Café Stories: #1. How NOT to Land a Job with an Utterly Desperate Employer

I’ve owned a restaurant for 71 days. An indescribable roller-coaster ride. If you had a couple of spare hours, and I could reconstitute the trillion brain cells I’ve shorted out in the process, I’d endeavor to tell you about it. But as things begin to settle into a routine, and I regain some of my equilibrium, stories do float to the surface. Stories that my writer’s heart can’t not share, when conscious time permits…

As I knew would happen, the crew I inherited from the previous regime has begun to exit, one by one. Since returning triumphant from our record performance at the Scandinavian Festival, I have lost three employees. One of them actually gave notice. The other two…not so much. Let’s see…one left a message on the café’s voicemail at midnight, saying he wouldn’t be coming in the next day because he quit. And the most recent—a "woman" of thirty-four whom one would assume should know better—told me on Thursday that Friday would be her last day. Annoying, frustrating, and inconvenient…but not unanticipated. What can I do but roll with the punches?

What has been unanticipated, however, are the dynamics of running a small business in a small town. And the incredibly tiny labor pool available into which to tap to supplement my dwindling crew. Three weeks ago, I interviewed and "hired" four…two of whom actually reported for their first day of work. And one of those has, in the interim, acquired two more part-time jobs, making her availability to me limited and unreliable.

Which is how it came to pass that on Thursday, in the aftermath of Ms. X apprising me of her one-day notice, I sat down with the telephone and the pathetic pile of applications I had stockpiled through the auspices of two newspaper ads and a sign in the window. From a field of six acceptable applications, I managed to wangle three interviews. Since losing one of my three remaining cooks (Mr. Midnight Voicemail), I have been working seventy hours a week. (The café is only open 74 hours a week, or I’m sure that total would be higher…) On Saturdays, we close at 3; it is one of the few times I can conduct job interviews while I’m still at least partially cognizant. So, today was designated "Half-conscious Interview Day."

Interview Number One: Applicant arrives fifteen minutes early. Applicant speaks English. Applicant is dressed (relatively) conservatively. Has thought to insert an almost invisible "plug" in her pierced lip. Applicant is hired on the spot. Shake hands. See ya on Wednesday.

I report back to my two counter girls that I have hired this applicant. Joke with them that my interview questions are, "Are you breathing? Do you have a pulse?" They laugh. Not all that amusing, really. Too true to be funny…

Interview Number Two. Applicant is breathing. Has a pulse. She, too, is hired on the spot.

In the back of my mind, I am wondering if I have become an "employee whore." If I am so desperate for help that I will hire anyone. To be fair, I did draw the line at the homeless man who submitted a barely legible application. Although I’m not entirely convinced that I wouldn’t have set up an interview with him had he supplied an address or a phone number…

And then along comes Interview Number Three.

She is dressed…not all that objectionably. A strange coral—colored matching top and capris. With a rather deep décolletage, about which she is obviously not the least self-conscious. I’m willing to ignore the tendency for my focus to shift from her cleavage to the huge dark circles under her eyes to her unkempt, peroxided hair. When she opens her mouth to speak, I cringe inwardly…her voice has that sort of ignorant, quasi-southern, not quite cowboy cadence cultivated to sound optimally redneck. Acknowledging that I have a tendency to be somewhat of a dialect snob, and prompted by the urgency of my present need, I club my aging hippie soul to insensibility, and wade into the interview with what I hope is an open mind.

Unfortunately, having dealt with the sound of her voice, I now have to digest what she is actually saying. And I can’t really believe she is regaling me with stories about the messy divorce she is currently in the middle of. And that her soon-to-be-ex is sleeping with her ex-roommate. And that the reason she needs the job is that she needs to move out of "his" house and get her own apartment. She and her two kids, of whom she is about to become a single mom. Out of the corner of her mouth she wisecracks, "wouldn’t it be funny if you were also interviewing my husband’s new girlfriend for this job?"

The flags appearing before my eyes are getting redder and redder, but I am so desperate, I decide to ask her about her customer service experience. The first story that pops into her mind, to demonstrate her ability "to handle all types of customers" is about the time at the Winn Dixie when she chased a "colored man" out the front door of the store, steaks flying out of his baggy shirt and pants…but by golly, she stopped ‘im, and got that meat back. And got her tires slashed by his girlfriend for her trouble.

