Clean-Up Time!!!

Puerto Vallarta last night, as stolen by me from https://www.facebook.com/puertovallartadailynews?fref=photo

It seemed time to remind readers that I actually live in a tropical paradise full of charming people and wonders of nature. Another tropical storm, Odile, is approaching and we will again be deluged with rain, soon.

This is how fierce I think I am -- I have no real idea what readers think. Most are too afraid of publicity to confront or otherwise engage me.

But not all of them, and I hope to address a recent incident here.

>>> A RECENT INCIDENT TO BE ADDRESSED:

1. First, to avoid writing this, I decided to try to find Betsy Codrea, who was a year ahead of me at Denison University, and she being 6' 4" and large-boned, and I being 6' 11", we always joked about starting THE MASTER RACE, but were never involved sexually or romantically.

Betsy was a biology major from a family of Armenian-Americans and her giant father and brothers had a very successful large commercial construction company. Betsy landed in California, and when I took my mostly by-car, two-month trip in 1977 to California and then on to Alaska for a month, Betsy and her Ford Pinto showed me much of the California coast (she was starting a business to use natural predators to control certain pests in almond orchards). Today, Betsy works for a similar company in Yuma, Arizona, but there is no reason to contact her.

I would like to say, however, that she introduced me to Wendy's hamburgers -- and of course we only ate TRIPLES. What is funny about that is two things:

1A. Dave Thomas opened his FIRST Wendy's in my very school's "watershed" in Columbus, Ohio where I graduated from Whetstone High School -- it was right there, and first opened right then -- but I never tried it since everyone from school HATED Wendy's adult approach to fast food -- and I never tried Wendy's for that reason until Betsy introduced us.

1B. In 1985, I began working for Wendy's for two years as a manager -- a job I felt was totally beneath me, but ended up learning more about business and life than from any other of my restaurant and bar management jobs I had for 12 years. Two things from that:


1B1. During that time, Pepsi paid Wendy's a HUGE AMOUNT to replace Coca-Cola products in their stores -- I don't know if it was company-wide, or just in Atlanta, where I worked, the HOME of Coca-Cola. It met MUCH customer resistance, and after about six months it was reversed.

Would whoever was responsible for putting Pepsi into Costco fountain sales please GIVE IT UP??? While Pepsi actually wins blind taste tests in the USA, that is NOT TRUE in Mexico, and recently I read that Mexicans consume more Coca-Cola products per person than people in ANY other country. GIVE IT UP!!!

1B2. I was quickly promoted to head manager of a store in North Atlanta in an upscale area. There was a shortage of people willing to work in fast food at the time -- especially white people from upscale neighborhoods -- and all fast food companies were competing for the black kids from downtown Atlanta, and given the situation, that anyone fired could quickly work for anyone else, running a fast food store was quite a challenge and closing times had to factor in how long it took to clean up and get everyone on MARTA buses home before MARTA stopped running.

I had a great Area Manager boss, but he was transferred to Florida and Jerry, his face knife-scarred, his crowd a Christian Motorcycle Gang -- he an aggressive Born Again Christian -- became my new boss, Hollywood Hal, as we called him because he was a 6' 3" former UGA or Georgia State football star who prided himself on his handsomeness, remained two levels above me.

Jerry and Hal decided Wendy's would do SO MUCH BETTER if able to hire mostly WHITE people while the competition was "stuck" with blacks, and Jerry took me in the walk-in cooler one day to be sure no one esle could hear us, and told me, "You have to get rid of all the damn niggers."

This would be a nearly impossible task -- and I had SOME great black workers, if not all. But business was so booming, they often finished cleaning up AFTER Marta stopped running, so several times per week I had to drive one to five people home to some of the "scariest" neighborhoods in Atlanta at about 2:00 AM.

This was never a problem for me, because at Denison University, I had worked on several projects in the roughest black areas of Philadelphia and western Tennessee. I could relate well enough to black folk and was never scared. And then Jerry was fired after he got into some unrelated legal trouble.

