Category: California

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To-Go California, You can order your meal but you’ll never eat.

Consider this a bit of a PSA.

I stumbled across this article in The Wall Street Journal about some new regulation for fast food and dine-in restaurants no longer providing plastic utensils with your order, unless you specifically ask for them.

Gone are the days when you can blow through a Taco Bell drive through and be assured that you’ll be able to eat all your meal.

You’d think, “No worries, I’ll use my hands.”

TRUE you could, but then you’ll find that the napkins you assumed would be in the bag, AREN’T.

Not to worry though, It’s not like you’ll have hot sauce in the bag either because those too you’d have to ask for.

So, Taco Bell, and other fast food options will kinda be a no option without a checklist. I’ll attempt to help by providing my personal Ordering checklist. I’ve got it on my phone, but I’m thinking a post-it note stuck to my car dashboard might be better.

Fast Food ordering:

  1. Food
  2. Drink
  3. Condiments (Ketchup, Hot Sauce, etc.)
  4. Straw
  5. Napkins at least 5 (More depending on type of food)
  6. Necessary utensils (Spork, Knife, etc.)
  7. Pull up to window. Pay.
  8. CHECK that meal is correct and necessary Utensils, Napkins, and condiments are present.
  9. IGNORE HONKING of impatient people waiting behind you!

Yet again The State of California is working to make your life better, through unintended consequences.

Most of the time, If you’re a working stiff, perhaps hourly you’ve maybe got a 30 minute lunch. If the company you work for is exceptionally generous you might even have 45 minutes or a whole hour!

With traffic in most areas around California industrial parks, for a working stiff, it works out like this;

5 minutes to get out of the building, 5 minutes to get out of the parking lot (due to everyone else trying to leave for lunch) 10 minutes to navigate the rest of the lunch hour traffic from all the other companies in the industrial park.

5 minutes at traffic lights and turning into the nearest strip mall or gas station parking lot.

Pull into shortest line for for one of the fast food places, (Wendy’s, Mac Donalds, Taco Bell, Starbucks, Panda Express, etc) wait in line 5 to 10 minutes (By which time you’re already late if you’re on a 30 minute lunch.)

Place your order, 5 minute wait for food, then mad 10 minute dash, (You’re late at this point if you have a 45 minute lunch,) back to the industrial park.

5 minutes waiting at lights, 5 minutes to get into parking lot and find parking space, 5 minutes to get back into building. (You’re on the raggedy edge of being late at this point if you have an hour lunch.)

You get back to your desk, ready to resume work and eat your meal while you’re working…

You open your bag of cold soggy burger & fries or tacos that started out as crunchy but which are now, anything but. Voilà you discover that the whole exercise was pointless because even though you could eat without the condiments, or perhaps even the utensils, you have nothing to wipe your hands with.

Your lunch sits in the bag, not getting any fresher until finally it smells disgusting and ends up in the trash. Thereby contributing to food waste and spewing CO2 into the air, in the dash to get lunch that was also a pointless waste of energy.

So tell me again how wonderful it is that you’ve eliminated basic necessities to protect the planet? Huuuummm?

I swear to God, all of these jackass politicians should be under mandatory orders to live with their proposed laws for six months before they can put them into action.

Not ONE of the political elites in any California city has ever had to punch a clock or be screamed at by an overbearing manager over their lunch break being 2 minutes too long.

All one need do is look at the distribution of restaurants in and around industrial parks in San Diego, Irvine, Victorville, Huntington Beach, The San Fernando Valley, Ventura, or Los Angeles to see that most of the “working class” lives what I’ve described above daily. Or they bring their lunch so that they can at least have a real few minutes of rest during their lunch break.

Now, thanks to the politician brain trust, this new anti utensil or condiment law will ultimately slow the food ordering process down even further.

Not that these Politicians give a shit. After all, if the workers aren’t spending money on fast food, after skipping breakfast to get the kids off to school, it means the workers will have more money that can collected as taxes.

Obviously the low wage earner who collects $12 a week in unspent lunch money doesn’t need it now do they?

Plus, the Arch Ministers of Public Health can chalk up a “Win” because obesity will be less of a problem. Who cares if the workers are starving while they toil away to earn enough to pay their tax burden? That just means they’ll die sooner and a whole new group can be imported from wherever.

Maybe the Politicians are hoping it’ll be mostly white people!

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Triggered, First thing in the morning! Yeah!

After years of working in corporate America, there are a few things that really trigger me.

One of those things is Emails with the words, “Mandatory”, “Comply”, “You Must”, “Required”, and my favorite is “Compliance is Mandatory”.

You see, these words or phrases never herald good news for any employee.

