Hit SEND Before it’s Too Late - Repost

When we sent Son Number One off to his first year of college last year, we attended a one-day parent orientation. It was an informative day on a number of levels, the most striking of which was just how bad incoming college freshman are at using email.

Apparently, the first year of college doesn’t completely fix the problem, as evidenced by Son Number One’s new sophomore year apartment complex and their insane information spamming program. I’m a co-signer of the lease, so I’m on the mailing list, and between June 1^st and today – roughly 82 days – the Greenleaf Republic apartments sent me 64 emails. I don’t even talk to my wife that much.

One email a week would have been 12, and that still would have been major overkill for the amount of actual information they conveyed to us. Why did they send me 39 of the EXACT SAME EMAILS about move-in schedules and action items? Because their student clientele obviously still sucks at email.

Well, I’m here to tell you, parents of younger kids, it might be too late for my kids, but yours might still have hope, if you act quickly. Last year after the orientation day, I was kind enough to devise a plan to help all you younger parents out there who want their kids to someday be able to hold down a real job. Best of luck!

There’s a funny thing about kids these days. They have embraced digital technology like no other generation before them. It is interwoven into their lives and they probably would not be able to function without it.

Except for email.

For whatever reason, email – once the very pinnacle of sophisticated digital communications – is like a rotary phone to them. They don’t know how to use it.

Way back when the boys were little, I set all three of them up with Gmail accounts. Best dad move ever, I thought at the time. I would have been less enthusiastic had I known how little and how poorly they would use them.

If you email them something, you have to text them to tell them that you emailed them. If you do that, you have increased the chances from 0% to 11% that they will see your email. Unfortunately, even if they do see it, the chances are still 0% that they will actually read it.

I foolishly thought that high school would get them in the habit of using email effectively. I mean, after all, they were given school email addresses in order to communicate with their teachers. Once again, I was wrong. Ask any high school teacher how well the kids use email. They will just laugh and laugh.

Once again, I foolishly thought things would change with my eighteen-year-old when it was time to register for college. And once again, I was wrong.

He is going to University of Nevada, Reno in the fall, and yesterday was his orientation day. About two weeks ago we received an email about Orientation Step One. I saw that he and I had both received it, and I even mentioned it to him at the time.

When I inquired about it Monday night – the night before orientation – he said, and I quote, “Huh?”

When I sat down with him at his computer and had him look for the email, he immediately claimed that he had no idea where it was, and probably never got it. As I stared slack-jawed at his 999 unopened emails in his inbox, I suggested that he might try a search for the word “orientation.”

Miraculously, we found the email, which contained a detailed list of lots of things he needed to take care of about a week ago. He had a busy night.

The next day at UNR, one of the presentations for the parents was from the head of the student advisory department. They are in charge of helping the kids get all the classes they need in order to stay on track. She talked with us for twenty minutes, and about nineteen of those minutes consisted of begging us to somehow make our children check their emails.

Hmm…

So, parents of young children, this is your Immature Societal Email Nonfunction Disorder (I-SEND) Public Service Announcement. It’s obviously too late for our college freshmen, but you might still be able to salvage your children.

You need to get your kids in the habit of checking (and actually reading) their emails on a daily basis. It won’t be easy, but it can be done if you focus on the things they really want and need.

For instance, kids need food. Put a lock on the refrigerator and the pantry and email them the combination. Change the combination each day.

Kids love Wi-Fi. Change the code daily and have them send you an email each day to request their chore list. When they have replied with a list of fully completed chores, they can then send a separate email formally requesting the Wi-Fi code. If their email has no subject line, delete it without reading it.

Kids enjoy getting an allowance. Each month they must email you an allowance request. They can find their money after they complete a series of back-and-forth informational emails as you lead them through a scavenger hunt. Make it complicated. If you have more than one child and they use Reply All incorrectly, no allowance that month.

