Monday morning it was all of 56 degrees in the rig and 27 degrees outside.  We were once again having the conversation about whether we should back out some of my hours yesterday from the final revenue analysis (Absolutely not. – Lee) when we got a phone call around 9am.  They were on their way to pick up all of our baled trees (On stands and in water, but still tied up with twine) this morning and would be here in 30 minutes.  Neither of us had showered, and Lee was just getting ready to run to the post office and pick up our mail. So obviously that was out. I asked if they wanted us to call in employees, but we were told no, so Lee and I both layered up in long johns and went outside to help.  Not optimal in the 27 degree weather, but it did make his point once again that in the end, we are working a lot more hours than it appears, and that needs to be reflected in the final “Is It Worth It” analysis.

Theoretically we could have left it to the two guys they sent, but since both of them have been hurt this season, we couldn’t in good conscious do that do them. One thing Lee and I have managed to do (along with our staff) is avoid injury and it was only decent that we helped with loading the trees. The two guys that were sent aren’t to blame and at this point we frankly don’t want to make anyone mad because the bonus is still hanging out there.  That’s been sort of an ongoing theme, by the way.  Every time we think about setting some boundaries, the fact that our money is being held slows us down.  There is no doubt that this payment structure is by design, and I will even concede that it may have evolved over time because of bad behavior on the part of other managers, but personally  I have never worked this long and hard without seeing something in my bank account. For us that has been unsettling.

It certainly stops you from just walking away.  At some point, you have invested enough time and energy that walking away with no compensation would be pretty stupid, and maybe even financially impossible for some folks. And that’s a pretty big deal actually.  Many full timers take jobs that are lower paying and harder work than in their previous lives because they are temporary and they can walk away from them if things get to difficult.  We have had several conversations along these lines with folks and the most common comments are “We can do anything for a short period of time,” and “If it’s too bad we will just walk away.”  Personal ethics of course come into it, and some people find it very difficult to walk away from a commitment, but we all at least have the illusion that if we wanted to we could.  Not so much with this job.  The contract we signed is pretty clear on how long we have to stay.  And since the payment schedule is all at the end, I am assuming  there would be stiff financial penalties for leaving early. It’s not clearly stated in our contract one way or another, it just says if we leave early the owner will replace the positions and the cost of that replacement labor will come out of whatever money we have made to that point.

Don’t get me wrong, at this point we are certainly going to play this out and see what happens, but as our hourly rate at this point, based on the base pay we were promised and the commission we’ve earned on sales to this point, is $ 6.64 each, we know we are going to be relying more on the bonus to make this an equitable situation.  The owner was pretty clear that when everyone had a good year, he spread that around and based on what other managers have told me I have no reason to believe that would not happen.  But sales were lower than expected everywhere and generally in my experience this correlates to less bonus.  That may not be the case here, but I would be surprised if it was not.

I’m trying to be positive.  I am trying to continue with my wait and see attitude, but standing outside in 27 degree weather pulling frozen stands off trees and getting water on my feet and hands is not helping.   It was also made worse when I called the office to get some information on something totally unrelated and was told we should have brought employees in to help with the tree loading because “We don’t expect you to do that Tracy.”  Really? I asked, when I got the call letting us know they were on their way, if I should call employees in, and was told “no”, and for the record, I have been loading and unloading trees since day one.   Most of the time I don’t mind.  I am healthy, and no one gives me a hard time about lifting only what I can manage.  But to be doing all that work and have people not only not know I am doing it, but also tell me it isn’t expected, like I did something wrong. Well needless to say I was pretty upset.  I bit down on it though, and tried to keep those feelings in, but it was touch and go there for a minute.  I am sure she knew I was upset, but at least I wasn’t hostile about it.   I’m tired, my back is sore, and my feet are wet from moving 44 trees. Please don’t give me a hard time on top of that.

Still have some pretty trees left

My poor flocked trees that haven’t found a home yet

Oh and something else I should probably talk about that is totally unrelated to this job but relevant to RVers.  We applied for the Affordable Care Act a couple of months ago, and even though I have paid the first month it still isn’t finalized.  First they asked me for proof of income to match the estimate we made, and when I called the help center and said I didn’t have one pay stub that would show that, I was told just post any of them and nothing would be done with it.  So we took one from the beet harvest and submitted it.  I received a phone call from another group who said that because it didn’t match, they would need to make an adjustment and immediately explained things again.  We are starting a new business and working a series of temporary jobs so no one pay stub will show our annual wage.  Thankfully this person understood the situation and said I needed to submit a letter of explanation stating exactly that, and then they could process it.  I was under the impression based on everything I had heard that you estimated your income and they adjusted at the end of the year up or down.  Well, apparently that is not always the case, so I thought I would let people know in case they were going to apply soon.  If we had a representative pay stub we could have used that for the whole year, but this year in particular our wages have been high and that would have overestimated our income.  If you underestimate your income then you don’t qualify for ACA and they want to put you on Medicaid.  Using a paystub also presupposes that you make that amount of money all year which is obviously not the case for most full time RVers.  Basically it can be tricky, so just forewarning you.

I also called about my life insurance which is a carryover policy from my employer.  They want a check payment or automatic checking account deduction and need a cancelled check to set that up.  Well I don’t have cancelled checks and I can’t believe in this day and age there is no online method to pay.  (I also find this incredibly bizarre. We haven’t had checks for about twelve years. We reached the point where the only thing we were using checks for was to pay a babysitter, and once our youngest never needed a babysitter, we just got rid of them. It’s truly amazing that there are still large organizations that don’t have an alternative way to accept money. You know how most people pay babysitters now? Paypal, Venmo, or some other phone based app. – Lee) It’s almost as if they don’t want my money.  I was going to shop around anyway since I am an AARP member, so I told Lee not to do anything dangerous until I get this life insurance thing sorted out.  Honestly it should not be this hard to give people your money.  Man I am cranky. (I don’t blame her. I’m getting pretty cranky, too. – Lee)

And to continue with my great day, we had another tree returned.  This guy was super nice about it and since I remembered the tree specifically I think it was just one of those things.  Luckily I still had 10 foot Nordmann’s on the lot and let him pick his favorite for an even swap the next day.  As I was walking back to the RV to tell Lee, I tripped over the orange rope we use to separate the customer area from the work area (you know, for safety) and fell backwards into the work area of the lot.  I went down hard and my shoulder hit a piece of rebar from a stand before I was able to stop myself.  Thankfully I had grabbed the line and the jolt stopped short of being a puncture, but I could have seriously hurt myself.  Those metal legs on the stands are no joke.  That put things in perspective.  Yes, I was having a not so great day, but it was warming up and things certainly could have been a lot worse. Definitely time to get a grip. (But I’m the one who is supposed to be careful while she sorts out the life insurance. I’m just saying. – Lee)

The entire back area was cleared and the stands are being twined together

This is where my shoulder hit. Could have been really nasty. I was super lucky I grabbed the rope border I tripped over and it actually held and slowed my fall

