Working wine retail on Thanksgiving was an insane time, more wine was sold on Thanksgiving Eve than Christmas Eve. The build up was slow the weekend before and then boom! Tuesday and Wednesday were as busy as it got. Salesman flying in and out, special orders filled in a panic. Will the check clear? Dollars and merchandise had to be flipped.
Last night with the Beaujolais Nouveau always brings back memories of Thanksgiving pressure. A lot of change went to buy that wine, and it had to go by Christmas or it would sit months into the new year.
There were good years here in Columbus, and very bad years. There was success at the Holiday. The owner would always go to Ray Johnson’s for shrimp and the horse radish sauce. We’d open up a few bottles of good champagne to go with it. Times were almost happy. At the Grandview Avenue spot, not so much. The owner screwed up purchasing again, completely ignored the lower priced wine and homebrewers, and saying no to customers became tiring to the point of depression.
After I quit, for years after I would have this adrenaline rush around the holidays. I’d been in retail for 13 years and then I was out. The pressure working for Barnes and Noble was nowhere close to the energy I’d get out of selling wine that I had a hand in purchasing or knew about. That urge finally left a few years ago.
I still do not know how I did it, because at the end of the last run I was broken. My marriage was broken and it took a long time to return to something close to intact.
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