If you have teenagers that drive, the location of their car keys should be available only by email. Every once in a while, send them an email from you, but with poor grammar and spelling errors, starting with, “Dearist beloved Child.” Include an attachment that is a “pdf of the locality of you keys.”

The pdf should read: “You don’t get to drive today because in the real world you just downloaded a virus. Stay home and learn which emails to flag as spam.”

Good luck out there, parents!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Do Your Job Like Nora

This is a message for all you kids out there. And also all you adults who act like kids. And really, also you adults who act like adults. This is a message for everyone, I guess.

This is a story about having pride in your work. This is a story about “Nora.”

Nora is in quotes there because I’m old and I didn’t write it down, so I’m only about sixty-five percent sure her name was actually Nora, but I’m rolling with it because calling her Hostess X makes this sound like a story about sci-fi or street drugs, which it is not.

You see, all three of our boys were out of the country over spring break last week, and my wife’s school district was holding spring break at the exact same time, so we were forced by parental law and basic common sense to escape by ourselves on vacation. We went to Tennessee and visited Memphis and Nashville. I would highly recommend both.

We have two good friends who have spent time in Memphis, so we got restaurant recommendations galore for the birthplace of rock and roll. We ate at Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken. We ate at Hattie B’s Hot Chicken. We ate at Central BBQ. We ate at Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous. We had to unbutton the top of our pants a couple times. Totally worth it.

All of those places were amazing in their own right, but one place shined above all others – because of Nora.

Nora is the hostess at a little place called Itta Bena. It sits above B.B. King’s Blues Club on Beale Street, and if you didn’t know it was there, you would never know, because it doesn’t have any signs. Literally none. We had to ask the bouncer at the door of B.B. King’s how to get there, and he told us to go around the corner to Second Street and go up the stairs with the blue awning.

The stairs looked shady at best, and when we got to the top, we were greeted by a blank door that looked equally shady. Thankfully, everything on the other side of the door was amazing.

Backing up to earlier that day, we were at the National Civil Rights Museum, in between chicken breakfast and rib lunch, when I got a phone call. I answered and a young lady asked, “Is this Mr. Schmatjen?” Now, you have to understand, with a last name like Schmatjen, we have a built-in BS detector when it comes to telemarketing. You automatically know if the person on the other end of the phone knows you or not.

If they try to pronounce it like any normal human would, I say, “What is this regarding?” If they pronounce it how my insane ancestors decided they would, I say, “Yes, it is.”

“Yes it is,” I said.

“Hello, this is Nora calling from Itta Bena. Just confirming your reservation with us tonight.”

“Umm… yes. Uh… we will be there. Thank you.”

I hung up the phone with a puzzled look on my face. I didn’t know Nora, and she didn’t know me, but she pronounced my last name flawlessly. My wife, who had been scowling at me for answering my phone in the National Civil Rights Museum, saw the look on my face and asked what was wrong.

“That was Itta Bena calling about our reservation, and she knew how to pronounce our name.”

“Didn’t you make the reservation online?”

“Yes I did.”

“Wow,” my wife agreed. “That is weird.”

When we navigated the speakeasy-type entrance later that evening and made it to the hostess desk, I had almost forgotten about it. But when I said, “Marc for two,” to the young lady that turned out to be Nora, she said, “Ah, yes. Mr. Schmatjen.”

“All right, time out. How do you know how to pronounce our name?”

Nora almost seemed to get a little embarrassed as she explained, “Well, before I make calls in the morning, I do a little internet research to see if I can figure out the hard names, because… well, it matters to me.”

My wife and I both complimented her on that, and then she showed us to our table. We then proceeded to have a phenomenal dinner in the little upstairs hidden restaurant. Itta Bena comes with my highest recommendation, even if your last name is Smith. The food was insanely good.

A few days later, after thinking about how strangely above and beyond Nora did her job, I called Itta Bena and spoke to her manager. I told him how impressed I was that she would take the time to do something that, most certainly, the world would never expect a restaurant hostess to do.

