07/24/2026
After my July 4th post, many of you seemed to enjoy hearing about the less glamorous side of owning a small business, so I thought I'd share some trials and tribulations from the last few days.
If people ask what my role is at the store, I usually respond with "head janitor". And honestly, that's the truth.. There aren't many of my regular customers who haven't seen me with Windex and newspaper in hand, repeatedly going after fingerprinted glass and the classic mark that says "my hands are full so I'll bury my sunscreen lathered shoulder into the door to open it". You are mopping spilled juices, sweeping up dog hair, picking up cigarette butts in the parking lot, and watering the plants.. These are near daily occurrences..
This week had a little something extra.
I met the plumber at 6am, twenty minutes ahead of my usual arrival, because the hand wash sink needed replacing due to a broken handle. By the time the doors open at 7am the sink is fully replaced.
The gas dock opens at 9am but due to pent up demand from the recent fall-like weather, people were calling much earlier, and you want to help them get their lake day started. It's 8am and I head down to fill them up. As I attempt to take payment, the wireless credit card machine fails to connect. I run up to the store, process the transaction at the main computer inside and go back to the dock to hand off the receipt. By the time I untie their boat there is already another boat waiting to be filled, so I repeat the exact same process all over again.
Over the next 11 hours, I spent 90 minutes over 3 different calls, getting the back-up machine setup, software updated, only to realize that our AT&T service has noticeably diminished over the last few weeks and generally stinks overall . So now we have two newer wireless machines that fail to work consistently at the dock.
Around 2pm, a large shipment of hats arrives that we have been waiting for. As I am organizing the 150+ hats, we receive 3 separate orders, back to back. In total, there are 37 sandwiches immediately on the board. Paris calls me over to the kitchen, as we were down our most veteraned employee, who was attending a funeral. We get the sandwiches out the door in a timely fashion and I continue with my day.
As I am filling the mop bucket at the end of the day, I notice the water pressure is lower than normal, so I go down to the basement to turn off the system and replace the filters. In transit, my youngest/newest employee grabs my attention to inform me that he saw a "rodent" in the dumpster while taking out the trash. "Is it a mouse? A rat? A woodchuck?".."I think its a woodchuck," he replies. So I abandon the basement and head to the parking lot. Sure enough, a full grown raccoon is rummaging around the trash. I jog down to the area below the taproom where we keep hand tools and grab a metal rake. After several attempts, I am finally working the vermin up the side of the smelly metal box. As it hisses and snarls at me, I am able to fling the trash panda into the lawn, and it runs off into the brush.
I return to the basement and finish my filter project. By the time I close up it is 7:15p.. I wash up, throw on a collared shirt, and head to Glenwood Club for the 8p dinner bell. Home, shower, sleep, and prepare to do it all over again.
My morning alarm goes off at 5:46a, but I am usually up long before that.
It's time to make the donuts (sticky buns).
All that was missing was Sonny and Cher singing "I Got You Babe."
This is my Groundhog Day.
Please stop by this weekend and buy some food from my friends. Friday/Saturday 4-7pm.
-Seth
