Tea in the Library (19 page)

The agency I consulted assured me that Renee was a young lady with plenty of personality, pizzazz, and experience of the tough world of the hospitality industry. For an industry with such a nice touchy-feely name, it certainly has a dark underbelly. Renee had worked in clubs on the late shift, and her stories of fronting rabid knife-wielding chefs and drunken patrons were enough to make my hair curl. In the spirit of fair play, I warned Renee at her interview that, despite its placid exterior, Tea In The Library was a seething mass of contradictory personalities, which needed a strong hand on the rein. Renee smiled kindly, and assured me that she had frequently been called “a bitch”, and was quite up to the job I described.

Indeed she was. Renee's brief was to get the café inventory and ordering in order, get a proper working roster going, train and supervise the café staff, and placate the chef so that lovely food continued to emerge from The Place I Never Ventured (i.e. the kitchen). She was also asked to focus on profitability, getting sales up and keeping expenses down. To her credit, I must say that many of these goals were accomplished, or great strides were made towards them. Kudos to Renee for that. Under her rule, young waitresses quaked in their boots (but received her support too); the chef was kept more or less in his place (although there were a few meaningful glances the significance or otherwise of which I chose to ignore); and expenses did drop.

However, progress didn't come without a cost. Under Renee's rule, our white tablecloths were covered with paper sheets, our linen napkins became paper, our jams became ordinary supermarkets jams, and
—
worst crime of all 
—
she changed our coffee to a foul cheapo bean (soon rectified, but I had a Bad Moment).

The most significant problem, though, was that a Dragon who could sort out the staff and reduce expenses was not, unfortunately, the right personality for our ambience and our demographic. That is to say, Renee was rude to the customers. Her view seemed to be that the whole enterprise would run much more smoothly if the customers would just go home. Friends of mine who were also customers began to take me aside and give whispered warnings; Todd and the other booksellers would request “private discussions” to relate unfortunate incidents. I even had customers ask for my email address in order to send me long and sorry tales of bad service received.

So again, I had to have the “difficult conversation”. I think that Renee was already looking for alternative employment, although she had not yet found it. She seemed philosophical about it all
—
she was one tough lady. I can't say that I was developing a thick skin for this sort of thing. It didn't get any easier, even when I wasn't especially fond of the person.

During this period, indeed for a whole year, Tea In The Library's customer service was reviewed by a “Mystery Shopper”, who visited us unannounced, once a month, and reported back on the experience. I paid for this service
—
not a high cost
—
and it was always fascinating to read the monthly report. The report was shared with The Team, and I must say that they took the “constructive criticism” very well
—
usually.

The Team were under strict instructions to wear their name tags at all times
—
this was my edict, issued on the premise that it meant good customer relations. The name tag rule was often honoured in the breach, however, which left us scratching our heads over some of the Mystery Shopper reports, which were reduced to describing the person who had served: “I was approached by a tall blond woman” or “A person with a polite tone of voice answered the phone”. Mostly we were able to follow the clues and divine The Team member who had been “shopped”. Gratifyingly, we scored consistently highly, and I was careful to heap praise where it was due. But one constant theme emerged
—
the most frequent complaint of the Mystery Shopper was lack of attention from staff. The customer could wander around the shop for ages waiting to be approached, and in the end have to call themselves to someone's attention. It all confirmed what I knew
—
our booksellers were so concerned with the business of “running the shop” that they forgot to attend to customers (or in some cases, preferred not to be bothered.) They resisted this interpretation, but I was convinced that I recognised the underlying problem. Not enough
real
salespeople!