Buddha Soap & Black Holes
Mar. 11th, 2005 05:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraFascinating piece in The Christian Science Monitor this week on women entrepreneurs. It seems the majority of female small business owners in this country are immigrants – by twenty-five percent. Many of them trained in professional fields in their native lands, as doctors, lawyers, academicians. Granted, there's a self-selection factor operating in that only the most enterprising women (and men) will be moved to moved to abandon a familiar culture to seek opportunity elsewhere. But still. What's going on with that?
"I think it's that they're willing to do whatever it takes," said Nancy over the phone. "Scrub toilets, wake up at 4 AM to deliver newspapers. Somehow scrape that second income together until the business can float itself."
"No sense of entitlement," I agreed absently.
Nancy is one of my vendors, an artist whose sidelines are soap and porcelain body parts like something out of Cocteau's La Belle et La Bête. I've been a big fan of hers since long before I opened the store, but have only bought a couple of hundred dollars worth of stuff from her over the years because (sadly) the Cannery Row tourist crowd is just not into the type of post-modern irony it takes to appreciate cunningly molded soap Buddha heads and sushi. They don't sell; I end up giving them all away as Christmas gifts. That she would bother to call me up in the first place spoke to a certain degree of desperation – I can't be one of her bigger accounts.
"I can't order till spring," I told Nancy gently, knowing full well that when spring rolled around, I wouldn't be ordering from her. "Business has been scarily slow."
"All the stores I sell to are telling me that," Nancy sighed. "I wonder what's going on there?"
"Times are tough," I said. "Much tougher than you would know by reading the Wall Street Journal. The price of gas has had a huge impact on the tourist trade. They'll spring for hotels, splurge on a fancy meal. But they have no money left over for souvenirs. You have to package what you sell as essential in some way, it can't be whimsy. You know what the best-selling item on Cannery Row is?"
"What?" asked Nancy.
"Cheap fleece jackets, made in China, with Monterey insignias. And do you know why they're the best-selling item on Cannery Row?"
"No," said Nancy. I heard defeat in her voice.
"Because it's always freezing here. We're in the fog belt. And none of the tourist guides tell people that. They make it seem like it's a beach paradise. When people get here and realize that all that stands between them and pneumonia is a fifteen dollar sweatshirt, they'll spring for the sweatshirt. And maybe a candy apple. But they won't buy anything else."
Actually, though, from a business trend point of view, things are picking up. Sales this month rose forty percent over sales last month – and about twenty percent over what they were this time last year – although with no big holiday weekend looming on the horizon, I'm not sure how that will play out by the month's end. Business prospects would actually look encouraging if only I had the deep pockets to float the store for a couple of years. Alas. I don't. So it's scrabble, scrabble, scrabble. I've always been a stranger in a strange land, but my sense of entitlement is strong. I'm better than this, I think. I rage against a non-existent God: make me win Lotto, dammit! A waste of valuable energy. It is what it is.
Had a major epiphany on the scut job front this week. There are quality control people who check every bit of work at Bartleby Inc. because the Department of Defense in its infinite wisdom has decided that the absence of typos in outgoing reports is more important than their timely reception in the hands of people who actually need the information they contain. This is beyond stupidity but hey! it's the government and these are your tax dollars at work. Anyway, one of the QC'ers had taken a strong dislike to me. I figured it was because I am old and white. But no, it turns out it's because I'm doing too much work!
"Your job security is all those folders on that shelf," Latoya told me. This was after I'd marched into the supervisor's office to complain about her, been told – in polite bureaucratese – to fuck off, and then turned around and marched into her cubicle to complain to her face: "You're rude to me. I'm having big problems working with you."
"You work too fast," she told me. "It makes the rest of us look bad."
All righty then! A nice prison yard conversation. So Big Bertha tells Martha Stewart: stop with the dandelion centerpieces on every table in the cafeteria!
No problem. Already I'm spending six of the eight hours I'm there reading every link on the Drudge Report, but hell – I can do even less.
I left LaToya's cube a changed woman. Now we're bestest friends.
The only snag being that Yossarian was right – boredom prolongs your life immeasurably. I'm already older than the most ancient black hole in the universe. Where do I go from here?
