Not This Time
18
Down to Business
“DO YOU REALLY not know the answer to that, Laura? Or is asking me a habit?” I demanded of my salesperson. She’d been with me nearly since I started sales. She and Rick were about equal in sales and had both earned close to $15,000 in bonuses the past year and a half. That wasn’t bad for part-timers.
“I thought you wanted us to always check with you,” she spluttered. I brought my head up. She was right. It was my problem.
“I’m going to make a transition that means I won’t be as involved in each sale,” I said. “I’ve always been in the middle, but I’ve stayed there too long. I’m going to hire another salesperson to take up the slack that I won’t be doing so I can focus on a marketing strategy for the new units we’ll open this spring. That’s why I’m asking you if you know what to do or if you need to check everything with me.” She breathed a sigh of relief.
“We know what to do. I’m answering for Rick, too. With Renata as efficient on the paperwork as she is, we haven’t had a stalled sale in nine months,” Laura said. “We’ll need that new salesperson to work the evening shift. I don’t really want to stop working the weekends and Rick likes the daytime calls.”
“That’s good input, Laura. Remember that you can always call on me when you need advice or something gets stalled, but routine stuff should just be handled through our process now,” I said. “I plan to be working some regular hours soon and not be on call to do all those evening showings.”
I danced around that one. I even sounded like I had a plan.
The truth was that I just realized I’d been screwing up my business as badly as I was screwing up my relationships. My obsession with making sure everything was perfect on every sale meant that I wasn’t letting anyone else make decisions they were capable of. As a result, they were making my job harder by having to run every little thing past me. I estimated that I had about two months to get everything running smoothly without my micromanaging everything. By the first of February, I needed to be focused on those new units and marketing plan. And my family. It couldn’t wait.
In the meantime, it was damned hard. Laura, Rick, and Renata all tried to pick up the challenge to do it without me, but I’d never let them build up the confidence to take charge. They were nervous and a few errors slipped in. We actually had an offer from a person who failed to qualify for financing. It should never have gotten that far. I just wanted to jump in and wring some necks.
I’d never faced anything like this. In my former life, I’d begun selling real estate. I’d been good at it. But that was all I did. I was a mother and I sold real estate. I’d never managed a business. Suddenly, my low prioritization of my degree came into question. I’d almost convinced myself that I didn’t need to finish school. I already had the business and it was successful. Now I realized it was tenuous. What I was doing was based on my ideals and not on anything practical. I needed more help.
And I didn’t mean just another salesperson.
I had Ben on board by Christmas and invited the new salesperson to our holiday party. That made one more of us in our little condo.
Jim’s date this year actually seemed almost age appropriate for him. He was well into his forties now, maybe almost fifty. Rebecca was in her late thirties. She still packed her voluptuous body into clothes that were a size too small, but that was a look Jim seemed to like. My own breasts had shrunk a bit when I quit nursing, but they were never going to be the tiny, pert, unused things they’d been in my former life. Nor was I going to try to wear that size bra.
Laura and her husband, Rick and his wife, and Renata and her boyfriend were all happy with the year-end bonuses. Gordon was definitely in his wife’s shadow. Councilwoman Carla had swept into office this fall and was already trying to reform city government. It was a wonder that she was able to be with us for the party, but she said that it was the only night this week she didn’t have something else she had to be at instead. Certainly nothing she wanted to be at. I took that as a compliment.
Ben was a grad student at the U. The party was lively and I guess I was spending a lot of time with Bruce and Emily as I tried to host things because Ben seemed to be spending all his time with Lily. She caught my eye and gave me a pleading look. I hustled over there with Emily in my arms.
“Look here, Emily. Ben hasn’t held you yet. Did you show Ben your Lamb Chop and Charlie Horse?” I asked as I pushed my daughter into his arms. “Ben, do me a quick favor for a couple minutes and occupy her so I can have a minute with my wife. Would you do that for me?” I whispered to him.
“Your…? Oh! I’m… Sure.” He followed Emily, who nearly dragged him to the corner where her stuffed toys were. Everyone else had had the treatment tonight. It would be good for my newest employee.
“Did you really tell him I was your wife?” Lily giggled.
“Yes. And now I’m going to make sure everyone knows it,” I said. I pulled Lily to me and kissed her long and hard. “I love you. Now will you please help me get the next round of appetizers on the table?” Lily squeezed me and I could see a sparkle of tears in her eyes. For that matter, I had a little sparkle myself.
My plans were driven forward when Emily got the croup the second week of January. Lily was deep in student counseling as the winter semester started. Bruce had a midwinter show that he was working on and that left just me to stay home with my daughter.
And, inevitably, I got sick, too.
I couldn’t remember ever having been so sick in my other life and being at home with a miserable toddler left us both in tears a good bit of the time. The only thing that made either of us feel better was long hot steamy showers. The foghorn cough we both had eased some in the steam. But a couple of hours later, we’d both be coughing again. The doctor at the University Clinic had given us each a dose of steroids and told us to rest. He also told me that we had different, though related, illnesses and that I might be sick with bronchitis longer than Emily was sick with the croup. I’d need to be careful not to infect her with my brand.
