Eventually, painful decisions had to be made. Louise was the first to go. We were clearly over-supplied with managers — I use the term loosely — and our budget for staff was far more than the business could bear. Encouraged — indeed, strongly urged — by Dale, my small business advisor, I bit the bullet and “had a talk” with Louise. It wasn’t an easy task for me. We had entered the fray with so many high hopes, and had shared many good times. But I faced the but-terflies and sat Louise down, and explained that something had to “give”, and that was her job. Redundancy had arrived.
There is no doubt that sacking someone — especially when they are a lovely person who has worked hard and tried their best, and you know they have probably low prospects of finding another job — is not something you would want to do every day. There may be strong people who can face such a task with equilibrium, but I am not one of them. I admit that I sought the advice of Emma, the coach, at this juncture, and her analysis and guidance were very helpful. The task was completed, and however bad it felt for me, I have no doubt it was worse for Louise. Somewhat unbelievably, considering the poor state of staff relations and the almost undetectable book sales, it came as a surprise to her. I paid a large severance pay, and we parted ways.
Next to go was Jo, with — predictably — somewhat more drama. Battles had been raging in the kitchen for some time, not only with Chloe (of the “it’s her or me!” variety) but also with Daniel. Daniel was a charmer, but sharing a kitchen with Jo required more charm than even he could reliably muster on a daily basis. Jo insisted on interviews with me where she claimed that Daniel was trying to “take over her kitchen”, etc. She had become more and more unhappy, and would not listen to my proposition that she could not run both the kitchen and the “front of house”. On one occasion she donned the waitress uniform in lieu of her chef’s togs, and appeared at the café till to “supervise the floor” during an evening author event. Quite what was meanwhile happening in the kitchen was unclear. As I was coming to the conclusion that I could expect her resignation soon, I heard rumours that she “wanted what Louise got” (that is to say, four weeks’ redundancy pay). I bit the bullet again and had another difficult conversation, paid out a lot of money, and we parted ways. Jo’s departure was — as befits the personality — abrupt and dramatic. Unbeknownst to me, some of the kitchen equipment items were apparently her personal property, including the pans used to bake the mini muffins — a staple on our menu. These pans disappeared with Jo, without notice, leaving us in the lurch and the kitchen in turmoil. But we rallied around, the show went on, and we can look back and laugh (sort of).
In both cases relations were left strained and budding friendships abandoned. Grudges were clearly held. It seems that employer and employee can’t be friends, at least not in retail!
Upon the departure of Jo, we needed someone to take responsibility for the café business, and I asked Kate if she would take it on. Kate was rather inexperienced at being “in charge”, but had worked in many busy café and restaurant environments. I thought she had the personality and skills to do the job. But a lack of confidence overtook her, and Kate declined the job. She planned to take on studies in hospitality, and work fewer shifts. In her young-wise way, she solemnly urged me to go to an agency and hire a good café manager. This I did, which is how we found The Dragon.
Photos
Chapter Twenty
The dragon joins us
The agency I consulted assured me that Renee was a young lady with plenty of personality, pizzazz, and experience of the tough world of the hospitality industry. For an industry with such a nice touchy-feely name, it certainly has a dark underbelly. Renee had worked in clubs on the late shift, and her stories of fronting rabid knife-wielding chefs and drunken patrons were enough to make my hair curl. In the spirit of fair play, I warned Renee at her interview that, despite its placid exterior, Tea In The Library was a seething mass of contradictory personalities, which needed a strong hand on the rein. Renee smiled kindly, and assured me that she had frequently been called “a bitch”, and was quite up to the job I described.
Indeed she was. Renee’s brief was to get the café inventory and ordering in order, get a proper working roster going, train and supervise the café staff, and placate the chef so that lovely food continued to emerge from The Place I Never Ventured (i.e. the kitchen). She was also asked to focus on profitability, getting sales up and keeping expenses down. To her credit, I must say that many of these goals were accomplished, or great strides were made towards them. Kudos to Renee for that. Under her rule, young waitresses quaked in their boots (but received her support too); the chef was kept more or less in his place (although there were a few meaningful glances the significance or otherwise of which I chose to ignore); and expenses did drop.
However, progress didn’t come without a cost. Under Renee’s rule, our white tablecloths were covered with paper sheets, our linen napkins became paper, our jams became ordinary supermarkets jams, and — worst crime of all — she changed our coffee to a foul cheapo bean (soon rectified, but I had a Bad Moment).
The most significant problem, though, was that a Dragon who could sort out the staff and reduce expenses was not, unfortunately, the right personality for our ambience and our demographic. That is to say, Renee was rude to the customers. Her view seemed to be that the whole enterprise would run much more smoothly if the customers would just go home. Friends of mine who were also customers began to take me aside and give whispered warnings; Todd and the other booksellers would request “private discussions” to relate unfortunate incidents. I even had customers ask for my email address in order to send me long and sorry tales of bad service received.
