“Okay, so first I made a list of—”
“Wait!” He grabbed my arm. “You know what we need?”
“No, what?”
“Supplies!” He sounded way too excited.
“I’ve got the book and paper and stuff.”
“No. We need to be able to see all the information someplace. Visual representation of information is key. We’ll need poster board and different colored Post-its and flags and markers and maybe a microphone so we can tape you and you can hear yourself doing the pitch and—are you writing this down?”
The good news was, Dad had found a new project, one he actually knew something about. The bad news was, that project was me.
Four hours and one trip to the office supply store in Crellin later, my parents’ office had been transformed into Tom Levin’s Negotiation Boot Camp. Every piece of information I had about the doughnut business was now color coded on Post-its and stuck to the wall along with a poster board with my pitch in bullet points, the words I was supposed to “punch” highlighted in neon orange. Dad had this theory that you had to “punch” the most important words in each sentence.
“I think I’m ready now.” My voice was hoarse from practicing the pitch.
“Almost,” he said. “You still need to hit those punch words harder.”
“Okay.”
“It’s definitely better, much better, but I’m beginning to think what you really need now is a dry run.”
“I’ve already run through it twenty times!”
“No, I mean live, with a real person, so you have to think on your feet. You need to know there’s nothing wrong with negotiating, that you’re not going to get into trouble. Otherwise, you won’t sound confident, and confidence is key, right? The worst that can happen is somebody says no.”
“Fine,” I moaned. “What do you want to do?”
“Get your coat.”
This was going to be painful. I could just tell.
Fifteen minutes later, my father pulled up in front of Renny’s on Main Street.
“You want me to negotiate at the Gas Mart?” I said.
“Yup.”
“But the prices are printed on everything.”
“So?”
“You can’t negotiate in a place like that!” Now I was getting angry. The stuff he’d made me do in the office was embarrassing enough but at least that was in private.
“Of course you can. A price is just whatever the seller and the buyer agree to. That’s what I’m trying to teach you.”
“Fine!” I yelled. “But this is it. I do this, and then I get to make the calls. No more practicing.”
“This is it. I promise,” he said.
“Okay. Let’s get this over with,” I said and got out of the car. Dad was smiling his big, goofy smile like this was about the most fun he could have.
Once inside, Dad walked slowly up and down the aisles studying the shelves, and I followed along behind. On our fourth loop around the store, I noticed the pimply kid behind the register eyeing us like we were going to steal something.
“So what should we get?” I whispered.
“These.” He pulled a pair of sunglasses off a rack. “They sell these at the CVS in Crellin for ten dollars.” The sticker on the glasses read “$11.99.”
I looked at the glasses and then at the kid behind the register. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Yes, you can. Just do it,” he said and handed me the glasses.
I didn’t move.
“Now! Go!” he said, shooing me away.
There was no way my father was going to let me chicken out of this. This wasn’t like deciding I didn’t actually want to jump off that cliff into the waterfall on vacation last year in Mexico. People don’t need to be able to jump off cliffs into waterfalls. But being able to negotiate? That, as my father had been telling me all afternoon, was a “life skill,” something I had to learn how to do or I’d spend the rest of my life getting ripped off.
I turned around, walked to the register, and put the glasses on the counter.
The kid tipped his baseball cap back to look at me. “That’ll be twelve dollars and ninety-two cents.”
“Seems kind of high,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“Seems kind of high.”
“There are cheaper ones in there, I think.” He pointed at the rack. “You want to go check?”
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The guy was trying to be helpful, and now I was going to give him a hard time. I stood there for a minute not sure what to do next. Then I turned around and started back to the rack, but there was my dad, standing right in front of it, pumping his fist in the air. I guess it was supposed to be some kind of, “Hang tough, son,” thing, but it just made me feel even more like a wimp. And not because I was too chicken to negotiate but because I was too chicken to tell my dad how stupid this was.
I took a deep breath and turned back to the register. “I’m not trying to give you a hard time, really. I want these glasses. It’s just they seem like a lot, you know, for what they are. I was thinking they’re more like ten-dollar glasses. That’s what they sell them for at the CVS in Crellin.”
The kid pulled off his cap, smoothed back his hair, and then put it back on. “So go to Crellin then, I guess.”
“But don’t you want my business?”
The kid looked over my shoulder at my dad who had this look on his face like he’d just seen me make a basket from the middle of the court in the last second of the game.
“Is this a dare?” the kid said.
“No. I’m just trying to negotiate with you. If you lower the price, I’ll buy them here instead of going to Crellin.”
“Man, I can’t negotiate with you. This isn’t my store. Do you know what Renny would do to me if he found out I was selling his stuff for less than he said to?”
I looked back at my Dad, who tick-tocked his head as he thought about this. Then he nodded and mouthed, “Okay.”
“Okay,” I said to the kid. “Sorry. I’ll put them back.”
“So it was a dare?”
“Not really.”
“I don’t get it. This is weird.”
