Cup of Coffee

June 22, 2012: Why? Just…Why

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A couple of days ago, a kid I work with got fired because he consistently smelled so terrible that customers complained almost every day. He was sent home several times after getting in, and still didn't use this as motivation to bathe. The guy was a pretty good salesman, too, which makes the whole thing even more pathetic.

119 thoughts on “June 22, 2012: Why? Just…Why”

  1. Perhaps his smell was his sales technique? "Yes, I'll buy something, if it gets you away from me!"

    1. I had a smelly salesman at Big Box in Maple Grove. He was knowledgeable but I couldn't wait to get away from him.

    2. Heh, I've definitely suggested that one to coworkers before.

      It got worse with time. Perhaps his numbers dropped near the end, I don't know. It's certainly true that I was getting more complaints about him near the end. I know his department better than he did (I worked there for years before being in this store) and I'm just a few steps away, so a lot of his customers ended up coming to me and sticking there when they realized that I, too, knew the stuff.

      I just don't get it. The kid was socially inept to some degree, but you'd think being repeatedly told that you have to do something about your odor would get through.

      1. I was friends with a guy like that at Office Max. Constant complaints, self-admitted that he took a shower a month, fairly terrible at most other aspects of his job.

        I have no idea how he lasted a full year.

        2. As someone who used to work there before the arrests and corporate reorganization, I can't say this surprises me.

  2. Right fielder Ben Revere, who grew up in Kentucky and lives in Lexington, purchased 56 tickets for friends and family during the series in Cincinnati. He just received the bill Thursday. "Basically, I'm playing for free," he joked.

    I like Ben.

  3. Remember when James and Wade would never win a championship and Erik Spoelstra was an idiot and the whole team needed to be blown up? That was a long time ago. Like about a week and a half.

    1. Yeah, I only get MSM either in the break room or here when people post about it, but even I was bombarded for a couple of days with stories about how it was a failure and they'd probably have to lose Bosh and maybe Wade, and move on with a different supporting cast.

  4. No proof?

    For how many years was James supposed to have been the best player in the game? Before Thursday night, there had never been any proof to support the theory.

    No proof before Thursday night(!?!) to support the theory? That's ridiculous. Never fear, though, the Heat won and as the title of the article quoted from above says, "James' title is sweet redemption".

    1. I really don't get the LeBron hatred. He has a big ego and he can be an idiot. That doesn't seem hateworthy to me. I think it is much easier to hate Kobe, an accused rapist.

      1. He has a big ego and he can be an idiot.

        Which makes him like pretty much every other professional athlete, with a few exceptions.

      2. The thing you need to remember about hatred is that it generally doesn't need logical reasons.

      3. Read Posnanski on Clemenating players. Sometimes it makes watching more fun to make them into villains in our minds.
        Like: Miggy Cabrera, AJ, A-Rod, Jeter (guilty of playing really well for the Yankees, basically), Scioscia, Girardi, That Dancing Closer from the Tigers, Papelbon, etc.

        It's best if we can know that our stories about them are not real, that our hatred should only extend to the realm of sports.

          1. I don't really hate Jeter at all. He's had a pretty amazing career and he's pretty much quieted any critics with his bat the last two years. I'm actually stunned that he's continued to hit. What I hate is the irrational media treatment of him (my daughter was born in the same hospital as Derek Jeter!!!!11111111!!!one@@@211). Well, that and the puppy eating thing.

            I get the Clemenating and JoePos said it as well as anybody. I guess as I've gotten older, I've gotten less interested in athletes personally and more interested in just watching their play. Is KG somewhat of a turd? Yeah, it appears so. Does he play basketball in a way that I can only dream of? Hell, yes. So, increasingly, count me out of that.

            Media types, though, it's open season on those idiots.

        2. I like having villains, but I typically don't dislike them, if that makes any sense. I love it when the Twins beat the White Sox, but I never really had anything against, say, Ozzie Guillen any more than I have something against the Wicked Witch of the West or the Borg Collective. And especially in sports where I don't really have a rooting interest, it can be fun to see villains work their magic. I enjoyed Bill Belicick and Tom Brady "running up the score" on other teams and everyone getting their undies in a bunch over it. Even though I likely wouldn't take that approach, it provides for more interesting stories than good guys vs. good guys. At this point, I don't really even "hate" the Yankees. Yeah, they're annoying, but they aren't doing anything the Twins wouldn't do given the resources, and the real problem lies with the owners as a whole not standing up to the Yankees and insisting on more league-wide revenue sharing. The only problem with the Yankees is that they beat the Twins so consistently that it's really tempting to just stop paying attention.

