Damn It!

My time as acting superintendent at MVCC is just about over, although officially the GM was the acting superintendent. I met the new superintendent today. He will start officially in about two weeks. Ironically, I met the guy before about three years ago when I just got out of turf school. I interviewed at his course and accepted a position there. But when I got home from the interview I found a message waiting from MVCC. They offered me the same position and money, but MVCC is five minutes from home and a much nicer track. I would have had a 35 minute commute to a public course that had half the budget and 36 holes. MVCC only has 18 holes. So I had to call him back and renig on the job.

This is funny, as I was just getting ready to bag on the GM; he has called me at home. He is using the company truck and can’t find it in the parking lot. What a retard.

All the agronomical decisions the last two months have had to go through the GM and his advisors on the east coast. I was a little offended that they didn’t trust me enough to let me actually run things. I met the advisors and they knew a lot about growing grass on the east coast, but not the nature of the business here in the resort area that I live and work in. I even took the GM aside and said, “These guys are good guys, but I’m not too sure about some of the things they are having me do. You should be getting your advice from an expert that knows the golf business here in the Coachella Valley. We have over 100 golf courses here, it shouldn’t be hard to find someone.”

Well the “acting superintendent/GM” let the golf course get nice and yellow before he came to me and asked what the hell was going on with the golf course. I should have told him to ask his freaking advisors. Instead I made a couple of calls to superintendents in the valley that I trusted. I got some “good” advice and one week later the course is much greener and the members are much happier. It took 20 minutes of my time and about $15,000 in fertilizer that my old boss didn’t budget for. The advisors cost that much.

The guys I called threw 41-0-0 just like we did, but they knew it would shut down during the frosty months of December and January. A different fertilizer needed to go down in early December, before the frost started to hit, then the course would not have gotten yellow. My old boss did not do his homework. He didn’t plan for that fertilizer application in December. There was like $1000 in the fertilizer budget. So ironically, the 41-0-0 purchase that cost my boss his job didn’t even do the job he thought it was going to do.

OK, so I have had to deal with a lot of political B.S. and stupidity over the that last two months. But one thing has REALLY made me mad.

Before the whole 41-0-0 thing, I had been working on losing some weight. I had lost close to 25 pounds. You can probably guess what I’m pissed about now. I’ve gained most of it back. I’m a baaad emotional eater. I have sought the comfort of chili-cheese fries, pizza, In-N-Out Burger, and strawberry cheesecake too many times the last 8 weeks.

DAMN IT!