“I know. You’re right. It is. Sorry,” I said and walked out.
“So?” Dad said as we drove home.
“So what?” I said. “That was so embarrassing.”
“But you didn’t get in trouble. You didn’t get arrested, right?”
“Right,” I admitted.
“And you learned something else too.”
“Yeah, don’t negotiate at the Gas Mart.”
“No. Make sure that the person you’re talking to has the authority to negotiate.”
“Oh, right, that too,” I said.
By the time we got home, it was too late to make the calls, so first thing the next morning Dad and I locked ourselves back up in the office, and I called Pinehurst Food Corp., which had tied with Elwin Farms for the lowest prices.
“Hello, may I speak to Carl, please?” I said. Carl was the guy I’d spoken to the first time, and Dad said I should ask to speak to him again because it was important to develop relationships in the business world. Also, I knew Carl was the owner of the company, so he’d have the power to negotiate.
“For you, Carl!” shouted the man who’d answered.
A second later, Carl was on the line. “Yeah.”
“Hi, Carl. This is Tristan Levin from Petersville. Maybe you remember—”
“Yeah, yeah. I remember. You ready to put in your order?”
“I’m actually calling about the price you quoted us.”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“I just wanted to make sure that it was the best you could do for us. You know, because we’re a small business just starting out
and any additional savings we could get would really help. Also, even though I know we’re not ordering large quantities now, if the doughnut stand does as well as we expect it to, we’ll definitely be increasing those numbers.”
I’d done my pitch perfectly. I’d punched my words. Not a single “um” and only one “you know.” Based on what Dad had said, I fully expected the next words out of Carl’s mouth to be, “Well, sure, I’d love to help you out, and I do think I can do a little better. How about we cut that price by five percent?”
But that’s not what happened.
“What?” Carl said.
I repeated my pitch word for word a little louder this time, wondering if maybe Carl’s hearing was going.
Turns out, Carl hears just fine.
“Let me get this straight. You want me to take my profit and pass it on to you. Is that right? Is that what I’m hearing?” Carl shouted into the phone. I looked at Dad and tried to hand him the phone, but he shook his head and pushed it back at me.
“No…um, I mean, I guess. It’s just that we could really use that money to buy other stuff.”
Okay, looking back, that was a really stupid thing to say. I just hadn’t been prepared for someone to get all bent out of shape by my just asking if they could give us a better price. Dad kept saying the worst thing they could do was say no, but this was way worse than no.
“And what about me? What about my business? Don’t I got other stuff I need that money for? Don’t I got two kids heading off to college next year? Twins! I don’t even get a break because they start the same year.”
“I’m so sorry. I really didn’t mean to offend you. I just thought that since Elwin Farms quoted us the same price, you might want the chance to underbid them.”
“That’s extortion. That’s what that is.”
“What? No. That’s not what I meant.” I turned to my father and whispered, “What’s extortion?”
Dad chuckled, and I put my hand over his mouth.
“No, no, no. I know exactly what you’re doing,” Carl said.
“Please. Can I just explain?”
“No. You wanna do business with that slime bucket over at Elwin, you go right ahead. The two of you deserve each other,” he growled and then hung up.
“Thanks a lot,” I said to my father.
“Yeah, well, some people don’t like you to negotiate. They take it personally.”
“And wasn’t this a piece of information you should have shared with me before I made the call?”
“Nah. This was way more fun,” he said, grinning. “Besides it’s all part of the learning process. I knew getting you guys to do these projects was a great idea.”
I’d never missed school so much.
16
I don’t know what Carl was talking about. Abe, the guy at Elwin Farms, wasn’t a slime bucket at all. Though he didn’t lower his prices, he did throw in free delivery because his delivery guy passed through Petersville anyway. He even said he thought the doughnut stand was a smart idea, and I’m pretty sure he meant it even though I was a customer, and Starting Your Own Business for Dummies says you should always say things to make your customers happy even if they’re not true.
Once Josh and I had finalized the budget, I biked it over to Winnie, along with some molten chocolate cake to sweeten the deal. It took almost two hours and three molten chocolate cakes, but in the end, she settled for seven percent of the profit per doughnut. I knew Dad would have been impressed since I talked her down from twenty.
The book says you should always get everything in writing, so I told her I’d type something up on the computer at home and bring it back for her to sign the next day.
“Why wait? What if you get home and decide I don’t even deserve the measly seven percent. Oh no, Slick. We’re getting this down right here and now,” she said. Then she pulled a typewriter out from under the counter and set it down in front of me.
“Oh, okay.” I studied the machine. I’d never actually seen one up close. It looked way more complicated than a computer, which is kind of funny when you think about how much more computers can do.
Winnie slid a sheet of paper into the machine, then rolled it into place with what looked like a metal rolling pin. “All set.”
Each time I hit a key, I watched one of the little metal arms swing up and smash its letter into the ink ribbon. After a couple of words, I accidentally punched an A instead of an S and asked Winnie how you delete.
