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One Man's Journey in the Coffee Industry and Life.

I guess back to the drama! I hope you learned something about coffee in my last blog. I don't have any feedback but I was being toungue (guess I don't have spell check) n cheek about he had NO problem with the building! The building was our biggest challenge. I don't care if you are from Disney entertainment, that building was just not set up for an efficient manufacturing plant! Come on, the product, raw materials goes in a shipping door on another street address and gets sent up 4 floors to a production floor, where it is broken down blended roasted and maybe ground. Then packaged, put on palletts and sent down four floors in an elevator from 1945 with one rope! If someone told you that's what you had to live with and you were in manufacturing at the time, NO ONE would be ok with this! It is clearly called a BOTTLENECK! That's the exact thing you want to avoid manufacturing anything! I don't care whether it is computer boards, sweaters for the Gap or coffee. NO,NO, NO.
I kept pleading, but it fell on deaf ears, just picture trying to tall Harpo Marx after 32 movies to talk! Impossible right? Yes. So I set my feet down and tried to improve efficiencies, in the most inefficient building you could ever be in. Wow.
I will say that personally, my kids were good, my wife was working, and for the last time in the last  18 years, I took two weeks vacation off in a row. Yeah that's right, this is the last time I took two weeks off with my family in a row since. Stupid, but I was so driven. I tell you, we rented a little cottage on Cape Cod that summer and it was a magical time. We were a family, but I had my aspirations and things I thought I wanted to accomplish. I only called in to the office three times in 2 weeks, it was hard. I felt something pulling me, but at 34, you don't really know what that is, unless you are me or someone like me. I knew I was essential to the operation.
When I got back, after one catastrophe after another. You see my son was three and it was raining one day. The only thing to do on the Cape when its raining is go to the movies or go to a mall. Well we chose wrong and went to the mall. After my son ran away from us 25 times towards the Disney store, I grabbed his arm and his elbow popped out of its socket!! In come the ambulances and EMT's, we get to the hospital, and I get questioned whether I abuse my children! Holy crap, I never really even raised my voice, never mind physically abuse them. Hello world!! Wow.
Anyway I get back and the first day I am back every sales guy we had wanted to speak to me, the person running production wanted to talk to me along with a long list of others. They basically all said, they couldn't get anything done because they were all told to talk to me when I got back. I am sitting in my office that first day back at 6:30 at night, watching the cleaning company, clean the office and I just remember thinking, what the hell am I going to do to make this work. So I went home and thought about that really in depth.
Hey, I am pouring my heart out hear and as always, please tell a friend about this blog. I have gotten 315 hits on this page which is frustrating but I can handle frustration, failure is another story! Spread the word will ya, I'll keep writing as long as I keep getting ahead! I still have 18 years of complete mayhem, that's all true so I give you my word, please give me your time! Joe

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