I look at my watch. Surely this interrogation has gone on for hours. It’s 4:10. We have been "interviewing" for an interminable ten minutes. (And I have already learned so very much about her…!) My depleted brain is chugging on its last fumes, but I am desperately looking for a way out of this conversation. She has been filling out applications for months, she tells me. She is mystified as to why she can’t find a job. I am not. Mystified.

Eventually, it occurs to me that I can tell her I’m going to be interviewing a few more people, and then making calls for second interviews in a week or so. This will keep me from having to tell her to her face that I can’t possibly hire her (which I’m convinced I could not do without somehow telegraphing what a horrifying prospect she is…) In the blurry recesses of my exhausted mind, I’m already planning how I can "lose" her application and just never bother to call her back. Not a week from now, or any other time. I’m sorry I can’t be more mature, more professional, more considerate of the applicant’s feelings. But I have only just enough presence of mind to look out for my own survival. And this girl might as well have come into the interview with "Do not hire me under any circumstances" tattooed on her forehead.

So, on the one hand, I am bummed. I really, really, really need the help. But, on the other hand, I’m gratified to learn that desperation has not blown my standards completely out of the water.

Just another day on the roller coaster…

Checking In

Please, not another entry about how busy I am and how I never get anything done….how my house, my yard, my car, my everything is a mess. I know I’m in a period of great transition. I know that there will come a time when order is restored, albeit an order much altered from what it was before. I will learn to make little half-hours worth of housework really count…and I will learn to, shall we say, set my standards for orderliness a little lower? Part of the process is to take to heart my mother’s most famous words of wisdom: "If you don’t make a mess, you won’t have to clean it up." For the past several years, we’ve been able to let that advice fall by the wayside a little, since I was always around to DO the cleaning up. Now…well, we’re going to have to adopt a few minor changes of habit. Like not hanging our clothes on the bedroom floor at the end of the day. Stuff like that…

Today is my "day off." Of course, I have already been to the café, spent some time baking, eating breakfast, in general letting the staff know that they are never really on their own. At some point, I will have a staff that I can trust to run the place when I’m not there. And it’s not that they steal, or particularly goof off, or don’t wait on the customers when I’m absent. It’s just that it’s been like pulling teeth to get them to do certain things MY way. I haven’t made any huge changes, but the things I have changed have been important. Unfortunately, the staff would have preferred not to change at all. So as soon as I leave, they start doing things their own way again. Without batting an eyelash. Certain that "their" way is the right way, and I have no idea what I’m taking about. Annoying in the extreme.

But, like a lot of other little annoyances, I’m learning to live with them, and choose my battles. I settle for no less than complete victory on the battles I choose…though admittedly, it may take several skirmishes to make the victory stick. Progress is being made. When I start feeling overwhelmed, awash in the challenges and responsibilities, I look back two months, or even two weeks. And I see that things have changed…that I have grown and accomplished much. And that there is a lot more yet to accomplish. But it gives me hope when I look at where I was, and compare it to where I am now.

Currently, I’msitting out on my deck, trying to squeeze in a few moments of enjoyment of my flowers and plants before the cold weather sets in. It’s about ninety degrees, so that eventuality seems particularly remote today. But, as the calendar has flipped over to month number nine, I know the cold weather will be making its appearance, rather sooner than later. So I have stuffed the seed sock, and I am sitting here ticky-ticketying away to the accompaniment of the soft chatter of the goldfinches jockeying for prime position on the feed bag. I could watch them for hours…

But, as usual, I only have a few minutes. In a short time, I’ll be meeting the husband at his real job, from where we will strike out on a purchasing odyssey for the restaurant. And, hopefully, sneak in a bite at one of our old haunts. The places we used to go when we used to have…oh, never mind. You don’t want to hear it. Anyway, that’s what passes for a night out around here, these days.

As I look at the monitor on my laptop, it looks slightly faded…a result of the fact that the battery is down to about 62%. And I realize that it is very much a metaphor for myself. I’m most definitely running on about 62% power…maybe less. And the view through my eyes looks a lot like that slightly fading LCD monitor. I wonder…will I ever get back to 100% charged? Where IS my power cord… ?

Stream of Consciousness on the Edge of Exhaustion

What does one write when one has only a few free hours a week? When there are so many other things one should or could be doing, like dealing with a week’s accumulation of animal hair all over the house…or applying oneself to actually creating a home-cooked, home-served meal…or taking the dog out for a few minutes of desperately longed-for one-on-one dog and mom time…or paying the bills…or pulling weeds…or planning and scheming and dreaming the future of the business…?