          1. The villian approach is how I put it. Yeah, LeBron was fun to watch when he was with Cleveland, his game is incredible no doubt about that. But after "The Decision" he became a villian and someone to root against. It would have made the Finals more interesting for me if OKC had made more of a series out of it. Since they didn't, I lost interest after game 3. Its too bad, too, because Durant makes a terrific "good guy" to James's "bad guy" in a campy, cliched sort of way.

            But then there's Wade. I "hate" Wade because I hate his game and find it not fun at all to watch him on the court.

            1. I'm against Wade because of that first name. I know, it's not his fault. Just like it's not Jeter's fault that the Yanquis drafted him.

            2. actually, the Wade hate confuses me too (other than the disapprobation of how his mother spelled his first name). Incredible athleticism and body control. He earned (almost) every trip to the line he got in this series. He's a great, great, great player, 1A to LeBron's 1.

              On the other hand, the flagrant foul call against Derek Fisher last night was total crap. I really hate how certain strong players (such as LeBron) are allowed to run people over on their way to the basket, or slam into the defender in the post. I hate, hate, hate that kind of basketball. LeBron should have been called for a charge on the play. Fisher did nothing but try to protect himself against a 270-lb freight train intent on knocking him down.

      4. Im not a big James fan because he just kills the Wolves.

        I think Alex Rodriguez and LeBron James are twins or something. Both are (well, in A-Rod's case) were ridiculously good at their sport. But both are villians because the ESPN Goon Squad needs someone to mock and throw darts at for not being 'clutch' or some other made up thing.

        1. I'm as big a James fan there is, but I don't understand what you mean about the wolves. I've seen his deer-hunting pix though (apparently a big buck in Georgia is a small buck in MN).

    2. The antidote to the "no proof" nonsense comes from Hollinger:

      Similarly, we are now forced to contemplate James' status as an all-timer when we consider the body of work and what he might add to it. By any analysis, LeBron is pretty darned high on the list.

      Let's start with the numbers. According to basketball-reference.com, James' career PER is the second-best all time, trailing only Jordan's. Two caveats come with that: First, it is basically a post-merger stat since we don't have turnovers, blocks and steals for the older generation; and second, it's destined to go down a bit once he gets into his past-prime years.

      The big asterisk with LeBron, however, has always been the playoffs. History says they haven't been as bad as you think. Jordan trumps him on this metric, and so do Shaq and Tim Duncan, leaving James a distant fourth in career playoff PER. Nonetheless, he outranks a pretty formidable list of talents, including guys with names like Earvin, Larry and Kobe. He also has the best single-season playoff PER ever, again by a wide margin: a ridiculous 37.43 in 2009 (check it out).

      Of course, LeBron has been the best player in the game for a while; he just hadn't backed it up in June until now. James had won three of the past four MVP awards, and the one exception was immediately called into question after James suffocated Chicago's Derrick Rose in the 2011 Eastern Conference finals. In two of his three MVP years his team also had the NBA's best record, and in the third it won the championship.

      Want more? James has become one of only three players in the post-merger era (Jordan and Shaq are the others) with multiple seasons of PER greater than 30 (he has three), and this year joined those two as the only ones with multiple seasons of playoff PER greater than 30 (minimum 10 games).

  5. Dad's got a bonus day of vacation he's got to burn, so him, the little brother and I are headed golfing. I'm the best, but that's a very relative term. We, as a lot, are terrible golfers. We'll see how this goes.

    1. Describe "terrible golfers" in absolute terms. What are your best and average scores on, say, 9 holes?

      (Now I believe myself to be a terrible golfer, and I think we should get objective on this.
      My best on 9 holes? 81. I averaged about 100. I've never attempted 18 in a day.
      Past tense because I can't imagine how I will ever go again. The only opportunities I have are through work, and I prefer not to have my horrible golf game effect the stock price.)

      1. AMR, I believe that I could keep up with you on the golf course. More or less.

        a couple of summers ago on a family trip to Madden's, I played the social course with GrampaS, BrotherS and The Boy. I think I parred a hole or two.

        1. I'm terrible. Can't hit it straight, no touch with my irons, if I can even pretend to make consistent solid contact. But, I can one-putt for a snowman with the best of them. My brother, on the other hand, is really good. When he hits a bad shot, he recovers. Used to make me mad that he's so much better than me.

          1. I need to hire you as my closer when I go golfing.

            I usually have birdie or par putts on most holes, but I also usually settle for double bogeys.

            (best score on 18 was an 89 - back when I played golf almost every weekend)

        2. I gave up golf years ago. I realized it was costing me a lot of money to get really pissed off and I figured there must be cheaper ways of getting really pissed off. I was/am horrible at golf.

