Anticipating Disaster

[bhskittykatt]

This should be more Brain Burp than MiM, though it's also a bit reflective of the sorts of brain burps Area Manager seems prone to. I was flipping through the email last night, and saw this exchange between AM and Boss Lady.

Quick BG: one of the big, local oil refineries in our area last year had a small 'splodey. No one was hurt, but this resulted in an early annual maintenance shut-down that overlapped Other Refinery's shut-down (which are normally staggered), as well as extra people in general to fix what the 'splodey broke. This led to a spike in occupancy across the whole county as workers flooded the area in the off-season. A walk-in wouldn't have been able to find a room in town at all last February through April for about an hour's drive radius most nights.

Since it is budget time, and budgets are based off the previous year, I told Boss Lady to remind Area Manager about the special circumstances last year that caused the atypical spike in occupancy. Below is their email exchange:

Boss Lady: "Just a reminder as you prepare the budget, we had a big spike in occupancy last winter and early spring due to emergency workers coming in to deal with a refinery explosion, so that needs to be taken into account."
Area Manager: "Are they going to be doing that again this year?"
Boss Lady: "No, as far as I know they are not planning on having another emergency disaster."

You can practically hear Boss Lady's facepalm in her response. "Are they going to be doing that again this year?" Really, Area Manager?

[Teskeria]

NOw you realize if an emergency does occur, area manager is going to tell Boss Lady - 'you told me they weren't planning another emergency!'

[Kristev]

I thought the only people who planned emergencies were supervillains and novelists like me.

[muppet101]

I thought the only people who planned emergencies were supervillains and novelists like me.

And those of us lucky enough to work in business contingency / continuity planning. I LOVE my job. I get to decide what happens if our building gets hit by a plague of marauding zombies

[dalesys]

And those of us lucky enough to work in business contingency / continuity planning. I LOVE my job. I get to decide what happens if our building gets hit by a plague of marauding zombies

Send upper management out to negotiate for their golden parachutes?

[Teskeria]

And those of us lucky enough to work in business contingency / continuity planning. I LOVE my job. I get to decide what happens if our building gets hit by a plague of marauding zombies

last night at work we were discussing zombies. (me and my sup) Started with me making a comment that a fraternity house was like an apartment complex. for zombies. We went from there into how to fight zombies (I pointed out guns aren't as useful against zombies as flamethrowers and swords/machetes) and told one of my coworkers she will regret not paying attention when the zombie acopalypse happens.

Then on lunch I went to where my group (they play on Fri without me and Sun I gm them and the Fri gm is a player) what CR 36 zombies would be? (they are currently 6 parthfinder lvl 1 characters - no cleric types). That should keep them nicely worried... and distracted.

[EricKei]

GameStore did the usual "budget is based off of *this date* last year, but I seriously doubt that they take the actual dates into consideration...Which means that, if Thanksgiving is on the 24th one year and a different date the next year, Nov 24 of "the next year" shows a 100% sales increase ~_~

I really feel sorry for the stores in the area where I was right after Katrina, tho -- that December, we did a preposterous amount in sales (probably a chain record), thanks mainly to the, uh, extra money that most everybody got to replace their valuables (everyone got a certain minimum amount plus a good chunk extra, as there was a 99.9999% chance that you had to toss your fridge...), which means many people were getting their essentials at the local video game shop ^_^

While it's probably best not to give an exact sales number, let's just say that many zero's were involved. Picture lines wrapping around ALL of the walls in the store, from the cashwrap, along all outer walls, out into the mall itself, non-stop every single day from Black Friday all the way thru about January 16th, from 9AM to 10PM or later. With no significant slowdown and all three registers working constantly PLUS one additional guy who did nothing but pull stock and hand it to the cashiers so they didn't actually have to turn away from the registers. In the busiest mall in the state. Do the math. SM pulled several eighty-plus hour weeks...on salary. Poor dude.

Why is this relevant? Imagine the fuss District & Corporate must have put up the following year when the store "failed to meet expectations" (read: EXCEED those sales numbers) the following December...

[wolfie]

And those of us lucky enough to work in business contingency / continuity planning. I LOVE my job. I get to decide what happens if our building gets hit by a plague of marauding zombies

Send upper management out to negotiate for their golden parachutes?

So the plan is to try to starve the zombies to death?