Monday ended up being a weird day.  We only sold 2 trees, but we did sell some wreaths and garland at the 50% off price.  Since our bonus is based on quantity sold on these items, that actually helped us, although my labor was $40 a tree for the day.  I always take the last hour of the day, and Lee goes in and eats dinner, and for the last several days we have had no customers between 8pm -9pm.  Since it was so slow, for the first time I called my daughter and we were in the middle of a nice chat when some folks pulled up at 8:37pm.  I immediately got off the phone and greeted a group of six slightly drunk people who had come in a beat up pickup truck with a beer keg in the back.  They were all in a jolly mood and pretty quickly picked out a beautiful 1o foot Nordmann.  I also sold them a stand, so they spent $350 in no time. That’s one reason (other than common decency) why I treat everyone who walks in the door the same, because you never know who has money in their pocket, and more importantly, who is willing to spend it. Since that tree was way too big for me to handle, our employee went and got Lee.  He stopped eating his dinner and came out to help.  He was a good sport about it, and the customer’s positive energy was infectious, but it is another example of the fact that no matter how slow things are, our time is simply not our own.

We received a text late Monday night and were told they were coming to pick up more of our trees at 10am on Tuesday.  I appreciated the notice, because it allowed me to schedule our one employee to come in at 10am.  My back is still pretty sore from loading the trees and my fall yesterday, so I would love to not have to load this truck.  From this point forward all trees that go out are unwrapped and those are much harder to manage.  I can solo handle most 6 and 7 foot trees when they are wrapped (Where 6-7′ = 3-4′ – Lee), but the unwrapped ones are much harder to grab hold of, because my arms are short. Plus after getting chastised yesterday, I am perfectly happy to leave the work to the menfolk. Yes, I have still not quite gotten over that. We did have a nice moment when the young woman who has worked with us all season brought us a Christmas card.  It was so sweet and the note inside said “Sorry the weather down here is so bipolar.  Merry Christmas”.  It was so cute, it made me laugh.

Despite our hopes to the contrary, it was still pretty cold Tuesday morning although it did warm up a bit as the day went on.  We were also told that all trees were 50% off.  From what I understand this is the first time in 20 plus years that these trees have been discounted, so it’s a pretty big deal.   I posted the 50% off prices on the local Facebook sales group and also walked over and told the Fire Department that was behind us how much we appreciate the fact that they didn’t run their sirens late at night and let them know everything was 50% off.  Since most of our potential customers have been complaining about price over the last few days, I was thrilled about the discount.  Not sure it will translate into more sales or not, but at least I don’t have to have the “can
I get a discount” conversation with every single customer anymore.

Then I had a nice long chat with my grandfather.  My grandparents were full timers for three years (first in a Class A and then in a Class C) back in the 80’s and visited every major national park.  My grandfathers memory of those parks is absolutely amazing and it’s really cool when he talked about walking trails that I walked 20 years later.  He even shared a couple of bear stories from Yellowstone, which rival anything we have experienced.  Apparently bears have always been a major problem there.  It was a really nice chat and I enjoyed the fact that we always have something to talk about now.

Lee spent the time disassembling the flocking room and getting our rig ready for the RV tech to come.  We have been trying to get a mobile tech here since we arrived, and finally he texted he could come today around lunch time.  We definitely need to get the furnace working before we head out of here and it is much easier to get the work done while we are onsite.  Our backup plan is to visit the Camping World nearby, but they do not allow full timers to stay in their rigs on location because of problems they have had in the past.  It still might be our best option though if the mobile tech doesn’t work out because they understand the full timing lifestyle and work their scheduling around it as best they can.

Every bowl (these are just some of the ones that need done) needs to be washed but we are waiting for the weather to warm up a little

If it hasn’t become clear by now, we are trying to take care of the many chores that have built up during this job assignment.  One thing about working 10 hours straight, multiple days in a row, is there isn’t much time for housekeeping tasks.  Those things need to be done, and in particular rig related issues can really cause a problem if you let to many of them build up. One of our biggest issues is the furnace hasn’t worked since Alaska and since Lee diagnosed the problem enough to realize the furnace would need to be moved AND we have a warranty we have never used, we have been trying to get a tech to come and see us since November 15th.  Finally, the tech had an opening in his schedule and came out around 4pm on Tuesday.

The job was no joke as he and his son each had to crawl into two different very small spaces and disconnect all 8 of the heating ducts, and the gas line, and unbolt the furnace from the camper. The issue was that two screws that hold the blower motor housing to the furnace came loose (technically one came loose and one just fell out completely) which allowed the blower to push the housing away instead of maintaining the air pressure inside, which prevented the sail switch from ever engaging, and stopping the heating cycle at the first step. Simple problem, VERY difficult to fix as they had to work together from two different places simultaneously to move the furnace to get to the screws and then replace the screws and put it all back together. From the expletives the tech was muttering, it was not fun, and he was pretty open about how poor the design was in these models as it related to accessing the furnace.  (If you happen to have an exterior panel to access your furnace, consider yourself a very lucky person. – Lee) Afterwards, they adjusted the cables on one of our living rooms slides, and replaced a broken cable on the other living room slide. Again this was a job Lee had diagnosed and even got the parts for, but it required two people to do (one inside the rig and one outside) and was not easy.  Lee, who was feeling a little guilty about not fixing it himself, felt quite a bit better when he saw the level of difficulty and the two jobs all together took about four hours being done by someone who has been doing this for twenty years. (If it had been me, I would have lost my mind about an hour in, and told Tracy that she would just have to live without heat, and slideouts that don’t slide out. And then probably burned the rig to the ground to teach it a lesson. For whatever reason I have zero patience when I am working on my own stuff. – Lee)

Then to top off the evening Cori and Greg came by and Cori, who knows my husband well, brought him two mini pies.  I swear if she keeps feeding him like this he is going to leave me for her.  Lee loves his pie.  We had a wonderful chat and since it was so very slow (only 2 trees sold all day) it was a great end to the day.  The combination of better weather, the trees going on sale, starting the tear down process, getting our rig fixed, and their visit has really cheered me up.  Cori and I even scheduled a tentative date for pedicures tomorrow since things have been so slow!

See the look on his face. He hasn’t looked at me like that in weeks 🙂

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The slowness continued on Thursday, we sold 6 trees, and Friday we sold 10 trees. Then Saturday, which I had some hope for, it rained again.  It feels like it has rained at least some every weekend since we have been here.  I suppose I could go back and check, but I don’t have the energy for it.  Major ennui has settled in and the constant cloud cover is not helping.  I did decide we should cut down some of the larger trees though, since we had a family looking for a ten foot Noble on Friday.  I guess that is common practice as we get closer to the end of the season, and after getting the owner’s permission, decided we could cut down at least one of each.