The norm would be for someone on the other end of the phone to ask for me by my first name and then apologize for not knowing how to pronounce the last name. I would then joke with them about how it’s a sight word, or that we should have bought a few more vowels from Pat and Vanna, and then we’d go on about our business.

No one, including myself, would ever expect you to know how to pronounce it when you see it. But Nora made the effort. It is a seemingly small thing, but when you live your life with a last name like Schmatjen, it turns out it’s a big deal.

It was a big deal to her manager, too, because he didn’t know she did that, and he was thrilled to hear about one of his employees shining at their job.

So, my challenge for you folks out there is to attack your job like Nora does. Don’t just show up and do your job. Show up early, stay late, and do your job exceptionally well.

And I said it before, but I’ll say it again – great job, Nora!

By the way, I never did catch your full name... Probably something like Nora Wegrzynkiewicz.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Not-So-Super Bowl

I’ve had some easy jobs in my time. I’ve been the traffic control stop/slow sign guy. That was easy. I’ve been paid to sit in the booth at a gas station and sell people cigarettes, which, looking back on it seems dangerous and poorly thought out, but it was certainly an easy job.

The problem with the easy jobs is that they are inevitably boring and, in almost every case, don’t pay very well. There is one job I can think of, however, that would not be boring and pays really well. I mean, even if you were at the absolute bottom of the pay scale compared to your coworkers, this job still pays better than most.

And it’s easy. Really easy.

That’s the thing that has me a little miffed at the moment. If your job is really easy, and you get paid a bunch of money to do it, you ought to do it well, don’t you think?

I think so!

It just so happens that I run a Super Bowl pool every year. It’s the standard 10x10 grid of squares with the last digit of each team’s score randomly assigned to the squares. It’s not my job, but it is relatively easy to run it, and I do it well. It’s easy for me to do it well because it is easy to do well. You know what I mean?

Now, for those of you folks from the IRS or any kind of federal gambling commission who may be reading this, let me assure you that we play this pool each year for fun.

A lot of fun.

Each square is a fair amount of fun, and when we multiply all that fun by the 100 squares in the grid, there’s a whole lotta fun up for grabs. Each score change results in the holder of that square receiving a substantial amount of fun. Five times more fun than each square is worth, to be precise.

And if you nice government folks are at all concerned about my recent Venmo activity, let me explain that January and February are my months to go out to a lot of expensive dinners with friends, family, and a few folks I just recently met through mutual acquaintances.

Anyway, all I have to do to run the pool is watch the game, keep track of the score changes, and tally up all the fun everyone is having. Like I said, it’s an easy job.

You know what job is even easier than running a Super Bowl pool for fun? Playing in the Super Bowl, of course. That is, as long as you are the guy lucky enough to have that easy job I was talking about earlier – namely the placeholder for extra point attempts – a job literally easier than being the Gatorade guy.

Do you know who failed to do their incredibly well-paid and easy job last Sunday? The Rams’ placeholder, that’s who.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t rooting for the Rams and I didn’t really care if they scored any extra points (or any points at all, for that matter) in the game. It just so happened that one of my squares in the pool would have afforded me a significant amount of fun had the football been upright and available to kick between the uprights at that moment.

But alas, someone failed to do their job. (Their job that they do while literally resting on one knee, I might add.)

I ended up not having as much fun during the game as I could have.

I’m not bitter.

Do your job.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

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A Cautionary Tale-whip

I can tell this story now, because the statute of limitations has probably expired. Approximately a thousand years ago, when I was in college, I got a temporary job working as a car valet (pronounced: “valet”) at a very fancy oceanside hotel near Pismo Beach, CA. One of the regular guys hurt his foot somehow and was unable to put in the hustle it takes to be a fancy valet, so my roommate got me hired on to fill in for a month.

It was a great job for a college kid, because the wealthy people who wanted their cars parked almost always recognized that you were a pathetic, starving college student and tipped well out of pity.

