Since I was recently in Las Vegas
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These past two days I have spent working on my video to submit for MLB’s Dream Job. It had to be 2 minutes in length, at the most, and had to contain certain material.
As many videos as I have done, I found this to be trickier than I thought. Two minutes is not really a lot of time to squeeze in what they wanted. Thought then had to be given into how it might look or sound different from other submissions without being cheesy, cliché, or plain stupid.
So far the surprise of the young spring training season was when the Mets Oliver Perez threw two shutout innings against the Cardinals.
As a Met fan, this was a shock. First, it’s a shock that they ever signed him to a multi-million dollar, multi-year deal, because he is an enigma, at best.
After yet another disaster last year he looked like he picked up where he left off by giving up 3 or 4 runs in his first outing. Then, he shuts down the Cardinals for two.
I think it was the split roster though, so lets not get too far ahead of ourselves here.
In my life I’ve done a lot of things and been on both sides of a lot of things as well, work-wise.
I’ve been a grunt and worked for minimum wage. I’ve been a manager and I’ve owned my own business.
Workers need protection and so do managers and business owners.
I believe everyone should be able to get what they can out of their situation without upsetting the balance of anyone else involved.
When I was just a grunt, I always heard talk about how terrible managers were and how the owners were just evil rich people. Sometimes there would be evidence of that. I would see someone get picked on or fired because a manager just didn’t like that person. I’ve seen owners spend money frivolously while workers were getting laid off or denied increases in pay.
I’ve also seen workers do whatever they can not to work hard. I’ve seen them steal from those who offer them work.
As a manager, I’ve had to work harder because work had to be done and worker agreements were in place that said that only a certain amount of work could be done by any one person in a given day but yet the work still had to be done.
I’ve been told by an owner of a company to hassle certain people to force them to quit.
My experience as a business owner changed my whole perspective from all sides.
My business at Delaware Sports cost me my entire life savings. I will not be able to retire…ever…as a result. When I finally pulled myself out of a deep hole then the economy tanked again.
I risked everything to see my vision come true. I worked 60 hours a week on it and worked a full-time job also. I didn’t have a social life, I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t.
I remember very vividly when I finally pulled myself out of the hole and started to make some money. I took what by many standards was just an above average vacation, cost-wise. It was long overdue. I hadn’t had one in ten years.
I had a couple of guys who were working with me at the time. They were getting paid $35 an hour to videotape events for me.
Don’t you know that I actually heard that I should have pumped those “profits” that I was making into their salaries?
I’ve had people steal from me, ruin my equipment without an offer to pay me back, ruin business relationships with crappy performance, and just about everything else that can cost a business money or ruin a reputation.
I could see if I had cut my guys pay, claimed poverty, and THEN went on some long, luxurious journey for a couple of months. But that didn’t happen.
The point of all of this is about professional sports teams and athletes.
Ultimately, I end up on the owner’s sides in many of these situations.
It’s the Oliver Perez thing that really got me thinking. This guy got paid 24 million dollars for winning 3 games in the past two years with an ERA over 6.
$12 dollars a year. In my head I do some quick math and note that if my attendance is 3 million a year that I have to add $3 per ticket to YOU, the fan, to pay for this.
Now, it is the fault of whoever signed that deal, to be sure.
If my general manager had some sort of arrangement where I trusted him to make deals within a certain budget, all trust would be gone and so would he.
Oh yeah, the Mets GM is, in fact, gone.
As an owner, my real problem with it is how to explain to those employees, who aren’t blessed with the ability to throw a baseball 90 mph, that I can’t really pay them much more right now because Ollie Perez, for one, is getting most of that. Since he can’t pitch in the Majors, I have to have someone in his place to do so.
Oh yeah, not only am I paying Ollie Perez, but because of some other genius decision back in the 1990’s, I suddenly found Bobby Bonilla on my payroll again!
Bonilla just isn’t my payroll again this year for 1.2 million. No. He is on my payroll for the next 24 YEARS at 1.2 million per year.
Ok, so the rambling now needs to end for me.
The moral of this story is very simple. Labor, Management and Owners of a business (or a government) comprise a three-legged stool. If any of the legs of the stool are longer or shorter than the others, the stool does not stand. Everyone needs to work together to achieve the desired goals, which should be discussed and should be the same, with one exception. The owners, who do risk the most, financially, get to decide the basic vision for the business. The owner should then take all of the best advice of those who agree to work at the company to then make sure that the path followed is straight and true. The owner has a responsibility to create a proper environment for all of the workers so they can prosper and earn rewards along with the company and the workers have a responsibility to be honest, hard-working and reliable along the way.
