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mallorys_cameraAh, mystery solved: Long’s was having a sale on Carlo Rossi’s last week, $2.99 for a gallon. That’s where Leather Hat scored. Such an interdependent little ecology we live in, folks. It’s just like Sesame Street sings in their songs.
One of the great visceral pleasures of small-time retailing is fingering great wads of cash. I sit here now bouncing approximately $2000 in small, unmarked bills on my lap, enjoying the sheer heft of the bundle. It brings back the thrill of early childhood Monopoly games. I wish the government had never switched away from the gold standard.
Ben and I have a verbal shorthand for this wad of cash. We call it “Chuckchancy” after the Chukchansi Indian Casino whose ads blitz the local radio airwaves. We make lame jokes about ditching it all, running off to Fresno or wherever the hell the casino is and loitering for a couple of days amidst the slots and toothless slot machine addicts. At a nickel a game for video poker, how long would it take us to work our way through the wad?
“Chuckchancy!” Ben will say at the end of the night when I pick up at the store. Through folded fingers he’ll flash the wad in his shirt pocket and for a moment both of us will be happy, grinning like idiots, the shared complicity of a dumb joke and a flash of childhood Monopoly games. Of course the money is barely a drop in the bucket in real terms. The store has bills, the store carries debt. The whole thing is very scary. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I do my own discount Carlo Rossi wine tasting and try to imagine what the future will be while channel-surfing aimlessly through dumb late-night movies. Besides me, Ben snores gently. JURY DUTY starring Paulie Shore. How did Universal greenlight that one? Did it make any bank? Perhaps the studio would like to diversify, maybe invest in a chain of hot sauce stores –
In a comment to a recent entry of mine,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hotelsamurai posed the question: “What does ‘successful’ mean?” The question threw me. I don’t have a clue. He posited “knowledge” and “friends” and from poking around in his journal I would also add, “opportunities to cook.” Now I like ideas, I love to cook and I’m much less broody in the flesh than I am on the page. In fact, you could call me downright personable. (“I like hanging out with you,” Bozo commented yesterday. “You always make me feel like I’m a little bit stoned.” “A lot of people have told me that over the years,” I grinned in reply.) But I’ve done very little learning, cooking or hanging out over the past year. It’s all been a kind of grim assembly line – moving the business creakily from Point A to Point B and beyond. A one-man show! Performance art in the trenches of capitalism. I do the selling (though Ben helps out a lot there.) I do the buying. I do the accounting. I do the marketing – not just the ad design and stuff (which has been very limited because I think word-of-mouth and discount coupons are the most effective ways of promoting a small, quirky business like this) but also the shelf talkers, the little museum displays that keep people in the store longer thus increasing the likelihood of a purchase. I designed the web site and play sys-op to the increasing amount of e-commerce orders.
I’m getting quite burned out.
I think I really have to figure out a way to cook and socialize more in Business Year 2. Otherwise I won’t be able to do anything. If you don’t break out constructively, you break out destructively.
One of the great visceral pleasures of small-time retailing is fingering great wads of cash. I sit here now bouncing approximately $2000 in small, unmarked bills on my lap, enjoying the sheer heft of the bundle. It brings back the thrill of early childhood Monopoly games. I wish the government had never switched away from the gold standard.
Ben and I have a verbal shorthand for this wad of cash. We call it “Chuckchancy” after the Chukchansi Indian Casino whose ads blitz the local radio airwaves. We make lame jokes about ditching it all, running off to Fresno or wherever the hell the casino is and loitering for a couple of days amidst the slots and toothless slot machine addicts. At a nickel a game for video poker, how long would it take us to work our way through the wad?
“Chuckchancy!” Ben will say at the end of the night when I pick up at the store. Through folded fingers he’ll flash the wad in his shirt pocket and for a moment both of us will be happy, grinning like idiots, the shared complicity of a dumb joke and a flash of childhood Monopoly games. Of course the money is barely a drop in the bucket in real terms. The store has bills, the store carries debt. The whole thing is very scary. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I do my own discount Carlo Rossi wine tasting and try to imagine what the future will be while channel-surfing aimlessly through dumb late-night movies. Besides me, Ben snores gently. JURY DUTY starring Paulie Shore. How did Universal greenlight that one? Did it make any bank? Perhaps the studio would like to diversify, maybe invest in a chain of hot sauce stores –
In a comment to a recent entry of mine,
hotelsamurai posed the question: “What does ‘successful’ mean?” The question threw me. I don’t have a clue. He posited “knowledge” and “friends” and from poking around in his journal I would also add, “opportunities to cook.” Now I like ideas, I love to cook and I’m much less broody in the flesh than I am on the page. In fact, you could call me downright personable. (“I like hanging out with you,” Bozo commented yesterday. “You always make me feel like I’m a little bit stoned.” “A lot of people have told me that over the years,” I grinned in reply.) But I’ve done very little learning, cooking or hanging out over the past year. It’s all been a kind of grim assembly line – moving the business creakily from Point A to Point B and beyond. A one-man show! Performance art in the trenches of capitalism. I do the selling (though Ben helps out a lot there.) I do the buying. I do the accounting. I do the marketing – not just the ad design and stuff (which has been very limited because I think word-of-mouth and discount coupons are the most effective ways of promoting a small, quirky business like this) but also the shelf talkers, the little museum displays that keep people in the store longer thus increasing the likelihood of a purchase. I designed the web site and play sys-op to the increasing amount of e-commerce orders. I’m getting quite burned out.
I think I really have to figure out a way to cook and socialize more in Business Year 2. Otherwise I won’t be able to do anything. If you don’t break out constructively, you break out destructively.
