Back to the front

It's easy to lose track of what's important when you're tired. We have a special kind of bicycle shop. We want the clientèle to believe in us and trust our advice. We go to great lengths to choose products we feel are high quality and great value. Well, most of the products at least. We extensively assemble each bicycle from the least expensive to the full custom, top of the line, dream machines. We often do a little lagniappe on the bikes we take in for repair. You know, something extra at no charge. You wouldn't get it if you asked for it, but extra love for good customers and those we would like to impress as well as a few just plain charitable acts for someone down on their luck are the norm. It's not something written into our corporate charter, but a natural offering in the spirit of generosity.
It has become more difficult to be generous lately as time constraints often has us tearing through repairs and moving along sales. As the staff diminishes, I think we will retract some of our instantaneous promises and look to provide a stable line of jobs that we can do our best on. Each bike presents a unique set of problems that keep you from truly knowing how long the repair will take. Especially if you aren't going to do the work.
It would be nice to divide the day into segments where from x:xx to y:yy we do this and so forth. Cleaning, repairs, organization, and more cleaning. It never works out the way I plan it no matter how hard I try. So, my goal will be starting from the front, where the money walks in, returning to the attitudes which make the shop a great place to shop and get your bike worked on.