My Korean Deli_ Risking It All for a Convenience Store - Ben Ryder Howe [60]
“Excuse me. You the owner?”
From my knees, I look up and see a baby-faced Latino kid wearing a weight belt and holding a clipboard.
“Yes?” I pant.
“Delivery.”
Delivery? “At this hour?”
“We’ve never been to your store before,” he apologizes. “We had a little trouble getting here.”
“Oh. I understand. Do you need my help unloading? The store’s empty, as you can see. Put the boxes anywhere.”
“I just need you to sign here,” he says, passing me the clipboard.
“Okay. Who are you, by the way? Which company?”
“Steinway Foods.”
I must look confused because he says the name again, then adds, “You know, gourmet and imported delicacies?”
The name doesn’t register with me. Then it hits. “Yes, of course! I placed an order, didn’t I?” It was weeks ago, and it’s finally here!
“So where do you want us to put this stuff?” the cherubic deliveryman asks. He really looks like he should have wings.
“Where? Anywhere! Right here is fine.”
“There’s a lot of stuff.”
“There is?” I swallow.
“You ordered”—he studies the invoice, counting in his head—“twenty-seven boxes of food.”
Twenty-seven?! My God, am I insane? Will our shelves even hold twenty-seven boxes? What could I have been thinking, ordering twenty-seven boxes? Gab is going to go crazy. She’ll lose her mind. We don’t have that money. We won’t be able to pay. We’ll get sued. Kay will want to kill me. George already wants to kill me. What am I going to do?
No.
I will not panic. This was the right move. We need this food.
“I’ll make room in back,” I say, “and in the meantime you can start unloading right here.”
Three other deliverymen—much coarser and flabbier than the angel boy—suddenly burst into the store wheeling dollies loaded with boxes. Boom—there’s another one. Boom—another. Stacks begin forming; the door cannot stay closed.
“We’ll need that space in back,” the choirboy calls.
My God, those shelves of ours won’t be empty any longer. It’s here! It’s finally here! There is a god who listens to the prayers of small, previously irreligious (but willing to be open-minded!) business owners, and today he looked down on us in our hour of need and delivered. I’m thinking of calling Gab at home and fessing up just so I can get her to come over and we can share this joy together.
Meanwhile, the flow of boxes goes on and on.
“Do you want to check what’s inside?”
“Huh? Wha?”
“I said, Do you want to check what’s inside?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Most owners just check. Once it’s here and we leave, we can’t take it back.”
“Oh.” What am I thinking? I’m acting like I’ve never done this before. Of course I should check. I should make sure that what’s inside the boxes isn’t damaged, that it hasn’t been tampered with, that it didn’t fall off the truck. Most important, I should see if it’s what I ordered.
What did I order?
Yes, what exactly did I spend all that money on? The phone call is a blur—I got so excited (twenty-seven boxes!) that I wasn’t thinking straight and just started calling out SKU numbers. I was in the grips of anxiety and hysteria. It was a frenzy.
“No need to check,” I tell the deliveryman.
“Okay, then sign right here.”
“I thought I already did.”
“No, you forgot.” He hands me the clipboard again, and this time I sign very deliberately, and as I’m signing I see the little number at the bottom of the invoice.
It’s our total, nearly fifteen hundred dollars.
Never have I seen an invoice so large. Most deliveries cost around one hundred dollars, and with fifteen to twenty of them a week, that expense has been our downfall so far as a business. This is the same as all