The café closes at 3 pm on Saturday. I only had to work a nine-hour day. I was not a completely exhausted basket case by the time I got out of there today. I felt like I’d had the day off. Tomorrow, I don’t even have to work open to close. Ahhhh….another almost day off coming up.

The husband is currently ensconced in the only air-conditioned space we own—our travel trailer—trying to redeem a few of the million hours of sleep he has lost in the last two months…

Two months. We’ve been full-fledged entrepreneurs for two months. Since July 1, 2006. Two months have gone by. And, as is the way with time once you have passed the half-century mark, these two months have at once seemed like an eternity and the wink of an eye.

It’s September already, for god’s sake. And I seem to have missed the summer. (I always do the "where has the time gone" thing in September; but this year, moreso than usual.)

I think the problem is that summer is not as long as any of us who live very far north or south of the equator would like it to be. Think about it. Twelve short weeks. And here in Oregon, the first six weeks are wasted trying to shake off the rainy season that lasts half the year or more.

So we have about six weeks of summer. From maybe mid-July to the beginning of September. Before that, or after that, it could be summer…but it could just as easily revert to whichever season—spring or fall—precedes or follows. Which isn’t all bad, come to think of it. Here in the inland valleys of Oregon, spring and autumn are truly the longest and most beautiful seasons.

My drip irrigation-aided garden beds, planted in May before the insanity began, are thriving. The lawn looks like crap (because our sprinkler system gave up the ghost this year) …so the grass is brown and the only green accents are the tall spires of the weeds that haven’t been mowed since July. I can look outside and see the lush, thriving tangles of slightly wild beauty in my raised beds and container gardens. Nothing has been pinched back or deadheaded since d-day (July 1, 2006.) It’s wild and untamed and slightly weedy…but at least it’s green (in places…)

For those of you who remember the saga of the trees (from two years ago…): The volunteer poplars I have encouraged around my deck are now taller than I am. A little while more, and I shall have the tall, green, thriving screen I had when I moved into this house. Only this time, it will be mine…and I won’t have to worry about the neighbor cutting it down again.

I had so much more to write about…but I’ve run out of time. Time. Time to go feed the animals. And walk the dog. And do some laundry. And vacuum the furniture. And…and…and. Sigh!

Longing For The "Good Old Days..."

I am a boomer. I came of age just past the middle of the last century. The sixties. The seventies. Those two decades of turmoil turned to enlightenment. When centuries of American apartheid gave way to the Civil Rights movement. When the arms race was shouted down by the Vietnam peace movement. Maybe the hippies—the "flower children" of the sixties and seventies—had it right after all. Maybe all you DO need is love. Maybe their very existence was the Universe’s answer to a cosmic overload of paranoia, xenophobia, race-hatred, and tunnel vision that had been the hallmarks of our nation for far too long. For a few brilliant ticks of time, we seemed to understand that in order for the human race to have a future, any future, we needed to embrace each other, change our polluting ways, quit lobbing bombs at each other, and figure out how to get along.

In retrospect, I’m beginning to wonder…was there really an "Age of Enlightenment," somewhere in the later years of the last century, when people got it? Or was it simply a time when the people who got it somehow managed to get more press than the people who didn’t? Because, judging by the events of the last, oh, six years, there’s no doubt in my mind that the vast majority in this country is composed of people who don’t. Get it. Don’t get that life is not painted in black and white. That there isn’t an "us" and a "them." That if we don’t start thinking in terms of everybody being "us," we will all perish. By our own hand.

I feel old. I hear myself thinking things like, "What’s this world coming to?" and longing for the good old days. The days when the looming shadow of the mushroom cloud was always in the back of our minds. It colored everything we did. It made us stop and think. It made diplomacy a necessity, not an afterthought.

What has this world come to? We’re not afraid of war anymore. We’re not afraid to encourage it in some remote area of the world, confident that it won’t happen here. We’re not afraid to wave our big nuclear stick in the air and threaten to take out anyone who doesn’t subscribe to our current whim. We are the nation with the biggest balls, after all; separated by very large oceans from other countries who might liketo raise up large armies against us and overrun our borders. What do we have to fear? Besides being blown up in airplanes, or in tall buildings in big cities? And Mr. and Mrs. Joe America, who spend 90% of their lives puttering around their own little towns or suburbs, don’t even have to worry about that. Their solution is to give our leaders carte blanche to go "over there" and blow the shit out of "those people" before they can come here. You see? It’s all good. Sigh.

