Such is life in the fast lane

Hi there, it is just me again and again I find myself waiting for those valuable customers. I need to move! I am in an awful situation here. The only people who come to my shop are those that are definitely headed my way or those who use my parking to visit the bar next door. This has to stop! Soooo, I find myself looking for new digs! I think I may have found a place and it is in the right kind of environment with 700 additional square feet but on days like today I find myself wondering if those additional square feet are truly necessary! still when we have had music I have found that an additional amount of space would truly be wonderful for the extra seating. It is a tough call though. Anyway, I am hoping that this move would be a good one and would have real benefits for me. Still, if I do get this space it would mean moving over Thanksgiving or Christmas and I do have to admit I hate that idea! But better to move during our slow season then wait till we get busy.
I have had kind of a heart breaker the last few days. I learned that several of my bands have "disbanded". This is really tough news for me and for those who love music here on the island. I am hoping some of the players will come visit me though and possibly continue playing here as individuals or when they get new bands together. It is tough though.
On a lighter note, I have to say that the weather outside has been incredible lately! It has been sunny and cold and the nights have been so clear you could see all the stars in the heavens. So it has been a nice time for the age old traditions that come with Halloween. I have to admit that Halloween is not one of my favorite times of year. As a matter of a fact I rather hate it but I do have a story about my favorite Halloween and I figured I would go ahead and share it with you.
I grew up in a little town in Eastern Washington. The town of Spangle, with a population of 210 people back then. My father was a science teacher at the high school. He also taught the yearbook and photography. Any way, he was a very strict teacher and expected that no matter what, the kids who took his class would learn science or they would not pass his class. This was not a popular expectation especially since sports was such a huge part of life in Spangle. Most of the families believed that if their kids were going to college it would be through sports scholarships or the kids would simply farm like their fathers and their fathers before them. Most of the basketball players skated through their classes with b's and c's but dad would not allow skating! Needless to say he at times was not a very popular man! On the other hand he was very respected by most of the other teachers and many of the kids who had older siblings that had graduated and gone on to college respected him as well because of the things they were told by their siblings about the difficulties of college and the prep that they received from my father's classes. So, when I got into high school I inherited a rather mixed bag of behaviors from other school mates. Anyway, during my 8th grade year, our high school FHA decided to do a fundraiser and came up with the brilliant idea of selling trickster insurance. If someone came to your home during Halloween and soaped your windows or tp'd your home and you had purchased the insurance then a small group of kids from the FHA/FFA would be dispatched the next day to clean up the mess. If you did not purchase the insurance then the cleanup was on you.... For weeks my father was pestered by kids to buy insurance from them. He always refused saying that our dogs would protect the house and he would shoot any intruders. In the meantime he secretly went to the director of the FHA (another teacher of course) and purchased insurance knowing that we would be visited by a group of kids come Halloween night.
Halloween night came and so did the visitors. My dad was expecting them and had taken the insurance and on the back of it had written a note inviting the tricksters to come in for hot apple cider and doughnuts. He then hung it on our front door. The tricksters would not see the insurance until they went to leave the house and we would see them the next day. The first group that came to the house tp'd the large pine trees that surrounded the house, soaped all our windows on the house and the cars and generally made a real mess. They were boys and when they were done they came in for doughnuts and cider. They laughed and laughed at dad who made all the appropriate noises of dismay. Then they went to leave. It was a new experience watching those boys faces! They were completely white and the smiles on their faces were totally frozen. Then it was Dad's turn to laugh as he said good by and asked them when he could expect them tomorrow.
About an hour after the boys left I went out to feed the dogs. I could hear some girls trying to sneak onto the back yard through a wheat field. They had one small flash light and as they got closer to the house they kept falling. They were giggling and carrying on and they could not have sneaked up on anyone the noise they were making. I ran in and told my dad and dad jumped up out of the sofa and ran for his guns. He had a blank (starting pistol) pistol and when he got out into the back yard he started firing it and making noises like "Who's out there? Who's there? I 'm turning the dogs loose... go get em Hattie... get em thistle..." The girls could not see that the dogs were not outside nor could they see where dad was firing his gun. They just assumed he was firing it at them. They had parked their car about 500 feet away from the field and the field was about 500 feet from the home. They had made it about half way to our house when dad started shooting. That's when they lost their flashlight. There is nothing quite as noisy as 4 girls trying to run through a stubble field in the dark with no light and someone shooting at them and with dogs that are supposedly chasing them. Three girls made it to the car by the time my dad hopped into our pickup. The fourth one was left standing in the road while dad went after the car. The fourth girl was told to go to our house and her friends would be back to get her when my dad caught up with them. Dad chased the car for about 4 miles when the teens decided to pull into a driveway and lay on their horn. They just knew dad was going to shoot them! Dad was laughing so hard when he caught up with them that I thought for sure he was going to drive off the road! The girls had the windows up and all the doors locked on the car and it took dad about 5 minutes of yelling to get them to understand that he was inviting them back to our house for doughnuts and cider. The joke was on them and when they finally realized it they sheepishly came back to our house. They did not have an opportunity to do anything to our house so when they saw the insurance policy on the window they quickly made the boys the butt of yet another joke. The boys came by the next day and cleaned everything up and dad added yet another prank to his list of pranks that he became famous for. It was a fun Halloween and one I remember with smiles each year.
I am not one who enjoys Halloween now though. I find that sitting and listening to "War of the Worlds" on the radio is my favorite way of celebrating this night. However you like to celebrate Halloween (or don't like to celebrate it) I hope this eve agrees with you and finds you well tomorrow. Good night for now. R

