And whose leprechaun are you? (Smug's on Drugs, part 2)

“¡Ahi esta! El ladrón de mi galletas.”

The woman in the aqua-blue housekeeping uniform was maybe four-feet-eleven and about as wide.  I’d put her age at over 40, but anything more specific would be a guess; she was simply moving too fast.  After bursting into our rented conference room and pointing a stubby, accusatory finger at one of my team members, she elbowed aside an Armani-clad product manager from Glaxo Smith Kline who, along with three other representatives from that company, had convened at the Minnehaha Conference room of the Nicollet Island Inn that Saturday morning to be convinced that Smugglers’ Inn was, indeed, capable of handling all domestic marketing needs for Glaxo’s new happy pill, Flumoxidol. (Street name: fluffies).

“Estas galletas no son para ustedes.  Tienes que comprar galletas.   Alguien pagó por ellos,” the housekeeper said, and leaned her stout body over the tasteful, pickled pine conference room table in order to grasp the only thing that had impressed our potential clients fifteen minutes into SI Powerpoint presentation #3. This being a platter of the Nicollet Island Inn’s justifiably famous, made-on-site chocolate chip cookies.

“Ustedes no comprar los galletas.”

Seeing chocolate being taken away, one of the Glaxo clients, an attractive woman with short, steel-grey hair, snatched a cookie from the disappearing platter.  It was an automatic response, like a fish striking at a lure or how you or I might grab one more bacon-wrapped shrimp from a passing waiter’s tray as we were hustled into a banquet hall at the commencement of an awards dinner.

“Wap!”

The steel-haired woman was speechless.  We were speechless.  The maid wasn’t speechless, but what she was saying was in such rapid Norteno-Mexican Spanish that Ricky Ricardo, speaking from some lost episode of “I Love Lucy” would have had to just hold out his upturned palms in a gesture of surrender, shrug and say, “Don’ look ah ME.  I’m from Coo-ba!”

This maid had slapped our client’s hand.  Slapped it hard, like a mother reprimanding a child attempting to filch a coin from the collection plate.  The steel-haired woman stared at her hand.  The rest of us stared at the maid.  The maid turned away so as to prevent any eye contact.

“Sorry,” the maid said in English.  She set the platter of cookies down on the carpeted floor of the Minnehaha Room and slipped out, head down.

We apologized to our clients.  What else could we do?  Clearly, the meeting was terminated.  The Flumoxidol account would go to some agency who could make through a presentation without having their snacks being repossessed or their guest’s hands being slapped by foreigners in teal uniforms.  Smugglers’ Inn, the world’s only restaurant/ad agency, would need to go back to being just being Smugglers’ Inn, the restaurant for a while.  We still owed vendors $4,000 from our last foray into marketing consultancy, but that’s what credit cards are for.  We would fight another day.

Carol, my co-creative director at Smugglers’ Inn, actually gave a pretty funny impromptu speech in which she quoted Harry Truman, her favorite president.  The third member of our team, Smuggler’s Inn’s Irish Bartender, Scotty, bowed like a bad stage actor and said something like he’d be playing the room all week.  Lame, but with Scotty’s brogue, it was passable charming.  For my part, I acknowledged everyone in the room by name and made a show of taking a bite out of one of the cookies just to lighten the mood.  But it was over.  We packed up quickly and were almost out the door when someone spoke.

“We are not done here.”

It was the Armani suit man.  The leader.  The Alpha.
Carol and I exchanged looks.  Were we still in this thing?  We did have five minutes left of our presentation, SI Powerpoint #3.

“OK!” I said, a smile breaking out across my face.  Carol and I started to take our positions at the table while Scotty hurried to re-connect the MacBook Pro containing SI Powerpoint #3.  “I think we were just getting to the good part,” I continued.  “I’m pretty sure that one else is will bring you ideas like these.”

Armani Man waved his hand in unambiguous dismissal.  What?  Now he didn’t want to hear us?  I was confused.

“Of course, we can just talk you through the high points,” I said, looking for help from my compatriots, who also seemed lost. “If you prefer to skip the dog and pony show.”

“I need YOU to get that woman back in here.  That maid.”

“Why?  She left the cookies,”  said Scotty.  I thought it was a funny line.

“I don’t give a shit what language she does it in, but SHE is going to apologize to HER.”  Armani Suit indicated the Steel-haired woman, who did not like this plan.