"I think it's that they're willing to do whatever it takes," said Nancy over the phone. "Scrub toilets, wake up at 4 AM to deliver newspapers. Somehow scrape that second income together until the business can float itself."
"No sense of entitlement," I agreed absently.
Nancy is one of my vendors, an artist whose sidelines are soap and porcelain body parts like something out of Cocteau's La Belle et La Bête. I've been a big fan of hers since long before I opened the store, but have only bought a couple of hundred dollars worth of stuff from her over the years because (sadly) the Cannery Row tourist crowd is just not into the type of post-modern irony it takes to appreciate cunningly molded soap Buddha heads and sushi. They don't sell; I end up giving them all away as Christmas gifts. That she would bother to call me up in the first place spoke to a certain degree of desperation – I can't be one of her bigger accounts.
"I can't order till spring," I told Nancy gently, knowing full well that when spring rolled around, I wouldn't be ordering from her. "Business has been scarily slow."
"All the stores I sell to are telling me that," Nancy sighed. "I wonder what's going on there?"
"Times are tough," I said. "Much tougher than you would know by reading the Wall Street Journal. The price of gas has had a huge impact on the tourist trade. They'll spring for hotels, splurge on a fancy meal. But they have no money left over for souvenirs. You have to package what you sell as essential in some way, it can't be whimsy. You know what the best-selling item on Cannery Row is?"
"What?" asked Nancy.
"Cheap fleece jackets, made in China, with Monterey insignias. And do you know why they're the best-selling item on Cannery Row?"
"No," said Nancy. I heard defeat in her voice.
"Because it's always freezing here. We're in the fog belt. And none of the tourist guides tell people that. They make it seem like it's a beach paradise. When people get here and realize that all that stands between them and pneumonia is a fifteen dollar sweatshirt, they'll spring for the sweatshirt. And maybe a candy apple. But they won't buy anything else."
Actually, though, from a business trend point of view, things are picking up. Sales this month rose forty percent over sales last month – and about twenty percent over what they were this time last year – although with no big holiday weekend looming on the horizon, I'm not sure how that will play out by the month's end. Business prospects would actually look encouraging if only I had the deep pockets to float the store for a couple of years. Alas. I don't. So it's scrabble, scrabble, scrabble. I've always been a stranger in a strange land, but my sense of entitlement is strong. I'm better than this, I think. I rage against a non-existent God: make me win Lotto, dammit! A waste of valuable energy. It is what it is.
Had a major epiphany on the scut job front this week. There are quality control people who check every bit of work at Bartleby Inc. because the Department of Defense in its infinite wisdom has decided that the absence of typos in outgoing reports is more important than their timely reception in the hands of people who actually need the information they contain. This is beyond stupidity but hey! it's the government and these are your tax dollars at work. Anyway, one of the QC'ers had taken a strong dislike to me. I figured it was because I am old and white. But no, it turns out it's because I'm doing too much work!
"Your job security is all those folders on that shelf," Latoya told me. This was after I'd marched into the supervisor's office to complain about her, been told – in polite bureaucratese – to fuck off, and then turned around and marched into her cubicle to complain to her face: "You're rude to me. I'm having big problems working with you."
"You work too fast," she told me. "It makes the rest of us look bad."
All righty then! A nice prison yard conversation. So Big Bertha tells Martha Stewart: stop with the dandelion centerpieces on every table in the cafeteria!
No problem. Already I'm spending six of the eight hours I'm there reading every link on the Drudge Report, but hell – I can do even less.
I left LaToya's cube a changed woman. Now we're bestest friends.
The only snag being that Yossarian was right – boredom prolongs your life immeasurably. I'm already older than the most ancient black hole in the universe. Where do I go from here?
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-11 04:32 pm (UTC)Furthermore, ever since I got the job at the animal hospital and remembered what it is like to work @ work, I have been getting up earlier and being sort of more productive at this job (the school one where I just read and sit around all day). The teacher I work for thinks its because my living situation stabilised, which I think is cute, but know is so off base. Point being, hello sister in boredomhood. I feel yr. pain.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-11 04:48 pm (UTC)Here's Nancy's website:
http://www.nfunkceramics.com/soap/soap.html
no subject
Date: 2005-03-11 05:40 pm (UTC)cuuute.
I need to buy some new molds.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-13 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-14 02:03 am (UTC)