Another Whine-fest or A Needed Payday

I haven't written about my beloved Browns this season because there has not been much to say.  They ended their season 5-11 after a 1-11 start.  I am excited to see next year.  I am excited to see what Mike Holmgren will bring to my Browns.  I am going to be excited if we can keep the players that make a difference.  I am going to be excited if we don't get blown out right out of the gate.

Well for those who don't know, Mike Holmgren was the football genious behind the resurgence of the Packers and also the Seattle Seahawks.  Mike Holmgren is now the president of The Cleveland Browns.  He said he is going to have a meeting with Eric Mangini [coach] and also has reached out to Josh Cribbs [the most under valued player in the NFL].

Josh Cribbs is coming off a terrific season personally.  He holds the record for most punt returns for touchdowns, he is The Cleveland Browns MVP, and he is what I would call the classiest person in football.  He doesn't whine.  He doesn't bitch and moan.  He goes out, puts his heart into the game, and goes back to the locker room and is quiet.  Yes, he was not happy about his contract.  Yes, he may have held out at the beginning of the season.  Yes, he needs to get paid more. 

Yesterday The Browns made him an offer.  To give you perspective, he is currently under contract.  Originally it was a 6 year deal valued at $6.77 million.  So that is about $1.13 million a year.  He has 3 years left on his deal.  Obviously the fans want to give Josh what he wants.  A pay increase.  He deserves it. We won 5 of our games on the legs of Josh Cribbs.  He deserves more.  So the offer yesterday was, $1.4 a year for the rest of his contract and we can talk about it in 3 years.  Josh rejected the offer and then tweeted about it.  Saying it was a slap in the face.  Looks like he isn't coming back next year.  Sorry to the fans that they have to go through this.

This is a frustrated Josh Cribbs.  It shows.  There is no secret there.  But this has me in a precarious bind.  So I stand behind the player or the organization?  I am not a fan of the owner Randy Lerner, but he has begun to warm me over with a football genius in Mike Holmgren.  I have always been a fan of Josh Cribbs when I watched him run back multiple kick off's for touchdowns but they were called back because of a stupid holding penalty.  So what do I do?  Why not play both sides?

On behalf of the organization, we don't know how much room they have to offer Josh Cribbs a proper raise.  Mike Holmgren is playing GM and president.  He is walking into a crappy situation started with Phil Savage, enhanced by Kokinas, and now it seems to reach a head on his desk.  Mike has been in town 2 days.  He's already trying to deal.  He went to Cribbs first.  Get Cribbs a deal was his goal.  But the long and short of it is, Josh is under contract for 3 more years.  He is giving him a short term deal in order to take a step back and breathe. 

On behalf of Josh Cribbs, he is a players player.  He goes out and plays the game.  He came in as an undrafted player from Kent State, a school not known for it's football program.  He was a QB and was converted to a WR and special teams player because he was fast.  He deserves every penny he gets because he plays.  He helps the team win.  He is the reason we won 5 games this year.

So what is there to do?  Any other year I would side completely with Josh Cribbs, although that is not my history.  This guy needs a payday.  But this time, in a time of financial hardship all around, and my family's struggle to keep the bill wolves away, I don't agree with Josh Cribbs?  He got a 20% pay increase and he is rejecting it.  I say take it.  I would take a 20% pay increase any day!  Josh is living in a city who sees recessions first and gets out of them last.  The people that fill that stadium to watch him play probably couldn't afford the $40.00 ticket [Cleveland has one of the lowest ticket prices in the league].  They want him to do well.  To reject a 20% pay increase in a city that isn't getting one is pretty shitty move.  Seems like a baby move.  We can't expect him to be patient forever, but I think 20% is fair right now.  Who knows what will happen?

I am sure this situation will continue to play out.  If you want to follow Josh Cribbs on twitter, you can, just click here.  What do you think?

Sights and Sounds from the Holiday Maddness!

"With a gun stuck in your mouth and the barrel of the gun between your teeth, you can only talk in vowels."-excerpt from the novel 'Fight Club' by: Chuck Palahniuk

The holiday shopping season is finally over. The longer hours, the sore feet, the never ending stream of bitchy customers, is over.

By all reports on the news and online, America's retail sectors are down this year. I would like to contest any of those reports. I have been in the midst of the busiest shopping season to date in my eyes. The first half of the December the crowds were thin. 7 days before Christmas I would have told you that, yes, retail was down, but in the last 7 days leading up to Christmas, the crowds came, and they spent. My company's location that I work in did almost an entire month's worth of sales in 7 days.