The valets were almost always the last to leave for the night because the hotel had a nightclub attached, and we stuck around to park and retrieve cars after last call. Two late-night incidents occurred while I worked there that highlighted for me the fact that not everyone is always qualified for their job.

We valets rarely went inside the hotel, but one night when I was the only valet left, the fire alarm went off around one in the morning. I was all alone out on the front driveway, and not sure what to do, so I wandered into the lobby to ask a desk clerk what was going on. That was a mistake. There were no visible desk clerks, bellhops, managers, assistant managers, custodians, concierges, or any other type of hotel employee within a sixteen-block radius of the hotel lobby, except me.

I found myself in the middle of a vast expanse of marble floor, surrounded by an angry, pajama- and bathrobe-wearing mob, demanding answers, of which, I had less than none. I made the mistake of smiling to myself as I truly grasped how ridiculous it was that these people thought I was in charge, which angered a businessman in boxer shorts. I received a pointy-fingered tirade about how none of this was funny at all. I had to agree with him, but somehow, “I’m sorry, I’m just the valet. This is only the second time I’ve even been inside the hotel,” didn’t ease his frustration.

Fortunately, there was no actual fire, and we got out of it without a fancy riot. I dodged a bullet on my other late-night adventure as well, thank God.

Later that month, one of the front desk staff called me in and told me the shuttle bus driver had gone home for the night, but there were four guests up the hill at F. McLintock’s Saloon that just called for a ride back to the hotel. She gave me the keys to the bus and told me to go get them.

Sure…

I had never driven the shuttle bus before, but how hard could it be? It’s just a big car with lots of seats, right? Off I went up the hill in the dark of night to retrieve my passengers, as a light fog rolled in off the ocean. I had a little wait in the parking lot for all four of them to muster to the bus, since it appeared they had become quite familiar with the offerings from the bar during their dining experience. When my two slightly toasted couples were on board, we set off back down the hill in a much heavier fog than I had experienced on the way up.

Now, college kids aren’t exactly known for their amazing decision-making skills, or conservative risk assessment, or extreme caution behind the wheel, but the one thing they do have is fantastic reflexes. That’s why when the hard ninety-degree left turn snuck up on me in the fog while I was busy driving far too fast for the road and weather conditions, I was able to keep the giant shuttle bus on the road. An unfortunate byproduct of my deft maneuvering however, was throwing one of the ladies across the bus into the opposite row of seats, and flinging the other lady out of her seat and literally rolling her down the aisle of the shuttle bus in her fancy cocktail dress.

One of the guys (presumably the least drunk of the four) had a few constructive comments regarding my driving style, but fortunately the other three were just howling with laughter, including the nice woman that I had just transformed into a well-dressed human pinball.

I drove much, much slower the rest of the way back to the hotel and apologized profusely to the four hotel guests as they exited my shuttle bus carnival ride. Thankfully, no one was injured, presumably from being very loose and relaxed during all the flinging. (A big thank you to the F. McLintock’s bartenders and staff!) And thankfully for my employment status, I never heard another word about it.

So, remember, when you’re out there this holiday shopping season, that young (or old) clerk who has no idea how to give you the discount shown on the tag is not incompetent. They’re just not properly trained. And if they are a college student, remember to have some patience. They have the mental capacity of broccoli.

And in this holiday travel season, if your shuttle bus driver looks to be nineteen or twenty years old, catch the next bus.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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We Put the "IT" in School District

It seems our Rocklin, CA teachers are currently at odds with the school district over some aspect of their contract. I would have to assume it’s about salary and/or benefits, because, honestly, if you’re getting all the money you want, you don’t tend to argue with your boss too much. Anyway, they seem to be at a stalemate in their contract negotiations.

I have mixed feelings about the issue of teachers’ salaries. Before I became an author with flexible hours and an unnervingly flexible pay scale, I had real jobs with steady paychecks, and we only got two or maybe three weeks of vacation each year. Teachers have the only job I know of where you get sixteen paid weeks off every year, so on the one hand, I think, pipe down!

