(He's) Sick and (I'm) Tired

I'm still trying to figure out what people don't get about the health care crisis in America. I heard somewhere that, since "most people" have their health insurance paid for by their employers, the general population just doesn't connect with the cost. Huh?

I've worked for a living since I was eighteen. That would be thirty-three years—up until we bought the restaurant in 2006. Three decades of mostly full-time employment. Mostly in food service. And out of that whole time, I got employer-paid health insurance maybe six or seven years. That's right, folks—the restaurant industry has always sucked at providing health insurance for its employees. (And there's a reason for that—restaurants function on notoriously tight margins. The dining-out public would not pay what a meal would cost if the operators had to absorb the cost of health insurance for the employees. Especially now. Imagine a Big Mac costing ten bucks…that's what it would be, if Ronny Mac's was going to buy health insurance for all their workers. Honestly, if the Hot Flash Cafe were forced to provide a health plan for our employees, we would have to close our doors. The money just isn't there. But that's a rant for a different day…) To get back to my point: I know I'm not the only member of the voting public who has had to worry about health insurance--and sometimes go without--for most of my working life. So, believe me when I say there are legions out there who get that we're in a world of hurt here when it comes to health care and insurance costs.

Still, through the magic of payroll deductions, many folks have no idea exactly how much of their paychecks are eaten up by health insurance costs. People never see that money, so they don't miss it. They probably even blame their shrinking take-home pay on taxes. Blame it on the government--that's the easier target. And certainly nobody on the insurance companies' side of the health care debate is inclined to point out that error.

My husband has $144 per week, per week, taken out of his check to cover health insurance for himself and for me. No family coverage, no kids dragging us to urgent care once a month. Just him and me. That's almost 9% of his earnings going out of his check—before he ever sees it. Oh, and by the way—that $144 is the highest number on the list of deductions from his check. Federal Income Tax is only $131. So his insurance deduction is higher than his tax rate. We joke sometimes—though it's not funny, really—that thirty years ago, he was earning less than a quarter of what he makes now, but he had better insurance (Blue Cross/Blue Shield) and it was free.

But, honestly…even if you haven't noticed the meteoric rise in the cost of health care, how can you fail to see the precipitous decline in the quality of health care? Let's say, through some miracle, you DO get in to a hospital or clinic. The chances that you are actually going to see a DOCTOR are almost negligible. There are nurse practitioners, and physician's assistants and licensed this-and-thats… but where are the doctors?

California Chef (my kitchen manager and right-hand man) has been sick for two weeks. He first called in last Tuesday to tell me he was too sick to come to work. He came back on Thursday, worked three hours and had to go home. I knew by the look and sound of him that he was really sick. My diagnosis was pneumonia—I had my own little encounter with that nasty bug ten years ago. He looked exactly how I remember feeling during that miserable bout. I told him to go home and get himself to a doctor.

Well, he took my advice…went to a clinic. Don't know if the person he saw actually WAS a doctor, but that person told him he had an intestinal virus and "mild bronchitis." Sent him home with a pat on the head and no meds. Five days later, chef is trying to come back to work, because the medical professionals have, after all, told him that he was on the mend… And by god, by the end of his shift last night, the poor kid can't breathe and he looks like crap. So he calls me on the phone at 7:30 this morning and says he was running a fever again last night, so he's going back to the clinic before he comes to work. He thinks he might be a little late for his shift…will that be okay? Two hours later I call him to find out what's up, and he says they have just told him he has double pneumonia, they are giving him some whopping antibiotics, and he shouldn't come back to work for at least five days. Well, DUH!!! If I could get my hands on that first dipshit who told him he had "mild bronchitis," I'd show that idiot some shortness of breath…with my hands around his throat.

Ten years ago, all A DOCTOR had to do was listen to my chest to figure out I had pneumonia. It wasn't tough…it just took someone with the education and the training to interpret what she was hearing through the stethoscope. I really want to know what kind of under-qualified bedpan-pusher couldn't even recognize pneumonia when they heard it in California Chef's lungs. And are the un- and under-insured the most likely beneficiaries of such excellent, highly skilled practitioners? Or are we all paying more and more for less and less?

So when "they" tell me that the general voting public of this country doesn't understand that there is something very broken about health care in the United States of America, I can't help but believe that "they" are full of crap. I'll wager there is not a soul out there who has had anything to do with medical treatment—or the lack thereof—in the past ten years, who doesn't know that we're in deep, deep trouble. I hope we don't have to wait until the system is so fouled up that nobody can get decent treatment, not for any price (though I'm afraid we may already be there) before something shakes loose and REAL reform comes to pass.

On second thought, who needs reform? I'd settle for things going back to where they were thirty years ago…

Alone Again...Naturally

Three years and nine months. That’s how long it took.