As careful as I tried to be, Emily was clear of the croup for only about a day before she started the symptoms of my chest cold. The doctor put us both on a light dosage of aspirin to keep the fever down and told us to go home and eat chicken soup.
Of course, like with the croup, we were both more comfortable sitting up than lying down, but my poor little girl just wanted to be hugged to my chest with her head pillowed on my breasts. Lily came home at noon each day and fed us soup. She made sure we were as comfortable as possible, but kept her face covered with a surgical mask she’d picked up at the pharmacy. No kissing this girl.
I watched old movies and sitcom reruns from the seventies. If I never heard the word ‘Dy-no-mite!’ again it would be too soon. I worried that I was damaging my daughter’s intelligence. But I didn’t have the energy to do anything else.
Bruce managed to get home early every evening and brought food. Neither he nor Lily had time to stop and cook every night. We’d always shared that responsibility, shifting as each of us had tougher schedules. But Bruce managed to pick a different carry-out almost every evening, discovering that we all liked food he picked up from the Hmong restaurant in Uptown or even the ribs and coleslaw he brought one night from Rudolphs Barbecue.
But Bruce and Lily slept together in the other room at night to avoid getting infected. I was lonely, but I didn’t think they were even making love with each other for fear of infection.
By the end of the second week of being housebound, both Emily and I were ready to get outside.
That was complicated by the fact that we had ten inches of new snow and the temperature never got above twenty degrees.
Nonetheless, I bundled Emily up in her snowsuit, tucked her in the chest carrier inside my parka, pulled the hood up, and trudged the four blocks to my office.
“Well, if it isn’t the living dead,” Renata said when I came through the door.
“Good morning, Renata,” I moaned.
“It’s afternoon. Go straight to your office. I turned the heat up. Get yourself and Precious unbundled. If it’s too chilly, there’s a blanket on your chair,” she instructed. “When you’re all settled, I’ll bring you things to review one at a time. Don’t even think of asking questions until you’ve read all the reports.”
“When did you become the boss?” I asked.
“Was that a question?” she demanded. Then she laughed. “I’ve always been the boss. We just used to hide it from you.” She shooed me into my office and Emily and I got out of our outside clothes quickly. Renata had, indeed, turned up the heat. Emily was happy to get down and run around for a few minutes as she got reacquainted with her office toys.
“I’m ready, boss,” I called out to Renata. She came in immediately with a cup of tea and a stack of papers.
“Here’s the sales report for the month to date,” she said. “I reformatted it so that we could see quickly what our traffic was, how many appointments we had, and exactly what stage of each sale we were at. You’ll notice that the report splits into three sections with a summary at the bottom when you turn to the second page. That’s so you can see exactly what each salesperson is up to. Read and digest that and I’ll bring you the next thing on my list.” She left the papers and went back to her desk. I heard her answer the phone.
The reports were exactly what I needed to get up to speed quickly. I was impressed. One pending sale was marked in red and a note indicated that it had been forwarded to Gordon for intervention. I was quickly able to see the buyer had put over a dozen contingencies in the contract and none of them would be acceptable. I was glad Gordon was taking care of it. That was not what I needed to face on my first day back.
“Hey! Ben has a sale already!” I called out.
“Yeah. Two more in the pipeline and he has a showing tonight. He’s a bit of a horndog, but he’ll do okay.”
“He’s not creating problems for you and Laura, is he?” I asked. He’d hit on my wife so I wouldn’t put anything past him.
“We can handle him. Jim had a talk with him last week and told him in no uncertain terms what the result would be if he ever made a pass at a customer. I doubt he’ll have another erection for a month.”
“God! I hope not. That would be all we’d need.” I could imagine the lawsuits if Ben made a pass at a single woman during an evening showing of an empty apartment. I wished I’d hired a woman, but the risk of a single woman showing an empty condo at night was even worse. I’d certainly be keeping an eye on him.
I’d had my share of terror over the past two years. I was a single woman showing condos at night. I kept my pepper spray concealed in my hand the entire time I was with a client. I kept furniture between us and even had the client unlock the door to enter ahead of me as part of my presentation. One evening a man had shown up for an appointment without his wife. I’d been expecting the couple and was extremely uncomfortable with the way the guy looked. I politely refused to show him the condo, saying I had tried to reach him to cancel because the unit was sold.
For all I knew, the guy was completely harmless. But he outweighed me by a hundred pounds and we were scheduled to go into a building where no one was living. Two years earlier, I would probably have been desperate enough to make a sale that I would have gone with him. But I’d had enough unwelcome advances in that time that I wouldn’t risk being assaulted and perhaps not being alive to watch Emily grow up. You might tell me I’m stupid or foolish or that I can’t live my life in fear. But I’m a woman. I know how men look at women. I can see it in their eyes. Meat with a hole. Maybe I needed to take some self-defense classes, too.