          1. That's why I never started. I don't have the temperament for such a frustrating game.

            I'm a very good mini-golfer so my putting would probably be fairly good for a beginner, but if my golf swing is anything like my baseball swing, I'd never reach the green anyway.

      2. My best 'honest' score was a 103 on 18 holes (no mulligans, all penalty strokes counted). If I could someday break 100, I could put the clubs away and be done with it. But I'm not quite there yet.

        1. Oh yeah, My 81 and 100 wasn't counting swings where I missed the ball completely. That'd add at least 40 strokes to each score.

      4. I love golf, but don't play often enough to be any good - too expensive and time consuming. The best honest* round I've ever had was a 97. Didn't hit my first birdie on a par 4 until this year. I've been learning to golf since I was 15, but have never been out more than a dozen times in any 1 year.

        *Using Twayn's description

        1. I had a birdie once on a par-3. Got lucky on the drive to the green, less than 5 feet out, and got lucky on the putt. I think that was my 81-round.

          97 on 9 holes?

      5. I adore golf, and try to make sure I put a couple nines a week (by the time I get off work, 18 is sort of a pipe dream). I'm not particularly good at it, but I'm roughly a bogey golfer. Best in 9 is 39, best in 18 is 92.

          1. I am about this good. Well, I was until this year. It's tough to play consistently these days.

        2. Same here, although I found I can play up - we were are a links course in Bloomfield last year and a pro joined us to make a 3-some. For some reason I got real serious and tightened 'er up, and beat him. 'Course, he did have a heater going most of the time (strange, smoking golf pros...).

      6. I was told I needed to learn to play golf. I took a private lesson. At the end of the lesson, the instructor told me all I needed to do was go to the driving range twice per week and golf 18 holes per week.

        I thanked him and never touched the clubs again. I don't have the time or interest to golf.

      7. The only time I ever kept score was years ago, and I don't remember the score exactly. I do remember it was 2-man best shot with Dad at the company outing, and we won the booby prize for worst score.

        I'm bad enough that I can only remember having 1 par putt in the last few years. Did make it, ended up with a 7 on the hole, but the fact I was even in a position for par was amazing. I'd say I average roughly +3 per hole, so around 62-63/9 holes.

    2. My best score on 18 is 98, and the only time I've broken 100. I don't embarrass myself on the course because I'm quick, and I don't get upset or frustrated anymore. Too old to care how much I suck at the game and I just enjoy the weather.

      1. This is by far the healthiest approach to take. I like to think of it as a three mile walk during which wonderful and terrible things may happen.

    3. Richfield used to have a golf course where youth were allowed to golf for free every Friday morning in the summers (until it got eminent domain'd by the airport). I played that one quite a bit in junior high and have played a few rounds every year the past few. Two summers ago, I shot a 97 in 18. That's the only time I've ever been below a 100. The Executive 9-hole at Fred Richards in Edina (par 29) is perfect because you can get in and out in 2 hours.

      1. I'm an executive 9-hold kind of guy. Play one down here in Mankato a few times a summer. Poorly. I play poorly.

    4. I like golf, but havent played it since 2008 when I got rid of my clubs because I was moving and had no space for them. I miss it more nowadays because I work at a golf course. But when I played, it was just me and my roommate hitting the ball around and shooting the breeze and enjoying the weather. We were never really good at it, but it was fun to go out and hit the ball around.

      Down in the Albert Lea area, there were a few courses that were 'beginner' courses and ridiculously cheap (one was $15 for 9 holes and a cart Monday thru Thursday) so we would play those. We played a round at the 'real' 18 hole golf course in Albert Lea. I shot a 136.

    5. I worked two summers as a groundskeeper at Rolling Greens Country Club and another six months working on the construction of a golf course in Idaho and I took a golf class in college, but I've never played a round of golf other than mini or video games.

    1. The arbitrariness of MLB's territories – seriously, six teams want to claim Iowa as their own? – lends a sense of unfairness to the system.

      Italics from the article.

      This kind of shit really pisses me off. It's as though Iowa isn't worth fighting over. Like we don't have passionate baseball fans or our money doesn't spend the same as anyone else's. Passan talks out of both sides of his mouth, first saying how unfair our situation is (it is) but then in the same article ridiculing why 6 teams would even want to claim territory here.

      3. Maybe I'm just giving him the benefit of the doubt, but the point could be that no clubs play there.

        Proposed compromise: at most any location can be in the blackout area of three clubs, and then only if two of those clubs share a metropolitan area (NYY/NYM, SFG/OAK, LAA/LAD, CWS/CHC). It's just ridiculous what Iowa and Hawaii have to put up with: there could be full-schedule days in IA where 40% of the MLB games are blacked out.

