"What's the matter, Dan?"
From his seat on the couch, Dan looked over at his mother who had just come in the house. They were alone since Diana was at some after school function and his father was still at work. Dan said, "I really miss having Tom around."
"I understand," his mother said. She had been wondering how long it would be before he started feeling lonely again.
The strange thing was that Dan knew she understood exactly how he was feeling. She knew that Tom had been his first and only friend in school. They had spent a lot of time together over the years. Sounding very sad, he said, "I miss Alison."
"I bet you do," his mother said with a grin. Dan had spent more that a few nights away from home over the summer. While she wasn't one to pry, she knew that he had spent those nights with Alison fully aware that he wasn't sleeping in their guest room. She said, "She was a very nice young woman."
"Yes," Dan said. He had been exchanging e-mail with her and learned today that she wouldn't be home until four days before Christmas. Tom would be home about the same time.
"There aren't many young women like her," his mother said. She had been kind of sad when Alison had headed off to school. She had enjoyed exchanging the light banter with her and had appreciated how happy she had made Dan.
"You can say that again," Dan said. He missed her sense of fun and honest sexuality.
"So what is really bothering you?" his mother asked.
"I'm lonely. I just can't seem to connect with the folks at school or work," Dan said. His classmates were dedicated students going for college degrees. He was there after practical knowledge. They viewed the classes as an exercise in learning. At work, the situation was similar. He was there to learn the business and they were there to earn a living. The fact was that it wasn't much of a living. It seemed to him that the waitresses' lives were complicated with bills, kids, and bad boyfriends.
His mother didn't know what to say to cheer him up that wouldn't sound trite. She went with trite and said, "Things will work out."
"Wishing doesn't make it so," Dan said. He was trying to figure out some way to get things to work out.
Dan walked into the back door of the restaurant ready to start his shift. After putting on the over shirt that was part of his job uniform, he went out to check the bathroom. It was clean. After washing his hands, he bent to the task of busing tables.
Dan moved through the restaurant with ease. He avoided bumping into the waitresses as they rushed from table to table. Tables were cleared as soon as they were vacated. Waters, iced teas, and coffees remained filled without customers having to flag their waitress down. Plates were delivered to the cooks before they ran out of them.
Even as busy as he was, he managed to have time to watch what others were doing. He'd spend a few minutes every hour watching the cooks at work. It amazed him how they managed to cook so many dishes for several tables at a time. The truly amazing thing was that all of the dishes for a table were completed at about the same time. The movements of the cooks were quick and efficient. The ingredients were set out to be right at hand.
Each waitress had her own style. Mary was a slight flirt and would charm the men at the table in the hopes of increasing her tips. Vicki was more serious, but would occasionally laugh and joke with customers. Cathy always had a smile and talked in a very friendly tone of voice, but it felt false for some reason that Dan never understood. Sue was a sad woman who took orders and delivered food with a ruthless efficiency. Kim was a gossip and would often spend a lot of time at the tables talking to the customers. Sandy, who always worked the counter, was an elderly woman who was all business and said little except how much her feet hurt.
There were three cooks who worked on the night shifts although only two of them were ever at work at the same time. Jimmy was an old black man who had worked most of his life as a short order cook and expected to die as one. Tim was a young man who had dreams of making it to a culinary institute and becoming a chef. Trent was just drifting through life knowing that his skills as a cook would allow him to earn money when he needed it. He had been at the restaurant for five months and was thinking of moving on to a warmer climate.
Dan wasn't the only busboy who worked nights. Manuel was the other busboy. He was also a part time dish washer who filled in for Jose, the full time dish washer, on the nights he was off. Manuel spoke a little English. Jose spoke no English. For the most part, Manuel and Jose didn't talk much except during their breaks.
Riding herd over the staff was Rob Rendell. He worked the cash register and seated guests when it was busy. He walked around and talked with customers making sure that their meals met their expectations. When a waitress was having a bad night, he'd send her home and help out with a few tables. Nothing went on in that place that Rob didn't notice.