Then again, maybe my point of view over-simplifies things, too. What is the point of all this hatred, fear and strife?  Nobody gets out of this life alive. And I’ve spent enough time at funerals and in hospital rooms over the last couple of decades to realize that there are some particularly nasty "natural" ways to go. It seems to me that it would be better to be blown up after a short life of loving and freedom, openness and inclusion, than spend eighty or ninety years cringing, hating, warring and watching your back. Surely a protracted existence carried out in constant fear and loathing is infinitely more frightening than a rich, full, expansive life cut short by an unseen enemy at some unforeseen time.

How "enlightened" do you need to be to figure that out?

Taking It

The alarm went off at 6. A creaky arthritic arm snaked out from under the blankets to pound the snooze bar. Twice. These days, I go to bed exhausted, and wake up in the same state. Somewhere around noon, with the help of my two-ounce daily allowance of caffeinated beverage, my eyes will open all the way—for about two hours. Then I float back down into that semi-fogged world of bleary-eyed sleep deprivation I’ve inhabited since July 1.

This morning, I dragged my butt down the stairs after my shower…about fifteen minutes later than I had planned. I wanted to get to the café at 7…a half-hour earlier than I really needed to be there. So I was fifteen minutes late for being a half-hour early. And now I needed to hurry out the door if I wanted to get there in time to let the key-less cook in for the start of his shift.

The sprinklers had been turned on, and mewling livestock had been rewarded with bowls of kibbles slid under their noses. Dog had been sent out the back door to take care of business. Chores accomplished, I collected keys, purse, satchel and prepared to fly out to the car. But the kitchen window was open, just a crack…and the soft calls of the goldfinches hovering around the seed sock derailed my businesslike exit.

My birds! The drip irrigation was still dripping, and I have set up one nozzle to dribble into the bird bath, refreshing the water and (hopefully) keeping it from turning too green and scummy in the summer heat. One little yellow bird was merrily bathing under that tiny drip. Fluffing wings, wagging tail feathers, scattering tiny droplets in a joyful shower on the other birds waiting their turn. I was lost in the moment. For several seconds, I couldn’t have moved, couldn’t have dragged myself away from that vignette if the house was on fire. I consciously ignored the little voice that droned that I didn’t have time for this…that I was going to be late. And the thought crossed my mind, about taking time. Taking time to smell the roses.

For several years, I have not had to take time. The roses were there. I had the time. I smelled them.

Now, I have no time. It’s all used up. There is not a moment to spare. If I’m not rushing around putting out fires,walking tightropes, planning changes, poring over invoices and schedules, I’m cramming in a couple hours of sleep in between. And those "boring" days when I had oodles and oodles of time float just outside my grasp. As unattainable as the Grail.

And now I get it. The part about taking the time. So I took it.

I watched, enchanted, while that little bird enjoyed his ablutions. In less than a minute, he finished and flitted away. But those few stolen seconds sent me off with a smile and a calm that changed the entire fabric of my day.

Time. Take some. For the important things.

Look What They've Made Me Do

Let me just say that being a “real” business owner is a fiscal nightmare.  And an accountant’s dream, I suppose.  I’ve decided that accountants must have a powerful lobby in Washington, because the layers upon layers of IRS rules and regulations governing just payroll are mind-boggling.  This is to say nothing of the quarterly, bi-weekly, bi-monthly, monthly, biennial, semi-annual, multilateral, interracial, and multi-orgasmic reports that have to be filed by a legitimate business, with every agent behind every desk of every federal and state bureaucracy in existence.  One could hardly afford not to hire an accountant…one would be have no time to run one’s own business if one tried to wade through this by oneself.

We had an amazing weekend catering at an event with my old business (the twenty-foot concession trailer) this past weekend.  Like shooting fish in a barrel, as the old saying goes.  We brought in more money than we ever have at a weekend event.  More money, in fact, than my newly acquired café brought in all of last month.  Which gave me pause this morning…and touched off a tiny tug-of-war in my head.  For the first time in my life, I felt the overwhelming desire to cheat on my taxes.  Not just the little white-lie cheating that everybody does.  I mean big cheating. 

