It was going to be a gorgeous day. I had just showered after a 22 mile bike ride and I was now walking to work. The sun was shining, spring was in the air, I had just opened a second shop nothing could be better this morning.
I did my cursory walk around the building just to make sure the night had not brought any surprises and that I still had four walls. Getting to store early was my favorite time. I was the only one there, alone with the store I created. Rows of bikes, accessories, tools.... The calm before the storm.
I took a look around and got right to work reviewing the service sheets for the repairs. I had three mechanics coming in and wanted to make sure everyone was clear on what needed to get done. Then I started in on the paperwork. Two bicycle stores with 16 employees produces a lot of paperwork. I had a bookkeeper and part time assistant coming to help. The assistant was a young woman my age. She was really smart. Had a great education. Was way over qualified but seemed to like the work, at least for the moment. She was also really attractive and had a great personality.
I was trying to keep a handle on the growth of the stores and surrounding myself with good people was helping tremendously.
Obviously there were a lot of technical issues that needed to be kept on top of, but a large part of my job was simply pressing the flesh with the people in the neighborhood, potential customers. Because of this I worked from a stool overlooking the store and repair area this way I could be up greeting people in a moments notice.
As the morning progressed I was getting work done, customers were coming in with bikes for repairs. A few were looking at purchasing but most of the sales usually came in the afternoon / evening. I was working on the stool jumping up now and then. Our accounting assistant, Mary was helping, pulling files, checking orders etc... She was good company as we would chat about this and that as we worked. My work spot was at the end of a long counter near the cash register. Under the counter in this area we had a number of file cabinets. Mary would occasionally need to either grab a file or file something from here. One of the reasons we were able to speak so easily was because of our close proximity.