We still have 180 trees in the lot and no further discussion about taking any away.  Corpus Christi (the busiest location) already has a tent full of trees and they also had a chemical spill down there which has stopped people from drinking the local tap water.  Not sure how that will ultimately effect business down there, but they were always the location that sold the most.  We talk a lot about why business is off this year.  It could be the political uncertainty, it could be economics, but most likely it’s just the rain.  San Antonio folks don’t go out much in the rain. Or it could be the price.  There was a shortage of availability this year and prices were higher.  The closer we get to Christmas the more folks are looking for a bargain, but the owner is adamant that we don’t discount trees (beyond the 10% returning customer or active military discount).  Even when it finally stopped raining things were still slow and at 3pm we had only sold 4 trees.  The HEB down the street marked their trees down 50%, but as one customer who bought said, they didn’t have any large trees left.

It stayed slow all day and pretty humid with temps in the high 70’s.  I let one person go home early and called another one off before he even came in, but I never really got caught up on the labor. I did treat myself to a Pizza Hut online only pickup deal of a Thin Crust pepperoni and mushroom pizza for $7.99.  There is a small delivery hub right down the road and it was slow enough I could pop out and get the pizza.  I am also developing quite the love of Blue Bell Dutch Chocolate ice cream, which is the best chocolate ice cream I have ever had in my life.  Whatever weight I lost at the beet harvest, I am definitely gaining back lol.

At 8:30pm the wind and corresponding cold front started.  It got cold fast, and the wind blowing through the tent was pretty unsettling. We were prepared though and per instructions kept the cash register on and covered it with a blanket, disconnected the flocking machine and brought the metal spray gun inside, and closed up the tent flaps.  For the second time the wind was so hard it ripped one of the big banners off the metal fence, but we caught it in time before it blew away.  Feels a little Wizard of Oz when it’s that windy and you are hanging out in a tent.  Thankfully, by the time we did all those chores it was time to close anyway.  We ended up only selling seven trees and we weren’t alone with the slow day.  We heard later that the most any lot had  sold was  30 trees.  I know this is unusual because of the reaction of the more experienced lot managers. At the end of the day though it doesn’t really matter what past years have shown.  We have to deal with the cards we are being dealt.

The next morning it was COLD.  It was below freezing until after we opened at 11am, and we even had a thin layer of ice on the bowls of water the trees were in.  The water bowls in the trees closest to the edge of the tent where the wind came through were completely frozen. Plus still windy, so I was thrilled when Lee offered to sit in the tent this morning and let me watch some football.  I haven’t watched a game since we first arrived, and as an avid football lover have felt the loss.  Initially we had some trouble getting a decent FOX signal, but after downloading an app our friend Greg recommended (DTV Antennas) we got a very good signal.  So I worked on a paperwork mistake I had made, straightened up the house, did the dishes and watched some football, all while Lee sat out in the very cold tent.  It was super nice of him.  We have taken one of our space heaters and plugged it in the little office we have, but since it’s right near the tent opening and has no windows it’s still pretty cold.  I feel really bad for the helpers we have, because they have to sit outside the office with no heat source at all.  Occasionally they will go into their cars and warm up or I will bring out some hot chocolate, but it’s a pretty cold gig for them on days like today and not much I can do to make it better for them. When we have customers and they are active the physical exertion helps keep them warm, but when it’s slow it’s cold.

I called off two of the four people we had on for today, but we are still having 1 extra person at all times.  We talked about having no employees here at all, but there are a couple of reasons why we are not taking that step.  First, once people lose all hours it is likely they will find other work.  Since we know we need help during the tear down process, I am trying to keep at least two of our long term employees with some hours.  Secondly, we still never know when we will sell one of those big trees.  Almost every day last week, despite the extremely low numbers, we sold a 9 or 10 foot tree.  And I just don’t feel comfortable lifting anything that heavy after I almost hurt myself on an 8-1/2 footer.  No big deal, you might think, take the risk and then seek medical care, and under normal circumstances maybe I would roll the dice, but this job comes with no workers comp insurance.

Every single position we have held to this point, including our two volunteer positions, have had worker’s comp insurance.  And it’s not just hourly positions, but 1099’s as the gate guarding company offers it and they are 1099.  And ironically I have seen more people hurt in these jobs than at any other place we have worked.  One person dislocated their shoulder, another badly sprained an ankle, and a third ruptured two disks in their back.  Loading, unloading, and processing trees is extremely physical and when most activities are done with a second person it is relatively easy to strain or sprain something.  By now you all know I am a team player and I think I have shown I am not afraid of hard work, but I have to draw the line about putting myself in a situation that could involve injury and impact our future income.  Neither Lee nor I have ever filed a workers comp claim in our lives, but knowing the insurance existed gave us some peace of mind. That’s just our personal take on it.  The company is certainly within their rights to not offer the insurance, but I also feel we have the right to be as safe as is reasonable.  We must be somewhat alone in our concern because that the labor ratios require at least one person in the couple to work person in the couple to physically work most of a 10 hour day.  Regardless having one employee takes some pressure off of Lee.  He still has to lift every tree, but at least he is doing it with someone stronger than me. The cost of that is $80 a day in labor which I think is a reasonable price to pay. Will find out at the end if the owner feels the same.

We ended up only selling six trees for the day and one of us had to sit in the cold the entire day.  (Hey kids! Any guesses as to who that one of us was? – Lee) And it stayed cold.  Several of the water buckets with trees in them remained frozen solid and the wind never really died down.  Cori and Greg stopped by for a bit, which was awesome, and I got to watch my Patriots beat the Broncos which was also really great!  Lee bore the brunt of the pretty awful day though and I felt bad about that.  I only had to break him during his lunch and then again for his dinner at 8pm, which made for a long, cold day for him. I think at this point it’s pretty fair to say he’s over it. (I’ve been over it for about a week. – Lee)

Oh and on a completely different note, I received my bonus from the Beet Harvest this Friday.  I don’t know if it was the blog, the phone call I made, or everyone’s positive thoughts, but someone changed their mind.  I do know it wasn’t a clerical error initially, because I did verify that on the initial phone call, but someone, somewhere changed their mind and I am grateful for it.

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Once again we were all excited about the weekend and it started off really well.  On Saturday we had sold 32 trees by 7pm along with 3 flocked trees (my 9 foot flocked tree sold which was awesome!) several wreaths, some garland, and many stands.  We were definitely on pace for a record setting day, when the rain that had been threatening all day started and business just died.  We didn’t have one customer for the last hour and a half and the day ended with a thud.  It was respectable.  34 trees and $4100 in sales, just not what we were hoping for.  And worse it kept raining through the night and we woke up to rain on Sunday morning.  Thankfully it also got a little warmer and it was a light drizzle rather than a windy downpour, but as we have seen, the rain has a significant impact on everyone’s sales in Texas.

