B.A.T.H. Index???

July was a pretty hot month around most of the United States including here at home in North Carolina. I'm not a big fan of stinking hot summer days, but I always figure that it could be worse. The only thing that I find worse than the heat is the constant discussion of the heat. As a restaurant manager, I talk to a lot of folks every day. Most of them want to talk about whatever is in the news and lately it has been the heat.
I hate the weather segments on the news. How about just reporting the facts and letting us figure out the rest? Don't you love watching the weather idiot say something like "We're going to try to get this front to move through here today." How do you think he's going to do that? What station do you think that the clouds are watching? As if the real weather isn't miserable enough, they contrive numbers to make you feel worse. The chill factor and the heat index are the two best examples of this. For example, one day in the winter it is 10 degrees and windy, can't they just report that? Noooooo! They have to tell us that the wind chill factor makes it seem like 5 below zero on our bare skin. Excuse me Mr. or Ms. weather idiot, but at 10 degrees, I'm not putting my bare ass outside. Last week it was 100 degrees one day, miserable enough right? Noooooo! The weather idiot has to tell me with the humidity(more on humidity next time) it feels like 115 degrees. Thanks for brightening my day! There should be a "Truth in Broadcasting" law to require stations to show a disclaimer on the weather segment. Something like "Our goal in broadcasting this segment is to keep your butt glued to the Lazy Boy watching this swill on the TV and not let you go live your life". By the way, I'm not waiting by the phone for Senator Liddy Dole to call me and tell me that they have passed that idea into law.
By now anyone with more than a room temperature IQ has figured out the B.A.T.H. index thing, right? Well, maybe not. Last week, one of our managers wrote in the "weather" line on our Daily Sales Report - "Heat Index 110". I saw it and wrote "B.A.T.H. Index 9.8". The next day he asked what the B.A.T.H. Index was. I explained that it was the Bitching About The Heat Index. A BATH Index of 9.8 means that 98 out of 100 customers complained about the heat. In my own opinion, and I'm the one writing this, the BATH Index is as relevant as the heat index. Hey Mr. or Ms. weather idiot! Next time it's a hot, miserable day, don't broadcast from your air-conditioned studio, go outside. Find yourself a busy street corner and compute your own BATH Index. Now that will be news worth watching!!