Lights Out - A Story of Closing a 17 Year-old Business

A pizza box, napkins, red plastic cups, clear plastic forks, a thirty-two dollar bottle of cabernet and a wood–look corkscrew expectantly arrayed the top of my antique library table-desk. A milk crate containing what usually covered it crowded an edge with a short stack of newly opened mail,  coffee cup, my Wonder Woman figurine that held an inspiring,"Sell" and the ten-line phone marked with staff names, still plugged in, with the dimmest of hope for a last minute reprieve.  Guest chairs, upholstered with vintage fabric were buried by brown cardboard boxes of books, white banker boxes marked by fiscal years, and others marked alphabetically by clients, piled too high and too many to notice the pink rayon peonies beneath.

The shelves and drawers of bookcases and file cabinets stood empty but topped  by boxes filled from their contents. Labeled for storage, they were destined for a location where they would settle like refugees.  Only three months earlier, in an attempt to reduce costs, we moved from a 3,000 square foot space down the hall to our current 600 square foot office.  At that time, we stored furniture, weeded accumulations of office supplies from the past seventeen years and donated more than 30 boxes of books to a school in Costa Rica.   Though that helped, brown boxes and banker boxes oozed like extra slices of cheddar on a grilled cheese.

I relocated the business four previous times – each occasion adding space for the growing company. The initial seed of the idea for the company sprouted in a two-bedroom condo in Chicago, on a butcher-block table, on an enclosed back porch that required a space heater and heavy socks in winter. We advanced to a suburban 1950s ranch, where we placed the butcher-block table against one wall for my desk and removed the doors from a closet in an extra bedroom for a computer station for Heidi, the first employee.  When we required more space for additional employees, we built-out an office in the basement. As I brought on a project for one of the country’s largest banks, we commandeered the entire basement. We were ready when I brought in the client for a site visit. Pleased he registered little surprise when we pulled into the driveway of a suburban home, I declared my residence, “corporate headquarters.” Not long after, when my son, a toddler at the time, referred to our half-bath as the "worker’s bathroom." I knew the business must move to a different space.

We leased an office a few blocks away in the center of town above a liquor store and next to the prep space of a busy hair salon. The smells were intoxicating and nauseating. Condemned three years later to revitalize the town square, the next move took us further away, but to the far less noxious building where we stayed until this last day of business.

I watched Cracker, an employee who began in year ten, as she slowly twirled the lid and read from a candle-in-a-tin given by a vendor selling premiums to promote business, “Bright light, for sales out of sight, buy from Barry, always right.” Mitsy hooted as she entered, “Remember that guy who sold that crap?  God, how does he stay in business? His great meaning in life was to get Oprah to do a show on reuniting sponsors with their pagan babies.” Once after Michael delivered an Account Paid self inker, Mitsy and I spent lunch explaining to Cracker the cardboard banks catholic grade school children apparently all over the country were given at the start of lent every year to save pagan babies. Given the status of the church, we were skeptical that any baby was saved.

Straightening the wick, Cracker chose a match from a gold foil box with black flocking we’d picked up at Le Francais, after an expensive lunch that didn’t persuade the prospect to buy. She studied the box as she struck the match, “who says, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?  We should have fucked him.” The image of Dr. Goldman, his bow tie, Indiana Jones hat, ivory buck shoes, and man-purse with the three of us, no four of us, Babe was here then.”

“Oh Jeez.” “Please, let’s get on with the wine.”  I recalculated for the umpteenth time, the cost of that lost sale. Cracker assembled the corkscrew and handed it to me as she leaned and pushed the bottle toward me too. In that move, she also pushed the scent of the candle; a putrid peach collided with the aroma of garlic and oregano.  It didn’t matter-- my stomach was queasy and could tip at any moment.

             The sensation was not foreign; I’d felt nauseous for weeks… months, maybe longer if I’d let myself analyze it. I incorporated LLL seventeen years and twenty-nine days earlier. The pressure was on from the beginning- to garner my first customer, then the second and hundreds since… till today. In the early days, I handled sales, fulfillment, vendor relationships, accounting, mailroom, and maintenance. I gained ten pounds by the third month eating Oreos for courage.  Late at night, with the whirring of the dish washer and the dahdump of the dryer serenading, I opened and paid the bills.. One by one the customers increased like an add–a-pearl necklace, ten by ten invoices multiplied and so did staff. Once in a sand box, brushing the grit from my son’s hands, I struck up a conversation with a mother pushing a bulldozer toward her son’s truck. She wondered whether I needed childcare because she wanted to stay at home with her son. Turns out she was a CPA, Instead. I hired her to tend the finances; she stayed home and I minimized my cookie binges. Rhonda, another mom in search of part-time work, joined to help fulfillment. More people generated more expenses, more expenses necessitated more sales, more sales required more people… I hired and fired to find the right constellation of stars.  