The hardest thing is knowing whether the sales are just lost or once again pushed to another day.  I still have people coming in regularly who say they were going to skip the real tree this year, but changed their mind and I have to believe those folks could go either way based on weather.  Then again, many of the people coming in are bringing reminder postcards, which means they had every intention of buying, they have just waited until the weather cleared.  One exciting thing is I am seeing a renewed interest in flocked trees.  We still have several for sale on the floor, and I continue to flock trees to fill those holes because folks have an interest in them. It’s an excellent way to jazz up a less than perfect tree, and I really enjoy it.  I’d flock all the trees if time allowed and people wanted them!!  The rain is a bummer for the flocked trees though, because they can’t be transported in the rain, and most folks aren’t willing to wait so buy a regular tree instead.  Ah well, what can we do?

Thankfully the rain held off all day and we had a decent day.  Sold 30 trees and did some nice garland and wreath sales making plenty to cover our labor.  Then at 5:00pm we got a call saying we were getting more trees.  Apparently a truck came in from Oregon and the contents were being equally divided between the 15 locations.  We didn’t need any more trees, and didn’t have the labor to cover it, but were given no choice.  40 trees were on their way and we had to accept them.  Luckily I was able to get a hold of our one guy who didn’t work on Sunday and he was kind enough to come in. He showed up at 5:30pm but the truck didn’t get here until 8pm.  It took our three guys and Lee about a half hour to unload the truck, but we ended up paying an additional 3-1/2 hours of labor.  Why do we care?  It took our labor per tree from about $5 a tree (which is already over our target) to $6 a tree.  And all for trees that we really didn’t need.  I had a plan in place to change the footprint on the floor going forward and we could have coasted on the back stock we had until the end.  Heck, we don’t even know if they are going to keep us open to the end, so every tree we processed was probably going to another location anyway. The fact that we were doing it after already working 9 hours added insult to injury and Lee was about as angry as I have seen him over this job yet. Since we are cutting labor so close, he is doing a lot of the physical labor (I am also doing what I can), so we are working hard these 10 hour days, not just sitting around.

We also had to schedule extra help to process the trees Monday morning, and about the time the processing was done the phone rang.  The owner wanted to know if we had extra trees we could give to other lots.  Interesting question, especially since no one asked us the day before.  My answer was a polite “We are finishing processing the trees you sent last night as we speak and once they are done I will do an inventory and call you back.”  And just to be clear, I don’t mind being the storage facility for trees.  I also don’t mind us processing them for other lots.  What I do mind is our commission is impacted by the amount of labor we are using and I have no idea if all these extra hours will be taken into account or not.  I also mind that it puts extra pressure on Lee as he has to do the physical labor himself to process them and since we aren’t selling them we will not be the ones to get the commission.  I was assured in the beginning of this that the owners would “even things out” at the end of the season and that may well be the case, but since we have absolutely no idea how that bonus is being calculated it’s taking a lot on faith.  To be honest, since my bonus from the beet harvest was taken away with no explanation or recourse I am a little gun shy about the whole bonus thing.   Our low sales coupled with the hours we are working and the physical labor we didn’t expect, makes the bonus more and more important.  And in case you think we are being alarmist,  up until this point we have only made $2060 in sales based commission.

I should add here that almost everyone’s sales are lower than last year.  The heavy rain on the weekends has impacted business and some folks are down 30%.  The other lots are still selling much more than we are.  On my 30 tree days they are selling 100+, and although I don’t know what the percentage of sundries associated with those tree sales are I have to guess they are higher than mine.  Plus of course we get paid a small amount per tree, so even just selling more trees would put more money in our pocket.  By the way this is the first commissioned based job I have ever worked in my life, which is adding to the general unease.  I had many opportunities when I was young to go into sales, but I never felt confident or secure enough to have a job where the income was that variable.  If you are a person who has experience working a job that is commission based, this would probably bother you less, but if like me you never went that route you should definitely take that into consideration.

On Monday I also had my first returned tree.  The trees are 100% guaranteed ONLY if they get them in water within 30 minutes of leaving our lot.  We, of course, have no way of verifying that, so they need to bring back in the tree and the receipt.  I heard other people talk about this during training, but was frankly unprepared for how angry the guy was.  I get it,  He went out of town for two weeks and came back to a dead tree.  Unfortunately, he didn’t have the receipt or the tree, so I was reduced to verifying the tree was dead via a facetime conversation with his wife.  Then he has to fill out a form, because believe it or not there are people that return these trees every year.  The whole interaction was pretty unpleasant, but we did at least make it right and replace the tree because I was able to verify it was one of ours.  And no, I’m not allowed to tell you how we know it was our tree. Crazy.  And hopefully not something I will be dealing with often.

After the customer left I called a person at another lot and was told they only had one refund last year and that person was very nice.  OK then, let’s chalk it up to just “one of those things”.  I also talked a little bit about our situation with the labor and commission and essentially asked if they felt the owners were fair at the end of the day.  She immediately said yes, she felt they had been, so armed with that (and my personal ethic) we went and did a count of trees and I figured out what we could spare.  Some people might hold onto the trees in the hopes they would sell them, but then another couple wouldn’t have the opportunity, so that just didn’t seem right to me.  We completed the count and gave away twelve 4′ Nobles,  and fifteen 7′ Douglass’.  The Dougs in particular I know will sell on other lots, I  just hope whoever comes and picks them up brings some help with them.  I know this is just the beginning of the trees leaving though, and I appreciate the fact that the owner gave me some choice in what I was willing to send off the lot.  My understanding is that soon they will start moving trees around to lots that are selling and then my job will be to try to hang onto the trees I feel will sell.  For me the whole thing is rather deflating.  I would like to sell all the trees.  Lee though would be fine with getting done a few days early and having some time off.  Either way we will just have to see what happens.  I know I am saying that a lot, but there really is nothing else I can say.  We never really know from one moment to the next what will be happening.  I guess that’s just the way the tree business works.

We ended the day selling 11 trees (three were big ones) and about $1400 in sales.  Not a horrible day for a Monday, but not the boost we were hoping for since it was an absolutely beautiful day. They did come and pick up the 27 trees I gave up and since the folks who got them have been super helpful to us, I didn’t feel that bad about it.  In an odd way I knew they were going to a good home.  And yes, I know that seems a little nuts, but we have watered and cared for these trees since the beginning and I want them, as Phoebe from Friends says, to “fulfill their Christmas purpose.”  If they can’t do that here, so be it.  I just want them to go to a good home.  I know, crazy right? But when I heard two of the trees I sent were purchased before they were even unwrapped at the other lot, I felt better.

