Winter has finally left us, even though the first official day of spring has not arrived yet. The snow has all gone except in places where it was piled high during the mid-winter blizzards. The green grass appears in the soggy ground. And the bulb plants have pushed their way out of the ground. I am getting ready for my first weekend of yard work, replacing old mulch and fertilizing the lawn for the Sunday rains.
The census came and went. What was said about the new census form was right: Even thought it was humongous, since there is only one of me, I only had to fill out a single page: Name, age, date of birth, race, and whether I owned and lived in my house.
It is sixteen months since the new library building opened, and minor annoyances left over from construction have emerged: A leak in the furance room from poor drainage from the roof of a neighboring building; porous concrete causing floor tile in one room to rise; and a temperamental thermostat. Also, we need to renovate the old library building, which we are using as meeting rooms. On a brighter note, the Friends group have new tote bags for your books (or anything else you want to carry) on the way.
I mentioned in my 2009 review that service at the local grocery store became poor after a change of owners.
By and large, it still is. The new people who run the store evidently do not know how to manage a business. One more letter in the town paper reports the owners bitching at the employees for trivial reasons. No wonder the people there are so dour every time I visit.
And, while the store — realizing that few people here read the Marion paper — has started putting their ads in the town paper several weeks ago, the paper is still airing angry letters about the store. Normally, newspapers suppress reports, letters and opinions hostile to businesses for fear of losing advertising. I guess the town paper has gone without ads from that grocer store for so long, and the new ads are so small (only ¾ of a page as opposed to two whole pages under the old owners), that its editor likely would not mind if the new owners would simply go away.
And they just might. I do not think those people realize that their unsociable behavior is going to cause them to fail. Whatever else I learned from my days at the Bank, I learned that if you render bad service to a customer, that customer will tell up to nine other people about it — people who will avoid your business. A bad rep is such that even a favorable location cannot overcome it. And in a place where depression hangs on long after it lifts elsewhere, that is the last thing you want.