Although Dan didn't realize it, everyone there liked him. The waitresses tipped him well for his help. Their tips were usually a little better the nights that he worked with them. Manuel and Jose appreciated that when things got busy for them, that Dan would take a little time to help them out. The cooks could depend upon him to fetch more ingredients from the cooler when they discovered that they needed them. Rob took the time every night to talk with Dan about managing a restaurant. Some nights it was about inventory management. As manager over the slow shift, it was his job to go over the inventory and identify what needed to be ordered.
Dan was busing tables when Kim Parker entered the restaurant on the arm of the guy she was dating. Rob seated the pair in Sue's section. The first Dan knew of it was when he heard her laughing. As he turned to face her, she extended her forefinger and her thumb at right angles. Putting them to her forehead, she shouted, "Loser! I knew you wouldn't amount to anything! God, a busboy!"
For the first time in his life, her taunts had no effect on Dan. More significantly, her taunts had the opposite reaction from others in the restaurant than what had occurred in high school. The people at the restaurant didn't look at him with disgust or laugh at him. They looked at her with disdain for interrupting their meals with her rude behavior.
As she spewed additional nasty comments in his direction, he shook his head wondering why she wasn't away at college. He went on with his job and continued removing the filled dish tray from the service station to take it to the back of the restaurant. A second later, he heard Kim shout, "You bitch! You spilled that water on me on purpose!"
Dan turned to find Sue standing toe to toe with Kim. Both women looked furious. Rob had headed over to Kim as soon as she had started bad mouthing Dan, but Sue had beat him there. After all, it was her table and she was expected to be on top of things there. Now he had to deal with two very angry women rather than one very rude woman.
Pointing to the back of the restaurant, Rob said, "Sue! Get in the back. I'll talk to you in a minute."
Kim gave Sue a smug smile and said, "I'm going to insist he fires you."
Sue snarled at Kim and said, "Bitch."
Rob pointed to the back of the restaurant and said, "Go. Now."
"That's it, cunt. Might as well pack up your shit because you're history," Kim said to Sue's retreating back.
Rob turned to face Kim. In a very soft voice, he said, "Get out of here. No one treats my staff like that."
"That bitch poured a glass of water on me," Kim said getting furious at Rob.
"That's not what I'm talking about. You came in here and insulted one of my employees. That was totally uncalled for. Now please leave," Rob said in a firm voice that suggested any arguments would fall on deaf ears.
Kim turned to the young man with her and said, "Frank, let's get out of here."
The pair headed towards the door. When they reached the door, Kim turned and shouted, "You're all a bunch of fuck heads for sticking up for a loser like Dan Parker."
Dan stared at Kim shaking his head. When she had finally left, he carried the bin to the back. He passed Rob who was watching to door in case she returned. Once he reached the back room, Dan said, "Sue, thank you for sticking up for me, but you didn't need to do that. She is a nobody and her words don't mean anything."
Turning her back to him, Sue said, "You're the only nice guy I've ever met. She shouldn't have talked about you like that."
"Thank you, Sue. I do appreciate you standing up for me," Dan said placing the bin at the dishwasher for Manuel.
Sandy walked through the back and said, "That woman is a real bitch. Good for you, Sue. I would have used hot coffee."
Rob came in and looked at Sue. Everyone else fled the backroom not wanting to watch what happened. Shaking his head, he said, "Sue, what am I going to do with you?"
"Is she gone?" Sue asked glancing over at Rob with an angry expression on her face.
"Yes, I sent her out," Rob answered. He took a deep breath and said, "I was on my way there to take care of the matter. You shouldn't have poured that glass of water on her."
Sue stared at Rob for a second and then said, "Then fire me."
"I'm not going to fire you. Just don't do it again," Rob said feeling a headache coming on. When Sue didn't respond, he said, "Get out there and take care of your tables."
Sue turned and left the kitchen without saying another word. Dan said, "I'm sorry."
"You didn't do anything," Rob said. There was hardly a week that went by without some sort of scene taking place in the restaurant. He'd been surprised that Dan had been the subject of that scene, but had noticed that Dan had kept well out of it. It was better than some of the shouting matches that occasionally erupted. Shaking his head, he said, "Get back to work."