(In case you’re wondering, I’m keeping track of every hour we work, and every penny we make on all the various items we sell. I have a running spreadsheet that I update each day that tells me how much money we’ve made, and how that translates into how much we’ve made per day as a couple, and how much we’ve made per hour as a couple. The information is useless right now, because I won’t know the final tally until we find out what the bonus is. We believe that information will be given to us on Christmas day, although it’s possible it won’t be until after we’ve taken everything down and packed everything up, which could be New Year’s day. Whenever it is, we certainly will publish that information, because while all the experiences and narrative is helpful, I’m sure what anyone considering doing this will want to know is at the end of the day, was it worth the time? – Lee)

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Thursday I woke up to a cold and blustery wind.  This tent is very heavy-duty and it’s tied down securely, but wind gusts are wind gusts and the side were flapping.  Throughout the week I had been waiting on a pretty big order, which as we continued to sell I kept adding to.  Lots of big trees, more seven footers, more Grands, and more Douglass’ were on their way. I had everyone on standby to help with the truck, but once again had no idea exactly when it was going to come.  At this point, I just wanted to get it so we would have plenty of time to process before the weekend and my hope is this last order would carry us through.  I wanted to avoid processing trees during peak days at all costs and was fine with over stocking a little to avoid that.

I actually gave this order quite a bit of though prior to placing it, because it’s very possible that after this weekend our busy could significantly decrease and then we have a ton of trees that will need to be moved to a different location.  I tried to look at it from the perspective of the owner and made the order based on that.  From a cost standpoint drilling and standing them will be roughly the same no matter who does it, and sending stood, wrapped trees to someone else would only help them.  From a commission standpoint, it’s the same regardless of who sells them. Transportation will be more difficult if they are stood up and wrapped, but transfers between lots do happen frequently and there is even an internal paperwork process in place to handle this scenario.  And since I need to have at least one employee here when we are open for business, processing these trees will give them something to do throughout the day, which might actually save labor costs long-term.

Where it gets more challenging is the unwrapped trees.  They are harder to move and you risk damage during transport, so how many unwrapped trees should we have on the floor.  So I thought long and hard about how many open trees we should have.  The owner has been very clear he is trying to establish a presence in this area, and every customer we make happy this year will return next year with friends.  That’s how new tree stands gain momentum.  Word of mouth and quality of service and trees. That means lots of choices, especially in the larger sizes, and the staff to help deliver them, tie them on cars, etc.  I’ve been super lucky with the deliveries, being able to accommodate almost all of the customers with same day/next day delivery and thus far we have only had to ask people to come back and get their tree the next day a couple of times and those were the 11 footers.

Filling this tent up with these big trees could mean more problems on the back-end with what is left, but will maximize our chance for profit on what I believe will be our busiest weekend.  Plus, selfishly  if I have to sit here day after day I would rather not do it in a half empty tent, listening to people complain about the lack of selection.  It may come to that.  It probably will come to that, but maybe not.  I have seen a willingness on the part of people to drive extra to get the selection they want.  I made a couple Grand sales that way, when others ran out and sold a flocked tree yesterday, because no one else close had pre-flocked trees ready for sale in their tents and I had several. We have a text group where we ask around if a customer is looking for something and we don’t have it, so maybe as the season progresses, I can be the place that has it?

Lee thinks I am nuts by the way.  He’s focused on just finishing the season as painlessly as possible, and my constant tweaking was driving him crazy.  My compromise has been to leave him out of it.  I, and the one or two employees we have (I often do this on shift change and keep once person a little long so we have two people) are moving the trees and rearranging so as the stock diminishes the tent doesn’t look empty.  I am actually enjoying this very much, but every time we make a change trees have to be moved, so I have to be very careful to not require too much of the folks working for us.  It’s kind of like a puzzle.  Figure out a way to get the new pattern locked in with the least amount of moves. Again, Lee thinks I am nuts, but I can’t just sit there.  Wednesday we sold 12 trees which is a little over one an hour.  Seven of the twelve were 8 feet or higher though and we really need another strong person to handle those.  We dealt with two in the morning and the second 8-1/2 footer was really heavy and I could barely handle my end.  And no before you ask the person who bought the tree didn’t offer to help.  That rarely happens, even when I am loading the trees.   So on these slow days, we still need to have an employee but because they aren’t allowed to run the cash register one of us has to sit outside with them.  We out a heater in the little office so it’s not super cold, but it can be pretty boring.  Lee would rather sit outside with a book than get into something and get interrupted, so I am staying inside mostly until a third person is needed. It would be ok if I could actually leave and run some errands, but we never know when it will get busy, so we both have to stay.  Not the most optimal circumstance, but I have managed to keep my labor around $6.50 a tree, which I think is pretty good considering the circumstances.

Thursday we got our truck in and it went great.  I had my four full-time employees and one extra that I was trying out and they rocked it, processing 88 trees in about 2 1/2 hours.  Totally amazing job and so great that we have tons of trees for the weekend.  Even more amazing considering how cold it was.  The wind was blowing very hard and it was in the 40’s all day. I kept hoping it would warm up, but if never did.  Everyone kept working though despite the conditions, and it was a true team effort.  We did totally blow our labor ($35 a tree), because we had one of our slowest days ever and only sold 9 trees So even though we are not sure how busy we will be this weekend, we will be ready.  It’s also a good sign that as soon as we put up a new 9 foot Nordmann it sold.  We received ten more of those on the trailer and if nothing else I am pretty confident all of those will sell.  Unfortunately there are no large Nobles left in the warehouse, so we will need to make due with 8 footers, but those are nice and fat and look beautiful.  Should be a fun weekend and we feel totally ready.  Hopefully we aren’t all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Friday morning I drove down to the bank and got some change for the weekend and went into HEB for some deli chicken.  They do have trees, plenty of them, but most are wrapped up and their prices aren’t that much better than ours.  This part of town is growing, but there is still a relatively limited customer base  so Lowes and HEB could definitely impact our sales of low-end trees.  Still, I feel extremely confident that we have the highest quality trees around.  The question remains how many people in this area are in the market for a quality tree?  My understanding is the closer you get to Christmas the more price becomes a factor, so Lee and I both believe this weekend will be critical to our success one way or another.

My confidence felt well founded when we sold 3 trees and two stands within the first hour of opening up.  The weather is decent, chilly but not windy and not nearly as cold as yesterday.  Folks have waited this long because of the weather and now seem to be coming in. It was busy in spurts all day and we ended up selling 20 trees along with some big ones. It was fun while people were there, not so much when it was slow.  One of my new guys did call and say he had gotten a job offer out of the blue in his field and had to leave immediately to work in a fish hatchery (yes that’s true), but he was so nice and so apologetic I really didn’t mind.  Plus I had another guy who helped with the truck waiting in the wings so I just switched the hours.  I made the schedule a whole week in advance this time and this is the third person who has picked up this particular set of hours. I also had someone who had quit on me come back and ask if they could still get the free Christmas tree deal.  The company offers a free tree to any person who stays through the season and we hold the money back in an envelope for them until the end of the season.  Although this guy has little two kids and I felt pretty lousy about not just giving him a tree, my firm answer was no.  He left me in the lurch, with no notice, and it takes a particular kind of hubris to think I would still give him a tree after that.  Crazy.

