Sunday, September 20, 2009

Contrary this!

"You weren't open on Sunday," a regular customer said, exasperated. "I always think that businesses that aren't open 7 days aren't doing well..."

As you can imagine, this sent daggers into my heart. As I feared.

"Then again," he says, "Owners who work 7 days a week also worry me. They start to look like their businesses."

That made me laugh. "...start to look like their businesses...."

Despite feeling somewhat overwhelmed, despite the one day off not quite being enough, I'm going to go to the end of the year, and if I do that, it makes sense to go until next summer. I keep looking at this simple fact: my profits equal my former employee wages.

And I've loved having that cash in my accounts, both as a rainy day fund and as a cash-flow enabler.

Beside, hiring someone right now wouldn't help with the stress one bit. In fact, for the first few months it would ADD to the stress. It's only until after they are accustomed to the store that employees help relieve the burden instead of adding to the burden.

**********

The whole 'expert' stock brokers thing is giving me a giggle.

Now that all the optimists have joined the pessimists, a few of the pessimists are becoming optimists, and being accused by the former optimists of being optimists while most of the pessimists remain pessimists and newbies like me see nothing but pessimists with a few optimists who used to be pessimists.

Or something like that.

Meanwhile, most of the pessimists see everyone else as optimists and most of the optimists see everyone as pessimists. Whereas I, who be a newbie deluxe, see almost exclusively pessimists who are having cognitive dissonance recognizing that all the former optimists have joined them as pessimists and therefore the former pessimists are no longer contrarians.

That about right, Jesse?

6 comments:

Duncan McGeary said...

I did the math again. If I do half the average on Sunday (being open only 4 hours instead of 7) and figure about 1/3rd of what's left is 'regular' business I would've done anyway on another day of the week, and I take out the cost of goods and subtract employee wages...

... there is so little left that even small bills like utilities and theft and damage and wear and tear and cost of transport to and from the store...negate most of the rest.

Duncan McGeary said...

Or if I'm tracking this right:

bull,bear,bear,bull,bull,bull,bull, bear,bear,bear,bear,bull,bear,

bear,bull,bull,bear,bear,bull,bear,bear.

Don't you love experts?

Meanwhile...I obviously have too much time on my hands.

Anonymous said...

Have you ever thought about taking Monday off instead of Sunday? If you're a tourist business, you probably get lots of Valley people roaming around on Sunday - but not Monday, when everyone has to be back at work on the other side of the mountain.

Duncan McGeary said...

For some reason Mondays are very good. And it's a good day to get business done, orders and such.

Now Tuesdays. If I could close Tuesdays, I would. But that would just seem odd.

Sundays people understand.

H. Bruce Miller said...

"I keep looking at this simple fact: my profits equal my former employee wages."

Another way of looking at it is that you're selling a larger chunk of your life for a little more money.

Like the saying goes, I never heard of a man who on his deathbed said, "I wish I'd spent more time at the office."

But it all depends on how you choose to spend your life, and nobody has the right to make that choice but you.

"The whole 'expert' stock brokers thing is giving me a giggle."

A stock broker is a salesman -- no more, no less. I had a brother in law who was one.

Duncan McGeary said...

Normally, I'd agree with that BD, but having cash in the accounts is such a huge stress reliever and such an enabler, that in this case working a year or a year and a half in the 'great recession' makes sense.

But it will also make sense to give myself more time off in the future.