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The biggest obstacle that I faced this week is drama in my work life. The local restaurants are full of drama queens and divas. Just to up the ante, my latest workplace is a new restaurant inside a convenience store. The pandemic has filled the workforce with qualified applicants, so we can all be replaced easily. Sometimes, none of us has a clue about how to handle work issues. As we all train and introduce more food offerings to the public, more people show up. And introducing new foods has not been easy. Supplies that are short in the grocery stores are also short in the restaurant supply houses. The new business has not been affected by the pandemic. That last fact should be good news for the convenience store chain, as they are counting on the fact that they offer food as well as alcoholic beverages to save them from closures due to the pandemic. It is a strain on the whole staff, and we all kind of melted down one day last week when the restaurant was overrun by a sudden surge in hungry people. Our area was visited by hurricane evacuees this week, as well as the area manager. We’re still rocking along, maybe with a better idea on how to deal with the new volume in sales. Our dilemma has been highlighted by some announcements by a nearby competitor. This competitor decided to ignore warnings from the state of Texas regarding who could stay open and who had to close. Dire consequences were threatened if bars who did not serve food with their drinks did not close. The only way to avoid penalties meted out by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission was to close. But this competitor was in a small town, and all tourism to the town was discouraged by closing the major events in town so far. I guess this businessman thought that he was safe enough as long as he was serving locals only. Someone complained and TABC paid a visit. Now this man is out of business as a part of the penalties that were assessed. It makes me grateful that I am working for a company that was bold enough to try a business expansion in the face of this restriction. But it also means that state authorities are watching closely.
September 3, 2020