today i woke up at 11:00 and distinctly remember looking at the clock and feeling proud for being up so early. I am really painting myself into a corner here;* I mean I can't work at a bar forever but i am working on 5 straight years of waking up around noon so I don't know what would happen if I for some reason started working a nine to five job again.
i have been thinking about work lately so perhaps I should go over every job I ever had as an exercise in making myself write blog entries again and possibly gain insight into potential career directions. Starting with.....
First Job: Deliveries Unlimited: Flyer Delivery
I delivered flyers from age 11 to 15. Our parents had no problem putting their 11 year old twins to work and in fact told us later that paper or flyer routes are a popular way for parents to introduce their children to the expectations and responsibilities of paid labour.
Twice and sometimes 3 times weekly Ben and I would go to every house in our neighbourhood and drop off a flyer bundle we had previously folded together in our rec room while watching television. Sometimes our parents would not let us watch television because we needed to understand that work isn't always fun.
I think we understood.
I believe we received two cent per flyer per house for the first flyer and one cent PFPH for each additional flyer. A typical week would feature flyers from both of the grimsby grocery stores, a couple of randoms, and a Canadian tire flyer which was usually the largest and as such folded in half to make a kind of sleeve for the smaller flyers.
Folding would take between 20min and an hour depending on the quality of television program. Delivery would take between 25 min and an hour each depending on if we were racing and also how stringently we followed the "no lawn" policy.
Best case scenario math for our pay looks something like this:
(one flyer @2c +3@1c)x100 houses/2 underage workers = $2.50 daily wage
The "no lawn" policy would be the first to fall in what would be a series of failed lessons about positively integrating into the working world.
It was simply much faster to walk across the lawns from mailbox to mailbox without travelling back to street level. Eventually this led to hurdling imposing hedges and killing the occasional flower. Since we could never really agree on an equal route our races were kind of pointless but at least out faster delivery time was pushing our hourly wage into the mid 2s.
Following this victory was the blurring about exactly when the flyers were to be delivered.
One was supposed to be on Saturday and one one i think Tuesday but since this was before common Sunday shopping there really should be no difference to the consumers we were delivering to between Saturday late and Sunday morning. In fact once again if the stores don't open until 11 on Monday then Monday morning would be fine as well.
The trouble with this is that if we were delivering on Monday morning (occasionly after school) then we were just 24 hours (occasionally 14) away from going right back out with our Tuesday mid-week flyers.
While it took longer to fold in all of the weekend and Tuesday flyers together into one weekly superbatch we were of course cutting our weekly delivery time in half(it was already going pretty well since we had grown into the ability to vault shorter fences). So far so good but would we learn a workplace lesson about (sometimes literal) shortcuts?????
Kind of... then not at all.
Now in toronto if you were to take a cross section of houses you would probably find that at least half would have a "no flyers please" sign. In my route there was exactly one "no flyers" sign (we were told to deliver to them anyway) and it seemed like the rest of our lower-middle to middle class homeowners seemed actually excited to be receiving information about the various deals offered to them from grimsby's Big 4 (Can tire, IGA, Dominion, and Shoppers). We shouldn't have been surprised when a shopper from our area called deliveries unlimited to complain that her weekend flyers had been routinely arriving the following Thursday. There was actually a few complaints and it seemed like they always came from the same houses. The epiphany came one Saturday when Ben and i wanted to go play baseball and were just about to screw over Saturday flyers in favour of Tuesday-Thursday superflyers when we remembered that 32 lakeside had been complaining so we figured at the very least we should drop off a flyer set to them and a couple other squeaky houses and then the rest we could drop at our leisure.
We didn't actually have a hard copy list of houses that "needed" to receive flyers as much as we had a rotating system of service which provided some of our pickier clients %100 service while averaging near %30 for others. I was too young to really understand that I was having a moral dilemma but sometimes I would deliver as many as %75 of my entire assigned houses because it felt like the right thing to do.
I remember our mother finding nearly 400 Tuesday/Saturday flyers in our garbage one time but have blocked out her reaction. We met the kid who was in charge of the neighbourhood next to ours when he was dumping the flyers for his less complainey residents in an unused cement storm drain. With 45 houses and only 1 complainer he explained that his main concern was that the drain would eventually fill up.