So again, I had to have the “difficult conversation”. I think that Renee was already looking for alternative employment, although she had not yet found it. She seemed philosophical about it all — she was one tough lady. I can’t say that I was developing a thick skin for this sort of thing. It didn’t get any easier, even when I wasn’t especially fond of the person.
During this period, indeed for a whole year, Tea In The Library’s customer service was reviewed by a “Mystery Shopper”, who visited us unannounced, once a month, and reported back on the experience. I paid for this service — not a high cost — and it was always fascinating to read the monthly report. The report was shared with The Team, and I must say that they took the “constructive criticism” very well — usually.
The Team were under strict instructions to wear their name tags at all times — this was my edict, issued on the premise that it meant good customer relations. The name tag rule was often honoured in the breach, however, which left us scratching our heads over some of the Mystery Shopper reports, which were reduced to describing the person who had served: “I was approached by a tall blond woman” or “A person with a polite tone of voice answered the phone”. Mostly we were able to follow the clues and divine The Team member who had been “shopped”. Gratifyingly, we scored consistently highly, and I was careful to heap praise where it was due. But one constant theme emerged — the most frequent complaint of the Mystery Shopper was lack of attention from staff. The customer could wander around the shop for ages waiting to be approached, and in the end have to call themselves to someone’s attention. It all confirmed what I knew — our booksellers were so concerned with the business of “running the shop” that they forgot to attend to customers (or in some cases, preferred not to be bothered.) They resisted this interpretation, but I was convinced that I recognised the underlying problem. Not enough real salespeople!
The Dragon Lady was of course the opposite personality of big, cuddly Toddles. However, the writing was on the wall for Todd too, mainly because I had hired him at a salary way beyond what the business could support. In fact, in our initial discussions, Todd had said that he would probably only stay with us for a year; and to give all the credit where it is definitely due, once the sorry state of the sales figures became apparent, Todd told me he would
understand if we could no longer support his salary. He stayed on a bit longer after that discussion, but eventually I told him that we would have to dispense with his services, and he worked out another four weeks, made plans to travel, and had farewell drinks with us. An amicable parting! Our first!
So where did that leave us? Perhaps with her judgment clouded by relief at Renee’s departure, Kate decided this time to give the café supervisor job a shot, and Emma stepped up to the plate to take on bookshop supervisor. The girls were a great team, keen if inexperienced. Optimism returned. I gave them both a pay rise (which was not affordable), we hired Damien, another junior bookseller, and gave it another shot.
Chapter Twenty-One
The chef did it
Meanwhile, back in the kitchen … Daniel continued to turn out good food, yummy scones, a few excellent additions to our menu (lobster linguine!), and a certain amount of frisson among the female staff. Daniel’s life story (as told to our credulous Team) was that he had a wife and three little children, currently living in Queensland, from whence he had returned to Sydney to seek better work. He was living with his mother (terribly chaste) and his family would soon join him. He was a lively personality, and “calm” would not be the first word you’d think of if visiting our kitchen. But generally he was cheerful and playful, rather than aggressive. As far as I know.
Apart from the meaningful glances exchanged with Renee, and his attempts to “take over” (i.e. sort out) Jo’s kitchen, the first real concerns I had about Daniel began to niggle when he rather often requested an advance on his salary. Then we began to miss the odd $50 note from the till (which we could very ill afford), and after worrying about correct end-of-day totting up, etc., I must admit to entertaining doubts about Daniel’s honesty.
At this point, I pause to describe Tea In The Library’s abundant — although flawed — security systems. First, each book was protected with a security “sticker”, which had to be de-activated by staff at the till when purchased, or else a loud “beep” would sound when the book was walked through the security sensor at our exit door. I had gone to a great deal of trouble over this. The book staff were instructed to tag every book, but it wasn’t until later that I found that they were rather lax in this regard. Nevertheless, the most important point — from a deterrent point of view — was that any “beeping” that occurred should result in an approach to the “beep-ee”. Lessons were given to everyone on how to firmly but politely challenge anyone whom they were not absolutely sure had genuinely purchased their book before departing the shop. Despite whinges that the de-activator wasn’t working, or that they were too busy, or that customers would be “put off”, I insisted on this procedure. I must say that we never suffered any real depredations on our book stock. Our location down a set of stairs possibly made it a bit more difficult for a would-be book snatcher to make a quick get-away. I was warned by other booksellers early on, not to put the Lonely Planet travel guides by the exit — apparently these were known to be grabbed by the armful by thieves, to be re-sold for a quick $20 on the streets. Ours were carefully placed far from the entrance.
In addition to book security, we had five cameras in the ceiling, trained on the three tills and the back corners of the shop. The images from these cameras were visible on a small TV screen set up behind the front counter. The idea was that everyone who came in would know that “we were watching”. Except of course we probably hardly ever were. The images gathered by these cameras were recorded and kept for a short period on video tape. We did try looking at the tapes when the $50 bills began disappearing, but there were many flaws in our set-up. For a start, the cameras on the tills were trained straight down, and thus gave excellent views of people’s hands, but not their faces. We also were lacking a lucid system of dating and retaining the tapes.
