Mr. Goodcents

The Door to the Future

Sometimes opportunity knocks.
Sometimes you have to open your own door and go looking for opportunity.


Grant had several job applications in across town, from the grocery store to the book store.  The money would definitely be nice, but the real reward was to be able to document gainful employment in the State of Missouri in order to become eligible to apply for in-state tuition.


With an eye toward opportunity for his first paying job, Grant spotted a "Help Wanted" sign in a nearby deli sandwich shop.  He got a call to come in and interview with the manager.  She told him he was one of 3 applicants for 2 openings, but led him to believe he had done well in the interview and was all but assured of a position, doing some general sandwich shop sales and some delivery.  His assurance that he could make correct change was perhaps the deciding factor, but the recent acquisition of the family's 2003 Camry was a plus in landing the job, as it gave him the flexibility to make deliveries.


Returning to Columbia, Missouri (aka 'CoMo') after a few days home in Texas, he was called to come in and make his start the next week.  He landed his first job!


His commute is about 2 miles from his summer place, so he able to finish his summer school Economics course at 10:50 AM and go directly to the morning shift 11-3.  He started out with 12 hours/week as a delivery driver, making good use of his GPS app on his smart phone.  He has quickly worked into additional behind-the-counter work; slicing the meats, dressing the sandwiches to the customer's choosing and ringing up their orders.  For deliveries he is compensated an additional $2 per trip and gets to keep the tips, which can account for more than double his hourly wages.


Grant speaks well of his manager and says everyone has been very helpful in helping him break-in to the way things are done a Goodcents.  Many of his coworkers are (or were) tightly-wound lesbians, but a couple of these high maintenance employees "flipped out" and walked out after declaring the working conditions "ridiculous".  It is a mystery to Grant as to what the unresolveable issue(s) were - but he has since ended up with additional hours to fill in for the walk outs.


Making sandwiches & Making money Makes Goodcents.

What the Hail!

beep-beep-beep-
The National Weather Services has issued the following alert...


If you are driving a new car and feeling somewhat smug about it, you may be about to be pummeled by baseball-sized hail. Enjoy your fate BOHICA.


Looking into the sky on June 13th, about rush hour, those driving home home saw a wall of black clouds and dark gray rain close in on them.  Those looking at the weather radar on their computer screen saw a violet and purple shaded core in the storm cell.  Either way, to the naked eye or the digital view from Doppler radar - it was bad news.  This was going to be severe.


Sue left work around 6 o'clock, put the keys into the ignition of her new Camry in which she had driven several hundred miles since picking it up from the Toyota deal March.  The sky was dark to the north, but no rain.  Once she had made it about 4 miles, she winced as dull thuds and sharper plinks began to reverberate inside the passenger compartment as chunks of ice began to hurl out of the clouds while stopped for red traffic light.  She got a green light and detoured off her normal course home and parked the front of the car beneath the overhang of a parking garage.  Bump, pop, thud.  Ouch. 


Within a few drawn out minutes, the baseball-sized hail stones had been blown on to new targets and she pulled onto northbound Highway 75 for the trip home.  For the motorists on 75 who had no where to find shelter, it was brutal.  The shoulder of the highway was lined up for miles with parked vehicles, almost everyone had their back window blown out by the hail stones, and their windshields had become opaque with shattered safety glass, making driving impossible.


We counted six "dimples" on the exterior, mostly on the back half of the car where its tailpipe was sticking out into the weather, but no shattered glass.  It definitely could have been worse, as those frozen baseballs dropping from 25,000 feet can and did do some damage.

Someone not as lucky as us take a pounding from The Storm in Dallas: June 13, 2012