Some are gone, Summer forgotten.

Taking role of those who have disappeared in the last few months is fair. I don't easily forget one person in particular. The youtube evangelical from Buff-alo. His collage of guidos on the loft ceiling in the shop is nearing the end of its tenure. The negative internet comments on his less than stellar service remain, however. The knots he tied are almost straightened and the other remnants will fade too.

We take in our first clean breeze of Fall into our lungs as dry air with the promise of lower power bills sweeps through the swamp. Summer was long and tortured, but not as bad as some I can place. Feelings that each year my output is waning have been put to rest as I sense a shift in my accomplishments away from physical labors to delegation and conservation through technology. It seems common to most that when you visit a retail business, there is a smoothness in transactions and order. Not magic, it's hard work to create and maintain systems of information for this fluidity. Still without constant prodding, we will wander backwards into the chaotic, frenzied habits of rough, weak transactions that require much effort.

The day is mine. A rare Friday to wander. An extra day off is a tease. A run away from the taunts of work and persistent interjections of others work being fawned onto me without prejudice as the customer waits. A polite seize of nothing in particular on the way to tomorrow.

Think?

I don't know why I slip away from Zen from time to time. I'm leaving the shop the other day and see a bar patron outside of the bar, on the cell, and with her drink glass on my truck. To elicit a response, I say, "Get your drink off my bar". She exits her call, turns, and becomes defensive. No sense of humor. I'm met with lots of, "Do you think I'm...". Oh, you want to know what I think. I think you wouldn't be amused if I showed up with my drink on your car. I think you have no respect for anything in the area, like everything around her is part of some alcohol playground. I think you're only here to be able to say where you are to people on the cell who aren't here. I think... crap... I say, "I think you're a pretentious bitch. I think you don't care and should go back to drinking". Not very nice and absent Zen.
LCDTV took a header biking out in Baton Rouge. Blown up wrist and cracked helmet and many impact abrasions. Man down! Warrior is out for a week starting a day before I get back from my second break of the year. I doubt I'll take anymore strings of days off until Winter. Phantom has his helmet cam back in action. I like the videos, very realistic. Red dog got a new collar.
Today a client comes in with her 50 lb. trike loaded down with 60+ lbs. of art type stuff. She has a flat and before exploring common occurrences like punctures, she is convinced that we installed the wrong size tube the last time we changed her tube. There is no vocal reply that would be effective, this is only resolved though demonstration. Funny when I show her the little piece of wire poking through the tire. No slight of hand, and a guarantee that she will be charged if we're not at fault, she is cornered and ought to pay extra for the immediate service. I feel that the flat occurred during a period which within some grace from the original repair and charge her only for the tube. If I had been thinking, I would have weighed the option for ending commerce with this person and saving future drama as is likely to happen with this client. Command performances with great explanation are tiring and unprofitable. The catch-22 of doing business in NOLA. xx% of the people here are poor. You can choose to price them out of your store or slide your scale to provide them with help they really could use. The downside is they open cans of worms on you and return too frequently and take time you could spend on people with money. If only those of little means could have little expectations or maybe some patience? I try to respect everyone as individuals. Reality is different in a business. Most clients are appreciative and respectful. It's hard not to toss out the fringe clients when they abandon their bikes, steal your time without ever intending to buy something, and otherwise assume we're the reason their bikes don't work or that we're rich. I think that everyone is prejudiced about everyone else and in some way, play out their position regardless of reality. Well almost everyone. I guess this is my prejudice. It's just a supposition.

My dear Wednesday,

If has been over seven years now that we generally close on Wednesdays. Only the front door is closed most of the day. It has been a day of cleaning, stocking, special projects, mountain biking, and a respite from the never ending calls of customer duty. I'm not sure how we ran the store 7 days a week for so long. It was a long time ago. I'm off to see her now.

