“Gosh, it was a pretty garden store, very New England with grey clapboard, shutter, iron and cobblestone. It had been designed by the owner who had a love for form and place. Even the store signing appeared in garden industry magazines for elegance and beauty.
But it all ended at the front door............
You see, the son had taken the place over and we all knew that he did not want any part of it. Each morning he would greet us with a snarl, brushing past us toward the stairs to his office. The rest of the day we only heard him on the walkie-talkie yelling at us as he stared from his window overlooking the nursery.
One day at lunchtime, he and his cronies upstairs ordered food. When they were finished, he bundled all the leftovers together with half eaten sandwiches and dropped the bags at the bottom of the stairs for the employees to eat and rest and clean it up. Brother!
But the last straw was the worst, It was a busy hot Saturday spring day. The only two toilets for the customers and the employees had been broken and out of service for the past couple of days. (The owner had a private bathroom upstairs). We all had to walk near those toilets to punch the clock. The stench down that hall was awful. Customers were forced to leave their baskets and run to the nearest store to find a bathroom. Several children just wet their pants waiting in line for checkout. The guys working there would pee in the bushes. The girls would tear out of the parking lot to a gas station down the road. He didn’t care.
The toilets remained plugged for several more days until we couldn’t take it any more. Two of us volunteered to wrap used cloth towels around our faces. We found some old dirty plastic aprons and wrapped them tight over our uniforms. With trowels and buckets, soap and Lysol, we entered the rooms and started scooping as fast as we could, emptying the bowls overflowing with layers of dried and wet shit and soggy toilet paper. We washed the walls and floor that had tracked brown globs all over.
He wasn’t embarrassed, He wasn’t upset. He was just pissed off that we were not out in his nursery selling his plants.
His answer to the plugged toilets was,
“why don’t those people go to the bathroom before they come to my garden center.”
I quit that day.
An ex-employee
gladly driving away from the worst store ever
The exact same incident occurred at a
They knew what would happen. A young mother shopping for their plants would have a fistful of dollars in one hand and her young boy tugging her other hand, jumping up and down needing the bathroom. She would have to make and choice and her choice would be to put the dollars back in her purse and drive away mad and upset looking for a toilet. She may never return.
They swung into action. They called the local portable toilet company and paid the premium price to have six units positioned conveniently at the store. They got the best ones, with the hand washing running water compartments as well as a large handicapped accessible unit.
The wife walked over to a neighboring business and arranged for their customers to use those facilities during the outage. The husband began to clean the bathrooms from the sewer line backup, not allowing any of his employees to help.
The bathroom problem was posted on signs in the nursery directing customers to ask the staff for the location of the temporary facilities. Each customer using the portable toilets was given a coupon for one free geranium plant when they checked out from their plant shopping.
It was a record sales day at their store and an uncomfortable incident was made as pleasant as possible.
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