“Kyle, really.  Let it go.  Please...”

Armani Man held up his hand, silencing his underling.

“No one strikes one of my employees.  No one.  What happened here was unacceptable.  It wan an insult to our company and to me, personally, as the senior representative.”

I re-stated our earlier apology.  The woman whose hand had gotten slapped tried to talk sense to her boss.

“Kyle, the woman said she was sorry.”

“Jesus! We have the cookies,” Scotty repeated.  He was grinning, but I could tell that this prick was getting his Irish up.  With his own legal status murky, no doubt our bartender had sympathy for this fellow immigrant, whose only sin was to take her crap job too seriously.

Alpha Kyle didn’t blink. “And when the maid comes back,” he said, “I want the manager with her.”

The Steel-Grey haired lady protested even more strenuously.  The other two bodies from Glaxo said nothing.  Just like they had said nothing during our presentation.

“Kyle,” I said, affecting a contrite tone that I wasn’t feeling.  “I have to acknowledge responsibility.  I thought you’d like this place, but it’s pretty clear that they weren’t at their best.  Frankly, neither were we and we’re sorry about that.  We know that Flumoxidol is an important product for your company and for the people who would benefit from...”

“Get...the maid.”

Carol started to talk.  No doubt, she would have smoothed things over and possibly even left the door open for another run at a Glaxo product, (with a different brand manager), but Scotty cut her off.

“I did it.  My fault.  Blame me.”

“Scotty...(Don’t say fookin’.  Please don’t say...)”

“I stole the fookin’ cookies!”

Armani Man flinched as if someone had spritzed his face with water.

“There.  I admit culpability.  I looked in the other conference room and I saw that they had this massive stack of chocolate chippies smelling like heaven and then when I got to OUR conference room--no cookies.  Just some bottled water in a salad bowl with ice.  Horrible presentation.  I assumed that someone just forgot our cookies, so I took theirs.  Kind of like, if there’s no pepper shaker at your table you get up and nick one from a table no one’s sittin’ at.  I didn’t tell these guys,” Scotty indicated Carol and me. “I didn’t tell these guys because, well, I didn’t think much of it, you know?”

“That doesn’t change the fact that one of my employees was ASSAULTED today in this room.”

“Oh, fer fook’s sake, Kyle.  You can’t be fookin’ serious.  It was a mistake.  Human beings make them.  Obviously, it was this woman’s responsibility to put cookies in yon conference room and she didn’t want to get blamed for a cock-up.  Not enough she’s probably scared off her tits that she is about to lose her job.  Not enough she apologized.  Not for you. No, YOU need to shame her in front of her manager.  Are you a sadist, Kyle?  You like seeing women humiliated?  Fair enough. Everyone’s got their little kinks.”

Scotty continued talking and no, it did not get any better. He eventually allowed Carol to lead him out of the conference room by his arm, but not before he’d offered to pull our would-be client’s pants down and “bugger you like a proper choir boy”.

The ride home was quiet.  Workmen were stringing lights on the Nicollet Bridge prior to the evening’s “Holidazzle” parade.  Two of them were a good 40 feet off the ground on these bizarre-looking scissor lifts.

“You wouldn’t get me up on one of those,” I said.

“Oh, they don’t move,” Carol said.  “Not hardly at all.  They adjust for any wind with GPS.  I talked to the guy whose company manufactures them.  They’re the shit, as far as industrial lifts go.”

“They’re local?” I asked Carol.

“Their corporate office is here. They assemble them in Hayward, Wisconsin.  My brother with the cement business was one of their first customers.”

Someone in the car, I forget who, said that it would be fun to see a bunch of these things move like synchronized swimmers and then we were talking about shooting them at night with neon so that they made trails and could you have an app that let you demo one remotely?  If this things moved to music, what music would be they move to?

And so it begins.  Again.

***
This concludes the last Smug’s entry for the very odd year of 2016.  Prince is gone.  Bowie is gone.  We’re still on the merry-go-round and, presumably, so are you. (Prince? If you can read this, we are STILL your biggest fans.) From all of your friends at Smugglers’ Inn both real and imaginary, merry Christmas.  Happy Hanukkah.  Feliz Navidad.  Please check back for our annual New Year’s Eve post-mortem sometime after the first.  Until then, we shall be in the bar.

The lesson of the purse.

World's least waterproof item?