The Victims

We get some characters. One guy FG, smelled like urine on the stove and was checking out a bag, saying, "I know what some of these pockets are for, but this is must be where you put your crack pipe". I agreed with him. There is a group who MO is to spend your time asking baited questions until you either lose time with no sale or ignore them or kick them out. One guy pulled the infinite questions while on his cell phone and due to his odor was overheard saying, "I can't believe this guy is spraying me with lysol", to the person he was on the phone with as I am kicking him out.
Our typical customer varies from the "INNERTUBE!" guy, that's his greeting, to those pulling out bikes from the past to find out how close to the price of a replacement bicycle a full repair cost will get. Others are browsing for a gift, the second most popular purchase is a lock. Rental customers have many categories. Follow this - Go to a different city, walk in to a bike shop, ask to rent a bike, and then ask them if there are any nice places to ride around here. Kind of like renting a car and asking if there are any nice places to drive or going to a pharmacy, buy some condoms and asking the cashier if they know of anyone who might like to have sex. My favorite customers are trained that we won't wantonly take advantage of them and generally trust us to spend their money wisely. I don't mind skepticism, but negativity and cynicism get old really quickly.
So who are the victims. Well some victims come in and want as much as they can get for nothing. Others want a realy nice, light, fast bike that costs less than $300. Wow, me too. The best victims are the ones with a bike that's on life support who want some minor repair affected and it can't be performed without some liability issue. Catch-22. No work, no money, or lots of work, still bad bike, still no money. The lesser experienced are sometimes taken in by what seems like an easy job. If we could screen out those with less than $10 on them when thay came in... You don't have to buy anything, just have the $10.
More than 85% of our customers are fun, freindly people who know how business works and easily do commerce. But it sometimes seems that 85% of our time is spent on the 15% pain in the butt, no money having, stinky bums and otherwise uncivilized children and adult children.
A few of them can be fun and I even like some of them. I always hope that one day, they'll wake up and begin contributing something to the community, like commerce or polite behavior.

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.

Keeping up appearances.

Everyone has a different way they prefer to be approached. The boss, with his nearly infinite patience, thinks that information overload and overwhelming logic along with being just plain loud will overcome any question of expertise and therefore is a great sales approach. Make them feel that most choices should be limited and choosing otherwise will void general reason. Well if that's what you really want... Saying that you don't negate personal taste and actually not doing it are quite separate. I don't like to be pigeonholed or generalized. I don't mind being recognized, but when I shop, bugging me too much will send me out the door very quickly. The staff has a habit of not coming out from behind the counter to meet the customers. This leads to congestion at our bottleneck, the entry and exit from the mechanic's area and back stock to the retail space and showroom area. Often there are bikes leaning on other bikes and boxes lining the perimeter. Things that have fallen as they were brushed on by people trying to get in and out and behind this and that in an almost futile attempt at self service. Truth is that for all the merchandise littering the showroom, most of it it unreachable without some effort. Move this, wedge yourself, get a ladder or step stool, hold apart while extracting that thing find a place to put the three things in way of the thing I just want to look at for a minute. So much effort goes into cramming the shop full of barbels and trinkets, then an equal or greater effort goes into retrieving them.
We rent bikes and during a short portion of the year (less than 2%), we rent over 150 bikes per day. Without space or thought of the future we stack these vehicles vertically, hang them by any part which accepts a hook and otherwise compress them into otherwise viable space. This leads us to line the alleyway along the shop with bikes during business hours, rain or shine, and march them in and out of the shop at opening and closing. The idea is to demoralize the staff and make them ready to be subservient at opening and reluctant to do anything significant in the last hour of the day. With a half an hour of drudgery awaiting you at both ends of the day, aren't you excited to begin a career as a bicycle dodger and customer whipping boy?
It's not as bad as it seems, but it always occurs right when summer is beginning to do its worst. 99˚ and 99% humidity with frequent rain that steams the concrete and demoralizes the work ethic. But it really is a great place to work and I love my job no matter how much talent is pedaled into the dirt by unnecessary tasks and endless rearrangements.

The airport at rush hour.