On the other hand, I think all teachers should make ten times more than what they are being paid, because besides parenting, they are doing the most important job on the planet. (And in many cases, they are doing the parenting and the teaching, because many “adults” tend to outsource the parenting job by default in favor of malt liquor.)

(I also tend to think teachers should be paid more because my wife is a teacher, and I want a boat.)

I don’t know the particulars of the stalemate, but I do know one thing: based on the metric ton of property taxes I pay, along with the regular taxes, our school district should have more money than Uruguay. I don’t know where all the money goes, but I certainly know where the money is not going. It’s not being spent on the district’s IT department.

If any money was going into IT, they would certainly be able to afford someone who could fix their communications department. Even someone with the tiniest bit of knowledge about computers and one or two iotas of common sense could fix what is obviously broken.

Here’s my problem:

Last week the school district wanted my opinion on their new English Language Arts curriculum. (That’s what they call English now. I assume they have long-term plans to eventually drop the “English” from the title and just call it Language Arts. That way we can stop being so insistent on it always having to be taught in English. Time will tell.)

Anyway, they sent me an email with a link to a survey. That’s where a normal IT department would have stopped. Not at our district!

Moments after the email arrived, they called me and left a voicemail about the fact that they sent me an email.

Mere seconds after the voicemail about the email hit my inbox, they sent me a text message - to the same phone number that they left the voicemail on - to tell me that they left a voicemail about the email. I am not making this up.

Then they sent me another email (again, I’m not making this up, I swear!) to tell me that they just left me a voicemail to let me know that they sent me an email.

Twice.

They do every single one of those things twice because I have two kids at the elementary school. The same elementary school! Last year I got all of them three times, because all three boys were there.

Three separate emails. Three separate voicemails alerting me to the emails. Three separate text messages alerting me to the voicemails regarding the emails. And three separate follow-up emails alerting me to the fact that they left me three separate voicemails about the original three separate emails.

But they only let me take the survey once.

If they can’t come up with the money for a new IT hire, maybe they could look into a sixth-grade internship. Even the kid who sits in the back of the class and eats his boogers could do better than this.  

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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Hazard Pay

This weekend I met the man with the most dangerous job in America. Actually he was a high school kid, I think. He looked to be about thirty to forty years younger than me, and approximately ninety to a hundred years younger than I feel, so that would put him around high school age.

He was obviously too young to fully grasp the gravity of his situation, so to speak. No experienced adult male would have ever signed up for the job this kid had.

We met him on a magical day. We got season passes to our local water slide park this year, and Saturday was opening day of the season. We arrived early and staked out our chaise lounges, and then the boys and I rushed off to The Riptide. It's the park’s brand new ride, and the boys and I have been salivating over it all winter.

It’s an enormous water slide - easily the tallest in the park - with four-person “quad tubes” so you can experience near-death with three of your closest friends, much like the time you let Steve drive the car on spring break.

You are in charge of getting your own quad tube to the top of the stairs, and they are apparently made out of equal parts ballistic rubber, lead weights and more lead weights. I can envision a system where two adults would be able to carry the massive tubes up the stairs together, but unfortunately, the boys weren’t much help. After a few minutes of tripping over each other and almost crushing Son Number Three with it, I reluctantly told the boys that I needed to carry the tube up the stairs myself.

The Riptide is a very high water slide, so we needed to climb up a lot of steps to reach the top. I lost count when I came close to blacking out, but it was probably about three thousand stairs. I didn’t have my Fitbit on, but I’m pretty sure I burned an entire HomeTown Buffet’s dinner rush worth of calories on that one climb.

