I fired Betsy because she spent too
much time arranging the loaves in the display window. I kept telling her, “We
just need baskets so customers can see what we have and reach in to get what
they need.” But she kept doing it her way. She spent hours creating elaborate
constructions of wheat and sourdough, challah tucked into open spaces as
support, round wreath loaves perched atop precarious towers.
Customers used to
be able to choose and retrieve their own loaves from the window, until the day
a thoughtless customer pulled out a loaf central to the integrity of a pyramid.
The entire thing collapsed in on itself. At first the customer, a man in a gray
suit coat and jeans, laughed and started to make a joke about the longevity of
our pyramid versus the ones in Egypt. But then he caught Betsy’s eye and his
laugh cut off so abruptly it sounded like a bark. He laid the loaf gently atop the collapsed pile, murmured “Sorry” so quietly I could only
see his lips move, and speed-walked out of the store and down the street fast enough
to count as his cardio for the day.
When I got to work
the next day, Betsy had set up a barricade of low shelving and was manning the
window. A customer would point to a specific loaf, and Betsy would retrieve it,
hissing through her teeth when a structurally significant loaf was chosen. It
was a several-minute process to choose an appropriate replacement loaf and
wedge it delicately into the emerging space at the same time the chosen loaf
was nudged out. I always watched this process with fascination, sure that
sooner or later the architect would topple one of her own towers. They trembled a few
times. One even started to lean until Betsy deftly laid her hand against the
exact loaf that preserved the edifice. No tower ever fell.
It was
fascinating, but it was too much. Customers had to wait ten minutes to buy a
loaf of bread, a transaction that shouldn’t have taken more than three. And
then there was the blatant insubordination. Every day I explained a different reason
why I wanted the regular basket display. There was the time issue, the fact
that customers like to choose their own bread—it’s one of our charms!—and the
very reasonable concern that she spent so much time building and maintaining
the bread towers that she didn’t have time to perform any of her other
duties.
Every day she
nodded, as if she finally understood and the next day would return my
wicker baskets to the window, a chastened but wiser employee. And every day
when I arrived at work a new skyscraper of gluten awaited me.
So I fired her. I
gave her all of my perfectly logical reasons for letting her go. She listened
patiently, nodded once with no malice in her eyes, and took off her apron and
left. The bell tinkling over the door was her only good bye. I sighed,
disappointed that I’d have to come into work early until I was able to hire a
new clerk, but relieved that my shop was mine again. I immediately went to the
storeroom to retrieve my charming wicker baskets—so quaint! so vintage!—and some
clean linen to line them with. There were no customers in the store, so I
gleefully pulled a load-bearing loaf from the bottom of that day’s tower and
jumped back to watch the entire thing collapse with soft thuds.
Yes, I fired the architect and then I flattened the tower. I did that. I, with my concern for customer convenience and shop atmosphere, am the reason we went out of business. When the towers stopped appearing in the window, the
customers stopped coming in. One day I ran into a regular in the diner up the street,
and she demurred, clearly lying, “Oh, we’re cutting gluten out of our diet. So
unhealthy, I’ve heard.” One day I resorted to propping the front door open and
shilling my wares on the street. “I don’t need any today, thanks!” was the
invariable answer from the passersby.
Towers. To make it
in today’s cut-throat bakery market you need an architect who knows how to build towers.
1st edit: Sat, 4/13/13, 8am.
1st edit: Sat, 4/13/13, 8am.