It's 4:53 p.m., do you know where the boss is? The flight information says his plane is delayed one hour, seventeen minutes. We spend a bit assembling Zoltan's wife's bike and fielding sales reps phone calls. A friend had referred one of his dad's friends to me. Apparently he came down to the shop on Wednesday when we're closed and had a hard time parking as he said that several times on the phone. He called to eliminate the need to come back and nothing I could have said would have been right. I was polite, but about five minutes into the call, I wanted my five minutes back. He could not state a price range he wanted to stay in nor avail me of his size or any preferences other than that he wanted a hybrid commuter fast bike. I really dislike when people call with preconceived notions and self-fulfilling prophecies. I liken it to asking someone if they're stupid and if they say no, saying, "well if you are stupid then you wouldn't know you are stupid". Save me stripping down my existence and motivation for you and get on with it. I guess some people can only tell you what they don't want. My only point is we have bikes for sale but nobody's going to ram them down your throat. People buy our bikes for many reasons: price, quality, color, fit, service, reputation, and guarantee. This guy didn't want to buy a bike, he wanted to find a reason not to come back to the Marigny and at some point in the conversation, he found it. Congrads A.H.!
So off to the airport. 30 minutes of Metairie and park on the third floor. The flight does not appear on the list of arrivals. In the amount of time it takes to look up the airline on the phone internet, the boss shows up. A nice ride back with a slight tease about wanting a raise, hey I want to buy a house, and we've back. Zoltan found (liberated) some wheels for the new bike and we almost polished it off. Maybe tomorrow, aside from chip y salsa, the cleaning will happen. I'm sure nothing will possibly distract from that end.

Nice pets.

I like to say that the hair traps the dirt and dust so it's easy to sweep up. We, or I have a dog who works at the shop. Works for the occasional lunch scrap that is. The red dog doesn't have much responsibility and mostly naps in various places. Now and again, he capably shuns and unwanted visitor before they get into the shop. Mostly underprivileged children who have no money and often no bike. "Get dat dog??!", is uttered by the frighten heathen as they try to hide outside the door. It never ceases to amaze how poorly trained and educated these little humans are in all areas of public conduct, math, reading, science, money, business, and culture. They are set free by their female guardians into the streets and I see why. The little question machines go from business to business sucking up air conditioning and hunting, gathering, and obtaining anything they can weasel or pilfer. Not all of them are bad, but all of them are poor. The red dog can usually sort out the miscreants among them and keep them at bay until a staff member entertains them or moves them along.
Maybe some of the upper crust white bread rich folks would like a disadvantaged kid for a pet. For some privilege and a shot at a better life, the pet child would learn how to be an upstanding citizen and what it feels like to have something, be responsible, and what consequences are. That will never happen because rich folks want to enjoy their life without really considering the reality of poor folks. Herein lies the classic dichotomy of America and the bike shop as well.
We have the widest range of customers of any business I can think of. The homeless, working poor, service industry, clerical, professional, sales, medical, politicians, lawyers, police, firemen, factory workers, and globe trotters all regularly frequent our establishment. (No meter maids as far as I know. ) We get 'em all. The bicycle is simply the most efficient way to propel a human under his own power available. The motorcar is not for all, but the bicycle is for most. The red dog is a great judge of character and characters is what we've got.

The power of purpose

I love my boss. Otherwise my job would cease to be meaningful. He has a special place of business with some of the greatest people in the world as employees, friends, and clients. I work at a bicycle store. We service a great many cyclists in the New Orleans area. Stories abound of jobs where the pay is good but the toll on the soul leads to unhappiness. Not that I'm always happy, yet it is more often then not, our days are joyous and filled with humor.
I started working here about fifteen years ago. My employment history was mostly service oriented. I worked as a gardener, in a credit and catalog dept., as a busboy and bartender, and did some odd jobs for cash here and there. I am fiercely loyal and had been shopping at this store for 5 or 6 years before I approached them about work. The shop has had its struggles and schisms along the way and I think we've made it through the worst. Being nearly bankrupt in the mid 90's , we battled for over three years just to get back to even. Our best year ever was interrupted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and still we returned to banner sales.
The philosophy is simple: treat people with genuine interest and serve them as guests in your home. We've all been to a business where we were ignored, pestered, or treated like crap. We don't want that to be how we are viewed and quite the opposite, we want our clients to feel our honesty and devotion to our craft. We make some of the finest bicycles in the world and are willing to fix just about anything. I goes to say that some folks will try to take advantage of the easy-going nature of the shop and we'll put up with it for a while. I won't pretend I've never asked someone to leave, met young children at door to explain why they're unwelcome without their parents, or spraying Lysol® on extremely unhygienic bums and gutter punks. What I will say is we're quite tolerant of the wide range of beliefs and practices of our customers and consider everyone's individual preferences when they pay us a visit.