Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 59659 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59659 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Before my parents died, they’d had the foresight to set up a trust that controlled what little fortune they had left, including the ownership of the grocery store. When I turned thirty, I would inherit the store and everything that went with it, assuming the small group of investors my parents had brought in in case anything happened to them voted on my competency and faith in my abilities. I felt like I had done everything possible to make that happen.
Thus, I was sitting in the meeting room of the local library, having come in prepared to sign a bunch of forms and get the formalities over with so I could celebrate. It would be the day that I was able to feel like a connection had been made with my parents and do what they always wanted me to do, as well giving my life the purpose and meaning that I had been chasing for a long time.
Shaking with anger, I looked down at the paper in front of me. I had been staring at it for a few minutes now and had felt my entire body go numb.
“Melanie,” a voice said from some far-off distant planet away from where my thoughts were. “Melanie, I hope you can understand this. We did this with you in mind.”
The words started coming out of my mouth without bothering to check in with my brain. They were coming straight from my gut. From my heart. They were words that I was barely able to form as they passed through a tsunami of anger and bitterness and betrayal inside my throat. Words that dripped with the hatred of bureaucracy and the not-so-subtle misogyny that I had dealt with my entire adult life from these people. These people I trusted to do the right thing. The easy thing.
How wrong I had been.
“You did this with me in mind, Harry?” I said, my voice low and gravely. I wasn’t going to shout. Yet. “You did this, what, to protect me? Is that what you are saying?”
“Melanie,” he said, using his most condescending tone. He had been using it on me since I was eighteen and had started attending these meetings. “You must understand that we have been watching you and how you ran things for years. It just wasn’t what we thought were in the best interests of the trust as it was laid out to us.”
“Not in the best…” I began, unable to believe what I was hearing. “It is my fucking store, Harry.”
“Melanie, language,” another board member, Frank, said.
“Fuck you, Frank,” I shot back. “Fuck all of you, in fact. You did this to me on the day before my birthday. The day before. You didn’t do this just because you were worried about anything involving me other than your own financial interests. You did this because your financial interests are all you care about, and you don’t give a shit about me.”
“Melanie, that is enough,” Harry said. “You want the facts? I’ll give you the facts. The store has lost growth by an average of two percent every year for three years, an average of one point three over five and one point one over ten. Do you know what else coincides with that slow drive into the ground? You becoming manager.”
“Oh please,” I said. “It also coincides with Walmart opening up at the edge of town on one side and Costco on the other. You know that Hank. Don’t try to bullshit me. Look at the numbers of any other local grocer in a town where that has happened. Tell me the percentage of loss was even close to what I had.
“And if you look at the month-by-month numbers, we had an absolute crap first quarter, that’s true. But everything after that has been going up. Last year was the same, and we almost broke even. This year we are on pace to break even and go into the black.”
“You’re wrong,” Harry said. “That’s not accounting for vendor contracts.”
“You’re right, it’s not,” I snapped. “But I have already negotiated with the vendors to come back at their same rate. Which with the growth we had means we will actually have a higher profit than what I predicted in the forms I sent you two weeks ago.”
“I don’t remember that,” Hank said, looking unsure of himself for the first time. “But be that as it may, the board has serious concerns about your preparedness to run the store profitably and responsibly. Your attitude here today proves it. You’re hot-headed and not capable of keeping your emotions in check.”
“What the hell did you think I would do, Hank? Lay down and take it like a good girl?” I yelled. Hank visibly squirmed at that one. Good. “I’m not a child, Hank. This good old boys’ club bullshit is ridiculous. You seem to think that me being a woman prevents me from being able to run my own business, but I assure you that it doesn’t. I know what I am doing. It’s my family’s company, and I should be the one to run it by all rights just as my parents intended.”