“Those who do not see the power of social media are dinosaurs with their heads in the sand…and  you can’t breathe sand!”   

--Forward, “The Ten Commandments of Social Media Marketing”, E.Rand and V.S. Majudru, 2013.

Well, it isn’t as if we at Smugglers’ Inn are keepers of the Queen’s English, but sentences like the one above, which one encounters throughout “The Ten Commandments of Social Media Marketing” might have tipped us off that we should have popped for one of the other 20 similar titles Amazon had on the subject.  It was probably the biblical reference that hooked us; Smugglers’ Inn runs on a prayer.  Once we had the actual book (or the Kindle Fire with the book app) in our hands, we learned that communicating to the public through numbered lists was one of the Ten Commandments of Social Media Marketing.  As was the number 10 itself, which knocked off another commandment, but not the tenth commandment, as one may think.   No, the tenth commandment was, “Thou shalt fascinate!” “Remember the power of ten and keep it holy,” was commandment three.  Just as I was making sense of commandment four, “Thou shalt gather the data”, our seating hostess, Cat, stuck her head in my office and knocked to get my attention.

“Hey, boss!  Got a flaming emergency.”

“You don’t seem to be on fire,” I said, putting down the Kindle.

“Funny.  Somebody tried to flush a purse down the toilet and there’s water everywhere.”

It never fails; just as you’re about to tap into the hidden market forces that will make you rich beyond comprehension, someone presents you with a plumbing problem.

“Did you try pulling the purse out of the toilet?” I asked Cat. Quite reasonably, I thought.

This was greeted with a snort.  “Like you pay me enough to stick my hand in a toilet.”

Cat had formerly been as faultlessly courteous with me as she is with our customers.   It's only in the last week or so that she’d taken to calling me “boss” and being disrespectful as a show of  solidarity with Pongo, our dishwasher, whom I’d turned down for a raise.  Still, she was right: as a seating hostess, Cat made zilch tips and got the fewest hours of anyone on the schedule.  I’m not sure what the going rate for paying young ladies to stick their hands in toilets is, but it surely exceeds $7.20 an hour.  The going rate for plumbers, I know.  Which is why, when Cat turned on her heels and left, I rolled up my sleeves, stood up and took a deep breath.

“Jorge!” I shouted.

Jorge was the third of his name to have worked at Smugglers’ Inn as a cook/dishwasher.  He inherited his job from his nephew, Jorge number two, who had run into what you might call a spot of bother with the authorities.  We sincerely hoped Jorge 2 would be rejoining us soon, as Jorge 3 skeeved everybody out.

“What’s up, boss?”  Jorge had been hovering right outside my door.  Good—he already knew what was coming.

“Jorge, I need you to go into the women’s bathroom and pull out a purse that somebody tried to flush down a toilet.”

“Can I keep what’s in it?”

“Only if it’s gum.  Oh, and grab a mop, will you?  There’s a lot of water.”

Number Six of the Ten Commandment of Social Media Marketing is “Thou shalt be diligent.”  In the context of the book, “diligence” refers to monitoring how your efforts are paying off as expressed in terms of visits, Facebook likes and any of a dozen numbers associated with online performance.  Diligence is also a good motto when you’re running a restaurant with a diverse workforce that includes a man with no solid references and a tattoo of a spider on his temple.  I’d give Jorge 3 a couple of minutes alone, then I’d pop in and pretend to be looking for the shut-off valve for water going into the ladies rest room.
The valves controlling the water to and from our men’s and women’s restrooms are, point-of-fact, located in our cloakroom.  Talk to the architect.

After going to the cloakroom and moving a quiver of black umbrellas that were obscuring them (why do only black umbrellas get abandoned?), I located the two shut-off valves.  I turned them both off rather than look up which was which.  We had officially been open for dinner for 40 minutes, but there was no one in the dining room and I wasn’t overly worried about inconveniencing the party of teachers taking advantage of happy hour.  None of them was drinking beer.  Besides, they’re just teachers.
I waited in the cloakroom for a couple of minutes, during which time I tried to name all of the Ten Commandments of Social Media Marketing.  I could only recall the ones already mentioned, plus “Remember the list and keep it holy”, commandment eight.  Or was it nine?   I went next door to check on my man’s progress.
Jorge was already mopping up.  Laid out on the sink was a beige leather clutch purse and its soggy contents, which consisted of a Minnesota drivers license showing that she was just a year over drinking age, a pack of tissues, lip gloss, lipstick, Dentyne Ice, Hyundai car keys and can of mace the size of a cigarette lighter.   For those really tiny assailants.
“Any money?” I asked Jorge.  If the purse had been stolen, the thief would have removed cash and credit cards and if not, they’d be in Jorge’s pocket.  Still, I thought I had to at least ask.

