smear of pastel colors, with the words "I just ran into Tammy Faye Bakker" around the schmear.
D
Priceless!
Cowards.
That family doesn't have the taste or skill to produce something like that. Sure, it's over the top for the grocery store, but if one thinks of it as a small work of art, it's fine. More power to her, I say.
I used to be, but then I found out the hard way - after 14 years at one company, with 9 consecutive years taking no vacations or time off - that no employer truly appreciates or cares about one's "dedication and loyalty" as much as they claim they do.
Cured me of my workaholism right quick.
- Oct 22, 2015
- 21,167
- 257,027
- Disclosures
- I am an affiliate for Ari Cap.
Cowards.
That family doesn't have the taste or skill to produce something like that. Sure, it's over the top for the grocery store, but if one thinks of it as a small work of art, it's fine. More power to her, I say.
I used to be, but then I found out the hard way - after 14 years at one company, with 9 consecutive years taking no vacations or time off - that no employer truly appreciates or cares about one's "dedication and loyalty" as much as they claim they do.
Cured me of my workaholism right quick.
A Descent into the Maelström
It starts, innocently enough, with a pager on a one-weekend / month arrangement. No extra pay. Right. Maybe it stays silent, maybe not. Kills a weekend good.
Only a short ride to the beeper all day, every day. Anyone management believes to be levelheaded in adversarial environments gets sent into a lot of adversarial environments. Early cellphone - Blackberry wars are fought across departments intentionally placed in competition with each other. Probably not supposed to say anything about who takes daily late night dinners at Smith & Wollensky, or what kind of deals are made over $6,000 dinners in Paris and yes I'll pick up this tab dreams of the expense report from the bad place
One of the (micro)managerial sorts at the Former Place thought I needed to have a pager attached to my person, for little other than the fact that it gave him the ability to page me every five to ten minutes, just to have me call him back and be asked, "What're you working on??"
Because of course, interrupting people several times an hour with an inane question is how the best managers squeeze the blood of productivity from the monolith of their institutions.
I finally turned the pager back in to the HR flack who issued them, citing its uselessness in general, and pronounced non-use for critical emergency communications by its primary customer.
The boss then resorted simply to ringing my desk phone with his one-note inquiry, but at least that phone had a "do not disturb" function I could apply if I needed to. It also didn't reach into the gents', unlike the cellular waves that activated the pager.
"Just how badly do you want to see what I'm working on in here?" one may be tempted to reply.
One of the best qualities of that guy's replacement is that new guy knew that certain employees were far better when given a task, then left to our own devices. That much good about him, I can say.
Yep, my "technical managerial" career started with the beeper one weekend/3-4 months in the '70s. And it stayed that way 'til retirement in this century! The lie was that every few years we'd get a year off the weekend duty rotation. Well, the layoffs in the '80s put an end to that. Not enough people left! But, there was always an informal agreement that weekend duty time spent actually at the worksite translated to a similar amount of weekday time off, if not abused. We didn't punch a clock, but the bosses knew who was really working and who wasn't.
By the '00s I had a more sophisticated text beeper, but my "regular customers" in the company soon had my personal cell number, which even the weekend duty roster carried. But, it stayed at just once ever 3-4 months. Then, the year of my pre-announced retirement, with my dementia afflicted 93 Y/O mom going into a home just months before, I was blessed with a very understanding management. Seems my decades of dedication were acknowledged and my desk presence was no longer expected on a regular basis. Time taken for Mom's commitment and appointments, her subsequent funeral, her house disposal, my retirement home purchase, all kinds of miscellaneous appointments, were never an issue whether my boss was specifically pre-advised, or not. I still always answered my cell phone and honestly admitted where I was, if asked, and responded ASAP to emergencies. Never any probs.
Not that the company "had a heart". I saw the same behavior get others fired, who had a less than dedicated work ethic and/or got caught lying about their whereabouts. Maybe I became an acknowledged company GOF, I dunno.
But, looking back on it now, it was a reasonable tradeoff..
Never had a pager, never had a Blackberry. I never allowed it. I carried a big Motorola brick cell phone to which people had restricted access. I used email dating back to '83, workers were distributed over a big part of the world. The internet factored big into the business model.
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