Zombiewalk 2014

On my way home from dropping payroll off at Free Wheeler yesterday, I stopped in to Burger King for something to eat.  Right behind me was a couple of girls in ripped clothing and blood all over them.  They explained to the counter person that they were on their way to Liberty Park for The Zombie Walk.

I have no idea what a Zombie Walk is, but I decided to go down to the park to check it out, especially since I had my camera with me.

Well, I still don’t know what it is, I walked around the park for over an hour and didn’t see a single Zombie.

I did see a boat dock in an dry pond (they’re renovating the pond in the park.)

I saw the drum circle that they have there every Sunday.

Which included some serious hula hooping.

I ran into this cute little dog, which took me a minute to realize it wasn’t breathing.  Which is good, since it’s not a real puppy.

But the most amusing part of my time was while waiting to use the restroom.  There was a 20-something guy there keeping his girlfriend company while she waited for one of the two women’s rooms, and something you rarely see: a much longer line for the men’s rooms than for the women’s rooms.  This guy told us that the men’s line was so long because the rooms were occupied by “poopers” and not “pee-ers”.  The wait for the men’s room took at least 15 minutes – his girlfriend had time to go to the bathroom and come out for a bunch of the conversation. 

This guy (the one in the black shirt) started asking people showing up to get in line whether they were a pooper or a pee-er.  It was kind of weird, to say the least, but the reactions were quite amusing.  Nobody seemed to get offended, and one lady even smiled, said “neither”  and showed him the tampon in her hand.  At one point the guy actually got a little embarrassed, when he realized that the people in the stalls could probably hear him referring to them as poopers.

Yeah, it was an interesting afternoon, and I never did see the Zombie Walk.

Raises

I just got back from dropping off the payroll for Free Wheeler Pizza.  I was surprised to see extra money in my pay envelope, with a little note from the owner saying “It’s been a while, here’s a cost of living raise.”

The legislature also gave me a raise on my teaching salary this year. My first raise from them since 2009, which would have been a pay cut if I hadn’t earned my Master’s that year.  And it’s a whopping 0.33%.

⅓ of 1% from my full-time (and a half) job and 10% from the small pizza place I do payroll for.  Now you might think “Yeah, but ⅓% of a teaching salary is gonna be a lot more that 10% of what you’d get paid to process 20 paychecks a month.”

Au contraire, mon frère.  It works out to a difference of  $4⁵⁰ a month.

Yeah, the Utah Legislature respects and values their teachers.  Oh, yeah.  Not more than a struggling local businessman.

P.S. – red is the official Math Department color for sarcasm at my school.

Twofer

Some of you may not know that teaching (math) is my second career.  I was 33 when I became a full fledged teacher.

My first career was in the pizza business.  Right out of high school I started as a delivery driver for a very new local pizza place.  By the time I hit 25, I had worked my way up to General Manager of one of their 5 stores, gave that up to open up my own franchise of the company, gone bankrupt and returned to a General Manager position.  Today (literally) I’m still processing their payroll, which I’ve been doing on and off since 1980.

When I saw this on Facebook, I just had to laugh.  My two careers blended into one little Facebook blurb.  This is my own version, the pizza is from Free Wheeler, the pizza place I’ve been involved with since July of 1978.  The math is even correct, although z has been substituted for the r usually used for radius, and we normally use h for height instead of a.  But hey, that’s the beauty of variables, they can vary.

Whew!

It took me about 3 hours.  Had to download and install the payroll program, find my authorization code for it, download and install the most current tax tables, find the company’s latest backup file and re input the last payroll.

I now have pdf files of the W-2s, the W-3, all 4 quarters of 941s and the year end 940.  Yesterday I installed the new payroll program and recreated the one pay period that I lost in about 2 hours.  Everything is back as it should be.

Oh, and did I mention that I now have 3 back up copies of all my payroll information?  Yup, if they all crash at the same time, I’ll just give up, but for now all is good.

Psycho-Cyberbully: The Saga Continues?

Did you know that “Repetitious, unwanted computer communication” is a criminal offense under Utah Code 769201? 

We had a bullying seminar for the students the other day, and one of the police officers started the discussion with some interesting information about cyberbullying.  It led me to go up to him after the presentation and ask him some questions.  Here is some of the specific information I got from him:

1. Cyberbullying does not have to be threatening to be criminal.  It can be simply mean, insulting, rude or even “I love you” kind of stuff that is continued after it is made obvious it is unwanted.
2. Generally the FBI investigates these crimes because the internet crosses state lines.
3. tends to be very cooperative with law enforcement when it comes to the identification and prosecution of cyberbullies.

