rickvs

Dunno if he can quite afford it, but New Owner did something that I think got him quite a few brownie points with the employees.

My store's Former Owner had an arrangement with our production staff, where the supervisor and his brother used a lot of their own tools for company installs. And I mean a LOT. Like, they kept their own toolboxes at work, and were constantly chasing down their tools from the far corners of the building, because another employee or customer assumed that the stuff belonged to, you know. the store.

As soon as New Boss heard about this, he went out and played Santa at Home Depot, buying enough tools to mostly fill our twenty-foot-long production table ...including a duplicate set of our install kit, with carrying bags, so one can go out to the customer's location while another set stays in the shop. I dunno how many hundreds of dollars he spent, but I'm thinkin' it was over a grand. (And I heard a snippet of conversation that led me to believe he told the production supervisor that the old tools could become the store's property, while the new tools went home with him and his brother. New Owner's stock continues to rise with me).

I'm also not sure the store can afford this largesse, because New Owner has been buying stuff for everyone -- I shouldn't call them toys because they're useful equipment that we've been limping along without. But even if we're careening towards fiscal ruin, we're at least doing it with a degree of style and professional comfort.

In other news, one of the new salespeople stopped near my desk, and apropos of nothing, said, "Ze pearl is in ze river."

I said, "I haven't seen _Under the Rainbow_ in a long time..."

Fraternity through obscurity. Gotta love it.