I can still picture Ben and I and that kid looking down the dark storm drain trying to make out how high his flyer pile had gotten- The three of us making a combined $30 per week yet somehow not earning it.
Next week : Danger Boy in the Kitchen.
*i pretty much just jam in semi-colons randomly so apologies to anyone who attended grade 7 or higher.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
I have seen plays better than this....
hey blog fans,
we are full swing in Hart House Theatre's Winter Season and between now and jan 26 you can enjoys Criminals in Love. The first of George F Walker's East End Series set in Toronto's East End.
I saw it last night and it was hilarious and also I'm told "poignant" for the smarter viewers.
You will enjoy the original music by the boy balls (i put a link to there homepage- trust me on not using google images to find them)
also i am in the posters and you can see the back of my head all over the city right now.
When not making slutty theatre posters the red head girl doubles as my most of the time girlfriend. Please refrain from writing disgusting things about her in the comments section.
we got to be in the posters because they needed to shoot for promo purposes before casting. The producer and director hang out in my bar all the time
i also got mark to play Ceasar and my friend Jordan to play Oscar Wilde.
the two girls at the top were almost naked all the time.
ABOUT THE PLAYThe first of George F. Walker's "East End Plays", Criminals in Love is a fast paced dark aggressive Comedy. When two young lovers become intertwined in a two-bit criminal plan gone wrong they find themselves in a most unlikely set of scenarios with an even more unlikely alliance of accomplices. The Chalmers and Governor’s General Award winning play by the co-writer of Niagara Motel has got sex, violence, mobsters, terrorists and prostitutes….of course it takes place in Toronto’s East End.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Check Size v $$$$$$$$
Well that has probably been enough time with no posts for even the most die-hard Luke blogfans to give up and re-focus 100% of their Internet attention on superior blogs/celebrity gossip/porn so I can go ahead and talk about a neglected factor in the analysis of tipping without the fear of anyone actually reading it.
I don't like to talk too much about tipping to too many people because it usually comes off whiney/unappreciative but if you could all indulge me with the knowledge that I appreciate every single one of your tips when I am working (even the shitty ones) I will go ahead and let you in one the science of check amount v tip %.
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT TIPPING
A: EVERYONE ALWAYS TIPS THE SAME %
this isn't really true
B: BIGGER BILL=BIGGER TIP
mostly true but not always
C: BUNCH OF OTHER STUFF
we won't really worry about the other assumptions about tipping today although I should point out that most of the people I work with are using their tips to pay for school or other worthwhile stuff.
Back on track--- if A and B are more flexible than you thought than you are probably demanding answers in your head right now like
I don't like to talk too much about tipping to too many people because it usually comes off whiney/unappreciative but if you could all indulge me with the knowledge that I appreciate every single one of your tips when I am working (even the shitty ones) I will go ahead and let you in one the science of check amount v tip %.
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT TIPPING
A: EVERYONE ALWAYS TIPS THE SAME %
this isn't really true
B: BIGGER BILL=BIGGER TIP
mostly true but not always
C: BUNCH OF OTHER STUFF
we won't really worry about the other assumptions about tipping today although I should point out that most of the people I work with are using their tips to pay for school or other worthwhile stuff.
Back on track--- if A and B are more flexible than you thought than you are probably demanding answers in your head right now like
"I silently demand for Luke to explain any patterns of tipping% vs bill amount I was previously unaware of!!"
Fine here it is my..,
COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF BILL SIZE VS TIP %
In Dollar Increments
$1 NA if you have a dollar tab then you are not really in a tipping situation
$2 Good Start! You probably just had a coffee and am scared to tip less than a dollar. I am secretly delighted by my tip percentage. It is only a dollar but who doesn't like a 50% tip?
$3 This is definitely a pop or juice and you might not tip at all because you might be 14 but the number of people who cant be bothered to wait for change and just leave you $5 makes up for you underage non-tippers. Also if you do get change and leave me a dollar we are still very sweet % wise (although not really as good as the jackpot coffee tip)
HOLD ON YOU SAY!!!! same dollar! who freaking cares if you sold a coffee or a pop?
you would be neglecting two very important factors that will play out over the course of our analysis.
