Into the Fox's Den

“The regulars”.  That group of people who frequent a business time and again.  Be it on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, they are the faces you can expect to see over and over again.  A large number of the customers a business sees are one-timers, or people who may come back, but only irregularly or infrequently.  But the regulars are those who come often enough that you get to know their faces, learn their names.

The regulars are the ones who become your friends.

Taverns are quite good at attracting regulars.  And it’s getting to know these special customers, watching them change and develop as people as time goes on, and knowing that you provided a service to help make those lives some tiniest bit better; that may be the single thing that draws me to the business.  I’ve had some pretty strong friendships develop over the years with some of these people.

But, of course, even the most regular of regulars sometimes leave.  Maybe never to return, maybe someday will come back.  But their regular presence is lost.  So a tavern always needs at least some small trickle of new customers who become frequent repeat clients.  Not just new customers; new regulars.

The challenge is attracting new regulars.

The primary reason this is a challenge is the same challenge for bringing new people into any social group.  Those customers who already are regulars all know each other.  They are comfortable around each other and know they will be forgiven when they act a bit off-putting.  They know the others will get the in-jokes they tell.  They are a clique; a family.  They all know and protect each other.  And the barrier to entry for a newcomer can easily feel very difficult to overcome.

For example, maybe one quirky personality is acting out particularly quirky.  Maybe this is someone being very angry at that moment, or just acting particularly strange, or any way that may seem off-putting to others.  The other regulars all know the person and know that the rage will pass, or that they’re harmless, or that they mean well.  These people are happily accepted by the rest of the crowd for who they are in full and not judged entirely on the off way they may be acting at one specific time.

But for a newcomer trying to become a regular, this can become their only impression.  It might make them feel the group is not right for them.  Or perhaps they come in at a bad time when there are few friendly faces there to make them feel that sense of community.  There are are myriad of reasons why someone may consider and then decide against returning on that regular basis due to feeling like it’s just not right for them.

The fate of the new blood is made or broken in first impressions.

As the bartender, in some ways I am the first, primary impression a newcomer gets about the regular community.  As such I feel I have a responsibility to try and cater to them, try and draw them in and make their first impression as good as possible.  Not to openly make the place out to be something it’s not, but do try and make them see why it is a nice place to come back to.

As is true for most businesses, a good fraction of the newcomers don’t come back for second impressions.  (Again, here I’m talking about new potential regulars, not just any random customer.)  But as of late we’ve been starting to get a small few who seem to stick around.  New faces to add to the group.  New personalities to meld into the zeitgeist.  This is the way in which the tavern as a social construct evolves.

Because it is the regulars who define the community.

Everybody has secrets, and the more someone claims otherwise, the more they’re actually hiding.  There’s always something about us that we don’t want someone else to know.  Sometimes it’s part of the job (people who work for the CIA or government defense contractors, for instance).  Sometimes it’s something you don’t  want to tell your parents (like that you were actually the one who broke your mother’s prized knick knacks).  Regardless, we all have things that we hide from each other.

Secrets themselves aren’t bad per se.  They’re normal.  Not everyone needs to know everything about who you are and what you do.  Part of the issue is the motivation for why you keep a particular secret.  Is it to hide something for fear of negative reprisal?  Or is it to protect someone from knowledge that can hurt them?  For some secrets, it’s both.  But what do you do when the secret starts making itself known without your consent?

There seems to always be two obvious options at that point.  1) Confess the truth.  Once someone is getting hints anyway, just admit it and hope that honesty wins you some amnesty from the potential repercussions.  2) Lie about it.  Make something up to explain things that convinces them away from the real truth.  The really tough times in life come when neither of these options are good.

As I said above, sometimes keeping someone in the dark about something is for their own good.  Ignorance can not only be bliss, but ignorance also means you’re uninvolved.  And when involvement with the truth is a dangerous thing, why is it bad to want to shelter someone from that danger?  In these instances, confessing the truth may actually end up causing them more harm.  But what if the person is someone you respect too much to want to lie to them?  And they’re too insistent to just accept not knowing once they are aware that there is more going on than meets the eye?