That kind of volume makes you want to eat a bullet. Nothing can prepare you for being that busy.

"Money is not earned or won. It is just a mutual agreement to a change in perception." Dan T's Blackberry Messenger status message

One observation I have made this year, during this 'economic crisis' is that the over all mood of the people is poor. All day long they have to listen to the news reports telling us the economy is in the crapper, the stock markets have lost more points than it did during the Depression. The new President keeps telling us that we are facing the worst economic crisis since the Depression. It is no wonder why the people are depressed.

Now usually I am the biggest Grinch in America during the holidays, but this year, my mood seemed downright festive.

Despite this economic crisis the news said that retail sales were down, but I feel that people were still spending money, but you can tell that they just didn't want to let it go so easily. In my business there is a type of person that we do not like to see. That type of person is called, "Mr. and Mrs. Beeback".

Mr. and Mrs. Beeback represent a retail sales reps. worst fear. That they will come in, talk your ear off, and then think about it, and 'be back' later. All of our sales training that we have been put through is designed to close sales immediately, because we all know that Mr. and Mrs. Beeback are not coming back if they leave and if they do come back, they will either talk to your colleagues or go to a different store all together.

This year, Mr. and Mrs. Beeback actually came back. We kept very meticulous track of all the customers who said that they would be back, and we kept touching base with them. In a week most of out Mr. and Mrs. Beeback's had come back. Our sales went from being in the toilet to being up ahead of what we did last year. The economic crisis in my eyes, isn't the doomsday that the media is making it out to be. People are getting laid off but that is because the company they worked for made bad business decisions. The America auto maker put it eggs in the large SUV basket. They need to learn from it and move on. Pick up another skill. Its not always as easy as that, and I know people are hurting, but people are always going to be hurting. The broad strokes of the issue is not that people aren't hurting, but that people aren't hurting nearly as bad as the media would like us to think. Now in January; it might be a different story. That's when people will get the credit card bills.

"Damn my arm is killing me!" Me-after playing Wii until 4am

I was a part of a lot of other people's gifts to their loved ones this year. It is one thing to give a gift to another person, but the way in which you do it is what makes it all special.

How do you give a cell phone as a gift and make it all original. Many parents like to wrap up the phone in the box and call it. The ringing phone makes a noise, and the kids know what they got, and they tear into the package like a tiger to Roy's face.

This year I wanted to help people make giving a cell phone more fun. At this point calling the phone under the tree is old news. I tried to help people think of more creative ways to give gifts.

Here is a list of some of the ideas I came up with:

1. There is a very popular and very expensive phone that all the kids want. Because of the high demand for it, be had a ton of empty boxes for this phone. Parents were not buying the really expensive phone for the kids' first cell phone although they surely wanted it. So I would give them the expensive phone box and the parents would put the phone they really bought in it and wrap it up. Now many say, well you are just disappointing the kids. My retort is actually one a customer told me. "They can shut up, the phone they got was totally better than the one they had 5 minutes before opening that one."

2. Take the phone out of the box and place it in a much larger box labeled as something else.

3. This one I am particularly proud of. I had a customer who wanted to add on a new line for his girlfriend. He had to do it although he and his girlfriend were 'exploring their best options' with other carriers. He came in and picked out the phone and said he would call me to let me know when he was picking it up. He called me and said, I will be there today, but she is coming with me and she is going to want to talk to a sales rep.

We had to put on like we had never talked and they were a completely new customer. So he came up solo and said, we have 1o minutes before she gets here, so he bought the phone and put it in another bag he had already gotten from another store. He then walked away and said that he would be back.

So when they came back she was asking about phones and asked about plans. I basically sold her on the phone and accessories he just bought for her 15 minutes earlier, but lied and said the phone she wanted in the color she wanted didn't come out until January. She was excited and decided that they would come back after the new year.

Little did I know what he was going to do with the phone. He then took a photo of the engagement ring with the phone's camera and put it in the box.

She opened the phone, laughed, and when she turned it on, the engagement ring was the wallpaper of the phone and the banner read, 'Will you marry me?'.

She said yes and stopped back yesterday to tell me that I was a wonderful actor and he thanked me for all his help.

Its special moments like that; that can turn the crappiest most busy holiday season around. The acknowledgment of all my hard work from a customer is all I needed.