1. we tips out our hostesses, food runners, and bartenders as a percentage of our total gross sales (gross means after tax). So if my total tip-out responsibility is about 5% then we are looking at
Coffee: $1 dollar tip - $0.10 tip out($2x.05%)= $0.90 take home jackpot
Pop: $1 dollar tip - $0.15 tip out($3x.05%)= $0.85 take home
Ok not a big deal for the pop and coffee comparison but you can see how it would effect and $5 tip on a $30 dollar bill (take home $3.50) vs a $5 tip on a $50 dollar bill (take home $1.50)
2. we look at serving as kind of a game and the tips we make as kind of game pieces that reflect how well we are doing. Tip % as feedback is so entrenched that I know several servers who seem happier at the end of a slow day making high percentages (feedback: good job!) then if they had made more money but with higher sales and lower percentages (feedback: still good job!! - mostly everyone thinks they are an awesome server at all times)
$4 nothing costs $4 in Toronto but I wish it did because you are almost guaranteed a sweet $5 done no change.
$5 bottled beer maybe some places this is bad because your good one dollar tip people (%20) will be mitigated by the people who just hand you a five and are on their way.
$6 pretty good in that usually at least a loonie or two will be given in return for change and one of them will probably stay on the bar for a sweet 15+% not great because there is very little chance (0%) that the hassle-minimizers (HMs-the same people who just hand you a five on the pop) will just hand you a ten on a six dollar beer.
$7 see $6 but with slightly worse % balanced by slightly better chance of the nice HMs 10
$8 really good chance of a ten no change here and that is great and more than makes up for the change receivers who then leave a dollar (12%ish) or the people who leave nothing because "I could almost buy a BOTTLE or wine for $8"
I love you ten no change wine drinkers (less love for those who presumably think I influence the bar prices).
$9 BAD BAD BAD do not want to serve a $9 drink. The ten no change thing which was working so well for us on the $8 and hopefully sometimes $7 transactions is back and ready for vengeance with a 11% tip premium martini. The chance for more than $10 is almost always eliminated by pissed off/surprise that one drink is costing you $9.
$10 unlike the $5 dollar trap we were concerned with ten dollars usually is high enough that no-one really thinks they can get away with flippantly handing you a ten dollar bill. your loonies and toonies should balance out to give you a solid 15% in this range.
$11 same as ten even better because change is definitely involved
$12 GOOD ONE might see $15 even here for a 25% tip
$13 almost a definite $15 which at just under %15 is livable.
$14 by now you should be getting the drift. $14=bad, very little chance of a twenty no change here and a good chance of the 8% $15 no change
$15 ok/good, i mean we have an outside chance of a 33% no changer and even a surprising amount of generous $3 tips on this amount.
$16 same as fifteen
$17 That's Better! really good chance of a twenty even here for an acceptable 18ish%
$18 See $9
$19 See Horrible
$20 most people can do the math on this one so you are probably getting $3
$21 Look I can keep going on this but you get the idea. People have a tendency to push their total payment towards an easily manageable increment which can be good ($100 on $83) or bad ($100 on 91). Surprisingly this is also true for credit cards where someone will leave me something like 5.83 on a 54.17 bill for an even $60
$22 So I guess I am just outlining something everyone already knows
$23 What a triumphant return to blogging this is
$24 $24 is actually pretty good (big chance of 30 even)
$25 I am going to see imax beowolf tonight I am pretty excited
$26 Last night I had a dream where the wall in my house was a big statue (tapestry?) anyway wall shaped and relativly flat but still a statue.
$27 Still reading?? Great ok so the statue has various Roman or Greek gods on it but they are more biblical in nature like everyone in my dream thinks they are real and scary and I kind of joined my dream mid story in that it was clear to me that last year we had accidentally cursed one of the gods, and the statue started crying white blood, and then that god appeared in the form of a human in our lives, and we had to stab it to death.
I am pretty sure that was the back story to my joined in progress dream because when that was happening in my present dream everyone was like "here we go again..."