Before my crew deteriorated to such a serious state of meltdown that I had to call my husband and beg him to leave work (the work that pays our bills, which is more than can be said for the Hot Flash Café) and come to the restaurant and bail my ass out of trouble. Because no one…NO ONE else would work.

Out of a crew of ten, there was only one other hearty soul ready and/or willing to run that restaurant with me today.

Even in the bad old days—those days when the people I bought with the restaurant and those I hired in ill-advised desperation nearly drove me to distraction with their dramas, no-shows, hospital emergencies and hangovers—I was never faced with the prospect of opening the restaurant too understaffed to function. Today, I had a crew of me…and a cashier who has worked for me for less than two months. And a party of 15 scheduled for lunch.

Was it just the perfect storm? Chef sick, morning counter girl in Hawaii, relief cook out indefinitely with surgery that didn’t take. Everyone else with appointments and classes and anything at all that wasn’t work. A one-in-a-million convergence of unlikely forces pulling everyone away from the restaurant at once.

Maybe.

But really. In almost four years, one would think that I could have at the very least accomplished assembling a staff of which I was not the main and too often the only functional component.

Tonight I just feel like a colossal failure.

V-Day 2010 Retrospective

The “Big V” (Valentine’s Day) is behind us now. I have to say it was about 90% successful. California Chef produced a wonderful menu, so at least this year I’m not worried whether the quality of the food was where it needed to be (in the past, I was the chef, and usually in waaay over my head…) The restaurant was full for about an hour and a half; service didn’t exactly go without a hitch (a certain husband who shall remain nameless screwed things up by running food out to the wrong tables… Once we sent him back to the kitchen to help the dishwasher, things in the front of the house improved immeasurably.)

Even though I didn’t have to create and produce the entire menu this year, I am still exhausted. Maybe not as completely exhausted as I was last year…I don’t know. Exhaustion seems to be like labor…you know it sucks when you’re in the middle of it, but when you’re out of it, you forget how bad it really was. I’m too tired to analyze to what degree I’m exhausted.

I wear every hat there is to wear when it comes to one of these special events. There is no delegating this stuff…I am it. I still had to procure all the supplies, create and publish all the marketing materials, decorate the restaurant, puzzle out the whole “reservations” thing, etc, etc., etc. And wouldn’t it be nice if, after weeks of running around behind the scenes to assure the night is a success, I could just BE the owner on the Big Night? You know, greeting folks at the door, going around to the tables and schmoozing, that kind of thing? But no…on the evening of February 14th, I WAS the appetizer/soup/salad station. No rest for the…entrepreneur.

I’m only whining because I’m so tired. We did good—our highest sales Valentine’s Day ever. Our highest sales DAY of any kind ever (under our ownership.) And thus, our highest sales WEEK ever. I absolutely know that, in the midst of the economic malaise that continues to beset our fair nation, I have nothing—nada, rien, zip, zilch, zero—about which to complain. The Universe has been very kind to us for the past several months. I just wish I wasn’t so tired that I can’t properly appreciate that…

Change of Plan

In the wake of some news of which I have been getting wind in the past week, it has come to my attention that I need to plan an exit strategy for the café. Seems like a strange thing to be thinking about right now, while we’re enjoying being one of three less eating establishments in our immediate vicinity. But, even in these rough economic times, people just can’t seem to be able to leave well enough alone.

Early on in this economic debacle, our little town was able to score some major “Stimulus Money,” to fund a couple of projects that have been on the town’s wish list for decades. One of the projects involves the railroad tracks which neatly divide our town east from west. All the railroad crossings currently are in the center or north end of town, which has created quite an access problem for neighborhoods and institutions southeast of the tracks. The stimulus money is going to create a crossing at the south end of town, improving access to existing neighborhoods and businesses. And opening up a huge area for new development.

So of course there is a shopping center planned for the site. And of course someone is going to put a nice, big, shiny new restaurant in the center. The rumor mill is already churning, attesting to everything from a huge pizza parlor to an Olive Garden. I’m reasonably certain that Olive Garden would not be stupid enough to try to open a location out here in the sticks. But it’s a sure bet that someone is going to upset our delicate economic balance and inflict another eating establishment on us.

And that, my friends, will pretty much spell the end for the Hot Flash Café.

I am not certain of the timing of this new construction, yet. It could be next year, two years…five years. All I know is, every time a new place opens anywhere in the county, those of us who have been toiling in the trenches for years suffer big time. Seven months after we bought the café, the grand opening of a restaurant five miles up the highway nearly put us out of business. Three years and two or three ownership changes later, that place up the road closed down—in fact, it’s one of the three that went out of business recently.