  7. I have some extra tickets for tonight's Foster the People/Tokyo Police Club/Kimbra show that I'm trying to get rid of. Respond here, e-mail or contact me via book of faces if you're interested. bmjohnson327 at the heated mail dot com.

    1. CoC, how many tickets and how much? My daughter was talking about wanting to go to that show not too long ago, so I might be interested.

    2. Bumma - am big TPC fan and would have scarfed those up if was in the area.

      2. I texted my trainer friend about how Buxton looks in his first game. He responded with "pretty good." I guess one of the fly balls he hit was "crushed" even though he got jammed on the pitch. He was also very impressed by the starting pitcher, a guy named Randy Rosario.

  10. I could very well be making something out of nothing, but a statement from this article bugs me:

    Pirates outfielder Andrew McCutchen had just smacked a three-run double in the second inning on Thursday, bringing Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson to the mound to ask righthander Liam Hendriks why he can't make an adjustment.

    "I've seen you throw strikes with your fastball before," Anderson said to him.

    It seems to me that it's Anderson's job to help him figure out what adjustment to make and to help him make it. Just telling him "make an adjustment" or "throw strikes" is worthless. I could go out there and do that.

    1. This reminds me of a video skit once talking about a particular football play that turned into an interception. The coach asks the class what the QB should've done differently. Three different kids suggest different patterns, and the coach rejects them all and says that the correct answer is that he shouldn't have thrown the damn interception.

    3. Awhile after the old man had died, I got it in my head to get back into duck hunting, as we had done that when I was a kid.

      So I bought a shotgun (Remington 870 - Wingmaster) - bitchin gun, nice reach.

      And thot I'd try to get in some lessons at the Gun Club in Forest Lake. Got assigned to Otis.

      Otis (middle aged black dude, rather girthly) took me out to the skeet portion of the course. He quickly figured out which eye was dominant (the wrong one, BTW), and put some scotch tape on my non-dominant glasses lens to prevent me from using the weak side (brilliant).

      Otis then had me shoot at some clay pigeons. NBB: "Pull!" Boom! Otis: "You missed it." NBB: "Pull!" Boom! Otis: "You missed it." Etc.

      Nothing like - "how 'bout lead it more", or "follow-thru with your swing", or "breathe in", or "think about painting the duck with a brush" - just "missed it", "missed it", "missed it".

      Long story short - Mr. Otis never got a second appt, but the gun was great for getting ducks after the first retreat.

      1. Would be interested in this as a full-on short story...maybe not a short story made long, but longer than anecdote length.

  11. ESPN's Euro coverage plusses: Michael Ballack's insight, Ballack looking like Matt Damon from the right angle, Bob Ley, Ian Darke in the booth.
    Minuses: Any time Alexi Lalas opens his mouth, Macca in the booth

    1. That's a pretty good list. I would also fault them for not nearly enough Tommy Smyth. Also, while Ballack is fairly insightful, any time they attempt to have him interact with Lalas ends as a trainwreck.

      3. Appropos of nothing, "Tyson" could easily be replaced with "Coleman" when singing to oneself.
        Appropos of even less, I hope Strat's middle name has two syllables.

  15. Tool for visualizing a commute in every major US city.

    I found it more interesting for a different reason. It's often said that Tropicana Field is difficult to get to for the majority of people in the area. Compare the above for Target Field (the park is close enough to downtown) to Tropicana Field (the park is really close to the default location). Zoom out all the way (there's a reasonable max) to make the comparison fairer.

    Or, you know, just use it for your commute.

  16. Ok, Gleeman linked to it, but it bears repeating: Bill James/LeBron James.

    Hi, I’m basketball player and APBR-fanatic LeBron James. According to advanced statistics, I'm the best basketball player on Earth! (and in the 2012 NBA Finals). CLUTCH DOESN'T EXIST!!!!!

      1. my work schedule has not allowed me to watch much of this tourney, but the Greek strategy is to let the other team have 80% of possession and luck into a goal?

        1. And just as I say that, Germany retakes the lead.

          Pretty much, yeah. They are technically overmatched, so the sit-and-counter is their only chance. They won Euro 04 doing it.

  18. A nice little story on a big girl.

    I was never an Olympic-style lifter. No place to do it, and I lacked the flexibility to be good at it. But it is a cool sport. I loved watching Vasili Alexeyev and David Rigert. Alexeyev is the more famous, a mountain of a man, but Rigert was truly awesome in the 90 under 100 kilo class

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAnWOC4Pf_Y

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