The fifth West Coast Luncheon (my fourth) was held at Mandalay Restaurant in San Francisco. For a change it was on a Sunday, so I didn't have to delay gaming to attend the luncheon. This place is quite a bit past Divisadero, the farthest I've walked from BART, so walking was out of the question. I thought perhaps there'd be parking since it was so far from downtown SF, but I was wrong. I spent a good 20 minutes driving around looking for a space to park in. Lots of people were parking in questionable spaces and my car isn't that small so it did take me a while.

Jesse of course was there, as were Greg and Lonnie and Steve. Sam was sick and couldn't attend. Also there were Rita and Chris Chin-Wong and Edgar (I think). Since I got there late they were already ordering, so I quickly picked Crispy Chicken as my second choice -- I couldn't find any Walnut or Crystal Shrimp. The food was good and there are times when I miss Chinese food since even when I go to my parents my dad tends to make Peruvian or American dishes. One mishap was that the waitress spilled my water on me -- at least it wasn't hot tea. I pretty much dried out by the time we left.

Lots of talk about PK, who I found out is Peter Kory (Korby, Korliss?), the current IS Manager. Much too concerned with making himself look good rather than supporting the department. Dating Tara Clark, daughter of one of the owners of WCBS. Tara I remember being in one of the graphic departments. Don't know if I've ever met PK. Don't think I'd like him -- if you're people don't believe in you they're not going to go the extra mile in a crunch. Like Greg expressed, Jon Putnam may have been a pain in the ass to everyone outside the department but he treated us fairly and looked out for us.

West Coast is up to well over a hundred stores. As far south in California as parts of Los Angeles, all the way north to the border, and as far east as the Dakotas. Monarch is still a separate company (they bought that Canadian company while I was sitll working there) -- probably because it's in Canada so merging them into WCBS would be a hassle.

Unfortunately, they're still using the same old equipment that was getting outdated as I left the company. 486 computers or lower, running Netware 3.12 and MS-DOS. Character mode screens and applications. It's really hard to buy that stuff nowadays and what you do buy is used and breaks down a lot. Meanwhile, they buy companies with good POS systems and make them standardize on the outdated West Coast infrastructure. It's a relatively short term view and a bad way to run a company -- something that I really didn't like about WCBS management.

Some other talk about the various crimes perpetrated at WCBS. People making off with equipment and money or embezzling funds. One person would send all the unclaimed refund checks to her boyfriend. One guy stole a van load of computer equipment. And the big thing was that WCBS doesn't press charges, just fires them and moves on. Part of it is that they're making so much money that those crimes were all for small amounts and it's not worth it. But it encourages the unscrupulous to also steal from the company. I don't know -- it just doesn't look like management cares about anything but the bottom line and that's pretty sad.

Oh, they also talked about the WCBS web site. A thing of beauty to be sure and lots of money was spent building it. I believe last month only one web order was placed. Admittedly, the web site is only for licensed cosmologists and other such types since WCBS can only sell to those types of people. But still, it's pretty pathetic considering that they had like 30 000 customers when I was there and they probably have double that by now. The stores are what makes West Coast (strictly my opinion since consultants probably sold more product than the stores did) -- every time I went to a store, customers would be chatting with the manager and workers and it was a very nice atmosphere. The kind of environment that promotes customer loyalty and it's too bad that manager turnover is so high. Oh well, I'm still glad I got out.