Funny, A lot Can Happen In A Day…….

Yesterday started out ok, maybe a little cloudy, but it did not appear to a day
I would not forget, in a long while. Good and bad, emotions, raw nerves and lot of
everything else thrown in.

It started out with a price increase notice. I see things like a price increase memo, and of
course, they make no sense to me, as the economy hardly needs a reason not to move
forward, but in markets where the ownership of the commodity is limited to only a few firms,
they have the ability to simply adjust the price when they feel the need, within certain market
conditions.

The truth is the these monopolistic firms (3 firms own 80% of the resource) simply have not made
any money in this down market. So they claimed a shortage (they cut capacity over the last year….)
and called for an artificial increase. Nothing new, I have seen it before a few times, but there is no
real reason for this increase, as this is the second one in 60 days. They just do not care.

Then we had our Vice President, here, from Las Vegas. We had to talk about sales and how
we all want more of them, but we each have our ways of “how it should be”, and who we should
move forward with and who should do this and who should do that. Normal business dialogue
for decision makers.

Maybe we were due for a blow out, as all of the pressure of running and maintaining a company
that has issues, which is not abnormal for any going concern, these days. However, these
discussions evolved into an emotional conflagration, one that may in fact be helpful, but one
that seemed to border on a lot of frustration.

I would not be here if I did not care about our customers and our people—to a fault, I have to admit,
as I am emotional as a person and I understand that is who I am, better or worse. I am lucky, in fact,
to have a home and a place where I can have an emotional side, which does make what I do harder
at times.

It is another day, and I do feel that we are in for better days and if it does not hurt you, maybe it
is true, that it will make you stronger. BY : Mark Frydman