Randomness: the 18th sequel

[Green Eyed Monsty]

1 hour ago, Corsair said:

GEM

[Corsair]

[sumbloke]

51 minutes ago, Corsair said:

Are you crazy? Of course not.

[Chaoswolf]

[PaganMegan]

Grump spent half an hour talking about the political history of the State of Maine with the roofer.

 

Is there some kind of hand signal that historians use to identify each other or something? Cause when I see a roofer, a discussion of the politics behind a defunct canal system and how it was impacted by the railroads is not how I would start things off.

[kristof65]

15 hours ago, TGP said:

At a certain point it seems like best practice to:

 

…just close your umbrella and let it rain money.

Agreed, but we really don't have the staff to do time consuming mundane tasks like this just because our customers are lazy. 

 

Back in the 90s/early 00s, we had the capability to remote into our automatic car wash tellers and make all sorts of tweaks and diagnostics. What happened is that customers would call for the tiniest, most trivial things.  Back then they had seven techs in the Canadian office and two in the US office, and it still wasn't close to enough.  So when the next generation of teller was designed, a good bulk of the diagnostics were moved to the teller itself, made really simple to access AND the ability to run those tests remotely was removed. 

What happened was a large drop in service calls - to the point that it halved the number of techs required. No, nobody got fired, just natural attrition, particularly during the company ownership changes/restructuring.   Those of us who were there back then (basically, me and the Service Manager) try not to fall into the trap of doing the mundane crap for lazy customers. 
 

13 hours ago, Green Eyed Monsty said:

The bottom feeder asking for merchant services and account numbers would be raising Red Flags with Flare Illumination if it were being asked of me in your situation.  Perhaps a report both up your Chain of Authority/Supervision and notification of the appropriate authorities at both the current owners Merchant Services Provider and the Local Law Enforcement are in order, just to cover your own 6 o'clock.

And when the business is taken over, the Merchant Services Provider will already have the guy flagged as someone to scrutinize very carefully.

If any of the past victims of this guys shady dealings have filed a police report or a report with either the DA or Board of Realtors, this latest bit of shady business will at least add to the file, and might be enough to trigger further scrutiny, depending on the jurisdiction.

If/when the slime sucker does take over the car wash, obsolete as much of the equipment as quickly as possible.  If it gets expensive enough quickly enough he may decide car washes are too much work and additional cost for the short term return on investment and pick some other business for his future predatory moves.

-

The multiple cleaning accounts sounds good, add in a site log where every cleaning is required to be logged for time/date and procedures would help establish an audit trail, should it become necessary to question what is going on for either troubleshooting or accounting purposes.

Good Luck, and may you have a peaceful Memorial Day Weekend.

GEM

When someone calls me and says they're taking over a site/buying a site, one of the first things I do is reach out to the current owner. Most of the time, I already know because the current owner has told me they're selling, etc. When I don't know in advance, that's a small red flag.   After talking with current owner (she's the one that pointed me to the newspaper articles), that red flag got bigger, and after talking with the guy, several more large red ones were planted.   After I hung up with him the first time, I immediately notified management. 

Apparently complaints were filed against him, and he did lose a job as a realtor, but it appears that he has good lawyers, and knows how to exploit the system.  He apparently has a bad reputation in the restaurant business in his community as his restaurants all fail, so he's decided to move on to car washes. 

I have already obsoleted all of the site equipment in my conversation with him, which was absurdly easy to do, because it's all about 18 years old, with only a couple of updates since then.   The current owners have kept the equipment in decent condition - basically, they've been following the mantra of "If it ain't broken, don't tempt fate by upgrading it", but it does show its age now.  What I've learned over the years  is that the merchant processing companies tend to let POS equipment slide as long as it doesn't have to be reprogrammed, but as soon as it has to be reprogrammed, such as for an ownership change, they're all over making sure everything is up to snuff.  So the current owner could probably operate as is for years, while any new owner will be told immediately by any processing company he talks to that the site equipment is obsolete and/or not supported. 


Found out why the one site doesn't want to delete and recreate their cleaning accounts.   The system doesn't allow reuse of account numbers, and everyone has the existing account numbers memorized so they can look them up by account number.   They just don't want to learn the new account numbers, nor use any of the other methods to look accounts up.   They also claim to have never been told about this balance thing, despite me having at least one service ticket that says otherwise.  Well then, continue to have problems and complain. 

[Green Eyed Monsty]

And he still has a blind spot:

 

 

GEM

[Green Eyed Monsty]

2 hours ago, kristof65 said:

>snip<


Found out why the one site doesn't want to delete and recreate their cleaning accounts.   The system doesn't allow reuse of account numbers, and everyone has the existing account numbers memorized so they can look them up by account number.   They just don't want to learn the new account numbers, nor use any of the other methods to look accounts up.   They also claim to have never been told about this balance thing, despite me having at least one service ticket that says otherwise.  Well then, continue to have problems and complain. 

When they get audited I don't think the auditors will buy that as a "valid reason",

At that point they will most likely be determined to be using these accounts to hide income and get a     H U G E tax bill.

GEM

Edited May 26 by Green Eyed Monsty

[WhiteWulfe]

Might be evil if your first thought when you saw firefighters holding sighs saying "charity car wash" is "I wonder if they'll cleany work truck..." and it's a good thirty seconds later when the thought of whether or not work would reimburse comes about... 

 

I'm not quite that cruel.  If I had a car, I'd be there, but a two ton Hino with a box?  That's just cruel to them.

 

Apparently their mascot (a Dalmatian, naturally) is named "Sparky"... 

[Chaoswolf]

[Chaoswolf]

My wife and I are heading to BGG con for the weekend. Have fun and behave.

[sumbloke]

On 5/25/2023 at 4:32 PM, Green Eyed Monsty said:

"Were you there? Were you THERE?"

If you have to ask where "there" is, you weren't there.

[Great Khan Artist]

I don't know exactly how to word this, but there is a group of people who make dollhouse miniatures in Canada called Miniature Enthusiasts of Winnipeg. That's right, M.E.O.W.   

[WhiteWulfe]

2 hours ago, Great Khan Artist said:

I don't know exactly how to word this, but there is a group of people who make dollhouse miniatures in Canada called Miniature Enthusiasts of Winnipeg. That's right, M.E.O.W.   

It's Winnipeg, what else are you supposed to do, autocross? (this would be purple, but mobile posting is terrible for formatting options) 

Edited May 26 by WhiteWulfe

[Green Eyed Monsty]

6 hours ago, WhiteWulfe said:

Might be evil if your first thought when you saw firefighters holding sighs saying "charity car wash" is "I wonder if they'll cleany work truck..." and it's a good thirty seconds later when the thought of whether or not work would reimburse comes about... 

 

I'm not quite that cruel.  If I had a car, I'd be there, but a two ton Hino with a box?  That's just cruel to them.

 

Apparently their mascot (a Dalmatian, naturally) is named "Sparky"... 

They have "special equipment" for the work trucks.

It's the same equipment used to make A triple F, Aqueous Film Forming Foam, the stuff used for certain firefighting where they need to lay down a "blanket" of foam to smother flames.  They just use detergent instead of the normal chemicals.  Then hose it down a half hour later.

GEM