So Lee thinks these blog posts have been a little dull of late and I guess they have been.  Sorry about that,  Our live has been pretty monotonous and it’s hard to jazz that up.  Besides it’s an accurate representation of what’s going on, so you should probably see that as well.  Everything shouldn’t be drama all the time.  I realize as I am saying this I am probably jinxing myself. Oh, and somehow I got a pine needle stuck in my thumb.  It is on my right hand and it’s swelled up a bit trying to push it out.  Since I use my right thumb quite a lot, it’s driving me crazy.  How’s that for drama…

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Monday morning we woke up to more rain, but also to two people waiting outside the gate to put in applications.  Initially I was confused and thought they were together, but it was a coincidence they showed up at the same time.  One was available to do deliveries and the other was available anytime and this turned out to be a lifesaver, because my 6’4″ helper chose Monday to say he wouldn’t be working any more with us. The cold and rainy weekend was too much for him, and he wasn’t interested in continuing.  I also had a delivery early in the morning, but thankfully one of the two new guys took the delivery and we got the tree out to the customer very quickly. I am also going to fill the hours with the other new guy.

I think this last incident put me over the edge a bit though, and although I was polite to the guy as he quit, I had a mini rant after he left.  I promised myself I wasn’t going to write about the employees through this process, but at this point it is such a huge part of the experience I have to find a way to express it.  So after sleeping on it, I decided here’s what I am going to do.  I am going to lay out (in a thumbnail sketch) my employee experience to date chronologically.  No names will be used, but I am going to provide the same level of detail that I have been writing on the applications for next year.  This is my compromise to my ethical belief that although people have a reasonable right to privacy, I also have the right to share my experience.  You be the judge after reading it if I handled it appropriately. Plus keep in mind, I can only report what I have heard, the reality of why they chose not to work could be something completely different.  People seem to be pretty honest about it though.  And despite the fact that many people still believe that an unwillingness to work is based on social strata, age, and/or ethnicity I have absolutely NOT found that to be the case.  I have hired a diverse group of people and in my opinion work ethic does not correlate to any of those factors. It also oddly also does not seem to correlate to need.  I really don’t get that.

In summary (because apparently talking about this in detail can get me in trouble) I have hired 18 people.  8 people never showed up or quit after a few shifts.  10 people worked a few shifts and caused issues, so were never called back. 3 have been rock stars and a fourth just started and is doing well. I have had three people with me from the beginning who have been absolutely amazing, and have formed the core of my team.  I have consistently had these three, but the most active employees I have had at any time has been eight people and that barely lasted a full weekend.

Here’s the thing.  I know this job is low paying and hard, but we have done everything we can to be upfront about that and make the atmosphere as pleasant as possible.  (What she’s leaving out is that on numerous occasions we’ve fed our people, she gives them hot cocoa, and we give them lots of breaks whenever possible. We can’t pay more, but we can DO more. – Lee) At the end of the day though, this place requires hard work and most of the people listed above decided the money was not worth the effort.  What bothers me so much, is many of them are living off their parent(s) or are on public assistance.  If you have a better option, absolutely find a different way to make money.  But if you aren’t earning money and are capable of doing this job, then I see no reason why you wouldn’t do it.  It’s only for a few weeks after all, not for the rest of your life.  Yes, my Midwestern background is showing, but seriously this is ridiculous.  And for all those who say illegal immigrants are taking our jobs, I would be thrilled to be able to hire anyone who was willing to do this work, illegal or no.  But that is against the law and we do a thorough ID check before hiring, so that’s just not going to happen.  Lastly, it seems pretty clear that for most people this work is “beneath them.”  That mentality is making me crazy. After all, I have an MBA and I am selling Christmas trees, and I did far less pleasant work when we were young, broke, and needed the money.   Beneath them…give me a break.

OK, rant ended.  I will return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Monday was rainy cold and we only sold 11 trees, but Tuesday the sun finally came out and we had our best weekday ever.  We sold 29 trees and had $3800 in sales. We were also staffed perfectly, hitting the $4 per tree target right on the nose, without feeling like Lee or I were working ourselves to death.   The new guy I hired did a great job and seemed to like it, so he’s on the schedule now, taking the hours of the person who quit.  We had some really nice families come through and  sold wreaths, garland, big trees and had the staff to handle it.  It was a nice day.  Several people said they were going to come on the weekend, but couldn’t face the rain, and frankly I don’t blame them.  Since I was feeling more positive about sales, I placed an order for more trees.  I asked for ten 9-10 footers, ten 7 foot nobles (we had tons of sixes but are out of sevens in back stock) and fifteen more grands.  People on a budget really seem to like them.  Getting the order processed will be challenging with the four people we have, but everyone has expressed a willingness to come in to help with the truck orders and there is no immediate need so hopefully will be OK.  Running the lot with plenty of back stock is so much easier, I’d like to keep it that way instead of waiting until we run low and then getting a huge order.  That’s rough on everyone.

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We were told from day one that the weekend after Black Friday weekend would be our busiest by far.  It’s all hands on deck from a staffing perspective, and a completely full tent of trees in preparation.  That is one of the main reasons we have had such a sense of urgency around staffing and trees processing, because we knew the big weekend was coming.  That was a good thing.  I would always rather know and be prepared, and I have to say that the owner and his staff have kept their eye firmly on that weekend the entire time.  Despite an incredibly rocky start we actually felt ready.  Full to bursting with trees, and an adequate number of employees, and we were ready to go.  When we heard it was going to rain all weekend, I wondered what that would do to the sales, but everyone told us the rain and cold actually makes more people buy Christmas trees down here.  Weird, but since this is as close as they get to snow, I guess it makes sense.  Two of our employees have lived here their entire lives and have only seen snow once in their life.  Back in 1985 they got 14 inches of snow in San Antonio and several people talk about it when they have come into the tent.  Christmas equals snow mentally, even in Texas. so I guess overcast skies are close enough.

Thursday night was once again slow and Lee and I spent some time talking about our strategy for the weekend.  Now that the tent is full, the guys in the back can’t see when we have a customer, and I am yelling back for one of them to bring up the tree for the customer.  Obviously this is not the best approach, so we decided I would be in the booth and Lee would run the floor directing the team on which trees came first.  We had a mini-rush on which to practice and got five trees out in rapid succession with minimal fuss.  Lee and I will have walkie talkies so he can move over the floor more and I think it will work great. Speaking of walking, Lee hit a record high 19,000 steps on Thursday and he has walked over 120 miles since Nov 5th.  That is not a typo.  If nothing else, this is great for him in the workout department.  And one final thing that made me feel very hopeful.  This very nice gentleman came in and bought a 8-1/2′ Noble late in the evening and wanted it delivered that night.  That would have been a major emergency just a few days ago, but I called Jon and he was happy to do the delivery. He has a truck, lives a few miles away, and could handle the tree by himself.  He made $80 plus tip, we moved a tree quickly, and the customer was extremely happy.  It was a complete win-win-win for everyone!!  Things really are looking up.

