Small Business...
On Tuesday the commercial freezer at the cafe started to be noisy...I thought. When you work around equipment you get used to the chaotic rhythm of compressors, fans, ice machines, etc., all compounded by customer conversation and your better half providing minute-to-minute instruction and evaluation. Small business is the heart of America, according to many, actually the few who have also been instrumental is transferring our manufacturing might overseas. They have jobs. I don't.
It sounded like the compressor. There was an unusual amount of vibration and the thing seemed to be banging. Our repair guy showed up on WED right during the noon rush. There is no extra space and we were climbing over him to get to the meat slicer, supplies, etc. He's really good. There are two evaporator fans inside the unit and two fans that provide airflow across the cooling coil. The fans near the compressor seemed to have a bit of end play. He only had one replacement with him. We spent about an hour trying to get that to fit before deciding that was a dead end and that cleaning off the fan blades and the coil may have solved the issue.
Before we put it back together...this was the busiest Tuesday we've had for a while...we ran out of food at 1:30...the fire alarm went off and one of our suppliers made a large delivery. It was a bit of chaos. After the repair guy left I listened to the din of equipment and concluded that the freezer was much quieter. Good.
We close at 3:00 on Tuesdays. About 9:15 PM I decided to stop and see if the freezer was making noise. The fans were running and it was pretty quiet, quiet because the compressor had failed. Checking the temperature it was clear that 49 cubic feet of frozen meat and supplies were going to thaw. I walked into Menard's at 9:55 PM and bought two freezers. They close at 10:00 PM. When I opened the back of the truck it was clear that that was where I'd thrown all the tools and supplies from the recent house remodeling project.
By 10:30 PM I was back at the cafe, had unloaded and unboxed the two freezers and made space for them. At 11:15 PM there were cold enough to transfer contents. I hung around until 1:30 AM to make sure the new freezers were cooling adequate. I was tired and obviously had no options and there was no point in watching them. What was I going to do at 1:30 AM?
At 9:15 PM when this was discovered we called three or four 24 hours emergency refrigeration companies. Only one called back and it was ten hours later. Apparently there is capacity for another firm in the Twin Cities who wish to work evenings and nights and charge whatever they want to save people like us.
Back at the cafe at 7:00 AM I started the quest to find a replacement freezer. These things retail at $11,000 but are frequently discounted to $3500-$4500. There were three in the Twin Cities but all the delivery/install firms were booked for four to five days. There must have been a desperate look on my face because one of the vendors gave a decent price of $3600, took off an additional $200 because of my stress and found someone who would do a same-day delivery to the curb for $85.
Later in the day we have a 485 pound crated freezer sitting outside the door. My daughter and I wheeled the old one to the front door, the 83" front door and pondered the 84 1/2" 485 freezer. That was the point where I started to lose it. The freezers were 54" wide. My better half knows some weird people but had assured me that she'd found someone who would show up and install the freezer, including moving it. He called and I expressed my concerns. Before I brought up the dimensions he said "I know it's taller than the door. I've done this before." My inclination was a sawzall. He showed up with two wrenches and a channellock. The it played out was this. We used a 2x4 to lift up one end of the old freezer to remove the casters, repeated that on the other end and laid it on edge on a $14.95 four wheel dolly. The process of getting it to the horizontal was foreboding.
The guy said "go on the other side and push it toward me. I'll lower it onto the cart." We'd taken out the shelves but this was still a solid 400 pounds. My daughter had the job of placing the cart and steadying it under this load. It worked. We wheeled it out the door. Bringing in the new one was a repeat, but in reverse. The only downside was a second doorway. This freezer was about 1/4" taller than the old removed one. Once again I thought sawzall and offered to just make the doorway taller. The final solution was removal of an apparently unnecessary 1/16" spacer on each caster. This process involved the 2x4 once again and the guy in good position to be crushed or have parts crushed.
The electrical requirements were the same. We plugged it in. It worked.
Small business, the heart of America...the American dream. Yes. At a 5% net profit we'll have to sell about 12,000 bowls of soup (more or less) to pay for the new freezer.
Part Time Less Than Minimum Wage Challenge
My son , through some of his work with the R programming language, made me aware of Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Computers can do a great amount of work (I've recently watched the backlog of Mad Men and was intrigued with the 1950's ad agency's compulsion to show it's progressiveness by purchasing a computer to do I don't know what) but they do need help. MTurk is a component of Amazon Web Services, a broad and extension range of computing resources, services and platforms. People like me can sign up to complete services that computers may not be able to complete correctly like assigning attributes to photographs, selecting the funnier of two comical images, transcribe scripts, etc. These are know as HITs, Human Intelligence Tasks.
I've now signed up as a worker and can review the thousands of options to complete work. Prior to this I surveyed several articles by journalists who tested the waters of MTurk to see if you can actually make any money. The bottom line is that you won't. You might make minimum wage. I'll provide an update.
Uber
MTurk has received much of the same criticism given to Uber. Everyone is a contractor, responsible for their own supplies, tax obligations, etc., and the representation that as an independent contractor that you are responsible for your own inevitable success is mis-representative. Were I not driving a full size pickup I might log into Uber once in a while. They do have a great web site. I'm short of time right now but it's on the list.
Outplacement Service...
I've given up on LHH.
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