The term; “Mandatory Overtime” Only occurs in corporate email in the Summer when you’re planning a vacation, or in Fall/Winter before Thanksgiving or Christmas. That’s been my experience, your milage will vary.

Much like COVID’s 10 days to slow the spread there’s always a time component. Corporations always start with 30 days but all the employees know that’s complete bullshit. Whatever failures in planning that led to “Mandatory Overtime” in the first place are cumulative failures that cannot be resolved in 30 days and are much more likely to require 90 to 120 days.

But the HR department and management in general, lie in hopes of not having a bunch of people simply walk off the job.

Invariably Paid Time Off will be impacted and your employer will be looking for some kind of proof that you have a trip planned or are going in for surgery. The last company I worked for even added penalties if you were sick during Mandatory Overtime. They also had one guy drop dead at his desk because he was so terrified of losing his job, he neglected to seek medical assistance for a heart attack. Instead, he drove to work and died at his desk. Did the company relent? Hell NO! There were also miscellaneous people who went out on stress leave never to return.

If you’re a salaried employee, mandatory overtime actually reduces your hourly wage because you get no bonus or incentive to put in those hours. Usually, salaried employees don’t have enough “time in position” to benefit from stock options either. So even if the company succeeds due to salaried employees accepting their reduction in pay, there isn’t any long term benefit to them. But the executives see huge bonuses, and get plenty of accolades, even though they weren’t included in the “Mandatory Overtime” edict.

Having been in exactly the position above more times than I can count. The word “mandatory” has become a triggering word to me.

Over the years, “Comply”, “Compliance”, and “Must” have also become triggers for similar reasons.

“You must comply with the new standard”, means that you as an employee will have to set aside time to attend training. Often that time is supposed to be given to the company during some kind “lunch and learn” but the truth is you’re still working even though you’re not technically on the clock. After all, “this new training is for your benefit,” uh right…

If the training is from HR, it’s not for your benefit, it’s so the company can cover their ass.

Training of this type often includes: Sexual Harassment Training, New policies, (I assume new pronoun usage these days), Cheapening of Insurance, or Workplace Safety.

All of these sound like great things, until you read the fine print when you sign that you’ve taken the “Training”. 99% of my experience is that HR is making modifications to the terms of your employment and providing a mechanism that allows any perceived slight to be grounds for termination. Couple that with so called “Zero Tolerance Policies” and well being a white male… You’re screwed!

HR is not the employee’s friend and hasn’t been for decades.

Which leads me to my triggering this morning.

The California EDD sent an email that says in part;

“Urgent: You Must Verify Your Employment or Self-Employment for Your PUA Claim“

“Even though your Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) benefits have ended, federal rules require you to provide documentation to prove that you were, or planned to be, self-employed or employed at some point between 01/01/2019 and 11/15/2020.”

They start the email by SHOUTING my name because apparently, the state of California doesn’t know how to use lower case.

They direct me to the State of California’s shitty website which is always a pain in the ass to log into, and is in fact, such a pain in the ass that I stopped using it, opting instead for snail mail.

Triggered though I am, I’m curious to know what the hell EDD is talking about and what kind of documentation they’re asking for, so I try to log in anyway. Don’t they already have all that documentation? It should be in their files.

The login inevitably fails and I’m locked out of the account for an hour. What’s new? EDD couldn’t program their way out of a one bit puzzle.

In this particular case it also looks like they’ve changed or updated their login page and are now showing me a security picture of a die and a comment that says 1997 Chevy.

This leads me to wonder if the login is fucked up or if someone has been playing around at stealing my account. Neither would surprise me with California EDD.

As an aside, I’ve applied to work for California EDD on several occasions since it’s obvious they could use someone testing their shitty software. They, like every single other potential employer, promptly ignored my application.

Honestly, at this point I’d be happy with a response from any potential employer that said literally, “Fuck off you piece of shit!” At least then I’d know where I stood.

While EDD was sending me money, I felt compelled to respond to their shit. Technically since they were paying me, I considered myself an employee. But now that they’re not sending me money, and I’m still unemployed…

I’m much less inclined to go out of my way to deal with them.

I’ll wait another 30 minutes and try again. If I still am unable to log into the web site I’ll have to decide to ignore them, or contact my state representative’s office. In the past the representative’s office has been the only way to make headway with the EDD.

I hate having to involve them in this bullshit but I may have no choice.

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And the insane beat goes on…

‘Right’ is ‘Wrong’, ‘Wrong’ is ‘Right’. ‘Wrongthink’ is punishable, ‘Rightthink’ is rewarded.

I swear it’s Owellian!

Governor “Gruesome” Newsom kept his job this week. Not that there was much doubt he would. In a state as loaded with Democrats as California it’s surprising that there was even a recall election at all.

