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.