Retail Ecology

[mallorys_camera]

The restaurant upstairs had a very ugly sandwich board sign I was always moving. Every day around noon one of the waiters would cart it downstairs and plop it right in front of my store: Elevator To Clawdaddy’s. Every day I would move it. It effectively cut off access to my store. This never really got to the confrontation stage since the waiters didn’t care, they weren’t paid to think about stuff like access and customer flow, they were just told to move the sign.

Then last Saturday two waiters tried to move a pair of tables right in front of my shop.

I flew out from behind my counter.

"You can’t do that!" I screamed.

The little Mexican guy threw up his hands and backed off. "I just do what they tell me."

"It’s my store space!"

The Mexican guy smirked at his companion and shrugged.

So I went gunning for the big boys. Marched up the stairs into the restaurant. I was looking for the office, I was going to rip that manager a new asshole. A couple of frightened waitresses scurried out of my way. Shabby place, I thought, looking around. Kind of empty for a lunch crowd. I wouldn’t eat here.

The office was a tiny dark cubicle behind an unsanitary looking kitchen alcove. Door was locked.

Nothing to do but go back down the stairs and move the tables myself. I dragged them in front of the curving white faux New Orleans staircase. The Mexican guy was rolling his eyes, then a couple of moments later a dapper-looking black man in chef whites materialized on the thresh-hold of my store. "What seems to be the problem?" he asked.

"I moved your tables –"

"They work better there. Thanks."

"I mean, look. I’m sorry for getting all hysterical but this is my livelihood. You can’t just take over my space –"

"It’s all good," he interrupted. He raised his hand, turned around to go. "It’s all good."

It was a very slow Saturday. By 4 PM we’d barely cracked $100 and I was despondent – the last two weeks we’d passed the $300 mark by this time in the afternoon and I’d stopped thinking magically, started taking weekend revenues for granted. Ernesto in the square broke out from the South American folk music mold, wailing, "Georgia On My Mind." He had a fairly decent voice. Dozens of tourists loitered along the benches listening but they just weren’t coming over to our side of the plaza. It was a sunny day but windy, and we were the side with the shade. That must have been the problem. It was cold in the shade.

The tables at the bottom of the stair remained empty.

The day passed. The sun set , the moon began to rise. Spectacular sight, the moon’s elongated reflection in the ocean. And finally the waiters upstairs got busy, carrying tin tubs of crushed ice down the stairs.

The black guy came down to watch them work. He was wearing street clothes now, his eyes had that hollow, bloodshot thing going. He was carrying a takeout sandwich from 7/11. "First thing I’ve had to eat all day," he told me.

"Listen I wanted to apologize again –"

"Hey!" he said, warding me off with an uplifted hand.

"I’m glad to finally have the opportunity to meet you. You know, I’ve been telling myself that I should go and introduce myself to the guys upstairs –"

"You mean Burt and Ted?" he laughed.

It took me a couple of seconds to recognize the Cannery Row Company’s owners’ first names. "No. I meant you. I thought maybe we could work something out. I could donate a couple of baskets of hot sauce with my store logo on them."

"Oh yeah. Great idea," said the black guy. "We’ll talk. But now, I gotta eat."

A small army of customers flooded my store and for an hour or so, I was very busy. A small child was traumatized when the dancing chicken stood up and began to sing. A fighter pilot home on brief leave from the glorious war loaded up on hot sauce with lurid labels. I gave him a couple free. "We support you," I said, "but we don’t want another Vietnam." A merry party of drunks wandered in. "We’re from Orlando," one of the guys told me. "We know all about the touron economy."

"What’s a touron?"

"You mean you don’t know? It’s what you get when you cross a tourist with a moron."

"With all the manufacturing jobs moving to the third world, pretty soon the entire United States of America is gonna be a theme park," I said and that made them laugh and when they laugh, they buy hot sauce.

Outside the waiters were moving buckets of shucked oysters on to the tables by the stairs, setting up an oyster bar. Good idea, I thought, but too upscale for this kind of crowd. I was exhausted, I decided to close up early. Who needs money? I’ll buy a lotto ticket on the way home, I thought.

There were still tourists wandering the plaza, staring at the squid boats with their eerie fluorescent lights. But none of them were going near the oyster bar. The manager was standing alone in his starched chef whites brooding at the ocean.

"Looks nice," I said. "Great idea. Loans this place a touch of class."

"Want some free dinner?"

"No thanks. I have a frozen Swanson’s pot pie waiting for me at home."

"Frozen Swanson’s pot pie?"

"Joke," I said. "Listen, I’m sorry again about this morning –"

"Don’t worry about it. I told you. It’s all good." His manner was lazy but his eyes had something dark going on and the next morning when I went in to open up my shop, there was a handwritten sign in the window where Clawdaddy’s menu used to be: To Our Valued Customers, Clawdaddy’s Has Closed. Thank You For Your Patronage.

So that’s that, I thought. No more hassles with the elevator sign. And I wonder if that poor fucker knew his livelihood was about to be yanked from under him. It’s a cold world.

Comments

[hipstertrash.livejournal.com]

I never thought that tales from a fledgeling hot sauce store in San Francisco would enrich my world, but there you go.

You make something that would be dry and monotonous in other hands shine with more life and insight than I often see in the much more tawdry and nominally exciting tales of sex, drugs, etc. around here.

keep posting.