The slide takes you down a steep tube and then rockets your terrified party of four up a gigantic vertical wall, where you hang motionless at the top for just a split second before your stomach catches up to you. Then, through a miracle of engineering (or a nightmarish trial and error period), you slide back down, directly into another cavernous tube that takes you around a 360-degree turn and into a huge pool of water, where lifeguards await to accept your deepest gratitude for being alive. It is awesome!

We finally reached the top of the stairs and made it onto the platform high above the park. After I had managed to get my heart rate back under four hundred and my blurry vision cleared up, I saw him. The man with the most dangerous job in America. Just a scrawny kid with a whistle around his neck and zinc oxide on his nose. He wasn’t the one who was directing traffic at the entrance to the slide, so it wasn’t immediately clear what purpose he served.

He welcomed us to The Riptide and then asked me and the boys to all step up onto the four-foot-square industrial scale located on the corner of the platform.

Apparently, in order to keep groups of fun-loving patrons from shooting straight up off the top of the vertical wall and into orbit, or missing the exit tube and dying a horrible death under a nine hundred-pound quad tube, The Riptide has a weight range. Your group's total weight has to be between two hundred and seven hundred pounds in order to ride. This kid’s job was to enforce the minimum and maximum weight limits.

Let me get this straight, kid. They've got you stationed up here on a platform, seventy feet off the ground, with no safety harness or anything, and your job is to ask groups of women in bathing suits to step on a scale so you can weigh them?

I’m not sure $8.50 an hour constitutes hazard pay. Good luck, kid. You’re a braver man than me.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

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Facebook for Business?

Can someone please explain to me what we’re all doing on LinkedIn? It has been well over a year since I have worked in an actual business office, so I’m not really sure, but is LinkedIn still viewed as the acceptable business version of Facebook? If so, I think all you business-types might be fooling yourselves.

It looks respectable enough, I guess. Everyone’s wearing a business suit in their LinkedIn profile picture. On Facebook, everyone’s wearing a bathing suit and holding a margarita, so the natural boss/minion interactions might go something like this:

“What are you doing on your computer there, Jenkins?”

“Uh… just surfing Facebook, sir.”

“You’re fired, Jenkins. Get out.”

vs.

“What are you doing on your computer there, Jenkins?”

“I’m on LinkedIn, actively networking with current and potential clients, sir.”

“Good job leveraging social media for a synergistic win-win, Jenkins. Keep up the good work!”

I think Jenkins’ boss has it exactly backward. He should be encouraging Jenkins to spend time on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, because then Jenkins won’t have any time to be on LinkedIn. Jenkins’ boss doesn’t seem to understand that LinkedIn, the “World’s Largest Professional Network” is really the world’s largest simultaneous job search. The only reason Jenkins has a LinkedIn account is so someone at a better company than the annoying one he works for now might offer him a job.

Of course, maybe Jenkins’ boss does understand, and he’s on LinkedIn for the same reason. He’s sick and tired of Jenkins and his other annoying minions, and he wants to be the boss of cooler employees at a company with a better 401k matching program, more comfortable conference room chairs, and coffee that doesn’t taste like crap. Don’t kid yourself.

But how trustworthy is LinkedIn as a staffing tool? Are the member profiles (resumes) accurate? I’m here to tell you, probably not. That’s because ever since I joined LinkedIn, people have been endorsing my skills.

Just yesterday I got an email notification congratulating me that one of my “first-degree connections” had endorsed me for one of my skills. The skill he endorsed: Engineering.

“Congratulations, Marc. Endorsements help show what you’re great at.”

Well, that may be true, or it may be a load of crap. In this case, it was a load of crap. I’m not saying I don’t have any engineering skills. I have one or two. What I’m saying is that I went to high school with this guy. I have literally not seen him since then. We have not kept in touch at all. And as far as I can remember, I was a crappy excuse for a professional engineer when I was in high school. Yet, here on this professional business networking site, he announced to the free world that I am great at engineering. How the hell would he know?