“Over there,” Jorge said, motioning with his head. “I didn’t count it.”

The infant changing table had been pulled down.  Laid out on it was $56 in wet bills--one ten, the rest fives and ones.  Waitress money.  Had Jorge left it out of professional courtesy?
“Jorge, you’re the man.  You saved me calling a plumber. Thanks.”

“Nothin’ to it, boss.”

“Don’t worry about this,” I told Jorge, indicating the floor. “I’ll get one of the busboys to mop up.”

I located the purse’s owner in the lounge.  She was leaning over the bar, chatting up our bartender, Adolpho.  I’d guessed semi-right.  The woman wasn’t a waitress; she was a bartender.  Somehow, she’d gotten started talking shop with Adolpho.   Service workers almost always talk shop when they come together, although it ain’t for nothing that Adolpho’s nickname is “El Fabio.”  When I informed the young lady about her purse, she glanced over to a table occupied by two empty margarita glasses and blurted out the “C” word.  Apparently, she’d gotten so wrapped up swapping stories of surviving bar rushes and 86-ing drunks that she’d forgotten she hadn’t come in alone.  Or that she was supposed to be getting drinks for her girlfriend and herself.  God knows how long her wing gal sat fuming before she’d lost it.  Still, trying to flush someone else’s purse down the crapper is déclassé, even for Blaine.

I set a plastic with the purse and contents on the stool next to her and left, not waiting for a thank-you from the woman, who was still swearing.  She would likely get some sympathy from Adolpho, whose other nickname was “Ado the slut”.
I was confident that this episode had fulfilled the drama quotient for the evening, but as so often happens lately, I was wrong.  When I returned to my office to look up the Ten Commandments of Social Media Marketing that I couldn’t name, Jorge was sitting in my guest chair.  Great.  I pasted on a smile.
“Jorge! What’s on your mind, big guy?”

“Ah, boss,” he said, “I hate to do this to you, but I’m gonna have quit.  Tonight’s gotta be my last night.” 

“Well, that f***ing sucks,” I said.  I was sincere; Jorge III may have been of the poorest employees on the payroll, with a history of showing late and/or high, but he will show up and he will wash dishes.

“I know, I know.  I would like to give you, like, two week’s notice and all, but my cousin got done with his thing.”  What Jorge II’s “thing” was had never been explained.  Still, I knew what this meant.

“And he wants his old job back?”

Jorge III nodded.  “He’s got a family to take care of, you know?”

I didn’t, but if he was sending money back home to a wife and kid in Mexico, it would explain why he worked so insanely hard.  Jorge II didn’t look old enough to be a daddy, but Hispanic families start early.  I’ll have to ask to see pictures of his kid when he comes back.  Yay!  Good Jorge is coming back.  Evil Jorge? GONE-O.

“I suppose,” I said, “you want me to cash you out?  We’re just into a new pay period; I’m guessing you don’t want to wait 15 days for your last check.”

“Man, that would be real good; I’m kinda short right now.”

I got $137.50 from petty cash, the pre-tax amount Jorge had earned in his last two days with and scribbled out a receipt for the funds.  As I watched Jorge go through the motions of reading the receipt before signing it, I tried and failed make out a single identifiable image or word from the layers of blue-black ink that practically obliterated the top of his hand and forearm.  How had I had ever let this stone killer come to work at Smugglers’ Inn in the first place?

“Well, I better get to it,” Jorge III said, ”Chef wants me to de-vein about twenty pounds of shrimp.”

“Yeah, better get to it.”

“Um, boss?”

Jesus, what now? I saw Jorge swallow, like he was getting ready to say something that was really difficult for him.  He was going to ask me for a loan, I could see it coming.  That’s it: cancel the send-off drinks I was going to authorize tonight.  We’ll celebrate after he’s gone.

“I just wanna say, “thanks”.  For giving me a shot, you know? I really like my job."

