Its hard to be in business. My wife and I own a 50’s Diner and a flavored popcornand candy store. And we’d be having a blast except for a couple of things; employees and customers. If you could figure a way to earn a living without having to deal with these two groups, you could franchise your idea and retire a billionaire. Now don’t get me wrong, most customers and employees (ok maybe half the employees) are wonderful. But as the saying goes, “a few bad apples spoil the barrel!). There is a guy who walks his dog past the Diner everyday and occasionally ,on Sundays, he would stop in for a coffee to-go. He always ordered a medium except for one fateful day. That day he ordered a large and I brought it out to him. He laid $1.25 on the counter and I said ” A large is a dollar fifty”. You would have thought I had just stolen his dog. He started yelling and ranting , calling me a crook and demanding his buck and a quarter back. I said ” sorry,but you can’t really be that mad over a quarter”…..He was! He took a quarter out of his pocket and threw it at me like a rock..just missing a lady sitting at a booth near the cash register. He still flips me off when he sees me and its been over a year.
Another guy comes in every-time he is in town, orders eggs and sends them back because “they need another 30 seconds on the stove”…every-time! Well ok, not every-time. Once they only needed “another 15 seconds”. Then there is the diabetic who has to watch his sugar intake so he orders dry hash-browns. We don’t dare cook the with grill oil. Oh, he’s health conscience about the spuds alright, but he uses 5 creamers in his coffee, smothers his hotcakes in syrup and uses a 1/4 bottle of ketchup on his eggs, but at least he won’t have crisp hash-browns to blame for his blood-sugar levels. But its not always the customers….
We recently took an 8 day vacation and left one of our waitresses in charge. We got home, checked in and everything seemed to be in order until I checked the sales records…there weren’t any! And evidently the cash receipts were really piling up…so she tossed them out. We had no idea how much money came in or out, but everything was neat and tidy, no messy paperwork to clutter things up. And it only took about 9 hours to reconstruct the financials for the week.
Then there was the cook who decided to quit smoking. I noticed he was very pale and kind of weaving back and forth and I ask him if he felt ok. He said ” I better put on another nicotine patch” and unbuttoned his shirt. He was covered with patches. he must have had 30 covering his chest and shoulders. I don’t know how he kept from passing out. He did quit smoking , but now he is addicted to the patch.
Which brings us to me. We sell a toy called the “Incredible Flying Monkey” at our flavored popcornstore. On Sundays, we sell a few at the Diner. I’d been demo-ing the monkey, (you pull it back like a slingshot and let it go and it flies through the air screaming like a monkey…pretty funny) and I’d been sailing it the length of the Diner. People were entertained and buying one now and then. A guy in the first booth ask me to show him how it worked,so I pulled back and let it fly. But this time it must have slipped a little because it didn’t make it all the way to the end of the restaurant. Instead (almost in slow motion) it screamed through the air and landed on the face of an 80 year old grandmother. She clawed at it like it was alive. Everyone in the Diner was in tears laughing, except her, and I felt like running out the front door and down the street. I would have too if it wasn’t for the rush of customers headed to the counter to buy their monkey.
So you see, what a great business except for customers and employees…..and ME.