All told, on a seasonally adjusted scale, our sales for January were on a par with any month that I’d been here micromanaging things. I was going to have to find a new way to feel useful.
Emily and I only lasted two hours at the office before we were both ready to go home and take a nap. I bundled my little dolly up and we told Renata we’d see her tomorrow. I felt like I’d caught up on a huge amount while I was in the office. I had no idea how much I had yet to go, but each time I finished a file and was satisfied with where things were, she’d bring me another. My next big task, I knew, was to review the scheduled openings of coming units. We were going to have an impressive array in classes from simple economy to luxury by summer. I’d need to go on a tour later in the week if I was up to it.
I was also going to have to make a decision about school. I’d missed the first two weeks of classes this semester and it didn’t look good for going back this week. I thought I still had a week to withdraw and that was what I’d have to do. I’d talk to Lily about it in the evening. The hardest part about withdrawing was that I would be without health insurance. All my care for the past two-and-a-half years had been through the University. Even our pediatrician was there. I supposed I was a big girl now and needed to get big girl insurance. I’d made sure to take out a whole life insurance policy as soon as Emily was born. Started it with my first commission check and increased it twice. But a severe illness could wipe out all my savings as quickly as I’d built it up.
By my twenty-first birthday in May, I felt almost like I had my life back under control.
I no longer sold anything. I often listed properties of people who wanted to buy a condo. My salesperson received a referral fee. The listing went into Gordon Fiske Realty. My assistant there handled setting up the open houses with other agents and shepherding all sales through the system. I sold no condos. My three salespeople were proving adequate to the task of moving the inventory, though I thought I might have to add another two this summer.
I scarcely even managed anything. Renata had converted me from a manager to an executive. She managed the office, the sales, and the schedule. I reviewed the results, and made the plans. I met with Jim and Gordon on a regular basis to discuss the inventory and management of the condo association.
The Cliffs, a new condo development on the north side of the river, was threatening to take a bite out of our market. Main Street was a much classier address than Franklin Avenue. St. Anthony Main was still drawing the preppy crowd and they were a huge market for condos. Jim had acquired the last piece of property available, one of the old mills near the falls. He was gung-ho to tear it down and build a new luxury high-rise.
It was 1994. My initial guess was that we would have until 1999 to make whatever we were going to earn in this market and get out. If we followed Jim’s plan, it would be at least three years before we could start selling and when the market crashed, we wouldn’t be more than half sold. The problem was in how to convince my partners that it was a bad deal. I couldn’t do it by telling them I knew when the condo market would crash. ‘So now you’re a prophet?’ Jim would say.
We went on a tour.
The mill had been in operation until the mid-80s. By that time, the industry had moved most of the operations outside of town where the rates were cheaper. They were no longer dependent on the river for transportation. General Mills was all the hell the way out in Wayzata. It was a forty-five-minute bus ride. I still didn’t own a car. Of course, my roommates both owned cars, but I just never went anyplace farther than Uptown or the University on the Southside. I could get anywhere in about fifteen minutes.
The tour was an eye-opener.
“Jim, did you look at this place before you had architects start drawing your new high rise?” I asked.
“I bought the property and told them I wanted something like The Cliffs,” he said.
“What do you know about new construction?” I asked.
“I’ve been in the construction business for twenty-five years,” he huffed.
“Remodeling,” I said. “Renovating. Taking an existing structure and making it into something newer and better. Don’t tear this mill down.”
“What?” Gordon said. “This filthy place?”
“You should have seen my first apartment here the day I first saw it,” I said. “The renovation hadn’t been completed. Talk about filthy.”
“That’s just the way old buildings are,” Jim said looking around.
“Exactly.”
“But this isn’t an apartment building.”
“No,” I said. “It’s an entire village under one roof. The structure is sound. We could have stores on the first floor. Build condo streets above. Turn it into an entire community.”
“You mean do a renovation instead of new construction,” Jim nodded.
“There is nothing quite like you are talking about that I’ve ever heard of,” Gordon said scratching his head.
“That Edinburg complex they developed down on 494 tried to do it, but it’s two miles to get to anything else. Here it is a village within St. Anthony. The main floor can be accessed by The Cliffs next door. Once you are inside, it would be like you…”
“…walked through the looking glass,” Jim finished. “I can see it. Kid, you’re going to earn a bundle on this one.”
“Only if you can get units ready to purchase in twelve months. Before someone else gets the idea, too. The burden is on you, Jim.”
If there is one thing Jim is good at, it’s getting a project underway. He had to grease some skids on the north side of the river in order to get all his permits, but once the Hennepin County Historical Society got wind of the fact that he was going to save the structure and repurpose the interior, they got behind it in a big way. The last of the Northside mills. Jim was a hero again. Construction was underway by fall.
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