"Thanks," Dan said. He headed to the front of the restaurant. On the way, he grabbed a tray of glasses to put in one of the service stations.
Watching Sue work her tables, it was clear that she remained upset about the entire episode. She wouldn't look in his direction at all the rest of the night. He didn't know much about her background, but her comment suggested that she had a history of trouble with men. The incident with Kim put a damper on everyone's mood that night.
Taping the keys with great deliberation, Dan put the finishing touches on his project for his class. Diana, returning home from school, looked in and asked, "How's it going?"
"I'm done with my project," Dan said. He clicked the mouse and e- mailed it to his teacher appreciating that once he had the e-mail addresses in his computer that he didn't have to type them. Most of the time, they arrived where he intended them to go.
"You looked a little down this morning at breakfast," Diana commented.
"Kim Parker showed up at the restaurant last night and created a bit of a scene," Dan said. He double-clicked on a file before turning to look at his sister.
Dismayed, Diana asked, "You didn't get in trouble, did you?"
"No. Mr. Rendell asked her to leave. One of the waitresses got into trouble for pouring a glass of water on Kim," Dan answered. He had ordered flowers to be delivered to the restaurant that night for Sue. One of the statements in the Pursuit of Happiness was that when someone attempted to help you that you should demonstrate your appreciation. He didn't work that night; otherwise he would have brought in the flowers for her. He hoped she would appreciate the gesture even though he didn't feel it was as personal as handing them to her directly.
Thinking it was sad that Kim was keeping high school grudges, Diana asked, "Won't she ever stop harassing you?"
"I doubt it," Dan said. He didn't even know why she hated him so much, but he doubted that it would ever change. She'd taunt him every chance she got. He said, "She's going to do her best to make me miserable my whole life."
"You must have been upset," Diana said. She remembered when he was in elementary school and junior high school. He would come home in tears because of the things that Kim Parker used to say to him. At that time he didn't have Tom to stand up for him and it was just Dan Parker against the whole world.
Shaking his head, Dan said, "You know, that was the real funny thing about the entire episode. She was standing there calling me a loser and it had no effect. I wasn't angry, upset, or embarrassed. I just stood there looking at her. I kept wondering why she wasn't in college."
Thinking that it would be ironic if Kim had dropped out of college while Dan was putting the final touches on his college project, Diana asked, "Do you think she dropped out?"
"I don't know. I don't even care. She's a miserable little person who hasn't grown up yet," Dan said shrugging his shoulders. He turned to his computer and said, "Let me print this up so that I can turn it in tonight."
"I thought you were supposed to give her an electronic copy," Diana said thinking her brother had come a long way in dealing with harassment since graduating high school.
"I am," Dan said with a smile. He looked over at her and said, "This is my business plan. I'm printing it up for her husband."
Diana smiled and said, "So you finished it."
"Yes, I did. I think it is pretty good if I say so myself," Dan said. He had e-mailed it to Tom to correct some of his spelling mistakes. Tom had sent it back within three hours. He had listened to it with the text to speech program and had been suitably impressed with Tom's edits.
"So what is your mission statement?"
The hardest part of wording the mission statement had been avoiding distinguishing between dine-in and take-out customers. Dan answered, "To enable friends and family to have a fun time while enjoying great food at an affordable price."
"Sounds good," Diana said thinking that he had touched upon all of the important points. She was looking forward to walking into his pizzeria one day.
As was usual, Dan walked out to the parking lot with Professor Harrison after class was finished. As they walked, Professor Harrison asked, "Why did you break the advertising expenses into so many different subcategories?"
"I exchanged a couple of e-mails with my friend Tom about what kind of advertising would be best for a pizzeria. He's a science major at the University of Texas. He said that the only way to understand something is to be able to describe it mathematically. He said that I had to be able to say how effective my advertising dollars were at bringing in customers," Dan said.
"And?"