“You don’t,” she said.
“But what happens if you make a mistake?”
“Don’t.”
“Too late,” I said. “Didn’t people make mistakes back when they used typewriters?”
“The newer models had correction keys, but this one is from way back when people took enough time to be careful and just do things once.”
“Well, I live in a time when we do things fast and sloppy and have to do them over and over again, so what am I supposed to do?”
“No need to get all snippy, Slick. Just X it out and start again, and this time don’t make any mistakes.”
Know what happens when someone tells you not to make mistakes?
That’s right. It took me almost ten tries before I got it right, where right meant my own name had a typo.
“Congratulations,” Winnie said. “Now we need another one.”
“What?”
“Both parties need an original. Doesn’t your book say that?”
Unfortunately, it did. “Can’t you type the second one?”
“Oh, fine.”
I turned the typewriter around and handed her the agreement.
“So let’s see…” She squinted at the paper, then at the typewriter keys. “First word…agreement. A…A…A…A… There it is. A.” She punched the key, then squinted back down at the paper. “Yup. A. Okay, what’s next? G…G…G…G…”
She didn’t make a single mistake, but she took even longer than I had.
When we finally had two agreements, and we’d each signed both of them, Winnie pulled some cards from her pocket and handed them to me. “Don’t screw it up or sell it to Martha Stewart.”
“Is she that blond lady with the magazine?” I asked, flipping through the three chocolate-stained cards.
“All you need to know is she’d kill to get her hands on that recipe, and she’s already done hard time so I wouldn’t put it past her. Point is, you keep it to yourself. Got it?”
“Got it,” I said.
Then I ran across the street to show Josh, and we celebrated by eating more molten chocolate cake and figuring out how many doughnuts we’d have to sell to become millionaires.
Biking home, I could feel Winnie’s recipe in my pocket every time my right leg came up, and when it did, the smile I’d been wearing since I’d left the General Store got even bigger. The sides of my face hurt, but the smile had taken over, and I couldn’t shut it down, no matter how hard I tried. My whole body was smiling.
Suddenly, Charlie popped into my head, but this time I didn’t push him right back out again like I had been.
I had news…huge, smile-so-big-it-hurt news. I had to call Charlie now. I had to want to call him now. Didn’t I?
I waited for my legs to pump faster because I couldn’t wait to get home and call him.
I waited for my brain to start putting together the words I was going to use to tell him about everything I’d done to get those three cards in my pocket.
I waited to finally feel okay that he never was going to send me those sorrys I still looked for in my inbox.
But my legs didn’t pump faster, and my brain didn’t look for words, and I did not feel okay. My smile finally gave out, and I biked off the side of the road into a field of dead grass, tipped myself onto the ground, and looked up at the white sky.
I didn’t want to talk to
Charlie. I wanted to want to, but that wasn’t the same.
I didn’t want to hear him talk about basketball and how unfair it was that Coach Stiles wasn’t giving him more playing time.
I didn’t want to hear him repeat all that dumb stuff his dad always says, the stuff now he always says.
Most of all, I didn’t want to hear him say how crazy it was to think a doughnut could change your life.
I did miss Charlie, but not the one who’d answer the phone if I called when I got home. I missed the Charlie who refused to go to yard the day I thought I’d killed Charlotte K. But that kid was gone. He’d slipped away so slowly, it had been easy to pretend he was still there. But he hadn’t been, not for a long time, not since way before the move. And neither had TrisandCharlie.
I wanted to jump back on my bike and race home, leaving everything I was feeling out there. But I couldn’t move. My chest hurt like something was trying to crush it, and I just had to lie there and take it.
I don’t know how long I lay there staring into the blank sky pinning me to the ground, but by the time it finally let me up, it had started going gray.
17
I’d planned Doughnut Day so I could have the kitchen all to myself. I didn’t want anyone looking over my shoulder or telling me I was messing up. And I definitely didn’t want anyone with me if it turned out these doughnuts weren’t what I’d been dreaming they’d be all this time. Dad was taking Jeanine to the Solve-a-Thon. And Mom was going to keep Zoe busy playing Peter Pan in the basement, where, thanks to the zip line Jim the Kidnapper had installed, she could fly even without happy thoughts or fairy dust.
I didn’t want to waste any time on Doughnut Day, so the night before, I got out the equipment I’d need, including the fancy pastry gun Mom had gotten me.
I’d been practicing using the gun, and if I pressed down the plunger really fast with the gun at just the right angle, I could shoot icing onto a cake from halfway across the kitchen. Not that you’d ever need to do that, but it got me thinking that the police should consider trading in their guns for ones that mow people down with a stream of cream or mousse or something like that because then, if they’ve got the wrong guy, big deal. It’s kind of genius, right? Not in an I-can-solve-three-hundred-math-problems-in-six-hours kind of way, but still.
The Doughnut Fix Series, Book 1 Page 12