saturday night were those 4 ladies with 4 mediums. well, it looks like a trend… wednesday night another 4…

and here’s a van someone brought us… only the 4th so far…. c’mon people- make your vans….

here is the second image we have received for our photo contest. actually, it is the first, but i got a picture from a customer who had some pizza frozen and shipped to…(indiana???) and so i made that photo the first entry and now we got the first “official” entry, although the “rules” say to be wearing a satchels or LSE t-shirt but hey, this is a great photo. cheers.

jrestaurant is the name of this crazy software we bought to attempt to take orders with the ipod touch and iphone. tonight we may have had 95% of our tickets taken by ipod. for being brand new it worked pretty well. now, there were some problems. 1. there were 2 takeout orders that never arrived in the kitchen. the folks arrived to pick them up but we had no ticket. ouch. 2. there was a table that waited an hour and ten minutes and there was no ticket for them in the system. double and triple ouch. 3. at one point we lost our wireless connection for about 30 seconds. not so bad but everyone was a bit panicky…
now, the good news. as for #1… we actually figured out WHY those orders never made it to the kitchen so we can solve that in the future. as for #2… it was a server error because they had a different table “open” than the table they were at and so the pizzas got made but when they couldn’t figure out where they went they were set aside…. so, now we know ways to keep this from happening again. (and said table got their entire meal for free… 2 pizzas and drinks and cake… and fortunatley they were very nice and understanding.) and as for #3. it was only 30 seconds and then we got connection back so not the end of the world at all…. something we have to learn to deal with if it happens.

so, all in all i am pleased. now, in the middle of the stress of making those 2 takeout orders over, and the table that never got their food, and the internet stumble (all happened within 20 minutes of each other)… in the middle of all that i got this crazy migraine where i was seeing lines and colors (called an AURA.) so that wasn’t good… but i must say that i was very excited when i looked at the “open dine-in” tickets on my ipod and noticed that every single table was opened by ipod and the kitchen was humming away… it was working. despite my migraine and the problems. it was working on a busy busy friday night. thanks for all who were part of this experiment.

by the way and FYI: jrestaurant is a programmer i found who lives in Malta. we tell him via email what problems we are having and he send us updates. i send him an average of 6 emails a day. he probably hates me but he is always professional and never lets on. sometimes it takes days to fix something small. sometimes we get several fixes at once. he’s my new frenemy.

and delurking: this is word i learned the meaning of yesterday thanks to a comment on my latest post. first of all i didn’t think anyone read my blog and secondly, no one ever comments. so it was a pleasant surprise to not only get a comment that wasn’t spam, but someone actually saying how much they liked the place and cheering my blue self orange. even tonight in the midst of the madness a customer would comment to me of how much they loved the place… this happened twice tonight when my head was about to explode. i’m thinking… if they only knew how much crap is going on right now… they might not act so dang happy….

the bottom line is that change happens. we learn new words…. we take on new challenges… and sometimes if we are really brave, we enter a contest. bad days beat me down like the armadillo i want to bludgeon that wreaks havoc on my wife’s garden. good days come too and people are nice even when they wait too long or something goes wrong. other people delurk to try and cheer a brother up. it’s a good world really.

thanks for tuning in. here’s another random picture from my photos….

finally i must squarely admit and explain: none of this POS would have ever been possible without the new GM, WADE. wade has been working triple time to help me make this happen. he said to me tonight..”just don’t email me on sunday this week…” i said, “i wouldn’t email you on sunday would i?” he says “you emailed me 3 times last sunday.” … damn. poor guy. i work him so hard. when he comes to your table to apologize for something, be nice to him. he’s taking on the most stress of all….

well, i thought i was so smart detouring around the “traditional” POS and going straight to the cutting edge. it’s working, sortof. i knew we would be facing an uphill battle and it is. some employees are fighting against it. the system is still getting the bugs worked out. every time we get an “update” from our programmer, it’s like taking 1 step forward and 2 steps back. the update today helped some but suddenly the ipods wouldn’t print a bill. but it is much better than it was 2 weeks ago, and can only assume in 2 more weeks we’ll be even further along. the new ipods all have gps tracking in them in case they get “lost” or stolen. i’m not sure how it would work, i guess i would gather a few big guys and drive over to the location of the ipod and knock on the door and ask for it. hmmm. last night one of the servers “set her ipod down” (she guesses) and when she went to look for it, GONE. it was one without tracking, of course. this had me highly depressed all day.
on a brighter note, a farmer came by and is going to sell us his tomatoes which will save us a good deal every week. maybe even enough to buy a new ipod in a couple weeks….
tonight i got to work to a disaster zone. pies were taking 45, 50 minutes to get to the tables. takeouts were taking an hour or more. after 8 years i still cannot understand why they don’t just dial me up. i could have been there an hour earlier and saved all the grief and unhappy customers. i tell them over and over to call me. i tell them if i get there and the rush is passed i won’t be mad but happy. i tell them if it is getting crazy just get me there. “we kept thinking you would walk in any minute…” sigh.

then, in the middle of the chaos, a deep dish gets taken to the wrong table and they eat it. now the table that ordered it has to wait for another one and they had already waited an HOUR!. i swear i lost it. i can’t believe that when these hour long pizzas come out that someone can carelessly take them to the wrong place. what’s wrong with my restaurant? what is my problem? we are going to get killed next week during graduation at this rate.

