Toy Store Saga

[XCashier]

And I already can tell that everyone at the bordello is going to be furious at Kanalah leaving; because How Dare She Be Ungrateful.

Oh, no kidding. So many workplaces have just that attitude. They belittle, degrade, steal from you, screw you over in so many ways and just generally treat you like shit on their shoes. Then they're shocked, shocked I tell you! when you decide to quit putting up with their crap and leave. They just cannot (or will not?) see that Action A leads to Consequence B.

I look forward to the rest of the story, Kanalah, and especially your mother's and grandmother's reactions.

[Kanalah]

Had a show all day and just got home a little while ago. I will get the kids in bed and post some more.

[Kanalah]

Part Seventeen

We signed the paperwork on the new store in May. In June we went to Market again to fill up our new 3,000sf space. The leasing agents told us that they'd have our space "move-in ready" by mid-July.

Trusting them, Hubs and I went to spend a week with his family - where we talked all about our awesome new toy store. We were planning on opening in late August/early September. We had contractors lined up to help us build walls for a stockroom and bathroom, all of our inventory was coming in the middle of August, and we had already picked out carpet and paint. And of course, we had already passed out hundreds of flyers about our grand opening.

When we got home, we were so excited that we stopped by the store first. Absolutely nothing had been done! The next day we stopped by the leasing office, where (all smiles) they told us our space was ready for us to move in. We said "Really? Have you visited it?". They assured us that their maintenance guy, who we will call "Drunk" for obvious reasons was a hard worker and he'd make sure our space was ready in 2 weeks.

[Kanalah]

Awesome double update time!

Part Eighteen

It wasn't ready in two weeks. It wasn't ready when a huge truck full of toys showed up. We rang up the management company and told them that we needed a place to put our inventory, since Drunk still didn't have our space ready. He still hadn't pulled up the old tiles and in fact put new sheetrock on a wall and then ran outlets down the side.

They gave us a key to another store where we could put our things in the backroom. It was fun hanging out in 100F weather trying to make sure our shipments matched the invoices. Finally in mid September(!) he had a 10ft x10ft bathroom built, and had stripped the floor down to concrete. Our original contractor we hired had given up on us by that point, so we decided to hire one of my uncle's friends. He was a nice guy, but he was working for us off the clock from his other job, so they could only work on Friday nights - with a case of beer.

Let me just tell you I never want to see my uncle peeing on my dumpster ever again.

[sstabeler]

I think can see where this is going...

[rose_metal_nz]

Omg these cliffhangers & plot twists are killing me!
Seriously tho, I am starting to get clouds of rage just READING about what you went thru. I actually keep crossing my fingers that you prevailed & won, this is like reading a good action book
Updates please! *smiles sweetly*

[ApolloSZ]

Updates please! *smiles sweetly*

Uh oh... the Kiwi flailing has been replaced by kiwi smiling. RUN Kanalah. Wait.. no.. POST Kanalah!

*Smiles sweetly too* (I am actually in the same boat as Rose Metal there, getting angry at these...... people.... )

[Jay 2K Winger]

(flails)

WUMMAAAAANNNNN

POST MOAR

[Kanalah]

Part Nineteen.

So after that I finally had a backroom, plus they made sure my outlets on both sides of the wall were flush. Now it was up to me and hubs to paint. While I was painting chalkboard paint in the bathroom (I told you my store was awesome!) I fell off the ladder and hurt my ankle. While I was painting the walls blue, I grabbed an outlet to make sure I didn't get paint on it and shocked myself. We glued up the slatwall (to hang shelves on) and waited for our carpet to get in stock (again).

Meanwhile more inventory came in, so I was in the backroom checking it when a guy who was driving down the alley parked his car and walked in my back door. I had never seen this guy before and was really nervous, turns out he was the building owner and was checking in on everyone. It was all very weird, but he seemed to be a nice older gentleman. Little did I know what kind of trouble I was in for.

[eltf177]

Rats, another cliffhanger! This is evil, I tells you, E-V-I-L!!!

[Mytical]

I can already see the trouble ahead..they are already going back on their promises..never ever ever bodes well.

[Jay 2K Winger]

I have had it with these [censored] cliffhangers in this [censored] thread!

WUMMAAAAAAANNNNNNN! *shakes fist*

[Kanalah]

Part Twenty

Carpet guys came in, so now I can move my front counter and shelves in and finally decide where I want to put everything. We decided to host a little after hours party to smooth things over with the other shop owners in the center. We invited everyone and bought snacks and drinks. Everyone really loved it, and naive me thought that we all would be buddies and get along great.

After the party we moved everything out on the floor where we were going to put it on the walls to get an idea of how much space everything would take up. Hubs and I were in the middle of this when a young couple walked in and started browsing! They were completely oblivious that the store wasn't even remotely ready yet.

Hubs is very much a computer geek, and he hated the old paper carbon copy tickets the bordello used. Because he was in charge (sort of) of this store, he wanted an awesome computer-run system. We had a barcode scanner and automatic inventory updates. It was really cool - the downside was that it took about 5 minutes to input one new item. So it took me about a week to get everything scanned into the database. Also it was expensive and required us to have a DSL connection at the store.

Do you know that if you're buying a service for a business it costs 2-4 times as much as a residential service? I didn't.

[Teefies2]

I have enjoyed reading this thread, although I think what all you went through bites the big one.

What no one else has mentioned and the OP only touched on very very briefly, is why the heck did your family not help all this time you were living in your car?? I don't care how much I dislike some of my relatives, I would try to help them to get them out of living in a car, for what appears to be months, if not years.

The stupid, it burns

[Kanalah]

They actually knew that hubs was losing his job, and that we were going to be throwing out/donating over half of our stuff and putting the rest in storage.

We actually gave my uncle our new fridge, and my grandparents our washer and dryer.

We didn't want to move back in with my mom (she didn't offer) because her house is hoarded and full of cats. My grandparents did let us shower and watch tv at her house, but we'd sleep in the driveway. We were homeless for 2 years and decided to heck with it, we're going to get into hub's retirement money.

Thinking about it, hubs and I think they wanted to teach us a lesson, since apparently we think we're better then them.