The State Democrats though, have responded to this existential “Threat” to their power by taking steps to limit the possibility of recall elections in the future. In my cynical brain, that means that the law will probably read something like; “No recall election shall be permitted against an elected official of the Democratic Party. However any elected Republican Official may be recalled at any time. The recall process shall only require 1/4 of the California Legislature’s approval, no mass election shall be necessary.”

Their justification will be something along the lines of being fiscally responsible; “By doing away with the mass public election cycle the state will be able to save millions of tax payers dollars.”

General Mark Milley Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pretty much committed treason in the last days of Former President Trumps administration. This one is head snapping for someone like myself.

Milley claims that he was concerned about Trump launching nuclear weapons against the Chinese. I ask, in what universe is that even a concern? It’s not like the President of the United States can just arbitrarily decide to launch nukes. The only scenario I know of where The President can initiate a launch on his own authority, is If missile are already flying toward the US.

Otherwise, Congress has the authority. If there is not a state of war between the US and another country nukes are not an option. The President can scream and yell all he or she wants, but the launch isn’t supposed to happen. Congress wouldn’t agree, and the Military would in theory be well within their rights to refuse to carry out such an illegal order.

What Milley did, was well beyond refusing an illegal order. No such order had been given. Milley went behind not only the sitting President’s back. Apparently he also acted without the Secretary of Defense’s knowledge. Here we have a General contacting a foreign, technically ‘hostile’ government while at the same time attempting to route any and all orders and communications through his office alone.

That folks is not only treasonous, it’s the stuff of a banana republic coup d’état. That’s how you end up with military dictators for life. How many times have we seen something like this play out in other countries over the past 60 years?

You can bet your ass if Milley had done the same thing at the end of say, Joe Biden’s administration. Congress would be screaming for his head on a pike. Let’s face it, Joe Biden in his current state is far more likely to issue such an illegal order.

Can you say Afghanistan???

Unsurprisingly, Nancy Pelosi is in the shadows. The Pentagon has confirmed that she and Milley were colluding prior to Milley contacting his counterpart in the Chinese Government.

Of greater concern to me, is that none of the officers under General Milley stood up refusing to accept or execute what was very probably an illegal order from General Milley. They had that option. They too swore an oath to protect and defend The Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.

The fact that none of the other Admirals and Generals in that room with Milley had the balls to level charges of sedition and treason is flat out terrifying. In elder times, Milley would have been clapped in irons and brought before a military tribunal within days.

The terrifying part for me is their lack of action, or concern, suggests that they can be bought. I’m sure that intelligence officers in every hostile nation are right now trying to figure out how to buy a senior member of the Joint Chiefs.

I look at it this way. They didn’t say anything because either they were worried about their careers, pensions and retirement, or they are amenable to the overthrow of the United States.

Either way, it’s like the old joke about the guy propositioning a woman in a bar.

Guy: “Would you sleep with me for a $100?”
Woman: “Absolutely not!”
Guy: “Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?”
Woman: “Maybe, do you have a million dollars? I don’t want you to think I’m a whore.”
Guy: “We’ve already established you’re a whore, now we’re just haggling over price.”

I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there have been huge offers of cash extended from foreign governments, to various upper level staff in The Pentagon.

Milley’s continued presence in his position besmirches the honor of our military, and demonstrates that we are weak in that, we aren’t even up to the task of enforcing our own laws.

Milley shouldn’t resign. Milley should be arrested, and brought before a Military Tribunal, then tried under the UCMJ. I think the penalty for treason is still death. If he’s found guilty, so be it.

(Just a reminder, I’m not now and haven’t been in the military. Therefore, I might be a little unclear on the details of how this works. Military folks reading this, please correct me via comments.)

Speaking of the 25th amendment…

There are still people banging on about Donald Trump. Saying that he should have been removed from office via the 25th amendment.

Really? You’re still harping on that? Newsflash… Donald Trump isn’t The President anymore!

In the immortal words of Hillary Rodham Clinton, “What does it matter at this point anyway?”

You folks out there still bitching about the 25th, might want to shut up. The 25th amendment applies equally to any sitting President. Just sayin…

In closing here is something that I was personally gratified to see.

The Riverside County Sheriff is refusing to implement the vaccine mandate.

The Sheriff cites The Constitution and his oath of office in his decision. I swear I’d like to shake this man’s hand and buy him a beer.

Thank God there are still some men in this country who have a set of balls.

So that’s the highlights of the news. Well, not all the highlights, these are the things that caught most of my attention this week.

I’m still waiting to see how badly insulted the Australians are by Biden forgetting who he was talking to during the announcement of AUKUS defense pact.

Biden called the Australian Prime Minister, “That fella down under…”

Not an auspicious beginning to a new defense pact.