              The pressure never let up and my stomach was a constant state of upheaval. It was a peculiarly comforting day, when students from Lake Forest Graduate School of Business confirmed in a workflow study that we were officially on a hamster wheel.  I’d sell, we’d get a project, I get pulled from selling to help complete the project, sales would suffer, I’d get back on the phone, get a job and around and around we went. My stomach was the constant reminder of the fear and worries never far away.

               I once won a project that was financially six times larger and exponentially more complex as any previously. The deposit alone covered a year’s rent and salaries. We were flush enough and caught up from our usual slow payment mode. I took a three week vacation with my son- the only one I ever took. No one sold during that time. I came back. The project was underway, but problems surfaced. I got on the phone to sell again but was pulled away to renovate the computer system causing the problems.  An outside firm was required to redesign the system and the server needed upgrading. The mega-client pushed back their opening and all the subsequent pay per performance payments along with it. The hamster wheel flew and I had motion sickness.

              Cracker placed a corkscrew in my hand as I reached for the wine bottle. She possessed a knack for anticipating what I needed, when I needed it, to get the job done. I uncorked the wine. 

              “Another plastic cork and in a $25 bottle of Cab," she pointed out. It was a familiar conversation. We’d been together for seven years, since she joined us after her college freshman year.  For her, we coined the position title, Random Task Force. It adequately described the work of the college kids we hired. The plastic corks were a constant source of amazement to us, especially when found in good bottles of wine – we agreed it seemed so wrong.

Like the plastic bottle stoppers changing the experience of wine, the internet radically impacted LLL. We sold books, we sold information and there was no cork, natural or plastic to stop the affect of the internet on our business. Not that we didn’t try. We established our own web site but six months into it and thousands of dollars later, the developer vanished, evaporated, disappeared. We searched but stopped short rather than get mired in some sink hole of restitution and revenge. The business wasn’t that agile. We simply couldn’t afford the resources to fight it. It had happened once before with a partner.

That experience nearly killed the business.  Paul and I met over a tub of beer at a Fourth of July picnic. It took little time to form a partnership with his two-person company and develop a piece of software to manage operations for clients. For them, Paul was sales and Allen wrote code. They serviced other clients but together we built the software in a couple months and installed it in 30 sites. Like the creation of the days of the week as told in Genesis, it was good. It took four floppies to contain the program and the data. My partners’ partnership changed. Paul went to work for another firm. Allen stayed to take on projects and would deliver soft ware as we needed it, until technology changed and compact disks were preferred over floppys. This required the code to be rewritten from scratch. Allen promised a new program, but bugs appeared and multiplied. A correct user’s manual became as elusive as a whack a mole at the arcade. I kept whackin’. I kept putting off customers and installations until I lost a sale. And I couldn’t bill my half installed clients. The software was no small part of our services.

Eventually, after eliminating valued workers to eliminate expenses that were diverted to the software project, I spent another couple months searching and finding an adequate off-the-shelf program.. It wasn’t customized to our specs but it was stable. We were nothing if we weren’t resilient.

Mitsy, the most maternal of the three of us bent her knees to sit then sprung up and returned to the room with a pizza cutter and a table runner that she draped and reset our glasses upon. She lifted the box top and began rolling over the slice marks that congealed since pizza arrived. “Domestic goddess to the end, Mitsy,” I anointed.

“I found the pizza cutter yesterday as I packed Catherine’s office. It was in with the scissors and paper clips.”

“Did you wash it?” She thought it was one of my - once a health educator always a health educator remarks and smirked. Catherine was my last attempt at reducing employee expense ballast to keep us afloat. She didn’t go easily. She was angry. She took it personally and thought it was unfair that I kept Cracker rather than her since, she had seniority. But Cracker had more versatility and could do more jobs throughout the office. Catherine had good clerical and design skills.

“Mitsy, you are slicing that pepperoni with a rotary cutter Catherine used for posters - I always appreciated (I heard the past tense creep into my language for the first time.) your creativity. I just wondered if you rinsed off the glue and foam board shards.” A look of horror and disgust registered but it didn’t stop her movement.

“Moving days are exempt from all food-born illness. No one ever eats with clean hands or utensils. Their strained backs and hernias far out weigh any gastric discomfort.” She had a point. I’d nearly forgotten my queasy stomach.

“Besides”, as she pulled a short bottle of Korbel and three plastic flutes from her always-present enormous carpet bag, “the alcohol will kill the bacteria.”

I reached my pain tolerance the Monday before. I was grateful to slow my senses with the good wine and now exquisite champagne. “Shouldn’t we save this for something to celebrate?” I asked.

                She waved off the idea and in the same fluid motion, unwrapped the cork hood and popped the cork without losing a drop.

“Mary, I know I am losing my job today. I know we won’t ever be together again. I know there are vendors who aren’t getting paid and customers who are going to be pissed.” My stomach was having a really hard time finding any connection to this from the segue of celebration. She filled our glasses. Holding hers up, till we did the same like a six grade teacher waiting, quietly demanding attention till the last student complies.  “We have something to celebrate-- seventeen years.”