And, yeah, we’re still here. We outlasted it. But that’s the point. That’s ALL we are. Still here.

Three and a half years ago, instead of being able to take the helm of our new enterprise and move forward, no matter how slowly, we had to first endure being dragged backward—almost to oblivion—by a situation over which we had no control at all. New at the game and not willing to cry “uncle” quite that quickly, we put our backs into it and dragged the thing forward again. It’s felt like a great victory to get just slightly beyond where we started out. I really feel like we’ve accomplished something.

But I can NOT go through that again.

I cannot commit to staying in this game if we’re constantly going to be dragged backward by idiots who have no idea what they’re doing, upsetting the delicate economic balance of regional eating establishments, cocking up our sales for thirty-six months, and then going belly-up themselves. I am not attracted to a business plan of simply outlasting a barrage of ill-conceived competition.

There just is not a large enough customer base out here to support more than “X” number of restaurants. Even if they DO build houses along with the commercial developments, there’s no guarantee that houses will equal potential new customers. There are houses around town built during the last economic “boom” that are still standing empty. And since our area is being touted as a bedroom community for Portland, there’s no guarantee that folks moving out here will not merely choose to take their custom to the Big City. It’s not that far away.

But a new restaurant down the street guarantees instant competition for my existing customer base. And I am not willing to share anymore.

So I’ve formulated a tentative plan. The trick is to stay on top of the information. To know when the competition is going to open. And make the move before that happens.

Keep the restaurant going and growing. Make all the improvements and innovations I would make if I was going through with my original plan—which was to hold on to the café until we retired (another twelve years), pay off all debt associated with it so that we own it free and clear, and then sell it. The proceeds would be a decent retirement nest-egg.

Now, my plan is to pay off as much debt as we can, and put the place up for sale as soon as they start construction on the shiny new restaurant up the road. List it for exactly as much as we owe on our house. Come out of the whole deal as close to debt free as we possibly can. And…go on from there.

It sounds good. Very practical, very cut–and-dried.

But it breaks my heart…

Into The New Year And Beyond

Having three less eating establishments with which to compete over the past three months has been a gift for which I feel peevishly grateful. Grateful because I cannot possibly justify NOT appreciating any gift the Universe chooses to bestow upon me. Peevish because our enhanced sales are not attributable to anything I personally have done. And because I so wish we were getting an even BIGGER spike from the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

With another place scheduled to open in a few weeks (the guy’s an idiot, but that won’t change the fact that his potential entrepreneurial faux pas will negatively impact our sales for at least a few months) I wish we had banked a few thousand dollars more than we have. Unfortunately, circumstances have conspired to cause us to spend the windfall almost as quickly as the till drawer closed upon it.

Our enhanced sales set us teetering on the fulcrum between being seriously under-staffed and adequately- or even over-staffed. Attrition, both foreseen and out of the blue, called me to embark upon a major hiring project. The Good and Faithful “D” is slated to leave us in a very few months; plus Flaky Cook up and gave her notice—completely out of the blue—a week into the new year. And for the past three months, we’ve been doing high season business with low season staffing. Obviously we need more help. Right?

As predictable as the dawn, no sooner had I made the decision to put an ad out there and add two or three bodies to the staff, than the bottom dropped out of sales. We now have two new staff members, and potentially two more on top of that, which current sales cannot support, and who are having a hard time learning the ropes because there is a serious shortage of customers upon which they can practice. The Double-Whammy Bullshit Peter Principle of Staffing a Small Business. Happens every time.

Big changes are in store for the Hot Flash Café. Flaky Cook’s exit is, like it or not, a major turning point for us. She represents, basically, the Bad Old Days. The times when I couldn’t beg, borrow or steal decent employees. The times when she, and a string of others like her—with all their drama and personal disasters and time off for illness, career changes, insanity—were the best I could do. I had no choice but to bend over backward for high-maintenance employees, because I needed them. I didn’t have the skills to run the place by myself, and the labor pool was about as deep as a cookie sheet.

But things have changed. The state of the economy gives me many more options when it comes to hiring. My requirements no longer consist of, “Does the applicant have a pulse?” Not only that, but I have changed. I’ve learned my business. It took me three years, but I am now confident that if every one of my kitchen staff deserted me tomorrow, I could open that restaurant and git ‘er done—by myself, if need be. I no longer live in fear of being forced to be my own staff.

I’m every bit the breakfast cook—at least for MY restaurant—that Flaky Cook is. I’ve known, in fact, since she took her sick leave last winter that the restaurant could function quite nicely without her. So when her chronic case of chef-envy finally got the best of her and she tearfully grumbled her resignation, I knew I needed to let her go. I suspect that there are others who will follow her soon enough. But I can’t worry about that. We will go on—to bigger and better things—without those albatrosses around our necks.