Yes, I know this is all incredibly vague.  This is intentional because some personal issues are best not having their details publicly discussed.  Especially when the issue is still ongoing.  So I’m afraid my motivation for bringing this up will have to be just another little secret.  But, I’ll throw a hypothetical out here to consider.

Let’s say you’re an undercover spy.  You develop your secret life, meet friends, and maybe even have a family in this undercover world.  If you told these people close to you the truth, then your enemies could use them as targets to get information about you.  They are safe from your enemies only as long as they are ignorant and thus have no information to offer them.  But what if they start realizing that there is something significant you’re not telling them?  Say government agents are coming around asking about you.  Someone is seen sabotaging your car, perhaps.

What do you do?  Do you tell them the truth?  This risks getting them involved and the danger therein.  It risks you getting caught if they aren’t as loyal as you had hoped and turn you in.  And it risks loosing those closest to you who might not want to be associated with a spy.  Do you lie to them?  How to you look those you are closest to in the eye, tell them a bold-faced lie, and still both expect them to respect you and feel you are worthy of it?  Even if you would feel comfortable lying to your friends, what if the person was a close lover?

When they don’t know anything is going on in the first place, you don’t have to lie.  You simply don’t say anything.  Omitting the truth is not a lie.  But if they do know something is going on, but just don’t know what, then what do you do?

I know some of the people who read this work in fields where there jobs require secrets (be they national security or just trade secrets).  I’m curious how they or anyone else would handle such a situation.  Have you even previously considered such an issue?  What do you do when they’re safer not knowing, but you don’t feel you can lie to them?  And what if you also fear they would abandon you if they knew the truth?

Hello.  My name is Vulpecula, and I’m a bartender.  This is how most people know me.  But while tending the Foxtail Tavern may be my favorite part of running my business, it is not the majority.  People ask how my prices can be so low, and I try to explain that it’s because the rest of my business is profitable enough to make up the loss.  And I’d rather have more customers than more profit.  Afterall, what good is the money without the friends to enjoy spending the time with?

The truth is that I rank myself as just as much of a businessman and company leader as Mr. Mazekais or Mr. Rubin.  Though, personally, I’d rather be grouped with the former than the latter.  Nothing personal against Ian, I just don’t agree with his motives.  Maze seems to be in it because he loves his work and his company.  I can identify with these.  Ian seems to be in it for the money and power.  Money is needed to run a business, sure, but it’s a tool, not a goal.

I’m in it to serve my clients and use the revenues to employ more people and reinvest in the community.   Maybe it’s just arrogance to think so, but I personally believe that my employees and their families and everyone in the community is better off because of my business.  Helping clients, helping employees, helping the community.  Doing what I can to make the world that little bit better for others.  That’s what I’m in it for; not my own personal gain.

Now, of course, people like to ask just what it is my businesses do besides that tavern.  And people seem to always be suspicious of altruists.  Thus people often inquire as to just what the rest of my business is and just how profitable it is.  And they unfortunately also make all sorts of innuendos and rumors that what I do might not be entirely on the up and up.  I frown at these people as a general rule.

The unfortunate truth is that other than the tavern, my businesses are pretty mundane and boring.  The primary business is mostly a logistical services company.  For example, someone wants to ship some stuff from point A to point B.  They might need trucks, planes, or boats.  They might need all sorts of things like customs papers and other documents filed.  Basically they call me and arrange for us to pick up their.. whatever they might need to send around.  And we get it there.  We handle all of the paperwork and documents and red tape and such.

So what makes my company different from, say, UPS?  Well we offer better and more personal customer service, mainly.  We take care of more of the paperwork than they do, and leave less for the client to deal with.  We also work on a more private level for clients who want to keep their shipments more confidential.  I’ve worked with both private and governmental clients.  And, of course, we charge extra for the extra service.   But we market to the clientele who wants to pay more for it.  I’m neither trying to nor want to try to compete with someone like UPS for general shipping for everyone.