Sometimes even a great hostess has a breakdown

No one told me that the worst part of being a shop owner is the long hours spent waiting for customers. There is always the dusting, the cleaning, the stocking and the other time consuming tedious parts of owning a business and the time serving a customer (especially a difficult customer) can be gruelling but the WORST part of this owning a business, by far, is waiting for the customers to come.
I belong to a little tiny community in Washington. My shop is a coffeehouse. You can find pictures of the shop at www.rockhoppercoffeehouse.com. Washington is a hard place for a coffeehouse. We are innundated with coffee drive-thrus and almost every bank and grocery store now has coffee for its customers. To make matters more difficult I do not do food! I sell pastries (including freshly baked scones) and I sell soup beginning at lunch time through dinner. I also sell juices, teas and italian soda as well as blended drinks and I sell ice cream. My primary focus though, is coffee. The coffeehouse is a folk art gallery as well and the art is very important to the shop. Soooo... My clientele is limited. I offer events every night of the week (tonight is "chess" and "go" night and I usually have 12 or so players at the shop. It is generally a good night for me. I have Scrabble on Wednesdays, and I am offering an altered book group to meet on Thursday evenings. I have puppet shows, magic shows, cards, and dungeons and dragons and we have live music on Friday and Saturday evenings. A lot of time the musicians are amatuers but every once in a while I have someone terrific come play. Lately I had MSM which is a small group out of Seattle. Their music can be found at www.msmjazz.com This last weekend we were blessed with music from Jerry McCann. Jerry plays in San Diego. His music can be found at www.jerrymccann.com
Check out these guys and you will see that i really lucked out that they wanted to come play at my shop. This last weekend was an amazing weekend for us. We had incredible music and we made budget for two days in a row!
You know as a shop owner I often find myself totally amazed at just exactly how interesting some people are. Do people who go shopping honestly think that the only thing we as shop keepers/owners pay for is the supplies they buy? I pay rent, water, electricity, supplies for bathrooms and cleaning and advertising. I am responsible for the appearance of my shop and to a smaller degree for the building it is in. Consequently, I pay for garbage and sewage as well. The only thing I ask of my customers is to buy something while they sit and work on wifi or if they need to use my bathroom. I sell tea for $1.50 per cup. For $1.50 you can tie up a table at my shop with your computer on my wifi for hours and I will smile and serve you while you do. Did I mention that WiFi costs about $90.00 per month for me so that i can offer that service to my customers? Probably not but it does... Anyway, the other day we had a woman come into the shop looking for a bathroom. The restaraunt next door to us has closed and the bathroom that they had in the hall is closed until a new renter comes onto the premises. I explained that the bathroom was available for our customers and the woman stated she would love to buy a cup of tea. She headed to the bathroom and when she was finished in the bathroom she snuck out the back door and got in her car and left. I laughed..... How bad is it when you cant support the businesses that you like and use by buying a $1.50 cup of tea. The truth is I am a very nice person and I would not have chastised her if she could not have afforded the tea. Of course she was driving a mercedes benz... but well.....
I have had people go to the coffee shop down the block, buy coffee there and then come back to my shop to use my wifi... (I discovered an on and off switch on my wifi now so that doesnt happen often).
The truth is these are niggley little complaints that are just that little gripes. We all have them about our jobs and on days when the stress is getting to me because of poor business or just trying to make ends meet they come bubbling to the surface. As a struggling business owner I am saddled with start up expenses. I am not wealthy and I truly love my shop and want to keep it open but the word is struggling and I do not use it lightly! I also am human and understand if someone cannot afford something from the shop. I dont make people buy things when I know they cannot afford it. Frequently, I work out deals with some of my customers for trades or freebies or just credit. But I am amazed when a person just asumes that they are entitled to services for free just because I am the owner of a business that serves the public. This truly has taught me some social graces that I never thoroughly explored when I did not own a shop.
Anyway, i do love my customers. They are by far a wonderful group of people and I consider myself blessed that i get to wait on them and see them when they come to the shop. If you ever get an opportunity to visit the shop please come in... I will welcome you with open arms. Sometimes even a great hostess has a breakdown.