She's going home tomorrow. Whatever shall we do? She's been keeping Dad occupied at the house while the rest of us have been down selling trees. Everything is running smoothly. Once Dede is gone Dad will have nothing better to do than come down to the sales shed and make us crazy.
Tonight Dede told me Dad wants to be trained on how to do credit card transactions. We didn't get a phone-connected credit card machine this year because B of A doesn't have a record of us returning the machine we had last year (I mailed it back to them myself). No problem, we've just been telling customers we don't take credit cards. We did get a manual machine but we have to call to get every transaction authorized. That means calling an 800 number, entering a 15 digit merchant number, entering the card number, the expiration date, the date of the sale and the amount. Dad can't even dial a 7 digit phone number if it isn't already familiar to him.
He wants to have flocking available. We already decided we weren't going to offer flocking this year. We're going to flock one tree for his friend at the bank but that's it. After that, Drew is going to "break" the flocking machine.
We've knocked the prices way down this year. Dad is sometimes ok with that, sometimes waaaay not ok. This could be a fiasco with the customers and the cutters. I know Lindsay and Paige aren't going to want to put up with him messing with the prices. When he gets going he can be very mean. The girls won't deal with it, they'll leave. We've warned the cutters about him but they have no idea how nasty he can get.
His AD has gotten worse. Tonight on the way to dinner he couldn't grasp what we were trying to explain to him. He was getting flustered, on the verge of anger. Dede and Jim have told me about some of the conversations they've had with him recently. He really is getting more and more out of whack.
We're all working very hard selling these money-losing Christmas trees. After Dede leaves we'll be dealing with Dad and trying to head off disaster over and over throughout the day. I should try to be optimistic.
But I know it's going to suck.
7 comments:
On the verge of anger is a lot better than full on anger.
Optimism.
snjtl: the condition of being jilted and in a snit about it.
Maybe look at it as a real-life roller coaster. Exciting, scary, sometimes smooth and thrilling.
Or something...
otdjggb - a clenched-teeth roller-coaster utterance
Forgiveness...
Or something...
Forgiveness, of course. What other way is there? But it's the moment by moment stuff that can be very hard to deal with, especially for the kids. Trying to keep Dad from blowing up in front of customers, trying to keep our own sanity when he wants to change policies we put into place during our family meetings (which he doesn't remember), putting in long hours, my aching back, Drew's aching foot. It's a lot to deal with, not to mention the usual pressures of the Christmas season.
This morning he called and bitched about not being open at 10. He said someone had been up to his house this morning wanting to get a tree. He opening early is what the public is used to. I told him that during the week we open at 2 and on the weekends 10. He said, " Well, someone has to tell me these things!" Sigh. He backed off after a while.
Then the dumpster guy called and said his driver was down at the gate. I zoomed down there (in my nightgown) and opened it up for him. While he was moving the dumpster the guy who talked to Dad this morning drove up. I didn't have the cash drawer with me but the guy wrote a check so it wasn't a problem. So, I sold a tree this morning in my pajamas.
I called Dad after I got back up here and told him about it. I told him I'm going to make a sign stating our hours. If someone wants to get a tree before we're open I told him to call me and I'd take care of it. But we don't need to open earlier just for the occasional early customer. He's fine with that.
This real life roller coaster has been going on for the last, what, 4 years? What I'd like right now is a canoe on the Russian River in late summer.
tontydxf- kinda like hunky dory
What led your father to founding a Christmas tree farm, anyway? You guys lived there awhile, I remember, before he planted trees.
prjav--a sharp hooked instrument for grappling with tree trunks
Don't forget, "Tim" is "legadillo"--I'm just too lazy to re-register.
cmbtk--a short second blog entry with a tad more info
When we first bought this place Dad did some research into what would be the best agricultural use for the land. He actually was looking into maybe starting a shrimp farm here. He talked to one of our friends who was an ag professor at UCR and he suggested growing Christmas trees.
Damn it all to hell! I banged my little toe on the vacuum cleaner. I popped it back in but it hurts like a mo-fo right now. El Throb-o.
Dad and Drew got into a big one tonight. I don't know what it was about but Drew was trying to disengage and Dad was following him trying to keep the fight going. That's just the way it is. Sooner or later one of us will set him off. Dad stayed away most of the day but he wandered down at dusk. We got a rush of customers at the end and the Yokleys were here to pick up Cody so there were a lot of people around. Seems like a good time for a fight, eh?
We had one really drunk guy show up with his girlfriend. He was a very friendly drunk. Gave Drew a hug for tying his tree to his car. He was pretty funny.
ludslicd- Lud sliced the ham and then he made a sandwich.
Good old Lud. Yeah, I keep wishing for things to be _less_ weird rather than _more_.
nyvbak - wish to return to naivete.
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