For me, change is always scary. I’ve always been one to cling to the past, to hang on to and glorify the “good old days.” To compare today to yesterday, and find today wanting. It seems like I’ve spent my whole life walking backwards…making forward progress, but almost against my will. Always looking back with too much fondness. Not looking ahead at all.

But you can’t run a business like that. Business is about planning for the future, looking ahead, striving for the next dollar, the next improvement, the next innovation.

So…here we go.

It Doesn't Get Any Easier

The restaurant has been busy, so I have been either running around like a headless chicken or too tired to write anything that makes any sense. Besides being busy, we are going through more employee dramas…might be that we will experience some real crew turnover within the next couple of months.

All is not well behind the scenes at the café. We are in that space where long-term staff’s know-it-all complacency is running up against ownership’s desire to take the place to a new level. Staff is not particularly interested in going where ownership wants it to go. And is in fact planting its feet and pulling backward on the lead like a recalcitrant mule…

I hate the idea of having to indoctrinate a whole new set of employees. On the other hand, I hate having to drag my current crew kicking and screaming to the place we need them to be. It might just be a whole lot easier to start with a completely clean slate. I am torn between clinging desperately to the devil I know and taking the chance on throwing that demon over for…whatever else is out there. It would be just my luck that the “whatever else” would turn out to be infinitely worse than what I’m currently trying to manipulate. In the end, the choice will probably be taken out of my hands. The attrition has already begun, with the exodus of Flaky Cook and the impending exit of the Good and Faithful “D.”

To complicate matters further, business has been entirely wonky. We’re either empty or swamped, no in-between, and no predicting when or how. Mondays are improving, Mondays suck. Senior Night is crazy, Senior Night is tailing off. Fridays stink, Fridays rock. No rhyme or reason whatsoever. My crew of eight (and myself) were exhausted after our record December. But as soon as I made up my mind to post an ad and bring on more help, sales tanked. Called a halt to the hiring binge, and sales cranked back up to record levels.

As my mom used to say, “I can’t win for losing.”

And then there is the “small-town economy” dynamic with which we have been contending since Day 1. We have learned a lot about which conditions will spell success and which will spell disaster for those of us in the business of vying for the limited dining out dollars within our isolated little market. We keep tabs on the comings and goings of other eating establishments as vigilantly as a cat at a mouse hole. The demise of three local competitors in the fourth quarter of last year has been responsible for our current rosy numbers. One could almost believe there is a light at the end of the tunnel, if things could just stay this way. If no other fool would decide to muck up the water by dipping their ignorant and ill-conceived oars into it.

So my life is, still and forever, a roller coaster. Which I’m afraid might be starting to wear me down. But, just when I think I’ve had it, I get my second (third, fourth, hundredth) wind, and I go back at it with a vengeance.

Can’t live with it, can’t shoot it, I guess…

Look Out--The Home-made Stuff Will Kill You

I got a call from the County Health Department today. The Health Inspector. Following up on a complaint that had been called in against us. (Let me just say for the record that we received a 100% on our last health inspection, so it’s not like there’s a whole array of glaring violations for folks to choose from around here… )

This particular complainant was concerned about our home-made baked goods, which we display under glass far away from nasty hands or sneezes. And we handle only with tissue pick-ups or tongs when serving to any guest. But how we handle the product was not the issue. The insidious means by which we are poisoning the community is—

CREAM CHEESE ICING.

We make our own cream cheese icing. We use butter, powdered sugar, cream cheese, vanilla, and a little dash of half and half to make it spreadable. What are we thinking?

Cream cheese, being a dairy product, can be categorized as a high-risk food. Which should not, by state health law, be kept for more than four hours in the “danger zone” of temperature range—that is, warmer than 41 degrees or cooler than 165 degrees. So the fact that we keep our lovely pumpkin bars, cinnamon rolls and gingerbread in our un-refrigerated pastry case is, evidently, a BIG no-no.

No matter that we have been serving these things under these conditions for three years, and no one has ever gotten sick off our cream cheese icing. Nor, because of the high sugar content of the icing, are they likely to. And it’s not like they sit in there for days. We put them out fresh each morning, and generally run out before the end of the day.

So now, we have to keep our lovely baked goods in the refrigerator, since we do not have a refrigerated display case. Sales of these wholesome made-from-scratch goodies will now dry up and blow away. Eventually we’ll probably have to stop making them altogether.

And do you know what the sad thing is?

If we used some kind of crappy, factory-made institutional white “mystery icing,” full of chemicals and preservatives and who knows what not all…

We would not be having any issue at all with the local Health Department.

Doesn’t that just make you want to scream?

Cross posted at "Women On..."