The job is basically moving boxes and crates around and dealing with bureaucratic red tape.  Thrilling, I assure you.

The next largest chunk is probably the accounting division.  Oh yeah, I can hear your excitement already.  Basically other private firms hire us to do their accounting for them.  Though, again, we specialize in services for the sort of clients who want to draw less attention to themselves and those who need more creative accounting solutions than most firms offer.  We provide these services.  And of course, we charge that bit extra for it.

But it’s still accounting.  And yes, it’s every bit as exciting as the stereotypes suggest.

Then there’s the legal processing division.  This is not a law firm.  It’s more paralegals, notaries, and law clerk types.  Basically it specializes in creating and processing and filing all kinds of legal documents for just about anything.  Both the logistics and accounting divisions work with them, but this group also does more than just the work associated with those other two.  Basically any sort of legal filings short of court briefs that you need for about anything, they’ll help you with.

This is not Law & Order stuff.  This is not even Court TV stuff.   It’s more like filing forms with the DMV or the IRS or other such agencies for 8 hours a day every day.  I can tell you’re banging the door down to try and get hired.

Another aspect is insurance, though where the above three are larger national and international scale enterprises, this is just local.  Basically I write insurance policies to local businesses to protect them from worrying about things like break-ins, thefts, arsons, etc.  This possibly manages to be even less interesting than accounting, actually.  This is also a side of the business that I’ve been looking to contract out and stop having to deal with it directly.

This is actually much changed from the business I inherited from my father.  These divisions were all there in some form, but much smaller.  I grew these to be far larger in scale and far better than the entire enterprise I originally took charge of.  He favored other areas of business that were riskier and in some cases less savory.  His personal favorite was the divisions that dealt with arms trading.  That, and several others, I have either sold off or closed down over the years as I reshaped the family business to one which I felt was much stronger and much more sustainable.

So where the hell does a local bar fit into all of this?  Well the above are just the main aspects.  My father also collected many smaller businesses as well.  The largest of these is a small chain of jewelry stores.  But most are little single-location local places.  In most cases these were mom-and-pop family businesses that hit hard times.  My father bought them up cheap.  He then let the original family continue running it, but giving them help and guidance to make it work.

Today this hodge-podge of various small companies in all kinds of industries still totals a significant portion of the overall enterprise, but these are almost entirely run locally and they just keep me and my staff informed how things are going, so I don’t have much direct involvement in them.  But there was one that I did take a personal interest in.

There was a family that owned a bar, but the family member who actually ran it died.  Although they tried to keep it going, it failed mainly because no one else in that family really wanted it or cared about it.  So when my father bought it, they just washed their hands of it instead of continuing to run it.  I was only barely old enough to go into a bar at the time, but my father put me in charge of it as a place to groom me to lead and run a business.  Start small.

Today I’m now in charge of the entire enterprise, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for that little tavern I started at.  And even though I could more than easily hire someone else to run it, I don’t.  Because I like running my little bar myself.  It’s my own personal pet-project in it all.  And just like my customers, it’s where I go to relax and enjoy myself and be surrounded by friends.

Because sometimes I too just want go where everybody knows my name.

“Why are their so many songs about rainbows…”  I’ll save you from the full lyrics, though it’s a song I’ve found in my head of late.

It rained today.  Well… it very lightly sprinkled, really, but it’s still unusual to get even that much this time of year.  It wasn’t even overcast enough to completely keep the sun away.  But it did result in offering one of the most brilliant rainbows I’d ever seen.  A full arc across the sky from horizon to horizon.  Extremely bright and vivid in some parts.  And most of a faint second bow arcing outside of the main one.

I’m not sure what it is about rainbows that can be so captivatingly beautiful.  Afterall, as they say, “Rainbows are visions, but only illusions, and rainbows have nothing to hide.”  But something about this one struck a chord with me, and it wasn’t the only thing to do so today.

