cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I bought the bookstore and it is making my life better. I bought the bookstore. I own it. The building, the land, the books, Everything. For months now I have been effectively in charge. My life has become larger in that time. As a professional writer, my life was small. I dealt mostly with a few editors and the subjects of my stories and I was alone most of the time. Now I have employees and regulars and volunteers and well-wishers and friends who stop by, sometimes for hours each day just to talk to me and hang out by the desk. I am, now, the best version of myself. I have never had a single argument with anyone in any connection with the bookstore. Not that I am argumentative in the first place. With this cast of characters, I am invariably kind, generous and patient. I am probably the best boss that any of my staff have ever had. I run every new change by each of them, actually listen to what they have to say, and often change course depending on what they have to say. I handed out raises after the purchase. On days when I am not officially working, I still come in to offer breaks to whomever is working for as long as they need. I have told them that they can tell any customer to fuck off if that customer says anything misogynistic or creepy or anti-trans (my best employee is a trans woman). We are making money. Revenue is up about 20% and I haven't even started the big changes yet, nor started selling online. That will take another week or so until the stupid bank finally sends me a debit card for the business so I can make the expenditures that are really required. Yesterday we finished this massive project to re-alphabetize every single hardback fiction book in the building. Thousands and thousands of books. It seemed totally impossible when I started it. June, my star employee, got to the end yesterday. I did a lot of work on it myself, but she pushed more than anyone else who works here. I need to come up with some tangible reward for her doing that. Maybe a hundred dollar bonus? Today I ran Thanksgiving dinner. It was supposed to be on Thursday, but then it got moved because my ex-wife's sister was supposed to be coming in with her shitty husband and kids and my kids needed to be there because the sister and company almost never visit. Then that dumb asshole woman cancelled at the last minute. Gretchen. I've known her since I was 17 and she was 16. I thought that she was family. I hired her when I ran an insurance brokerage with my father. Started her off. We worked closely together for about four years. Then after Trish left -- not because of anything that she even alleged that I had done to her but just because she felt like leaving and thought she was gay -- Gretchen has never once reached out to me or had anything to say at all. And then she completely fucked up Thanksgiving, made me move it to another day, and then didn't even show up and there was no point to the whole exercise. But I had a killer Google Doc with the complete menu with a listing of all ingredients for shopping and timing for prep and links to recipes and assignments to everyone making anything. To prevent three people needing the oven at different temperatures at the same time. And more importantly to prevent anyone from feeling like a martyr because they slaved away at Thanksgiving dinner while everyone else was sitting in the living room. The Google Doc worked. My 1870's stuffing recipe with minced oysters was unparalleled. Harry made vanilla ice cream rather than his vanilla custard with whole bean because he was too fucking lazy to start the work last night. It was ok but not what it should have been. The turkey was underdone, but that was not my fault because my mother insisted on making it. She does not work well in the kitchen with others. If you don't have something that you need to be doing in the kitchen on Thanksgiving, get the fuck out. Unless you are backing everyone else up. Move in to wash dishes and utensils, restore them to their proper places, wipe counters, put things back in the fridge. And do these thing quietly without acting like you are doing anyone a favor. That was what I was doing while I wasn't making the stuffing. You are not the main character if you are not actively making a dish. Even if you are, move aside and understand that someone else might need a prep station. My mother had to act like a martyr anyway, complaining about not having enough room even when I had 75% of the kitchen and the counter space cleared with nobody else in it. She just sounded ridiculous. She had 45 minutes of work to do while Harry and I did five hours of work each. We had a staff meeting last night to review every recipe and every hour in the kitchen to ensure that there would be no traffic jams. It went as smoothly as humanly possible. I vetoed her effort to use tiny glass ramekins to serve the soup in and perhaps she was upset about that. We're not serving dinner in the same objects that we prep herbs in. I have plenty of fine silver and china and that is what we're using for service. Period. As soon as Trish got there, she had to start being the main character. Ida started venting about Gretchen bailing on Thanksgiving. Just let her. Nobody here is going to be offended. Ordering someone to calm down is the least effective means of getting anyone to calm down. It just comes off as condescending. Be the calm, let them vent, then change the subject. Trish is socially retarded. She seems to have literally acquired some form of autism since our marriage ended. Everything was running smoothly enough in the kitchen to ease the chaos that Trish and my mother were inadvertently sowing. Harry knows how to act, Ida was not far behind (Harry is actually far more emotionally perceptive than Ida is) and Ida's fiance is pretty quiet and just goes along with whatever she says and does. My father was unusually muted through the whole thing. What has worked the best at the bookstore has been leading by example. Just getting shit done and working really hard while being as kind as possible to everyone around me and delegating tasks. Everyone else seems to rise to the occasion to varying levels. That worked for Thanksgiving dinner as well. I am a better person now for running this bookstore. I am probably a bit more focused on being as kind and thoughtful towards my staff than I am on making money. And I guess the customers as well. It rubbed off on running Thanksgiving dinner tonight. 11:41 p.m. - 2023-11-22 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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