On to the main story, though.  The cyberbullying of Free Wheeler Pizza has hit critical mass and is being systematically dismantled.  The fake reviews have become so obviously personal that the people running those review sites are beginning to remove them as fast as they can be posted (I exaggerate, but you get the idea).  Facebook has removed 2/3 of the personal slams by the main culprit, in some instances eliminating the entire discussion.

One faction of this group of 3 hasn’t been heard from for over a month, the other has been MIA for a few days.

Are they regrouping?  Have they realized that their smear campaign backfired on itself?

I’m not sure what it is, but I’m sure enjoying the cybersilence.

Enquiring Minds Want to Know.

How many innocent people would you be willing to hurt for the sake of a 12 year old grudge?  One?  A couple?  Is it OK to spread lies and use deceit in an attempt to ruin a business if it puts less than 10 innocent people out of a job?  Just to get back at the two you’re pissed at?

Here’s the latest review that has shown up on at least 3 different sites just yesterday: (Feel free to skip most of it, other than the last paragraph it’s basically the same as the ones I previously posted).

Dec 6, 2011

I just had to post this after seeing all these glowing reviews that, if you read very carefully, are obviously posted by employees and friends of this joint. The reason I have to speak out is because I have tried this place and I will NEVER go back there again! Why?

Well, a co-worker at Rocky Mountain Power, recommended this pizza place to me and I decided to give it a shot and took my wife and two kids there in September. My son is 13 and my little girl is 8. We wanted to dine in but that was a huge mistake! First, the service was incredibly slow and 3rd-rate. I cannot believe that this place would offer dine-in because it is so dimly-lit and the atmosphere reminds me of a shed out back on my Uncle's old homestead in Price! The chairs and tables are very cheap and not appealing at all as well as being dirty when we sat down. I really was not too upset until I got the pizza. My kids would not touch it because it was so soggy it looked like soup on cardboard. Seriously, how hard would it have been to drain a bit of juice from our veggie pizza? I guess too hard for this place.

On to the next problem; the employees looked like they had not bathed or showered in weeks and their manners were atrocious! I tried really hard not to take it personally but I finally gave up when some young kid delivery driver started telling dirty jokes within hearing range of my kids. That was enough! We will never go back there again and we would recommend to you that you do not try it. You will be sorry like we are! This is definitely not a place for a family to go. I must say too, that the front of this place is a bit intimidating and dreary. The sign out front looks more apropeaux for a garage sale or a pawn shop!

After our interesting experience, I got on the internet and did some research about this free wheeler place. After a bunch of leads and contacts and about 6 weeks, I got in touch with an original owner of this pizza chain from years ago who told me that free wheeler pizza was started by potheads and druggies because they could not get a delivery pizza back in the 70's or so. This guy wanted his name left out but told me he owned several of these shops and since he knows a friend of mine, he revealed to me that they used to use free wheeler pizza shops as a front to sell dope and other drugs! Great! This place is the descendent of a drug ring! Need I say more!

We get it, you’re still bitter over the ending of your employment there.  But by your own accounts on the Facebook pages of the people you blame for it, it had no long term financial effects on you.  You’re doing great now, you’ve bragged about college grades and your financial success.  You’re happy in the new State you’re living in.

So why are you so intent on damaging a business that has been in the Salt Lake Valley for almost 35 years, your time there being just over 1/10 of it’s existence?  What about Tim, Adam, Kody and the rest that weren’t even there when it all came about?  Are you willing to sacrifice their livelihood, at a job they seem to like - having been there 3 or 4 years now, for the sake of revenge on the two?  What about the regular customers (myself and extended family included, and we’re not the only ones) who are used to having their occasional pizza?

I will continue to point out the inconsistencies of these kinds of reviews, on every site I find them.  Because the company you are attacking has been a part of my life for over half of it.  Because everything you say is either irrelevant, false or vastly exaggerated.  Because I still live in the same city and am down there at least every couple of weeks and know what their practices are like, and know that 98% of the time they serve a quality pizza.

So please, I’m appealing to your sense of fair play.  If you must exact revenge on the parties that you see as wronging you, please limit it to them.  Don’t continue this review charade that could end up hurting people that had nothing to do with what happened 12 years ago.

Thanks.

A Conspiracy of Three

A lot of you know about my 30+ year relationship with the very local Free Wheeler Pizza.  A few of you might have also read my post a while ago about a group of people who have been holding a 10 year grudge over their dismissal, and their harassment of the main people at Free Wheeler over the last year.  Up until now, other than that one post, I’ve stayed out of the fray since I have no first hand knowledge of what happened back then and, frankly, it’s none of my business.