He might as well have endorsed my skills as a submarine driver, or a catapult operator. “No one hurls pots of hot flaming oil over the castle walls like Marc Schmatjen. He’s simply the best flaming oil catapult operator I’ve ever worked with. And don’t even get me started on his mad skills with a trebuchet!”

Our moms know each other, so maybe my mom was bragging to his mom over coffee about what a spectacular engineer I used to be, and how woeful she is about my new career choice as a writer, and how worried she is that her grandkids will starve. Somehow, word got back to him from his mom that I used to be a great engineer, and I’m in need of some encouragement. Who knows?

If that’s the case, then basically his endorsement amounts to, “His mom thinks he’s good at this.”

Think about that next time you’re browsing for your next sales professional.

The brain trust at LinkedIn seems to be trying to make it more of a “networking and bonding” site, so they’re adding fun stuff like links to business articles and seminars. Wow. Way to really pump up the old excitement factor there, LinkedIn.

They also gave birth to a fun way to keep us all engaged. Every month I get an email like this: “Congratulate Bob on his work anniversary! Bob has been with Ferguson’s Widget Factory twelve years this October. Say happy work anniversary!”

Why? Why would I do that to Bob? No one wants to be reminded of how long they’ve been at their dead-end job, especially not Bob, the widget factory middle manager.

Are you really trying to make it more of a social networking site, guys? Here’s a tip… No one bonds over case studies or articles on market share. And since it’s a giant job search in the first place, no one puts anything fun in their profile. Here’s an example of a LinkedIn profile description:

Results-oriented business development guru with over 25 years of experience implementing leading edge concepts and strategic sales and marketing initiatives, improving brand positioning, increasing revenue, capturing market share, expanding customer base, and thinking win-win outside the box.

No one is bonding and “networking” over that crap. It was written in hopes of getting a better job, and only it only gets read when looking for someone to fill that better job. Do you know what it should say? “I once ate seventeen hotdogs in one sitting, I think the designated hitter rule should be outlawed, and I can tie a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue.”

“Now, that’s a guy who would be fun at the company picnic. Hire him. We’ll teach him how to sell our widgets.”

Do you really want to network and bond with people? Go to Facebook. People bond over sports victories, pictures of food and alcohol, and videos of people getting hit in the nuts. Plain and simple. It may not be right, but that’s how it is.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go log back on to LinkedIn and update my profile. In addition to submarine driver and catapult operator, I’m going to add “Money Manager” as one of my skills. If enough people testify to how great I am at it, maybe people will start sending me their money.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen

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Schooled Lunches

My boys surprised me yesterday, in a good and also annoying way. I was running late in the morning, and I arrived downstairs in the kitchen about fifteen minutes behind schedule to help them with their breakfast and to make their lunches for school. I was not concerned, because I had plenty of time to get everything done, but I became concerned when their plastic lunch containers were nowhere to be found.

As soon as I began to search for them, the boys piped up and said, barely able to contain their self-satisfied mirth, “Dad, you might want to look up on top of the fridge.”

I keep their insulated lunch bags on top of the refrigerator, and there they were, stacked neatly just like I had left them the day before. When I picked them up, however, they felt heavy, and the boys started giggling. They were all zipped closed, and when I opened them, there were the missing plastic lunch containers, filled with carrots, and crackers, and sandwiches. The boys had made their own lunches.

This was an unprecedented event, and a big surprise. I was initially filled with pride that my boys had been so industrious. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying my boys are geniuses for being able to put turkey and mayonnaise on two slices of bread. I realize kids their age in Bangladesh already know how to make Nike tennis shoes and sew Martha Stewart Collection pantsuits, but we’re talking about three boys who normally can’t work together long enough to build a blanket fort over a coffee table without starting a fist fight.

I hugged them and thanked them and beamed with pride for about fifteen seconds.

Then I started to get mad.

