I posted on Facebook yesterday that I had just made it through one of the crappiest weeks ever.
Now,
I know I have had much worse weeks. Like everyone else who has endured
life on the planet for more than half a century, I’ve weathered illness,
disaster, deaths of loved ones. But those things are in a different
category. The term “crappy” would trivialize those life-changing,
soul-wrenching times.
But this week was an undeniable shit-fest
from the word “go.” I endured all kinds of indignities, up to and
including a serious brush with the shadow of divorce court. How about a
Crappy Week Re-Cap (Re-Crap?) a la those wonderful (and long gone) Ten
Good Things Lists (you knew it was only a matter of time, didn’t you?)
1.
First thing Monday morning, my longest term employee--one of the two
who are left that I “bought” with the restaurant--hands me her two
weeks’ notice. She tells me she feels like she put in her five years,
she just doesn’t enjoy it like she used to, and she has a lot of
vacations lined up for the summer that she doesn’t want me to have to
worry about. Truthfully, this girl has been a steady and dependable
presence, and I will miss her…but it IS time.
In the way
of all things (at least for me) the change for which I believed I had
opted last July when I hired California Chef is taking an entirely
different form than I had anticipated. Rather than a kind of gradual
metamorphosis, with disenchanted old employees dropping off one by one,
it has been much more of a tug-of-war. While I slung my ideas for change
over my shoulder and endeavored to drag the café forward, the old
employees planted their feet and pulled with all their might in the
direction of “We Like Things Just The Way They Are.” It appears that
now, nearly nine months later, the rope has snapped, the old employees
are tumbling out the door en masse, and the restaurant is going to shoot
forward with a vengeance. Can’t say I was really prepared for this turn
of events, but it is what it is. We’ll make it work.
2.
California Chef is fully recovered from his bout with pneumonia. One
would think this would be a good thing, but of course there is a bug in
the ointment. During and just after his illness, while I was being
particularly solicitous of him and basically running the restaurant by
myself, he seemed to have finally developed a respect for me that he had
heretofore lacked. I thought, “Ah, now we can finally conduct a healthy
business relationship based upon mutual respect. The sky is the limit!”
Um…or not.
Is this a generational thing? Have the
twenty-somethings upon whom I must depend to run my restaurant (because I
can’t run it alone) simply been brought up unfamiliar with the concept
of “respect?” For anyone or anything? That would not surprise me, given
the political/pop-culture climate of the past ten years-- the years of
their coming of age. Respect is a hopelessly outdated concept. But I
have to say, ancient relic that I am, I’m having a really hard time
figuring out how to relate to and motivate these children. I am
not/cannot be their “friend,” and there seems to be no comprehension, on
their part, of “boss-hood.” They can be eager and cooperative as long
as they are in the mood, but they’ll turn on me like a snake at the
slightest provocation. There is no carrot I can dangle in front of them,
no stick with which I can threaten them, to alter their performance or
their attitude toward me or the job in any appreciable way. They make up
their own rules--which I do not know and would doubtless not understand
if I did--and when I break one, I suffer.
So, Monday afternoon,
I’m showing my twenty-six-year-old chef (yes, I am not only his boss,
but I’m old enough to be his mother’s older sister…) how to perform a
new task. He is going to take over the provision ordering, and I’m
trying to make a point about why we order a certain item a certain way;
and he says to me, “This isn’t the first time I’ve ever filled out an
order, Sweetheart.”
And any small hope I had cherished that he
has finally deemed me and my methods worthy of his respect, melts and
runs down the floor drain.
3. I’m
sitting in the dining room taking a rare food break, and a regular
customer shows me an article in the local paper about, you guessed it, a
new restaurant opening in town. Ugh! Looks like here comes the end of
“random factors operating in our favor” when it comes to the business…
Seems
that a local real estate agent has taken it upon herself to collect a
ragtag bunch of small food operations and bring them together under one
roof, that roof specifically belonging to the huge empty space a mile up
the road which has, in its short history, housed three unsuccessful
restaurant concepts. Mostly because it is a huge space, and carries a
walloping $7000/month rent, no one yet has been able to generate the
sales it would take to pay the bills. And no one is likely to, in this
small town. But people just don’t seem to GET that. Ms. Real Estate
claims to have the knowledge and experience it takes to “get the
restaurant open and get it sold” to some unsuspecting soul, the like of
which, according to P.T. Barnum, there is one born every minute. And it
will require that the unsuspecting buyer be unaware of Ms Real Estate’s
most recent history, which had her pulling the same “bait and switch”
with a restaurant in the next town up the highway. Which went tits-up
less than a year after she passed it off to some poor slob who didn’t
know any better.
So now we all get to take the hit to our sales
numbers while we watch another restaurant struggle into existence, limp
along for a time and slump to an ignominious end within, what? The next
twelve to eighteen months? Augh!
4.
The air conditioning project that I have delegated to my husband and my
landlord is going exactly nowhere. I cannot have another summer’s dinner
sales ruined by our lack of proper air conditioning. But husband,
landlord, and any and every local heating/air conditioning contractor we
have attempted to enlist do not seem to understand the urgency of the
situation. In the two days of over-sixty-degree weather we have
experienced so far this spring, the temperature in my dining room has
shot up to 80 degrees.
For whatever reason, we have the
devil’s own time trying to get any work done on that restaurant. From
floor stripping to HVAC maintenance to electrical work, we have been
stiffed by just about every local small business that handles these
sorts of things. And getting anyone to come out here from “the big city”
is like trying to talk a Viking ship into sailing off the end of the
earth. One after another, we make appointments that are either blown off
without a word, or are called off or postponed to death. This is
another instance where I hear how bad the economy is, and how small
businesses are struggling, going out of business, laying people off for
lack of work…and we have a job available and money to spend, but we
can’t get anyone to touch it. WTF???!?
5. And then there was jury duty…
How
can I describe (in less than a book) the debacle that was my
unfortunate experience with that Constitutionally conferred civic duty?
And the perfect storm created when my attempt to fulfill said obligation
collided with the restaurant’s busiest day in months, a “B” team
front-of-the-house staff (of which the over-worked husband was an
integral part), the unexpected illness of a cook, and my cell phone
lying forgotten on top of my dresser?
The resultant confrontation
between my business partner and myself, carried on in the parking lot
outside the restaurant as my unsuspecting foot touched the pavement
outside my van oh-so-too-late to salvage the “Senior Night Dinner
Service from Hell,” was the essence of the “serious brush with the
shadow of divorce court” I mentioned at the beginning of this post.
It was, to paraphrase Lillian Gilbreth in Cheaper by the Dozen, not the penultimate, nor the ante-penultimate, but the ultimate straw.
And
that was only Tuesday. Shell-shocked, brow-beaten and emotionally shut
down, I had four more days--two of which were twelve-plus-hour
marathons--to endure before the crappy week could be officially declared
over.
So today is Sunday. Arguably the beginning of a new week
(although it is actually the last day of the week on our staff
schedule.) Husband and I have hashed out some of our issues (after going
three days without speaking.) Staffing hassles at the restaurant have
not let up for an instant. And I have the gift of two days off in a row
(one of which is already 75% over.)
I have every intention of
spending tomorrow doing anything at all that is not restaurant
related--preferably fussing with plants and house and yard issues.
I’m
so looking forward to a badly needed and richly deserved one-day
vacation. And, please...a slightly less crappy week to come.
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