Wow. Cool. Thanks for reading my blog. I enjoyed the comments. I'll be away from the computer for the weekend so I wanted to put something up before we load up and hit the road. I'm really thinking about the JKV thing. Bloggifing it might just be the thing to make it fresh again. Adding pictures would make it pretty interesting too. I have a lot of old pictures that go with the story.
I have some new ones too. I put a couple with this entry. I put up a bunch more at myspace. myspace.com/bradleyalbertburkley. Check 'em out.
Yes I am currently sporting a Gold Afternoon Fix beard, and yes my hair is as grey as Kilbey's. Yes I'm only 32. Although I took too much acid at one point and it turned my hair color, 4 years ago, early grey runs in my family. It has been getting lighter and lighter in the sun.
As for Java Joint - well, I think it's your American right to run your business however you want. Even if you wanna run it like a communist dictatorship. Even if you want to run it into the ground. I also don't have to hang out and watch it happen either.
First thing - it's not a coffee shop. It's a vanity project. The owner has a lot of loot and I guess she always dreamed of having a coffee shop on the ocean. That's cool, I can dig it. But you can't be all things to all people while only being prepared to serve 12 people at a time, max. They have the best coffee in town, and good food (if the right cook is working), but they are running this small room with few tables like a restaurant. When it gets busy it gets so crowded and loud it sounds like a mess hall. I have been in and around restaurants and hotels my whole life, an F&B manager at the Hilton in Gainesville for a short while. You wanna be set up to run at full capacity. So there are people sitting reading the paper sipping coffee, with a line out the door!
Second thing - you gotta take suggestions. The menu(s) there are a nightmare. I was gonna offer to redo it. I actually did on my own just so I could study it when I got the job. It's all center justified and stuff, so I told a co-worker my idea. "Oh no, don't do that, they won't change the menu, don't bring it up. The inventory and computer (for entering orders) are a mess too. Now, when I wrote about Java Joint in my earlier entry I mentioned the communism thing in relation to the tips. But apparently it goes further than that. You can't be critical of the way things are being run even by the slightest comment. This couple (one is really the owner the other is her partner) has never been in the business before.
Another note - and it speaks to the pros of Capitalism I know but when you pool tips, "redistribute the income" if you will, that encourages your hard worker to become lazy and your lazy worker to stay lazy. I saw it in action. And when the owner is taking their cut from our tips without hardly being around! .....anyway, I quit. I went to pick up my last check yesterday and they said they had mailed it to me.
A couple of peevish things too - while I'm at it. They love to tell all the customers that "everything's organic." It's not. Some things are, some aren't, in fact there's Hersheys syrup in the "organic chocolate dispenser." They are conservative republicans to those customers, and liberal lesbians to those customers, drive big Suburban SUVs, have a recycle bin upstairs, but take it down and put it in the trash with the other rubbish. You get the idea. Lot's of rubbish.
One more thing - I don't intend to suggest I'm Jewish, as it may seem in the last post. I'm an all-american mutt. English/Irish/German/Dutch, with many variations depending on what family member you talk to on what day. My grandmother was unusually dark, with dark eyes and dark hair and it was suggested tongue-in-cheek that her family was Jewish.
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Stop whining. ~Connecticut.
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