It was also just one part of one of the more beautiful days I’d had in some time.  A quiet, special sort of day where the world was enjoyed for its simpler beauties.  A rainbow, a rose, a sunset, and a very dear friend to enjoy them with.

This wasn’t the first time that the two of us had gone to the public rose garden, but this time seemed even more wonderful than the first.  Everything was in bloom.  The aroma of the flowers was almost overwhelming, but in a good way.  The little droplets of water left on the petals by the brief fall of rain only seemed to heighten their beauty and help to enhance the perfumed scent in the air.

The garden is terraced, looking out towards the distant hills.  Surrounded by every variety and color of rose you could think of, we watched as the sky fought to prove its superiority of hue.  First it drew out the rainbow to dazzle us.  But in the end it was not satisfied with this alone.  A little later in the evening, the clouds mostly parted as the sun bowed itself low before us.

As it grew dimmer, it gave it’s radiance to all the sky around it.  A single all-consuming spectrum of colors filled all the air above us, from deepening blues in the east, to a reddened west that did its best to mock the flowers at our feet.  The remaining clouds only served to heighten the image, holding onto that light and making new shades and forms to attract our vision.

Poets posses a talent which I am always in awe of, but never myself able to match.  They find words to convey feelings and images in ways that pierce straight to your soul.  I doubt that even the greatest among them could capture the true wonder of the day.  No words could describe the purest and simplest beauty that lay above me, at my feet, and at my side.

And as the sun kissed the distant hills, bringing together the beauty of the sky and earth, I similarly beheld the beauty in my arms.

Apparently FoxBot was pretty serious about this thing.  Looking around, it seems he’s got a few others pushed into this, too, though I’m not entirely sure how.  Personally I thought the conversation about how I was such a disappointing “father” and that he’s “just trying to help [me] make something out of [my] life” and he’s “trying to give [me] the opportunities [he] never had” was a bit odd and backwards.  But how do you argue with a nearly omnipotent entity with seemingly infinite god-like powers and the ability to synthesize an unlimited number tentacles out of thin air?

The fact I’m here means, of course, that I don’t know either.

But the real issue, of course, is trying to figure out what it is he expects me to say.  Anything I say here is immediately put out for all the world to view and see.  All my customers, my employees, the local townsfolk, governmental agencies, and really anyone and everyone else.  FoxBot said to treat it like a journal, but part of the point of a diary is that no one else sees it.  That purpose is really sort of defeated from the start here.

When you run an operation for which the primary function of all aspects is customer service, you already put a lot of yourself out there for people to see.  But as any marketer will tell you, you have to be very careful what you put out there.  Everything you say can and will be used against you not just in a court of law, but also the court of public opinion and the court of whether or not people want to to give you their business.  I would think CEOs would generally be extremely cautious about getting involved with things like FaceBook, MySpace, and public journals for this very reason.  But they don’t have frighteningly-powerful non-corporeal entities driven by self-aggrandizing religious delusions pushing them into it.

But it’s more than just not wanting to inadvertently say something that could jeopardize the business.  There’s also an issue of privacy here.  I’m personally of the belief that much of what I do during my days and nights is not really any of most peoples’ business.  If they need to know about it, they already do know.  If they want to know about it they can ask and I’ll decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not to answer them.  But anything I say here is thrown to for all to see and preserved for posterity forever just waiting to come back and haunt me when I least expect it.

What do I do in my day?  I run a business and enjoy my personal life.  The various details of my business are either uninteresting, trade secrets, otherwise classified, or the sorts of things that I just plain don’t want to talk about with others.  The details of my personal life are just that: personal.  What I do with who when I’m not on the clock, as it were, is between me and them.  I’m mostly loath to talk about such things in general, and certainly not going to do so without them approving of it first.

So I’m not sure, really, what FoxBot expects to get out of me here.  I’ll try to give him what I can (since he doesn’t really offer me the option not to do it at all), but we’ll see what that ever really amounts to.