Porn Valley- With the Video Team sale to Metro finalized after a couple of years of going back and forth, Mr. Metro talked to me last night.
“I have to say there’s a mutual respect between the two owners,” says Mr. Metro. “But rest assured, if Metro doesn’t change it’s ways internally, it’s going to be impossible to deal with the situation there no matter who’s in charge. Basically it’s impossible to change things over there because of so much red tape. No matter what they do, it’s set up to take ten steps to do it. That’s because you have three people on this coast dealing with three people on the other coast and let the games begin.
“Kenny can have anyone he wants come in and take over but at the end of the day, he doesn’t let them do what they need to do or want to do. He’ll say go ahead and do this or that, but reality is, it’s an impossibility made by the system which allows three people on the east coast to say, wait a minute, we can’t change this or do that. It’s a recipe for disaster no matter who takes over. The fact that there are certain people still there screams a huge problem.
“The contradiction at Metro is that all the easy things are hard to get accomplished, and all the hard things are easy to fix,” Mr. Metro continues. “The hardest thing in the world is to take a 10,000 piece order and pull it in a matter of an hour. You’d think that would slow you down the most, but Metro has this machine that does it in an hour. But it still takes them five days to get any order out because it takes them five days just to get it to the machine. It’s unbelievable when you see what a mess and disarray they’re in because of this red tape.”
On the other hand, Mr. Metro’s very complimentary about Jiffy Lube Rick.
“He’s the only thing they got going. He’s a worker, and he gets the job done. Give the man credit. He’s a better businessman than anybody can imagine.
“But I don’t care if you’re Video team or Jiffy Lube Rick,” Mr. Metro continues. “It’s utterly impossible with the system Metro has now to get orders out within three days. The fastest that you can get an order into the system is three hours. That’s just the computers. Once it’s in the system then it has to go back to the east coast where maybe three more people have to put their hands on it, then it comes back here to a fax machine, then it goes to the warehouse manager, then it goes to the guy who pulls it then it goes to the guy who packs it. You might have eight people involved in fucking up this order.”
Mr. Metro also says one of the biggest problems left the building. “I feel sorry for Bo Kenney,” says Mr. Metro. “I can only imagine what he’s paying Noel Bloom.”