“Jorge, we hate to see you go; you’re a good worker.  I wish there was someway we could keep you on, but if your cousin’s coming back…”

Jorge waved me silent.  “I know that I don’t exactly make a good a first impression.  I’m not stupid.  Well, I’m not that stupid.  I appreciate that you gave me a chance—that everybody gave me a chance.  You got some nice people here.”

“The best,” I agreed.  Then Jorge shook my hand.  He was smiling, but I think he was actually choked up.  “The shrimp,” he managed to say and started walking off.

“Hey, Jorge, wait a sec.  You ever do any landscaping? Northtown is gonna stop maintaining this little patch of turf that we’re on.  I thought we could make some little hills and plant trees around the dumpster.  Make it presentable, you know?”

And that’s how Smugglers’ Inn got a gardener and Jorge III got to keep his 40 hours a week.  For a month or two, anyway.  I still can’t say why I did it, but I’ve no regrets. Smugglers’ will need to convert an advertising prospect or two, but that shouldn’t be impossible; we’re social media experts now.

Smugglers’ Inn nearly tops list of best places to work.

#1 ranked ATV and RV Corral offers its employees limited health care benefits. La-dee-dah.

Ever the innovator, Peter Lundquist and his Anoka County Shopper have published another top ten list. “The 10 Best Places to Work in Blaine/Coon Rapids” found in this month’s Shopper announces to the world what we’ve always known; mainly, that when it comes to providing meaningful work in a stimulating atmosphere, Smugglers’ Inn has no equal. Sure, there are places that pay better. Bob’s Produce Market. 15-Minute Lube. Red Robin Auto Body. Wendo Industries. ATV and RV Corral. Donner Realty, of course.

Yes, there were additional categories where we fell down in relation to the other nine businesses on this list, but why dwell on the negative? Chances are, you didn’t come here because you hate Smugglers‘ Inn. Those people hangout at VeganWorldAmerica.org, AdBusters, FancyPirate.com or one of the other sites that have called us out for being flesh-peddling ghouls, sinister manipulators of human behavior, or homophobes. We are not homophobes, for the record. We just don’t agree that because we have a pirate-y name, we have to be speaking out for the gay pirate community. As a matter of policy, we do not inquire as to the sexual orientation of anyone applying for a job at Smugglers’ Inn, although if the first thing a new waiter or bartender does upon being told his uniform will consist of an open collared shirt with puffed, 3/4 sleeves and a maroon vest with a sash is say that they have the perfect shoes to finish the ensemble, we generally skip the speech about how it’s not cool to harass the cocktail waitresses.

It was our commitment to equal opportunity hiring, in fact, that most impressed Mr. Lundquist, who knows full well that in Blaine, diversity means ordering off the KFC and Taco Bell menu at the same time. Smug’s also received bonus points for being in a glamor industry (advertising, not food service) and for providing a benefit no other business could claim, FREE SODA.

Given all of these positives, you would think that Smugglers‘ Inn would be THE place to work in the Blaine/Coon Rapids area. You would think so, but according to the Anoka County Shopper, you would think wrong. ATV and RV Corral scored highest overall among employers in this survey.

“How is this possible?” we asked, given that The Corral’s mechanics labor in a windowless back room under florescent light, exposed to carcinogenic petroleum byproducts that could ignite at any moment?

One word: health care.

The Corral was alone among businesses surveyed in that its eighteen full-time employees have access to subsidized emergency medical insurance. The health care factor, according to Mr. Lundquist, tipped the scales in favor of the sports vehicle dealership and away from America’s favorite ad agency/restaurant. We’re sure this was the case, just as we’re sure that the Corral’s decision to run a full-page, color ad in the same issue of The Shopper had no influence on editor Lundquist. Ol’ Pete, we should point out, offered Smugglers’ Inn a 40% discount on a full-page ad in the same Best Places to Work issue. An offer we respectfully declined.

No matter. We have our sights on a higher prize. Turns out that AdAge Magazine, whose circulation dwarfs that of the Anoka County Shopper, publishes their own version of a Best Places to Work issue. Owing to the unlikelihood that anyone from AdAge will be coming to Blaine, Minnesota, on a fact-checking mission, Smugglers’ Inn may just get our number one. After all, how many advertising agencies can boast an on-premise masseuse, 24-hour car service, a daycare facility, weekly pilates instruction, an olympic lap pool or a heli-port? Not to mention free soda.