Until I found out that someone has been orchestrating an effort to ruin the reputation of this business that has been a part of my life since I was a teenager.

You probably read the reviews I posted here last month.  I was seriously curious as to whether or not they were as obviously fake to someone on the outside as they are to me.

Well, I didn’t get my answer, but I’ll make my pitch anyway:

BEWARE THE VINDICTIVE REVIEW

Online review sites.  Any schlub, under the darkness of anonymity and ‘usernames’, can post a review on a whole plethora of things.  If you can name it, you can probably find a site to review it.

Problem is that if someone is really ticked off at you, they can sign up under multiple usernames and pass off a diatribe of personal vindictiveness as authentic reviews of your business. 

This is what’s happening to Free Wheeler Pizza, and after reading a slew of these reviews on a dozen different sites I’ve decided there are some definite signs that a group of reviews (positive or negative) are, for the lack of a better word, a conspiracy.

• Are these the reviewer’s only reviews? In all of the reviews I identified, this was their first and only review. Individually, this means nothing, every reviewer has to start somewhere. But when all of them are first-time reviewers (with newly created pseudonyms), you have to wonder.
• Do the reviewers fixate on a common theme? Again, by itself this could just be caused by a problem that everyone is noticing. But, are they problems that most businesses would work to correct? Like in the case of a restaurant, are they the kind of problems the Board of Health would easily notice and close you down for? Such as rotting food in the cold tables and enough mice scurrying around that customers can see them.
• Do they comment on the same petty things, things that are more of a pet-peeve than a serious problem? Things that most people wouldn’t harp on, such as a lack of uniforms and dirty clothing in a kitchen. (Food service is a messy business, you wouldn’t expect the same level of cleanliness in a kitchen as you would in a shoe store.)
• Does the review come to a reasonable conclusion, or do they admit to reacting irrationally? Did they take just one bite of the food and then throw it out the window, or did they bring it back and demand a refund? Did they get a case of explosive diarrhea and call the Board of Health to report it, or just write a review?
• Finally, do the reviews have a similar ‘voice’?  Could you tell where one ends and the next one starts if there were no breaks in the writing?

The main thing to ask yourself when reading any review is “Does this sound like the person is simply trying to inform me or do they sound like they need you to believe the way they do?  Do they sound angry or simply unhappy; fawning or just satisfied by the product?”  And if ever in doubt, go check it out for yourself.

Once again, thank you for listening to my venting.

I’m having a metal breakdown

I heard it all.  From a terrorist attack, pipe bomb to an explosion.  The only thing for sure is that an old Ford truck caught fire in the drive-thru at the McDonalds in Sugarhouse.  Probably just a simple engine fire since the only official on site was a security guard, No F.B.I., no C.S.I., no Homeland Security.

But a fire there was.  And at 7:30 PM tonight, the truck was still there, in the drive-thru, and the entire McDonalds property was fenced off.  I could still smell the charred wood.

Now, I’m not a big fan of McDonalds food.  I’d say it’s been over 3 years since I’ve eaten there, and I really don’t miss it.  But I feel bad for the people who work there and hope and pray that nobody got hurt.

And on the “small world” note, this McDonalds happens to be on the exact corner of the original Free Wheeler Pizza.  In fact, we had to move out of the original store because McDonalds bought the building so they could put this restaurant there.

So, there’s the burnt metal of an old ford, the dangling metal of the building’s gutter and, of course, the chain link fence surrounding the whole thing.  That’s my connection to the Metallic theme of:

Dawn of the dead.

From the moment that Free Wheeler Pizza was conceived, in the middle of the night by a half dozen inebriated out-of-Staters dismayed at the lack of food delivery service in the Salt Lake Valley, it’s been a counter-culture kind of place.

It has attracted employees from the likes of law-school students to a guy who used to hang himself vertically by meat hooks for relaxation.  And everything in between.  They either lasted 2 days and forced the place out of their memories, or several years and their ears still perk up when they hear the words ‘Free Wheeler’.

The most recently acquired partner wanted otherwise, he wanted to portray a more corporate image.  That may or may not have resulted in the recent, thankfully temporary, demise of the business, but it did cut me out of their payroll business for a more professional payroll service.

Now, after a couple of weeks on the Coroner's slab and a quick resurrection, things have changed.  The newly acquired partner is off to greener pastures in another state and the original partner is back at the helm.  New partner still holds financial interest in the business, but he’s going to be a semi-silent, long-distance partner.

The first order of business for original partner was to get me back on the payroll, doing the payroll.