More kids trees!! I love these little guys

One side of the tent to the middle. The other side was equally full

Lee tried to take a picture on a ladder but you can’t really capture how many trees were in here

Friday started with another load of trees.  We finally received the promised Grands and some smaller  Douglas I had ordered several days ago. We waited, and we waited, and we waited.  Finally at 5pm we were told 100+ trees was coming in the load.  It finally showed up at 6:33pm.    By this time I had lots of people, but no time.  The last thing we wanted to do was process trees on our very busiest day, Saturday, but that’s exactly what we were going to have to do.  I know they had problems with the delivery and I know we were last on the list of folks who got their Grands, but honestly they could not have come at a worse time.  Well, I guess 8am on Saturday would have been worse.  Thankfully everyone was super flexible with hours. Well, almost everyone.  I asked the two guys that live far away if they could come in at 9am to help process trees before we got busy (they normally come at 11am) and initially was told yes, but then later they said they had to go to the grocery store for their elderly parents so they couldn’t be here until after 10am.   I extended everyone else for a longer day on Saturday and just hoped for the best.  Friday was pretty slow until 5pm.  It was raining pretty hard on and off and I can see why folks wouldn’t want to pick up a tree in this weather.

The good news was the evening was slow so we did get some Grands up.  Sold the first 8 footer we unwrapped less than 20 minutes after it was on the floor, so that’s auspicious.  They are a relatively cheap tree, very full, and smell slightly of oranges.  I don’t find the orange/pine smell that pleasant but some people seem to like it.  Speaking of smells, everything we own smells like Christmas tree at this point which is actually kind of nice. (When we get ready for bed at night, we shed about a thousand pine needles each, which is not so nice. – Lee)  Anyway, we are full to the rafters of Christmas trees.  We sold 19 on Saturday, much less than I expected, and we will see how Saturday goes.  I can’t imagine the rain won’t be a factor, but we will see.

The Grands

After all the fuss, processing 100 plus trees to get ready, and totally blowing our labor for the week, Saturday was a bust. We sold 37 trees, which was less than last Saturday, and it was slow most of the day.  The main reason was that it poured rain most of the day.  Not just rained, but poured.  I felt super bad for the guys, because they had to tie trees on cars in the rain, but they handled it really well.  We did sell several 9-10 footers though, and had some big-ticket sales, but truly not great from a sales perspective.  The only positive thing was we have lots of trees in back stock now, so it was relatively easy compared to last week.  We knew what we were doing and so did our staff, so everyone was much more relaxed.  Since we are expecting more rain tomorrow, the whole weekend will not be what the owner expects.  The big question in my mind is when will those customers come?  Will next weekend be super busy or will we get those folks that didn’t come out over the weekend in a trickle throughout the week in the evenings?  It matters of course because of staffing.  It was all hands on deck for this weekend, but we can’t afford to staff this way every day, so will need to play it by ear. Thankfully we seem to be pretty rock solid on staffing at this point.  I have 4 solid people who have good availability and really want the hours.  I would love to have a fifth for safety, but these four should be enough to  get us through until the end.  Plus we really like them all, and enjoy hanging out with them, which is important.  There is a lot of down time on slow days and you want people who can handle the slow periods along with the mini-rushes we get.

Sunday started out OK, but then it started raining again and ultimately we only sold 34 trees, none of which were over 8-1/2 feet. We sold several of the new Grands, but it was a very slow day.  I was able to get everyone in at the same time though, and ordered pizza for the team, which was nice.  Plus Greg was there as well and the manager of the Shell station next door, so everyone got fed.  I also was plying people with hot chocolate at least once a day, which is a pretty cheap way to perk people up.  Carrying trees out to cars in the cold rain is really unpleasant, but everyone maintained a great attitude despite the weather.  Since it is only Dec 5th, I am hoping folks are just holding off and will buy a tree next week when the weather clears.  Starting Tuesday it is supposed to be 71 and sunny, and both of us are really looking forward to that.  So, it wasn’t a great weekend from a sales or weather perspective.  We still have 320 trees on the lot though, so we are staged and ready if the business ever comes.

What the back area looked like at the beginning of the weekend. Made me feel somewhat claustrophobic

At least we sold enough to clear out some of the backstock overflow. Much better!

My understanding is if our sales drop enough that it is not worth staying open, they will move the trees to another lot that is selling more, but I would think that since he wants to establish a presence in this area, he would try to keep it open.  We are more than making our payroll every day, and since our salary is fixed and the commission is the same no matter where the trees are sold, I would keep it open as long as it wasn’t bleeding money, but I am not sure what the owner’s thought process will be.  Mainly at this point I want to keep it open for the employees sake.  Since we are running a skeleton crew, they are actually making pretty good money and since they have hung in there with us, I would like to stay open for their sake if nothing else. Oh, and I had an order for an unusual flocked tree.  She wanted a light tip which “patches” of snow on the branches.  I gave it my best shot and she was super happy with it.  I don’t know if I like it that much, but she was really thrilled and that’s all that matters.  Still isn’t dry because of all the rain, but hopefully can get it to her on Tuesday.

Tree with “patches of snow”

Up close the patches look pretty good

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Monday the two new guys showed up around 11:30, and they are big guys. (Big doesn’t necessarily mean buff and strong. Sometimes big just means big. These guys are just…big. I saw no discernible difference between their ability to lift heavy things and the ability of our two younger smaller guys. Strike one. – Lee)   I was told they would want to work 7 days a week, 9-10 hours a day, but I was a little dubious. Most of the folks we have worked with can handle a solid 5 hour day and a couple can handle 7, but no one has been able to hack more than that.  When I talked to the owner about my concerns though, he said he was working a 12 plus hour day and I just didn’t have strong enough people, and since we were also working long hours I thought, “Well, maybe he’s right.”.   When they came in we had about 27 trees on the ground and after some initial introductions and orientation to our tent layout they started working.

Things started pretty well, and they processed the biggest trees, but as soon as we stood the big ones we were selling them. Seriously, Monday we sold five trees over 9′, and a 10 1/2′. Getting those out to the truck requires all hands on deck so I kept having to pull them away from processing and after a few hours I noticed everyone was getting pretty tired. The good news was Lee for once could take a more hands off approach, and he managed the process rather than performing it.   I gave everyone a break, made sure they drank lots of water and got something to eat, and then the next truck came in. We received an additional 68 trees, which joined the 14 or so that were left on the ground.

At this point both Lee and I were getting concerned.  We had been told two strong guys could process 20 trees an hour, but obviously that wasn’t the case.  But we also understood that even though we only sold 17 trees that day it was steady busy and we did $2,700 in additional revenue.  I called and talked to the owner and his second in command a bit about the situation.  It was a good conversation and I learned quite a bit about managing Christmas Tree labor.  Essentially, two strong guys can process 20 trees 6-8′ trees an hour if they are not interrupted.  That’s pure task time.  Larger trees are more time consuming and frequent customer interruptions cause a major loss of efficiency.  The larger lots are able to have separate staff for processing trees versus helping customers on the floor so are able to achieve those higher efficiency levels.  Because we are small, everyone does everything, hence it takes longer.  I felt quite a bit better after the conversation.  Not only because I learned something, but also because I firmly established with the owner that our situation as a small volume tent selling many large trees was somewhat unique.

