Boy howdy. How is it possible it's not Friday already? I'm sure it has to be Friday already, as this week has already gone on at least two and a half months.
So, the nasty flu that Z had last week has decimated my staff... well really, more than decimated. Decimation is only one in ten. 5 of my 10 employees have had it in the last 10 days. You can imagine the chaos this has made for the counter schedule, not to mention all the back room work that needs doing. At the moment we are treading water, as those that got it first are able to cover for those that were part of the second wave. The third wave is starting today, with L being the first of its victims. We'll see how we get though the weekend. (I've heard reports from all over the city of classrooms half empty and offices like ghost towns. Apparently the flu hit late and hard in Seattle this year. Even the flu shot isn't helping. L had one of those and thought he was safe, until this morning.)
On top of viral warfare, we've had water trouble. See, there is one mission critical machine in the store, and it's not even the cash register. We can manage without the cash register because 70% of our sales don't have sales tax. We could do it with a calculator. No, the mission critical machine is the on demand hot water dispenser, the one we use to make upwards of a hundred cups of tea a day. Now, I knew we were over taxing this poor machine. It was keeping up with us okay before the move, but then we moved it and asked it to do 3 times the work. Tuesday it turned on, and then off again, making no water. We saw the repair guy twice that day. Wednesday he was back hoping he had the right part. Apparently not. Today he was in with a new computer board to replace what was there. By the time he arrived (3 hours after his estimate on the phone), I was already gone home to take care of L. I heard a lovely story of him plugging the machine in and there being a "very loud pop noise, like a gun going off", which served to scare the crap out of everyone in the store, but did not produce the magic hot water.
So you can imagine, it's been a fun week. We luckily have two of these machines, and it's only the one set at the "full boil" temperature that's gone. We still have the one set at "green tea" making temp working. Thus we've been able to scrape by with 3 electric kettles and a fanatical devotion to making sure they are always full and hot. It's been an adventure though. Yesterday I got to drive literally all over town to restaurant supply stores to see if anyone had the right replacement machine for us. See, we need a larger machine than the one we have, and nobody I talked to has even heard of anyone else coming close to taxing out the size machine we have, so many of them don't even know if their suppliers make a larger capacity machine. I got a ton of "I'll get back to you", which none of them have done thus far.
I was at the very last place I knew to look to see if someone could get me a larger water dispenser (we have a 5 gallon machine, giving up to 12 gallons an hour of hot water. We need at least a 10 gallon machine that gives twice that.), explaining to the 4th person in the last 3 hours what it was I was looking for. As I attempted to use my words, very small versions of my words, the customer standing next to me at the counter interrupted. He was very apologetic but was I looking for "a on demand hot water machine?" I agreed that I was. As it turns out, he's the NW Region sales rep for the competitor company for the company we've been using for these machines. They make 5 & 10 as well as a 14 gallon machines. He wasn't trying to sell one to me, but would be more than happy to loan me a 5 gallon machine to get though the weekend. See, he's been trying everywhere to get someone who can give him a real estimate on the capacity for their 5 gallon machine, and he's got the demo sitting on his desk. If we'd do him the favor of using it over the weekend as sort of a field test, he'd been very happy to loan it to us.
It was great. Even if it was a lie, which I don't think it was, it was great. I was more than happy to have him drop it by today, which he did about 20 minutes after "the very loud pop" that signaled the final death of our old machine. I suspect he'd be happy to have us use it for a couple of days to a couple of weeks while I identify, order, and have delivered the machine I need to replace our dead one. The $1500 it's going to cost to buy replacement machine is actually less painful that doing without on-demand hot water. Now I have a sales rep that would very much like to make a sale, who has shown himself to be helpful and knowledgeable. You can imagine what my next week is going to be like, looking at shiny brochures and spending money I don't feel like we have, and being happy while doing it. So that's the question.... 10 or 14 gallons? What'd ya think? :)
Now that I've had my 4th call from the store since I left there 2 hours ago, I am going to go finish baking cookies for the feverish and sneezing L (thank you
mistress_gaelan for the amazing trick of freezing dough. Fresh cookies, no mess, no waiting!) and then have some wonderful British Ginger Jam on toast with tea (Yah!
misthawk for sending me the coveted and extremely hard to get ginger jam!). With any luck we'll have a calm relaxing weekend with L's mom over for a short visit and no store drama to speak of, and then we'll spend next week calmly getting Z though finals. Well, a girl can hope, can't she?