As a Met fan, this was a shock. First, it’s a shock that they ever signed him to a multi-million dollar, multi-year deal, because he is an enigma, at best.
After yet another disaster last year he looked like he picked up where he left off by giving up 3 or 4 runs in his first outing. Then, he shuts down the Cardinals for two.
I think it was the split roster though, so lets not get too far ahead of ourselves here.
In my life I’ve done a lot of things and been on both sides of a lot of things as well, work-wise.
I’ve been a grunt and worked for minimum wage. I’ve been a manager and I’ve owned my own business.
Workers need protection and so do managers and business owners.
I believe everyone should be able to get what they can out of their situation without upsetting the balance of anyone else involved.
When I was just a grunt, I always heard talk about how terrible managers were and how the owners were just evil rich people. Sometimes there would be evidence of that. I would see someone get picked on or fired because a manager just didn’t like that person. I’ve seen owners spend money frivolously while workers were getting laid off or denied increases in pay.
I’ve also seen workers do whatever they can not to work hard. I’ve seen them steal from those who offer them work.
As a manager, I’ve had to work harder because work had to be done and worker agreements were in place that said that only a certain amount of work could be done by any one person in a given day but yet the work still had to be done.
I’ve been told by an owner of a company to hassle certain people to force them to quit.
My experience as a business owner changed my whole perspective from all sides.
My business at Delaware Sports cost me my entire life savings. I will not be able to retire…ever…as a result. When I finally pulled myself out of a deep hole then the economy tanked again.
I risked everything to see my vision come true. I worked 60 hours a week on it and worked a full-time job also. I didn’t have a social life, I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t.
I remember very vividly when I finally pulled myself out of the hole and started to make some money. I took what by many standards was just an above average vacation, cost-wise. It was long overdue. I hadn’t had one in ten years.
I had a couple of guys who were working with me at the time. They were getting paid $35 an hour to videotape events for me.
Don’t you know that I actually heard that I should have pumped those “profits” that I was making into their salaries?
I’ve had people steal from me, ruin my equipment without an offer to pay me back, ruin business relationships with crappy performance, and just about everything else that can cost a business money or ruin a reputation.
I could see if I had cut my guys pay, claimed poverty, and THEN went on some long, luxurious journey for a couple of months. But that didn’t happen.
The point of all of this is about professional sports teams and athletes.
Ultimately, I end up on the owner’s sides in many of these situations.
It’s the Oliver Perez thing that really got me thinking. This guy got paid 24 million dollars for winning 3 games in the past two years with an ERA over 6.
$12 dollars a year. In my head I do some quick math and note that if my attendance is 3 million a year that I have to add $3 per ticket to YOU, the fan, to pay for this.
Now, it is the fault of whoever signed that deal, to be sure.
If my general manager had some sort of arrangement where I trusted him to make deals within a certain budget, all trust would be gone and so would he.
Oh yeah, the Mets GM is, in fact, gone.
As an owner, my real problem with it is how to explain to those employees, who aren’t blessed with the ability to throw a baseball 90 mph, that I can’t really pay them much more right now because Ollie Perez, for one, is getting most of that. Since he can’t pitch in the Majors, I have to have someone in his place to do so.
Oh yeah, not only am I paying Ollie Perez, but because of some other genius decision back in the 1990’s, I suddenly found Bobby Bonilla on my payroll again!
Bonilla just isn’t my payroll again this year for 1.2 million. No. He is on my payroll for the next 24 YEARS at 1.2 million per year.
Ok, so the rambling now needs to end for me.
The moral of this story is very simple. Labor, Management and Owners of a business (or a government) comprise a three-legged stool. If any of the legs of the stool are longer or shorter than the others, the stool does not stand. Everyone needs to work together to achieve the desired goals, which should be discussed and should be the same, with one exception. The owners, who do risk the most, financially, get to decide the basic vision for the business. The owner should then take all of the best advice of those who agree to work at the company to then make sure that the path followed is straight and true. The owner has a responsibility to create a proper environment for all of the workers so they can prosper and earn rewards along with the company and the workers have a responsibility to be honest, hard-working and reliable along the way.
Done.
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