So much for protecting our hard-earned takings from stick-up artists or dishonest staff. We also had to think about protecting the premises from outside break-ins after-hours. Our three exit doors were fitted with sensors, and there were movement sensors inside the shop. This alarm system was turned on each night by the staff who locked up, and was monitored by a back-to-base alarm company. The way it worked was if the security company became aware of any disturbance, or indeed of the alarm not being turned on when it should have been, they called. As to who they called, the staff were allocated to a list — there were usually three or four people who might be called before it defaulted to me. Since most of the calls were because the place hadn’t been properly secured or the alarm hadn’t been turned on, the staff were the ones who had to make the after-hours visits to fix the situation.
From time to time we might decide that the alert didn’t require a visit. The security company might advise that the disturbance was inside, but the outer doors were still secure (a spider walking on the sensor?) Or they might report a disturbance to the back door, which nevertheless remained secure (tramps in the back lane?) Another option, especially late at night when there had been a possible breach of an exit door, was to have the security company send around a guard to check on the place. This usually resulted in no news being good news. The security company charged a monthly rate, and the guards’ visits, if requested, were an additional charge. In all, considering our location in the heart of the city, it was not overly expensive, and I believe worth it.
You might have noticed in this description of our little Fort Knox that I have omitted to mention security for cash overnight. A safe was one of those items I was planning to get “later”, and in the mean-time the overnight cash was locked in a filing cabinet in the office. Since our takings were far from impressive, and the staff were under instructions to bank every afternoon, there was usually only a few hundred in change and petty cash floats to be locked away.
Of course, you can tell that I am leading up to a disaster story! Yes, one evening at about 7.45 pm, I received a call from the security company. I cannot recall now why I was the lucky one — all the others must have been uncontactable. Oh, how I loathed those security calls! At best, they meant a decision to “wing it” and a sleep-less night worrying that all was well. At worst, a trip into the city at night to check on the premises. At least, I thought that was as bad as it could get.
This particular call advised that a breach had been detected of the front door — a bit unusual. Our tramps usually hung around the back door. I was just getting into my bath, and asked the security company to send around a guard. After a quick but pleasant soak, I was toweling myself off when a second call told me the guard had discovered a true break-in through the front door. Dressing quickly, I hopped in the car and drove into town. About 30 minutes later I joined the guard, “Steve”, on the city sidewalk outside the wrought iron gates which bar our front landing at the street line. These gates are locked with a heavy padlock, but nevertheless a nimble person could climb over them quite easily — although you would think someone on a busy city street would notice. I unlocked the padlock, and Steve and I ventured gingerly onto the landing above the front stairs. “Stand back!”, said Steve, in a reassuringly authoritative voice. He wanted to make sure that the perpetrator wasn’t still with us. I duly stood back, but could clearly see that the front doors of our little shop had been physically smashed open. The glass panes weren’t broken, but the wooden frame of the door had splintered, loosening the lock. When Steve gave the all clear, I dashed in and turned off the alarm with the code, and we surveyed the damage. This was confined to the office, where the very drawer of the very filing cabinet where our cash was stashed had been wrenched open (bare hands, presumably — it was a fairly flimsy lock). The cash was of course gone. A quick check showed that nothing else had been snatched — not the glossy books, not the small tin of café petty cash, not the liquor, nothing else, in fact. Steve warned me “not to touch anything — fingerprints!”, and called the police.
While waiting for the boys in blue to arrive, I phoned around to my intrepid staff. Paul had been the last to leave, locking up at
about 7.30 pm — must have been moments before the daring robbery. The girls — Emma, Kate and Chloe — were co-incidentally having a drink in their favourite down-market pub around the corner, and dashed back to the shop when they heard the news. There was much umm-ing and ahh-ing over the thrilling development, and much speculation about “what could have happened.” For my part, I didn’t need my credentials of having read every Agatha Christie to see that it was fairly obviously an “inside job”. The thief had gone straight to our little cache of cash, grabbed nothing else and high-tailed it out. It was disturbing to think that it must have been “one of us”. I don’t know if the others were thinking what I was thinking, but it wasn’t long before all eyes turned to the only “clue” we could see — a chef’s jacket tossed on the floor beside the busted filing cabinet, perhaps used to strengthen the thief’s hold on the cabinet, or to disguise fingerprints. Hmm … Hercule Poriot would have solved this one in an instant.
The boys in blue arrived eventually, although they turned out to be two extremely young police women. They took down particulars, and asked us not to touch the cash drawers and broken cabinet, saying they would send the fingerprint boys tomorrow. Meanwhile, security guard Steve had been saving our bacon by considering the question of how to secure the premises overnight. He went off for a while to places unknown, and returned with a piece of board and some strong nails. He hammered the door frame back into place so that the front doors would lock, and we all went home. I think the girls went back to the pub for a steadying drink. It was quite a bit of emotional excitement for us!
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