Yup, I’m once again gainfully employed by 3 different companies, and a part of the Free Wheeler business.  Makes me happy.  Not just that I’ll be bringing in a little more money, but that the people of Free Wheeler (employees included) were happy that I would be processing their paychecks and coming by at least once every couple weeks to drop them off and shoot the breeze for a couple hours.

Happy days are here again, skies are clear and blue again…

Ode to a pizza parlor.

I got a text message in the middle of Algebra.  I took a quick look and all it said was “Free wheeler is closing”.  I had to wrap up the class, get the next one going, repeat the process a couple more times and then go to a 2 hour faculty meeting.  The message was pushed to the back of my mind.

Until I checked The Gearheads’ blog.  All I can say (not really, as you’ll soon see) is WOW. 

I’ve been involved with Free Wheeler Pizza since July 7^th, 1978, in one way or another.  Other than the last couple months and a few years in the 90’s, I’ve been processing their payroll since 1980.  Started out doing it all by hand, on those big ledger sheets, looking up deductions and taxes on a chart, going through miles of 10-key paper at a time.  I got my first real personal computer from them to do the payroll on, an Apple IIe.  Complete with 2, yes two, 5¼” floppy drives.

That place was my first career, I worked there for the last couple of my teen years, through my entire 20’s and the beginning of my 30’s.   I managed the Sugarhouse store at 3 different locations, the West Valley store at 2, the Holladay store and owned my own franchise in Provo for the 6 months before it went bankrupt (a story for another time).  It saw me through my parent’s divorce, turning 21, my 15 years of getting my Bachelor’s degree, going from living at home to owning my own home (a duplex with The Gearheads), and my mother’s death.

Like Mr. Gearhead says in his post, it was more than just a business, it was a family.  And all my real family, all my siblings, were involved with it at one time or another.  Even my parents, who gave their house 4 or 5 years in a row for the annual company anniversary party.

It was a small, locally owned restaurant.  Even in it’s heyday in the mid 80’s, when we were virtually the only pizza delivery place in Salt Lake City, we topped out at 11 stores, but for the most part it was a 1 or 2 store operation.   The owners always worked there, and we all knew them as Mike, Mitch, Al, Tony, Don.   Never as “Mr.” somebody.  Ownership changed hands several times, but it was more like being passed down the family line than selling out to someone, the new owner was always someone you knew, someone you had worked with, partied with and grown with for several years, and in my case sometimes someone who I had hired and been manager for.

Well, I’m gonna head off to sleep, let this sink in a bit.  All I have left to say for now is “Herb, you put up a hell of a fight.  Thanks.”

You can see my first in a line of stories about the place on my other blog: HERE.

Energy Solutions would even reject this…

Life lesson #1654-53A

Do not email someone out of the blue a decade after the last time you talked to them, call them spineless, wimp, gutless, question their sexuality, refer to them and an old friend of theirs as “a couple of old queers”, tell them their family hates them and generally berate them for something that happened over a decade ago, and then claim you harbor them no resentment.

I brought payroll down to the pizza place I’ve been involved with since right out of high school.  The owner, a friend of mine for over 20 years, told me of some contact he just had with a couple we all knew that he had fired from the business back in 1999.  I read the correspondence back and forth between them and walked out of the office with my mind reeling.  I won’t go into details, that’s not what this post is for, I just need to purge my brain.   I will say that I came out in a state of mind where I started giving this grown man advice like he was one of my 8th graders.  He didn’t need it, it was apparent from his last response that he knows the best thing to do is not even acknowledge it any further, but I had already slipped into teacher mode.

I call them toxic people.  I’ve been dealing with a few since the  beginning of this school year, and sincerely hope that I will let go of any resentment as soon as I’m out of the situation.  It was the same at the first school I taught at, which is one of the reasons I left.  Almost always negative, harping on things they cannot change, or changes their job requires them to make.  Every new idea that comes down the pike is “just another fad that will fade away when the next one comes along.”  Granted, especially in Education, there are tons of things that come down the pike that simply fade away, some because they were tried and failed, some because they never should have been tried.  But I’ve seen these people not only refuse to look into the new ideas, but fight even the ones the majority of the faculty have looked at and find interesting and promising. 

I’ve worked in 3 schools where these people  were the almost non-existent, silent minority.  Now, I’ve worked in 2 schools where they weren’t all that silent and, although still a minority, not-so-much non-existent.  Here’s to 59 more days of school, and blue skies in the future.