We don’t use a cash register in the catering booth.  You add up the transaction in your head, throw the money in the money box, and hope you have given out the right change.  (Those of us of a certain age actually know how to make change, which is more than I can say for any one of the employees I inherited with my new business…but I digress.)  So, I thought about that eighteen-inch-tall stack of money I took to the bank, and I thought…no one but me knows exactly what our sales were over the weekend.  My accountant doesn’t know…my husband doesn’t know.  The bank doesn’t know, because I made deposits in two different banks.  We have no cash register, so there is no paper trail.  The only figures in existence are in an Excel spreadsheet on my computer, and I can change those to read anything I want.

I’ve never really been tempted to cheat on my taxes before--for two reasons.  The first reason being that I am the kind of person that cannot get away with anything.  I got pulled over by a cop once, and he told me he’d have to give me a ticket this time, but the next time he might just write me a warning (?!?)  I exude some kind of guilt pheromone when I’m trying to get away with something not quite savory.  So I generally just don’t bother.

But the second reason is, I always felt that my tax money was, for the most part, being put to proper use.  I knew that if I expected the society in which I lived to provide things like education for the children, support for the indigent, good roads and police protection, I needed to ante up.  I never could understand these anti-taxation idiots who whine about taxing being excessive and illegal, but grumble out of the other side of their mouths about the potholes and the lack of prison beds, and want to run around the world with a big stick to make the rest of the world toe the line.  Where the hell do they think the money comes from to make these things happen?

Which brings me back to my newly-inspired desire to cheat on my taxes.  I look at what my country is, in this day and age, and exactly where that tax money is going, and I think, “I’m sorry, I can’t support any of this.”  I can’t support an illegal war financed with billions of dollars that could and should be going to support the indigent, educate the children, fix the roads, fund research to free us from the burden of dependency upon foreign oil, clean up our environment and make sure we leave our planet fit for our children to inhabit.  I can’t pour my blood sweat and tears into the pit of deficit spending created by our GOP-led government.  I can’t give my money to the people who will continue to ignore, abuse and disenfranchise me and the rest of the middle class at every opportunity.  It would be like buying a .44 magnum and pointing it at my own head.

So, I wonder…how many tax cheats does this administration create each day?  And why do I feel as if this—this difficult choice between two wrongs—is just one more betrayal of the middle class by the Bush Administration and the GOP?

Decisions...

I don’t want to limit myself to the five minute timer…but I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to write before I pass out.

Scandi went great. Better than expected, and infinitely more. We showed a 23% increase over last year. $21,250 and change vs $17, 333 last year. I suppose that doesn’t mean much to anyone who hasn’t been intimately involved with a business that lives and dies by the numbers…but those are good numbers. I am proud. I am happy, and I am tired. But, I went into the whole thing tired. So this is nothing new. And, though it’s nearly midnight, I had to log in here to report my success. To…whomever. Anybody out there who might care. I’m sure there are one or two of you who do….J

And…today, I cast an exhausted yet somewhat renewed eye back upon the café, and made a few "executive decisions." Let me preface this by reporting that, while we were having a beyond excellent weekend at the Scandinavian Festival, the café was struggling through another weekend of spotty, anemic business. I don’t really want to speculate about the reasons for the café’s recent tailspin. But I did have one "a-ha moment" over the weekend: I decided that if I was going to fail, I wanted to fail with my own concept, and not someone else’s. So, all of Mr. Previous Owner’s warnings about not changing anything lest I alienate the (meager) regular customer base are going into the circular file.

I’m going to make this café mine. From the menu to the crew to the décor…it’s going to be the restaurant I’ve always envisioned. That way, if I fail, I will know it was MY concept that was crap. I’m not really interested in finding out if I can make someone else’s idea of a restaurant successful. Is this risky? Damned straight. Anytime you invest that much of yourself into something…anytime you put your heart and soul into a dream, it’s going to hurt all that much more if you fall flat on your face Nothing good ever comes without taking some kind of risk. I’m older now…wiser. I’ve soared through success, I’ve wallowed through loss. Enough to know that, whatever happens, I’ll survive. And to know that victory is all that much sweeter when yourisk everything to achieve it.

So I hired four people today. Did this weird, mass-interview thing. I’m sure the four of them had never quite been in this kind of interview before. I’m not sure I knew what the hell I was doing, suffering as I am from extreme stress and sleep-deprivation. But if I know nothing else, I know it’s time to re-invent the place, starting today. Bring in people who will see me as the boss. Who don’t know about our landlord-cum-former-owner. Who will look to me for inspiration, direction, and discipline. Lucky members of the old crew will observe and learn. Unlucky ones will be out pounding the pavement for another job within a matter of weeks, if not sooner.