So the god we cursed accidentally in our mind (really hard to avoid) was kind of like a girl Satan (maybe athena I don't know) and sure enough her statue was crying white blood within seconds and then a girl shows up at the door and we aren't sure if we should stab her or not.
Luckily for dream Luke I am somewhere in a sleep period that also features my body trying to metabolize 7 tall Stella cans (on sale at lcbo) so my dream probably lacked some of the subtlety of a sober person's and just when Ben and I were arguing about whether or not we should start stabbing our strange guest she flashes me a terrifying exorcist-like dead-girl face and then all the statues on our statue wall start crying TONs of white statue blood which clarified the situation considerably. Justifyably we are like "we have to stab this greek demon!" and then she made herself invisible.
Fine here it is my..,
COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF BILL SIZE VS TIP %
In Dollar Increments
$1 NA if you have a dollar tab then you are not really in a tipping situation
$2 Good Start! You probably just had a coffee and am scared to tip less than a dollar. I am secretly delighted by my tip percentage. It is only a dollar but who doesn't like a 50% tip?
$3 This is definitely a pop or juice and you might not tip at all because you might be 14 but the number of people who cant be bothered to wait for change and just leave you $5 makes up for you underage non-tippers. Also if you do get change and leave me a dollar we are still very sweet % wise (although not really as good as the jackpot coffee tip)
HOLD ON YOU SAY!!!! same dollar! who freaking cares if you sold a coffee or a pop?
you would be neglecting two very important factors that will play out over the course of our analysis.
1. we tips out our hostesses, food runners, and bartenders as a percentage of our total gross sales (gross means after tax). So if my total tip-out responsibility is about 5% then we are looking at
Coffee: $1 dollar tip - $0.10 tip out($2x.05%)= $0.90 take home jackpot
Pop: $1 dollar tip - $0.15 tip out($3x.05%)= $0.85 take home
Ok not a big deal for the pop and coffee comparison but you can see how it would effect and $5 tip on a $30 dollar bill (take home $3.50) vs a $5 tip on a $50 dollar bill (take home $1.50)
2. we look at serving as kind of a game and the tips we make as kind of game pieces that reflect how well we are doing. Tip % as feedback is so entrenched that I know several servers who seem happier at the end of a slow day making high percentages (feedback: good job!) then if they had made more money but with higher sales and lower percentages (feedback: still good job!! - mostly everyone thinks they are an awesome server at all times)
$4 nothing costs $4 in Toronto but I wish it did because you are almost guaranteed a sweet $5 done no change.
$5 bottled beer maybe some places this is bad because your good one dollar tip people (%20) will be mitigated by the people who just hand you a five and are on their way.
$6 pretty good in that usually at least a loonie or two will be given in return for change and one of them will probably stay on the bar for a sweet 15+% not great because there is very little chance (0%) that the hassle-minimizers (HMs-the same people who just hand you a five on the pop) will just hand you a ten on a six dollar beer.
$7 see $6 but with slightly worse % balanced by slightly better chance of the nice HMs 10
$8 really good chance of a ten no change here and that is great and more than makes up for the change receivers who then leave a dollar (12%ish) or the people who leave nothing because "I could almost buy a BOTTLE or wine for $8"
I love you ten no change wine drinkers (less love for those who presumably think I influence the bar prices).
$9 BAD BAD BAD do not want to serve a $9 drink. The ten no change thing which was working so well for us on the $8 and hopefully sometimes $7 transactions is back and ready for vengeance with a 11% tip premium martini. The chance for more than $10 is almost always eliminated by pissed off/surprise that one drink is costing you $9.
$10 unlike the $5 dollar trap we were concerned with ten dollars usually is high enough that no-one really thinks they can get away with flippantly handing you a ten dollar bill. your loonies and toonies should balance out to give you a solid 15% in this range.
$11 same as ten even better because change is definitely involved
$12 GOOD ONE might see $15 even here for a 25% tip
$13 almost a definite $15 which at just under %15 is livable.
$14 by now you should be getting the drift. $14=bad, very little chance of a twenty no change here and a good chance of the 8% $15 no change
$15 ok/good, i mean we have an outside chance of a 33% no changer and even a surprising amount of generous $3 tips on this amount.