"Well, I thought about it and realized that just lumping newspaper ads, coupons, television or radio commercials, team sponsorships, and flyers into a single category wouldn't allow me to know which one was helping the most. I figure if I keep track of how much a form of advertising costs and how much business it generates then I'll know how to get the most return on my advertising dollars," Dan answered.
"That's a good reason. There is a difference between the formal accounting processes necessary to file official papers and tracking expenses for operational purposes. In a small business, those distinctions can be blurred. I can see where breaking an important operational area like advertising into smaller areas can help give operational insights," Professor Harrison said.
"I really don't have any idea what kind of advertising will work best in the long run. Initially, I guess I will do all of them and then ask folks how they learned about the shop," Dan said.
Professor Harrison walked along beside him for a minute thinking about his comment. She said, "Marketing is a major activity for a small business. Good marketing means knowing exactly who your customers are and what they want. If you can position your business to deliver what your customers want then you stand a very good chance of being successful."
"I realized that while putting together my business plan," Dan said.
One of the key sections of the business plan had been about a market survey. He had looked into a lot of potential locations to assess what kind of market there would be for his pizzas. He had visited one of the chain pizza places and had been shocked by what he had seen. The place had been like a tomb inside despite the fact that there were customers. It was true that people were busy eating, but there wasn't a sense of fun in the place. He didn't hear people laughing. Conversations were almost hushed. The décor was somber rather than light hearted. The lighting was dark.
"So what did you discover?" Professor Harrison asked.
"Well, I've become convinced that the kind of place that I want to open will not have much effective competition. There isn't a place where a large group of people can stop for a bite to eat after playing league baseball in the summer. There isn't a place for teenagers to gather after the football game had finished. All of the places around here are rather stiff and uninviting for people to have fun," Dan answered.
"So you are going to target the good time crowd," Professor Harrison said.
"That's right," Dan said.
"Seems like a reasonable niche market," she said. She asked, "Are you going to serve beer?"
"No. I don't want the hassles of dealing with inebriated people," Dan answered. He saw enough of them when the after bar crowd went to the diner. That particular crowd was very difficult with sloppy drunks, angry alcoholics, and flirtatious women. It didn't lead to the kind of environment in which families could have fun.
Dan looked over at the parking lot when they exited the building and said, "Your husband is here."
"Ah, good. It is getting too cold to wait outside for him," she said pulling her coat tighter when a gust of wind hit them.
Dan guided her over to where the blue SUV was parked at the curb. Lucky, her guide dog, took care to maneuver her around any obstacles that were in her way. After he had helped Professor Harrison get into the car, Dan went around to the driver's side. When Richard lowered the window, Dan held out his business plan and said, "I finished the first draft."
Richard accepted the business plan and glanced over the first page taking in the basic details. Satisfied, he said, "I'll read it and let you know what I think of it."
"Thanks, I really appreciate it," Dan said.
"Just doing my job," Richard replied with a smile. He noticed the mission statement and read it with a little more care. Impressed he said, "I like the mission statement."
"Thanks. I was thinking about the example that you gave for the hamburger chain when I wrote it," Dan said. He'd gone through a half dozen mission statements before settling on one.
Professor Harrison had finished buckling up her seatbelt. She leaned over and said, "You're going to have to work a little with Richard to discuss the next steps."
"Yes, ma'am," Dan said.
She sat there for a moment and then said, "Will you at least consider bringing in some pizzas when we are near the end of the class?"
"How many do you think I'll need?" Dan asked. He didn't have an oven that would allow him to cook more than two pizzas at a time.
"There are twenty-six of us in the classroom. You figure it out," she said with a smile.
Dan frowned and said, "That would be about ten large pizzas."
"Ten?" Richard said surprised by the number.
"Well, I'm assuming that not everyone will be hungry," Dan said.
"Really?"
Nodding his head, Dan said, "My experience is that two of my large pizzas will feed five people."
"That's almost half a large pizza per person," Richard said.
"I know. There's usually a fight over the last piece," Dan said. Seeing the incredulous expression on Richard's face, Dan said, "I make the best pizza in the world."