The lunches were perfect. They were well balanced and nutritious. I looked around. All the food was put back into the correct places in the refrigerator and the pantry, with all the lids snapped back on. The counter was clean. The utensils were rinsed and in the sink. Everything was done and done really well. I did the math. They told me they had gotten their little brother out of bed as his alarm was going off, so I knew what time they started. I knew what time they had finished. I subtracted. Holy crap.

They made their own lunches ten minutes faster than it takes me to do it, and the kitchen was cleaner than after I am finished. Holy crap.

I’m bad at my job!

My three little kids just schooled my ass in lunch making. I realize there are three of them and only one of me, but the fact that they are 9, 7, and 5 and I’m 41 should definitely cancel out that argument.

I have been making their lunches every day for six straight months and apparently I suck at it. Well, thanks for that slap in the face, you ungrateful little overachievers. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you just keep making your own lunches. Maybe you can cook yourselves dinner, too. While you’re at it why don’t you just do the grocery shopping, also? No car? I’ll give you the car. You’re probably better at driving than me, too.

Actually, now that I think about this a little more, I’m really not that bitter. I think this lunch situation just bought me another half-hour of sleep every morning. That’s huge. Come to think of it, I really should start teaching the oldest one to drive. That could really help out a lot.

I may be bad at my job, but at least I’ll be well rested.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen

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Technical Difficulties

I am finally figuring out what it takes to be a full-time writer and author, and it is causing some technical difficulties here at Just a Smidge. For starters, in order to write full-time, by definition you have to quit your day job. I took care of that on Monday. That, however, leads to other issues.

The main goal behind quitting your job is to access more free time, but the drawback is a distinct lack of money. With a substantial, or in this case, total lack of income, you naturally start looking for ways to cut expenses. Since electricity and hot water cost a lot of money, those are easy places to start. Those turn out to be a catch-22, though, because when you turn off the air conditioner to save on the electric bill, you sweat more. You would naturally take a shower to combat that problem, but since you are trying to save money on hot water as well, that’s not an option. I tried to take a cold shower, but it made me jump so much when I stepped in that I slipped and fell backwards into the bathroom, cracking my head on the sink. That led to some expensive medical bills, so the whole shower thing really turned out to be a net loser. No more showering, I guess.

Since I always used to shave in the shower, I am now forced to grow a beard. I am also thinking of taking up smoking in an attempt to mask my growing body odor problem caused by the lack of showering. This would explain the look of the standard male professional writer. Bearded men smoking pipes and wearing tweed jackets. At this point I can only assume that the tweed jacket is meant to cover up the pit stains caused by the lack of A/C. Tweed probably also holds the odor-masking pipe smoke smell better than other fabrics would. I need to go find a good tweed jacket at a thrift store.

On top of all those other issues, my computer died on me on Sunday night, and needed to go to the Geeks at Best Buy. They told me it needed a new falange valve installed on the McGruder pump. At least that’s what I think they said. So, I am typing on an old spare computer, on an unfamiliar, outdated version of Microsoft Word. It’s really disconcerting. The menu items are in the wrong place and the text seems smaller. I can’t live like this. I wish that valve would hurry here from Malaysia.

My computer dying the day before I was quitting my job to become a professional writer and author was a little disconcerting. What was God trying to tell me? That I shouldn’t go for it, or that I should, but I should only write with paper and pencil? Neither of those two possibilities seemed logical, so I chose to not see it as a sign, but simply an inconvenient coincidence.

Also, when I had a day job, I used to write this column really early in the morning, before the sun came up, or really late at night, after the sun went down. I am now writing smack in the middle of the day, which is odd for me. I was always at work during the day, so I have no idea if I’m funny during the daylight hours or not. I guess that remains to be seen. The upside is, I am saving a little more on electricity since I no longer need the light on in my office. Bonus!

As you can tell, I’m dealing with a lot of issues during the first phase of this transition, so I hope you will bear with me until I get all the kinks worked out. And at least in the near future, if you see me on the street wearing a tweed jacket and smoking a pipe, I would steer clear if I were you. I’m getting pretty ripe.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!