$16 same as fifteen
$17 That's Better! really good chance of a twenty even here for an acceptable 18ish%
$18 See $9
$19 See Horrible
$20 most people can do the math on this one so you are probably getting $3
$21 Look I can keep going on this but you get the idea. People have a tendency to push their total payment towards an easily manageable increment which can be good ($100 on $83) or bad ($100 on 91). Surprisingly this is also true for credit cards where someone will leave me something like 5.83 on a 54.17 bill for an even $60
$22 So I guess I am just outlining something everyone already knows
$23 What a triumphant return to blogging this is
$24 $24 is actually pretty good (big chance of 30 even)
$25 I am going to see imax beowolf tonight I am pretty excited
$26 Last night I had a dream where the wall in my house was a big statue (tapestry?) anyway wall shaped and relativly flat but still a statue.
$27 Still reading?? Great ok so the statue has various Roman or Greek gods on it but they are more biblical in nature like everyone in my dream thinks they are real and scary and I kind of joined my dream mid story in that it was clear to me that last year we had accidentally cursed one of the gods, and the statue started crying white blood, and then that god appeared in the form of a human in our lives, and we had to stab it to death.
I am pretty sure that was the back story to my joined in progress dream because when that was happening in my present dream everyone was like "here we go again..."
So the god we cursed accidentally in our mind (really hard to avoid) was kind of like a girl Satan (maybe athena I don't know) and sure enough her statue was crying white blood within seconds and then a girl shows up at the door and we aren't sure if we should stab her or not.
Luckily for dream Luke I am somewhere in a sleep period that also features my body trying to metabolize 7 tall Stella cans (on sale at lcbo) so my dream probably lacked some of the subtlety of a sober person's and just when Ben and I were arguing about whether or not we should start stabbing our strange guest she flashes me a terrifying exorcist-like dead-girl face and then all the statues on our statue wall start crying TONs of white statue blood which clarified the situation considerably. Justifyably we are like "we have to stab this greek demon!" and then she made herself invisible.
The rest of the dream we just went around the room stabbing stuff hoping it was the demon until i stabbed a couch cushion and blood (red) started shooting out everywhere. I woke up mid-stab and was tempted to go back to sleep to make sure she was stabbed enough but gradually I came too.
$28 I probably shouldn't drink so much right before bed it seams to give me nightmares.
$29 I also shouldn't fall asleep watching prison stabbing videos that is a big one.
$30 Not really that good you seem to get exactly 15% or just under in the 30s and 50s and 15-20% in the 40s and 60s. I havent figured this out yet. your input is welcome.
I have to go now- thanks for listening
$28 I probably shouldn't drink so much right before bed it seams to give me nightmares.
$29 I also shouldn't fall asleep watching prison stabbing videos that is a big one.
$30 Not really that good you seem to get exactly 15% or just under in the 30s and 50s and 15-20% in the 40s and 60s. I havent figured this out yet. your input is welcome.
I have to go now- thanks for listening
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
my dad new link
Hey check out my dad's new site.
Especially go to the meet the artist part there is a picture.
Ben and I are really proud of our dad for leaving the 9to5 world to go into woodcarving around 10 years ago. I can't really carve very well and ben sucks even harder at carving. when we were younger we would use his tools to carve a wide variety of things (95% wooden fighting knives with the occasional wooden bird thrown in).
Unfortunately with ben and I in Toronto there is currently very little influence to mitigate my parents escalating hippie craziness so we are never sure what is going to be happening when i go home to visit but it at least it seems that they are becoming less prominent in the Niagara drum circle community.
Especially go to the meet the artist part there is a picture.
Ben and I are really proud of our dad for leaving the 9to5 world to go into woodcarving around 10 years ago. I can't really carve very well and ben sucks even harder at carving. when we were younger we would use his tools to carve a wide variety of things (95% wooden fighting knives with the occasional wooden bird thrown in).
Unfortunately with ben and I in Toronto there is currently very little influence to mitigate my parents escalating hippie craziness so we are never sure what is going to be happening when i go home to visit but it at least it seems that they are becoming less prominent in the Niagara drum circle community.