anyway- if you consider the stress of the new POS, the constant trying to convince employees about the benefits and the reasons we need to do it… add the stress of the devices not working properly, or more often than not the “user error…” that always comes with something as new and complex as this… then think about the stress of 16 hour days, late nights, returns of stuff i don’t need, trying to get stuff i do need…. and then the working on my weekends… add up all those stresses, and the rental house i’m working on cleaning and fixing up, and the pool pump that i’ve been trying for 10 days to fix… do the math and it all = internal combustion.

it’s nearly midnight and i’m getting up with the kids to get them off for school. thursday is my day… hoorah!

do i have any new photos for you?…….

so last year we had this check fraud happen. we realized that someone had stolen checks from our mailbox, made copies and then sent people in to cash these “fake checks.” when we explained to compass what we thought was going on and the new security measures we were taking, they didn’t care one but and told us to find another bank and they weren’t covering our loss. i won’t get into all the details again. anyone interested can read THIS POST.
well, we bugged the detective and never found out anything. it didn’t seem like anyone was doing anything about this. well, then a woman gets arrested, as her name was on one of the checks. she’s from tampa, as were several of the people cashing the checks. she’s 23 and had no previous record. it’s in the court system still and may take months for anything to happen. but i want to find out what she knows? who put her up to this? who is behind this? i had a meeting with the state prosecutor on the case and explained the story. he was shocked that compass didn’t cover this. there is no reason.
well, last week there was an orange and blue game in town and we were quite busy. someone left behind a tampa paper and my GM noticed a headline on the front page about a check scam where people were taking checks out of mailboxes. turns out this guy has been doing this since the 90′s and there are several spin off organizations. they buy homeless people and crack heads ID’s for $50 and then travel around and send runners into banks with fake checks they have copied from stealing them from mailboxes. this HAS to be the same group as got us i thought so i contacted the detective mentioned in the article. he said he started surveillance on this group in 2007 and followed them to gainesville, tallahassee, south caroline, georgia. he has 800 cases of check fraud connected with this crime ring. he currently has 125 people in jail and has put a couple of the ring leaders behind bars for 10- 15 years. anyway, i told him my story and he wants me to take the witness stand at a trial soon, tell my story and explain how much damage this has caused us. he said he has 800 cases and every single one of them the banks covered the loss. we are the ONLY business he has ever heard of that the bank chose to bail. he was pissed. he was really pissed, especially since WE caught it and reported it 24 hours later.
anyway, i wish he was putting compass bank on trial. i mean, i’m glad they are catching some of these criminals but compass bank is equally at fault here as far as i’m concerned. they stole our money and wanted to blame US for it. they weren’t interested in our theories of a thief stealing our mail, they just wanted all the info on our employees and when they worked. we cooperated with them but we explained that we HAD the checks in our possession. someone had stolen checks from the mailbox and made copies. (we knew this because we later found out that checks we were sending out were not arriving.) this was obviously not an inside job. anyway, i will have a hard time ever forgiving compass bank. i will hopefully continue to slander their name as much as i can. use a local bank. the big banks don’t care. compass bank doesn’t care.
SEE STORY HERE

i’m always so excited to see the blogs of my co-workers when they’ve added posts. teresa is doing a great job of posting about some of the places we spend our ATM and grant money. check it out HERE.
john has archived photos of beautiful old flyers we’ve made fro various things (john made all of them but one..) see it HERE.
judy is always posting about the artwork that is up or about to go up at satchel’s. checking her blog gives you a peek of the work if you can’t make it in. see it HERE.
and of course danny posts once in a while and his latest is a short video of the kids dancing…HERE.

so, as some of you may know, we are in the process of changing to a POS system. that stands for point of sale. we currently use paper tickets for everything, we put our name and time on there, make a salad ticket, price them, and turn them in. we are changing to a system where we use an ipod touch at the table, and send immediately from the table to the kitchen. it’s challenging because it’s different and our staff has to get used to doing it a different way. but we’re on our way to figuring it out and it’s exciting too. i’ve been working 16 hour days for weeks now… i’ve been going in on the days we are closed to wire printers and change lights and add shelves and plugs… i’m so exhausted from it all and we are still at the beginning. anyway- no time for videos and photographs and all that. just lots and lots of real mind boggling work.

so, that’s where i’ve been. trying to wrap my head around getting this system up and running… i’ve bought a bunch of the wrong stuff and had to return 4 or 5 boxes in the last week. no fun. in the long run it is the right direction i have no doubt about that.

so, now you can go into lightnin salvage and order your pizza and salad at the counter and we’ll bring it to you. danny is taking orders on his iphone. now you will get your salad before your pizza if you eat on the property someplace. now if you are lucky enough to get a server using the ipod, you will get a printed bill at your table to take up to the register. that’s new – and nice. finally we are like a real restaurant and give you a chance to look at your bill. and also, the server can take your drink order and send it to the drink station, take your salad order and send it to the kitchen, all while still at the table. you might even get drinks delivered while they are still taking your pizza order. well- let’s not get too ambitious.

so, if folks eating in LSE are ordering back there and getting food delivered, that’s less traffic in the dining room. these are just a few of the obvious benefits, there’s a lot more for the record keeping but i won’t bore you.

come get some pizza, someone tell me we are the first restaurant in gainesville to use ipod touches to take your order? anyone know of a place in town that does this?