My, how time flies. I was reminded of this thanks to my sister today. She sent a message to our group chat explaining that yesterday, our newest additions to the family, kittens named Riku and Keiko turned a year old yesterday.
I'm fairly certain I have their photos somewhere. The passage of time is curious. In the mornings, I find it blaze by so fast before I have to sit at my desk and lock in collecting cases to help people with.
In the evenings, it seems to crawl by, as I approach the time to punch out. I take my lunch closer to the end of the shift, but in reality, I'm seldom so pressed on the clock that I need to take it easy before I leave. Now, working at ShakeShack was something else. In fact, even working in that retail workwear store Carhartt held no quarter.
I might be an ungrateful whelp whining about his employment, but sweeping a clothing store didn't make much sense. I wasn't trying to build my character or practice any martial art. I just wanted to collect my 17 bones an hour and walk my thirty minutes home after sending for 4 to 6 hours. I mean, you couldn't ever relax there. I wonder how its turnover goes. They weren't looking for any forward-thinking ideas to raise sales- despite management always recommended different things for our productivity.
Ah, the paradox of scaling.
I feel like as a smaller organization, you'd commit to some aspect and really try to drive it home. Let's say a restaurant is known for its artisan pizzas. As soon as you attempt to scale though, you're recruiting new hires, training people, for the sake of making more pizzas at more stores, but the sinister part is unseen. Somewhere along those lines, you get stragglers, people tired at the end of their shifts, ungrateful customers spending long hours but short money- a myriad different reasons for the change in attitude. Then, to maintain profitability, you have to come down on people's heads with strategies, warnings, reduced hours, write-ups, disciplinary actions, and vacancy replacements.
You lose that spirit of creativity. You lose the pursuit of perfection for the customer's enjoyment. Scaling brings more business, but more business isn't always good for business. That line of thinking brings me back to the idea of 1,000 fans. I think I'd be okay if I only made a difference to a true few of you. It's not that I'd close the door at 1,000 people, but that I wouldn't need to scale past that for my own ambition. If more end up interested in my journey enough to send a few dollars, then so be it.
I wonder what you all think about that. I hardly speak to 1,000 of you daily. If I'm real, maintaining a circle around 100 has been hard, nevermind 10. What a Herculean task.