Old Pictures of the Day

The last week in July of '78, right out of high school, I walked into this dumpy little pizza place in Sugarhouse looking for a job.  My hair was down to my shoulder blades, I was dressed in old Levi's and I can still remember Jo in cutoffs, standing on a chair putting a pizza in the oven.  I asked her for an application, she grabbed a paper menu, flipped it over and said "here ya go."  I can't remember what I wrote on it, but it must have included my name and phone number, because a week later I got a call from one of the owners who asked "Can you work tonight?"  Thus began my career at Free Wheeler Pizza, which has spanned 3 decades (I still do their payroll, although for 3rd generation of owner).  During those first few years we were the only pizza delivery place in the valley, and despite business being slow we didn't have to worry about our market share.  This led to Free Wheeler Football.  Football intramurals at the University of Utah took place in the afternoon, usually ending around 5:30 or 6:00.  Avid football fans, the owners of Free Wheeler signed us up for the league, hung a sign out on the front door of the store every Monday that said "Gone Footballin'", had us put on our "Twisted Brains" t-shirts and the whole crew went up to the "U" to either play or watch the game.  Customers got used to it, they had no choice and we had a lot of fun.  Except when we played the "Austin Animals", a group of students who lived in Austin Hall (dorms).  You know the type of guys, ones that are good enough to play in the expert league, but choose the novice league so they could kick butt.  The first 15 minutes of our first game against them, one of our players was sent to the emergency room to get a dozen or so stitches under one eye.  We called them the "Austin A-holes".  Here's some of my many pictures from those games, I'm not going to go into too much description because without names it isn't going to mean much anyway, just suffice it to say my team is wearing red:

  

Old pictures of the day.

Camping at Lake Powell, like much of Southern Utah, used to be a lot of fun.  Then, about 10 years ago the rest of the world discovered it and ruined it for those of us who have been enjoying it since the mid 70's (and before).  Edward Abbey knew this and was smart enough to die before it happened.

.

Anyway, it was about 1979, I was working at Free Wheeler Pizza and had just bought my first brand new car.  The 1979 Mazda GLC Wagon you see below.  ($4,500 with tax & license).  Free Wheeler decided to shut down the store and have a company party at Lake Powell.  This was not an unusual thing, Free Wheeler would open 2 to 3 hours late so we could all play in the company football team up at the U.  So my best friend Ed, another worker (Kathy if I remember correctly), her dog and I packed all our stuff into my great little car and headed down.  You may or may not have heard of the Burr Trail, in '79 it was 100 miles of dirt road between Capitol Reef and Bullfrog, through an area called Waterpocket Fold.  The road  was on the map, even showed the town of Notom about 15 miles down.  I'd always  wanted to drive down Waterpocket Fold, so we decided to make a day of it and go down the dirt road rather than take the longer (distance, not time) highway route.  I had about a quarter tank of gas and planned on filling up in Notom.  We get about 20 miles down the road without any sign of Notom, stop at wash that crossed the road to determine if the car was going to make it across and take a break.  While we were stretching our legs a ranger comes from the other side, says "howdy" and we get to talking.  I was a little concerned about how deep the wash got, since I didn't have 4WD I didn't want to get stuck, but the ranger assured me the car would make it through fine.  The I ask "How much further to Notom?"  Notom, well, Notom's about 5 miles back.  "Five miles back?" I sez, "All I saw there was a clump of trees."  Yup, that's Notom.  Nice, it's just a farm, no gas station.  Well, it's 75 miles to Bullfrog and all I've got is 1/4 of a tank of gas.  I ought to turn back, go to Capitol Reef and fill up, right?  Yeah, right.  I'm 19, Ed's 19, Kathy's maybe 21.  No way we're going back.  Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead.  Now, 50 miles later we come over a little hill.  The road goes down, through the wash again and up another hill.  On the other side of the wash, on my uphill side, are three Jeep's parked at the side of the road.  The guys are out locking in the hubs, getting ready to forge this huge river when they see that overloaded Mazda come over the hill.  I could hear them chuckle.  I came to a stop, surveyed the situation, determined the wash was no deeper than the spot we went through earlier, hit the gas, come screeming down the hill, splash through the water, continue straight up the hill and over to the other side.  Laughing all the way, 'cause you should have seen their faces.  Jaws on the ground, eyes wide open in disbelief.  Yeah, I wasn't even thinking about the gas situation at that moment.  As for the gas, we did make it to Bullfrog.  Put 11.9 gallons in an 11.5 gallon tank.  Drivin' on fumes I was. 

The contrast between the red rock canyons and the blue water is beautiful.

This is Al, Mitch and Mike, the original owners of Free Wheeler Pizza.