"Okay," Richard said withholding judgment on that matter.
Ignoring the little exchange, Professor Harrison said, "Just see what you can do about bringing in some pizza for everyone, okay?"
"Yes, ma'am," Dan said. He watched them drive off thinking about how he could possibly cook ten pizzas and deliver them to the class with them remaining hot. The real problem was getting enough space to cook them all. With his mother's oven he'd get two pizzas at a time. The first pair of pizzas would be cold before the last ones were finished.
Dan walked out to his car and then looked at his watch. He realized that it was getting late. At least he didn't have to work that night. Getting into his car, he headed home thinking about how to cook that many pizzas without a professional oven.
Working nights had left Dan in the unenviable position where he couldn't sleep too well during his nights off. Usually, he just stayed up until three or four and then went to bed a couple of hours early. This night, he spent his time at the computer pricing equipment for the pizza shop.
As much as he wanted a wood brick oven, Dan knew that he didn't have the experience to operate one. He also admitted that his recipe was optimized for a conventional oven. The sauce was the right consistency so that it wouldn't be too dry or wet when the pizza was finished cooking. The crust came out perfect rather than hard and brittle or soft and gooey. A Wood Brick Oven would produce a slightly harder crust unless he modified the dough recipe.
The prices of the equipment surprised him, but he realized that he was looking at professional restaurant quality items. It didn't help that he was pricing out the top of the line equipment. He knew that he could probably reduce the cost significantly by taking lower end equipment. He wondered if he could purchase the equipment from a pizzeria that had gone out of business at a cheaper price. He typed in his query and smiled at the results coming back.
Mr. Foreman had been right to recommend that he purchase a computer. In the long run, it was going to save him many times his original purchase price. He also realized that there would have been no way to find out so much information in the middle of the night without it. He'd have had to spend his days running from store to store or ordering catalogs from around the country.
While he was browsing the web, he decided to order five more pizza stones. He had decided that if he were able to solve his oven problem that he would need them to deliver the ten pizzas to the class. They were expensive, but he figured that he'd get his money's worth out of them over time.
As he thought about making ten pizzas, he realized that it would be the best opportunity to determine how much the ingredients cost to make pizzas in large quantities. It would give him an upper bound on the figure since he wouldn't be using the larger discount quantities of ingredients. Still, it would give him a much better estimate than the figures that he had borrowed from the web.
He realized that he would have to provide boxes for the pizzas as well. It seemed strange to him that no one ever discussed boxes when it came to business. Looking around his room at all of the various boxes, he realized that it was a pretty big business. Big name brands had boxes with the names of the company marked all over them.
He purchased a case of the fourteen inch plain white pizza boxes. A case held fifty boxes and his cost was a little over forty cents a box. The price would go down when he started ordering larger quantities of them, but he wasn't prepared to order a thousand boxes at the moment. Looking at the pictures of white boxes, he realized that he was going to have to order them printed with the name of his shop or purchase specialty labels that he could put on the boxes. That was another little expense that he hadn't considered.
It was getting very late and he decided to stop. Sitting back in his chair, he looked at the piles of notes that he had gathered for his little pizzeria. It was an amazing amount of material. There were so many details that at times it was a little overwhelming. He knew that it would get better when he was actually running the store. He'd get the process worked out and do little optimizations here and there.
Looking at the clock, he made his way to the kitchen deciding that he'd cook breakfast for the rest of the family. They would be waking soon and might appreciate a hot breakfast rather than the typical cold breakfast they had on weekdays. He decided that pancakes would be a nice gesture and rummaged through the pantry for the box of pancake mix.
He could hear the sounds of his family moving around as the house slowly came awake. His mother or father had just started the shower. His sister's alarm sounded and then went off. It was interesting that he never noticed those sounds when he kept the same hours as them.
As he prepared the pancake batter, he realized that he had been working all night at his desk. Even though there had been a lot of reading, he hadn't felt that overwhelming sense of frustration that had accompanied his studies. He had actually been enjoying the night. Stunned by the revelation, he said, "I feel... happy."
Lazlo Zalezac