I told my husband, I’m trusting the Universe to send me what I need. So far, It has been remarkably cooperative. Day by day, I discover little things, little blessings, that I don’t deserve and don’t expect, raining down on me…just to remind me that there is a higher power that might possibly care, might possibly want to allow me to succeed… I need that success; I so need that affirmation right now. And Someone knows that…

My internet connection has been extremely wonky this evening. In fact, I see that I’m going to have to go mess around with it before I’ll be able to post this entry. But, I just wanted to give anyone who cares a little update on what’s going on with me. Please continue to float positive energy my way. I can use it more than you can possibly know.

Time for Another...

Five minutes (or less) until I officially turn into a pumpkin. I was determined to be in bed by midnight tonight. I’ll make it…almost. After another five-minute snippet (I need to learn to type faster…)Tomorrow I go in to the café for a few hours in the morning, and then head down south to Junction City for the Scandinavian Festival--Café de la Rue’s biggest gig of the season. There was no way I was NOT going to do it this year…too much money involved. So I take off the Café owner mask and don the Scandinavian costume for a weekend. Trust me, even though it will involve four fourteen-hour days, and cranking out pocket sandwiches by the thousands, it will be like a mini-vacation. Going from wading my way through entrepreneurial quicksand to doing something that, though intense, I could probably do in my sleep. And I will enjoy the heck out of it.

I will NOT let thoughts of what could possibly be going on a hundred miles north tear me apart. I figure, I’m going to own the café for, god willing, a long time. One weekend away is not going to cause the whole house of cards to topple in on itself. I’ll go back Monday morning, probably feeling like I’ve been run over by a truck, but refreshed, and hopefully with a shade of new perspective on the café thing. It will be good to get away for a few days.

...Another Five Minutes

So, in the last two days, we have burnt, spoiled, dropped, or otherwise ruined about a hundred dollars (raw cost) worth of food. That would translate into about $400 worth of sales. I have a crew of cooks who wouldn’t use a timer to save their lives. Black bacon, quiches left in the oven overnight, turkey that comes out of the oven after ten hours looking like mop strings. I’ve already decided I have to fire the whole kitchen crew. Trouble is, this is a small town, and I don’t exactly have them lining up at the door to come work for me. Apparently, the previous ownership shot through the available labor pool rather quickly. That’s another story…

I bought some flowers to put out on the sidewalk, around the doors and under the windows, to make it look as if there actually WAS an inviting eating establishment open in this place. Despite the previous owners warnings that I not change anything lest I lose the loyalty of our regular customers, I’ve found that our ranks of "regular customers" are so small that I need to do anything I can possibly do to recruit MORE regular customers. Including changing the menu, changing the staff, changing the hours—all those things that Mr. Previous Owner was certain ought to be written in stone. Stone crumbles, my friend… And "regular" customers tend to ask, "What have you done for me lately???"

What's happening in five minute sound bites...

Just in case anyone out there is wondering how it’s going… I thought I would set the timer on my watch and give myself exactly five minutes to write…stream of consciousness..about what’s been going on.

I’ve discovered that under normal circumstances, caffeine (which I had all but quit five years ago) gives me a pleasant buzz, makes me chatty and friendly, and generally improves my mood and sociability. However, when I am stressed, rushed, and dangerously sleep deprived, caffeine turns me into the bitchiest harpy that ever walked. I have no patience, I throw things, I drop things, I say stupid things, and I just about burst into tears at the slightest provocation. Note to self: Quit caffeine. As soon as I can stop long enough to figure out how to do that…

After ten years away from the customer service game, I have come to realized that customers have not changed. They will come to the restaurant in large, noisy groups when we are under-staffed. They will want whatever we just ran out of, even if we haven’t sold one of (whatever) in the last five months. They will beat on the doors when they are locked, but will not venture to show their faces during normal business hours. These are parts of the Credo of the Customer that I have long been aware of. The trick is to make them think you are understaffed, unprepared, or closed…just to get them to come in. What?????

Oh, well, my five minutes are up, and I haven’t written anything of great import. I considered doing an audio entry…I may yet, if I can figure out houw to do it in ten seconds or less. But once you all hear my voice, you’ll probably stay away in droves. Just like the customers.

See ya sometime…