Ok, I will get to this weeks title eventually...I guess we will take care of the business that leads up to it first...lol. Well in the month of June we finally hit our target, we had 102% growth, and beat our old record month by almost 800,000. So, let the party start, right...not so fast, still not satisfied at the top. Well, Bob and I decided to celebrate with our people anyway. Bob bought two big banners that said "Congratulations Food Service on a New Record Month in Sales". He hung one of the banners in our warehouse and the other one in our department at work. Ralph, our operations manager, took our ware house food selectors out for dinner and adult beverages. We had the celebration at a hotel, set up a buffet with spicy Indian food (95% of our ware house pickers are from India) and each of the employees got two drink coupons good for a bottle of beer each. You must understand, that most of these workers have never even kissed a girl and spend almost their entire time at work or living in their company housing with 5 other male roommates. So after they have drank their two beers, some of them are drunk as skunks...too funny, 95 pound Innocent Indian boys gone wild...We had a really cute Philippine waitress (no, not as cute as Rodz :-) ) and Ashod (one of my favorite employees), begged me to get the waitresses phone number for him. I felt like a rock star, the workers all wanted to get their picture taken with me. One of the cultural things here is hard to explain. If you go to a club in the USA, you will see girls dancing with each other, well here, these single guys were up dancing with each other, they are not gay (not that I know of, it's just what the guy friends do here...well one of the guys from the warehouse wanted the honor of dancing with me...he asked 4 or 5 times (alcohol apparently gave him great courage..lol) fortunately I was sober, so no dancing with Indian boys for me.
In continuing the party atmosphere, last night Bob and I hosted the sales and support team at UNO's in Dubai Mall for a pizza party. We really have a great group of guys and gals working for us. I hope we can stick together and continue to set records. Speaking of records, today is going to only be 103 degrees. The forecast calls for 106 everyday this week with lows overnight near 90. The sand has been kicking up all week, cars are dust covered, and the skyline is obscured with the sand. I am looking forward to spending a few cool days in St. Louis in August, where the 98 degree highs will be easy to take with 120 degree days here in August. The official temperature here in the UAE won't be reported higher than 121. (49 C). because, when its 50 degrees (122F) the laborers working on the roads and skyscrapers are by law given paid days off, so it never is "officially" higher than 121.
Well a month from today, I land at JFK airport. I have my itinerary finished...Land Friday morning August 5th, drive to the Virginia state line. Wake up and drive the remaining 5 hours to my parents house in Lebanon, Virginia on Saturday morning. Leave for Knoxville Monday after lunch, fly from Knoxville to Orlando Tuesday morning to spend a couple of days working at IFG in Florida (SYSCO's international division) fly back to Knoxville on Wednesday, drive to St. Louis late that night. Meetings at Kuna (about meat operations) on Thursday morning, drive to Cincinnati on Saturday, where I will meet up with Fred and Dan Scott for a Reds baseball game on Saturday night. Drive Sunday to wheeling West Virginia, spend the night arrive at Dan's an Monday, catch a plane back to Dubai on Tuesday. My trip mileage will be well over 3,000 miles without even counting my flight to Florida. Sounds busy, but I am so looking forward to it. I need a break. I spoke with my buddy Chad (St. Louis friend) last night, and it helped me remember that I still had some really good friends in the states. I need to think more about what I do for a living and where I will live when I leave here.
I think Mimi is going back to the United States and leaving Nick here. She is planning to come back in September to find a job. So, I won't be totally batching it. Rodz leaves for a month in the Philippians next Friday...Sandy is here visiting Bob for the month of July.
Oh well, doing laundry and enjoying my day off. I will most certainly catch up with you next week....
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