Tales of low level management and a frustrated engineer

A recent article on Motley Fool suggested JC Penny had a sq footage target for its stores that would shrink the store size down by 30K or more sq feet, on average.  The article also noted the challenges with that,  namely that all their locations are in malls where renovations and subleasing can get tricky and require the approval of the property managers. Instead of shrinking the stores down JC Penny should do more partnering with other retailers that have struggled to maintain presence in malls and compartmentalize areas of their stores in to their own units.  I.E. 20 years ago every mall had a toy store, usually it was Kay Bee Toys in recent years it was Toys R Us Express, but now most malls have no toy stores.  JC Penny has the cash to buy the Kay Bee Toys name, build a few cubicle walls in an area of the store near the Sephora display and the Jewlery and purses and bring toys back to the mall.  Make it a separate business unit to JC Penny but still contrib...

I found out recently that my great grand father wrote for a local newspaper in the years after the first world war and up to his death around the time of the Great Depression. Largely he wrote political and philisophical essays, which is even more interesting to me since it is almost a dialog with a long passed away family member that was gone half a centruy before I was born. I say it is almost a dialog because the only thing missing from this are my questions to him that might guide our discussion, however he wrote so much that many of the things I might think to ask to learn his temperment and ideology have been answered already.  I first discovered this rabbit hole a year ago when I found out that he had wrote articles for the paper.  On the first day that I attempted to dig in to the hole I learned that this was going to be a deep hole.  At first I only knew of two articles; my second cousin had a paper clipping of one, and one of them is avalible through Google (g...

We all are familiar with the Doppler Effect.  It is why when an emergency vehicle has the sirens on the pitch of the sirens drops as the vehicle passes you. (The difference in speed between you and the emergency vehicle either compress or elongates the sound waves from the siren which changes the pitch of what you hear.) Hubble space telescope was used to identify other galaxies and thanks you certain types of stars that burn with a known standard brightness.  NASA scientists were then able to detect shifts in the standard color of the light to know what direction the other galaxies were moving in relation to us.  This means that the Doppler Effect works with light waves too!  (And now the science gets crazy) The light from a galaxy moving away from us shifts to the red and a galaxy moving towards would shift to the violet.  Just with sound the faster the speed towards or away from us the more the light would shift either towards red or violet.  The c...

If you ever met me in person you would note that I am a quite guy.  I don't talk much but when I do it is usually with purpose.  But if you could hear my thoughts you would also note I never shut up.  I am always talking in my head and thinking of things. Today I got to thinking about the movie Interstellar.  Beside the last 15 minutes it was a really good movie.  But lets talk about that planet they went to, the one that some how safely orbits a black hole just outside the event horizon. Besides that, once an hour, wave what was wrong with that planet that we couldn't habitat there.  Even that wave, we can build a fix for that I am pretty sure. 1. They landed on something and were walking around on something.  That water was only knee deep.  You can totally shore up some dry land by digging down in some other areas. 2. We know how to disapate wave energy, we already do it.  A water wave on that scale isn't something we have ever dealt wi...

I had to be the mean boss last week.  I still am sprised someone tried to challenge me on something as simple as, "sit here all day and watch all the safety training videos."  Some how some one fell through the cracks on that and never completed the safety training we require.  He spent almost the entire shift giving me reason after reason why he didn't have to do and how he had all these safety certifications from another job that are endorsed by OSHA. I sure didn't want a wasted day of someone not getting things done because they missed their safety training during their hire on but when the tuber boss says do it, just do it.  I hated saying it but eventually I told him that I gave him permission to skip all his regular work so that he could focus on getting this done and out of the way but if he wasn't going to do it he could go home. What real kills me about it is that I really felt like this one of the guys on the team that understood what I am doing with o...

I guess in some ways I am that stereotypical manegment supervisor type.  I am overweight, balding, and on the whole dissatisfied with my position.  But for me this is a journey, I will rue the day that I forget my purpose.  I am not here to be the best low level manager I can be, I am here to prove I got what it takes to be successful in any role I am put in to. In that vain, as life calms down and I start to get acclimated to a new city and new state the goals become all the more clear.  I have been hitting the gym with renewed vigor.  30 pounds in 2 months is the goal.  We will see what happens with that.  If am totally honest with myself I have an unhealthy dependence on Mountain Dew, it is a double whammy of sugar and caffeine.  Coffee definitely helps subside the Mountain Dew cravings but they are still there.  It is a secret of manufacturing work that most factories run on Mountain Dew, Monster Energy, and other similar energy drinks....

The majority of the interactions you have with government are not at the federal level.  If you are dissatisfied with he direction of government as you see it the best thing you can is get involved in city, township, or county politics.  Most people that have a higher rating of the direction of the country are more engaged in their community and have a stronger sense of civic duty. Be a builder, not a blocker.