I also spoke to the new employees at the end of the shift and asked them point-blank which tent was harder to work.  They said ours was much harder, because the other tent had more employees, so this corroborated what I was seeing with my own eyes. I thanked them for the feedback and assured them I was committed to letting them completely focus on processing trees the next day and had even called in extra staff to cover the floor.  I also said we might have a delivery and once the trees were processed and the delivery was done, they could take off early if they wanted to. They wanted to have at least one day off and were totally OK with that.

On Tuesday I actually left the lot in the morning for the first time since Thanksgiving to run a few errands. I had to get fingerprinted for the gate guarding job, I needed more bottled water for the employees, and I needed to stop at the bank and get some one dollar bills.  It was heady stuff being out in the world, especially because I got to squeeze in a McDonald’s breakfast sandwich.  While I was at the bank though I received two phone calls.  The first was telling me we were getting 46 more trees in the morning and a second truckload in the afternoon. No problem.  What would have been a frantic emergency a couple of days ago was fine because of the two new guys.  I did try to find out when the third truck was coming though, because I needed to schedule them a day off. I was also concerned about my labor, because yesterday I ran $14 per tree, which is three times the “red” threshold, so I thought if I knew which day the next truck was coming I could give them their day off and save myself some labor hours.  Not five minutes after that call the owner called me.  He told me to ignore the red labor warnings on my daily spreadsheet and even went so far as to make the analogy of putting a piece of black tape on a warning light on a car.  That made me laugh and I was like, “OK, no problem, but you have to tell me when to take the black tape off and start paying attention again.”  He said at least through next weekend (which is the highest volume) not to worry about it, which is absolutely no problem!!

I made it back to the lot before 11am when we opened and our two new guys and another employee showed up.  They started processing trees, but let me know they had to leave by 1pm.  Ummm…OK.  Apparently they thought when I said yesterday I would let them go after the delivery that meant they had the afternoon free and had scheduled an appointment with their mother’s caregiver at 2pm.   I was pretty sure I was clear that no one was leaving until after the current trees were processed, but maybe they thought they could knock them out in two hours.  Unfortunately, that was not even close to being the case.  (Strike two. – Lee) Even though there were no interruptions and we had a third guy, there were still 19 trees on the ground when the next truck came.  This load had 45 trees and it was all hands on deck to get the trailer unloaded before they had to leave at 1pm.  We all helped and thankfully Greg was our driver so we got it done and I also managed to finalize the schedule through the weekend.  In order to make sure there were no more miscommunication, I scheduled them 11-7 every day, and when they asked when their day off would be I said I was sorry, but it would have to be today.  Next week I promised to give them a full day off, but I simply couldn’t spare them any other day because now we had 54 trees waiting to be stood and another big load coming in on Thursday.

Luckily we finally had the slow day we had been promised.  We had the longest breaks between customers I had seen to date and although we sold one 11-1/2 foot tree we delayed pickup until the next day.  Since it was slow Lee and I and our third employee filled all the holes on the floor with trees, flocked several trees (I am totally caught up and completed 4 more as demos), and oversaw the pickup of the flocked trees that were completed.  I was pretty happy about that.  I love flocking the trees and since everyone is different you never know what you are going to get.  Everyone was very happy, in particular a woman who got a Douglas which was her first flocked tree.  Since the Douglass’ have very light branches I wasn’t sure how that one was going to turn out, but Lee had me practice on a littler one first and I got the technique down.  It required a very very light flocking, but when it was done it looked really great.  She liked it so much we gave each other a big hug and it was a great moment.  I wish I had a picture of it, but she came to pick it up almost as soon as it was dry and I will always associate her look of wonder with this job.  Something about Christmas trees brings out the kid in most of us, and a custom flocked tree can be very special.  All in all it was a very nice day, and although Lee had to do more physical labor, we had a nice day. Of course we only sold 12 trees and made $1700 in revenue, but we were overdue for a day like that.

Oh, and in the evening a 6’4″ gentleman walked in and filled in an application.  He is a former teacher who is switching careers and becoming a nurse and looking for money until nursing school starts in January.  As I talked to him, I am not kidding, it was like a sunbeam shined on him, and a chorus of angels started singing.  The perfect employee walked into my tent and wanted a job.  I was a little cautious though.  I said we would start him on a truck and see if he liked it, but wow, I couldn’t have dialed up a better fit.  Since he is also incredibly attractive, Lee wasn’t crazy about me saying he’s the perfect man for the job, but hey, we all have our crosses to bear.

The next day was so much better.  We received 46 more trees (including an 11′ Noble and a 10′ Nordmann), but I had lots of staff.  Labor costs were $28 a tree, but the owner said don’t worry about it and I am not!  Jon was everything I had hoped for as he seemed to like the work and could lift many trees all by himself.  Again it was slow (10 tree sales and $1700 in revenue) so we were finally able to completely stock the floor and get most of the trees off the ground.  We had 25 left at the end of the day, but we also rearranged the floor to add more trees (something we would have been hard pressed to do without Jon’s help) and we feel almost ready for the weekend.  I also flocked more trees so now we have 6 ready to buy and that whole section makes me happy.  I tried different styles on different trees so people can see what their options are.  The only sour note for the day was when the two new employees called me and said they were getting medicine for their mom and would be 20 minutes late. That’s two lates and an early leave in a three day period which is not an auspicious beginning.  (Strike three. I’m all done with these guys. – Lee) Everyone else is really getting along well though and once we get past this weekend I will have the chance to reevaluate.

So I am going to leave it here and since I feel like all I do lately is complain, I thought I would leave you with some pretty pictures of our Christmas trees.  All that hard work has definitely paid off, visually at least, and I feel proud of what our team has done.

Flocked tree area

My “practice” Douglas. Tends to clump so have to keep it super light

We flock trees that have a broken leader and mark the tag repaired.

The heavy flock at the top covers the zip tie that secures the leader to its stump

This was my “Charlie Brown” tree totally transformed by a light flock. It’s now my favorite tree on the lot

This is a pretty standard medium flock. Some lots do all their demo trees this way, but I wanted to show people their options

This was my one attempt at a heavy flock. It’s a pain in the butt and doesn’t hold up well during transport so we discourage folks from getting it

Our new configuration allowed us to put up two more rows of trees. Makes the aisles a little tighter but opened up much needed back stock area

We got some beauties in the last order

This row has 9 footers on the left and 10 -12 footers on the right

Lee had the great idea to add a little cluster of 5 footers in a space we won’t be filling. Hard to tell in the pic but the size difference is dramatic

Big tree back stock area. These are almost all 9 foot and up

6-8 foot back stock. The tent sloping requires us to put 6’s and 7’s on the right wall

The best view I could get of the entrance. I am standing by the flocked trees which are right in the front

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