But Hal was not pleased with my progress, and placed a new manager, John, in my store WITH me as Co-Top-Manager, and John hired his niece (who lived with his wife and five children), as an Assistant Manager. Although I knew their purpose was to effectively document why I should be fired, we actually got along very well -- and then I caught John and his niece DEEP KISSING, and it all changed again!!!

You see, John and I had enough respect for each other to tell the truth, and I was soon invited to his upscale home for dinner with his entire family, where I learned John was a Mormon Bishop, and the niece was actually his second wife. 

Not only that, but John was the RECOGNIZED TOP TALENT for making ships models for movies, this being about the time that digital tricks began being employed and his services needed less - but he had ALL HIS MODELS in his basement, and I got to look at the originals of so many ships I had seen in movies!!!

About that time too, Hollywood Hal was catching on that John and I were becoming allies, and at a managers' meeting in a facility that was otherwise empty that day, Hal and I "accidentally" ran into each other, both of us about to take a pee. Outside the restroom we paused, and Hal (I had no idea then he knew I was gay, but found out he DID know that), pulled out his flaccid dick right there.

He said nothing, but looked like a proud football player showing off (without much reason to). I really don't know how I kept from showing my shock -- and I was not about to react -- so I then went on in, into a stall that I closed and locked -- and SAT!!!

I still don't know how to interpret that -- was it solicitation, intimidation??? -- but John and a few other managers knew I was gay and at least found it entirely unprofessional on Hal's part. I was soon under a two-month time limit to improve performance or be fired, and Bishop John rallied to help me and we really achieved most of my goals. 

On the day Hollywood Hal announced publicly at a management party that I had WON and was no longer under threat of being fired, I gave him my two-weeks notice.

And so ended my Wendy's career -- LOL!!!


I wish they'd open one here in Puerto Vallarta -- you can't beat them for fast food.

>>> OK, MY RECENT OFF-BLOG CONFRONTATION:


1. First of all, it is important you know that this person, whom I'll call "Lars", is not someone I would ever want to harm. He's a ball of tension, somewhat pickled in alcohol (a substance I recently have had to face my own troubles with), and a good writer as well. He lives in Puerto Vallarta, although moves around a lot.


2. And I feel it my duty to acknowledge that in our email conversation, I blind-copied about eight people so that they could call me on it later if I was unfair. That might seem unfair to Lars, but remember, due to my special "political" position, I've had NOT ONE SHRED of privacy in years -- and the top THINK TANKS in the USA announced TOGETHER, about seven years ago, now, that SECRECY, which had been so necessary to SUCCESS throughout all previous human history, has NOW become ABSOLUTE POISON TO SUCCESS, in this wired age of surveillance of anyone who doesn't BLINK STRAIGHT.


3. The fact of the matter was that Lars had tossed the term "fudge-packer" onto the table in a restaurant where about six or so of Writers Group were eating lunch -- knowing full well that I am gay. Previously, he had met me by expressing his solidarity with the Tennessee Williams character Brick Pollitt from CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF. -- and I think we all know about Brick's difficulties with sexual identity and drink.





And on top of all of THAT, the first day I met him, and at THAT lunch, he had had to step outside to finish a beer he had hidden in the bushes, and I joined him for a cigarette. He soon stretched backward, revealing (he's about 38 and still wearing loose trousers that easily slip down), all to the top of his shaft.

Was it deliberate??? I don't know.

But the point of all my "fuss", is that he's OBTUSE to me -- if not deliberately disrespecting -- UNTRUE to his own inner being (which is not to say I or anyone else knows what that is -- but clearly NOT what he likes to project), and too alcohol-involved to even see what he is becoming.

That's all -- I have no more to say about that, except that I hope he continues to be a "hot guy", but learns to respect both men and women as well (I've met his nice girlfriend, but he bragged to me about having sex with TWO women in the mornings).

If he's Mormon, he should ADMIT IT -- LOL!!!

Scott

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