Friday, July 13, 2007
my trip to shoppers (dreck alert)
My trip started in my room.
My room is pretty messy right now and really that should inspire me to get out of it and complete today's mission (go to shoppers drug mart and buy bottled water) but I seem to be stuck looking at the internet which is pretty much just a collection of NBA rumours and ebay bidding to me right now.
The combination of auction sniper and booze has put me in a position of winning quite a few ebay auctions I was previously unaware I was participating in. actually most of the purchases are pretty good save that I can really only ride one bicycle at a time and there is no reason for someone with a size 8 1/2 head to assume that a baseball cap he buys online should fit. here is another picture of my room.
if you look closely you can see the shelf I built which is unable to support a working load of jeans and towels. the milk crates are full of socks.
my room usually isn't this fucked up but I wanted to move my bed away from the window for more comfortable afternoon sleeping and haven't put anything back lets finally leave my room
our house now boasts 3 vintage vitus aluminum frames. My dad found one and i got the other two from tanked up e-bay bidding. these frames will be bikes soon.
here is the box one of the frames came in. this should sit in out hallway for at least 3 months.
here is my awesome bike. note the aggressive geometry and lack of brakes. lets go outside.
it is a pretty nice day and shoppers drug mart is right next to my house so I can pretty much just wear the shit i slept in unless i run into...
people I know like these two (actually I don't know her) he is Chris New (sp?) one of the talented young actors who get drunk at my bar on the regular. Go see their fringe play at the tarragon.
shoppers drug mart I go here every day.
I cashed in a bunch of points before i went to Dominican for bmac and tashas wedding but I still have about 150 000 points which is like $300 shoppers drug mart dollars even if you are an idiot and cash them in on a regular day and not a extra value point day.
the cosmetic girls have to say hi to everyone who come in. They used to think that ben and I were one crazy guy who only said hi to them half the time and dated a ton of different girls. I know them now too and they are super help full even with non cosmetic inquiries.
Why did ben used to know them and say hi and not me????
probably because I am not constantly asking for help in selecting male cosmetics.
According to the friendly girls this is bens favorite line.
I am so glad we live in a world where men aren't embarrassed to use face revitalizing undereye cream and I am also super glad I get mistaken for this person (although not for much longer if ben's age defying cosmetic plans materialize)
They can't remember if ben bought this or not for $65. (remember this is a person who currently owes me 2 months rent)
I can't figure out if this toothbrush is better than mine. Probably not. My toothbrush is pretty good and until they figure out something revolutionary in toothbrush technology it seems like recent toothbrush upgrades have been mostly cosmetic. I am freaking bored as crap with my toothbrush though.
my pharmacist tells me that none of these products work in preventing cold sores which is weird because the online cold-sore communities endorse all of these products as part of your effective anti-coldsore routine. also endorsed: straight bleach, multiple self administered needle punctures, and boiling water. I am glad to know that there are people out there who hate their cold sores as much as I do.
at this point i am 20 minutes from taking 9 times the recommended dosage of this product (as advised by the responsible online coldsore community) and making myself sick for 3 hours.
mmmmmm gorilla munch. I wish this was a workout supplement I could buy 
don't worry ben I won't be buying this (ben is fat as hell right now).
it was when I was taking a picture of the scale that the manager approached me and asked me why I was taking pictures. Apparently because of the competitive nature of the drug store business they don't let anyone take pictures in the store. I could have been an agent for whatever rival drug store would foolishly try to compete with shoppers drug mart taking pictures of thier cleverly arranged scale section so that my store could copy or even trump thier display. To divert suspicion I dressed like a really hungover annex renter and doused my shirt with beer for authenticity.
He was pretty disappointed when I explained that I was taking pictures so that I could do a "photo blog" entry about my trip to shoppers so that friends i haven't seen in a while could catch up on how I spend my day. he did chuckle when I went on that the scale photo specifically was to make fun of my fat brother but it seemed forced. He said if was ok if I took a couple more pictures but I was pretty much done anyway. this just left me with
Mission Accomplished!!! 12 16 ounce bottles of water set in cardbord wraped in plastic and another step in my furious fight to save the environment.
see you tomorrow shoppers drug mart
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