Ah spring; the daffodils, the greening lawns, the plum blossom. And of course there is also the Bobcat that now won’t start, new truck drivers who don’t know your “before 10am” policy, the phones that didn’t re-charge overnight and the customers: oh yes, “them”!
Every year (like an ice-storm in Atlanta), spring seems to arrive as if it was a surprise to many. Garden retailers take in more on the first busy Friday than in the previous 4 weeks. By 11am on Saturday, you have already beaten the sales for the entire month of January. Yet employees are unprepared for the stress, hired and thrown in the deep-end (or allowed to continue set-up “task” jobs even as the parking lot is bulging). The next ten weeks should pay a year’s bills; this is intense stuff and not for the fainthearted! Nor for the shy or the task-obsessed; the next few weeks are about people, specifically, customers.
Read More
"This is a really complex issue with no quick and easy solutions," May Berenbaum told me. These papers simplistically fingering neonics are "just not good science."
Read More