I saw her lip beginning to quiver - my stomach did likewise.

“Fifteen -can’t count the last two” Cracker hissed. I didn’t know whether to hear the attempt at finding a silver lining or the contempt in that last utterance. I saluted with my glass and gulped it down. They were both right.

Cracker, bit into her pizza, “I’ll miss Roccos.” We’d ordered pizza from there nearly every Friday for at least five of the seventeen years. More than one of the Random Task Force, told us Roccos’ Friday was one of the best perques of working with us. The RTF were mom's with available hours between school  drop off and pick up, college kids- Cracker started as one, and my own son.   I didn't have trouble finding or keeping employees, except for that running out of work for them thing. We had health care benefits and a 401K. I paid severance. (I noticed my difficulty in separating the plural we of the company that we had become and the singular me, who started it.) We offered  flex time in recognition of the working moms we hired, including myself. that everyone used. I wondered if I had cut those benefits, if I had paid commission only, if I demanded more hours- could we have survived?  From the beginning, though, only Donna, the accountant and all the ones up till Mitsy knew, I always paid myself first, as a reminder of the responsibility and my role. Unfortunately, I knew too, that there wouldn't be a company without paying the others. Four days earlier, for the first time in 17 years I knew we weren’t going to make pay roll for me or anyone else.

I called them into my office and told them. Cracker denied it, “We have always gotten a check just in time. We still have four days till pay day.”  Like steam evaporating from a mirror, the words I needed to say became clear to me, but I didn’t know if I could say them. 

“It’s time to close the doors,” Mitsy interjected my thoughts, and cut through my hesitation with her usual cut to the bone sensibility.  And, that was that. I told them to pack their things. the movers were coming. 

Punctuating her words by raising her glass, You do have something to celebrate. You made the hardest decision of your career. You no longer have to live with the worry. I don’t have to live with the worry.”

Her quivering lips erupted into sobs and through it and among sniffles and un-even gulps of air, she said, “I thought you should close months ago, but you kept selling new jobs, the line of credit is a bungee cord. The bank liked the up and down activity of a credit line. It showed it was active.”

But the last time they renewed it, there was a new banker. She introduced herself over the phone, asked for our financials; and for the first time didn’t pay us a visit: an ominous sign. I knew that if s like the bankers before him, if she could see meet us, see out earnest office, we three could win her over. Like witches who lost our powers, it didn’t work on Dr. Goldman, and it didn’t work with the bank. The line of credit was near the top and there wasn’t enough room to use it for pay roll. I knew what Mitsy meant.  The bungee recoil, was stretched beyond recoil. 

I looked at both of them, raised my glass, “Here’s to…” the phone interrupted me. We all jerked toward it as it rang. I picked it up, not sure whether I should use the company name to answer it.

“This is Mary, oh yes, sure I remember meeting you at ASM. Of course. I’d be glad to send you pricing… can you tell me a little more about what you are thinking…, four sites… maybe four more after the new year?” Cracker and Mitsy stared at me like seeing feet coming down a chimney. I think I took her contact information and hung up.

“Do you think I should have given her a prize for being the last call of the company?” The Willie Loman part of me could not bring myself to tell the caller that I did not intend to send her anything, that in less than an hour, the phones would be dead, the website down. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that there were 4,900 envelopes printed with an address that was no longer ours, that there were no more stamps to send the promotional literature, that we would no longer get deliveries from Knobby Knee Ken the UPS driver or Sexy Steve the Fed Ex guy, that the lights and heat and water cooler would no longer function, that we wouldn’t have to hear all the Russian ladies from next door complain about  their boss in the lavatory, nor have him, who we called Slipper Boy, because of his footwear, stop us in the hallway. Cracker called him a letch, Mitsy called him an erudite and I, appreciated his business acumen and wondered if I should ask him for a job. I couldn’t bring myself to tell the caller that I’d never send her the materials, yet, I held a thought, that perhaps, once the boxes were settled in internment, and I was back in my basement, I could help her.

The office door burst open. Two burly guys, one with a Yale sweatshirt wielding an orange dolly and the other wearing a dirty suede jacket and pushing a huge laundry hamper, wheeled through the door. A third, who we could not see, was pounding, apparently at the hinges to make room to move the contents of the office. Cracker poured first the remaining cab into the cups and then the remaining champagne evenly into the flutes with the accuracy of a ten year old fairly distributing Koolaid. Like office Rockettes all kicking in unison, the three of us stood up and started giving directions to the movers.

No one could hear or understand a word. We started to laugh. We always worked that well together. The movers didn’t move. Mitsy and I watched Cracker cross her legs. Since her college days, her Monday morning stories nearly always included one where she laughed until she peed. I couldn’t catch my breath as I watched her shuffle off to the ladies room with the Russian ladies. A button popped, Mitsy’s laughter exposed a Bullwinkle t-shirt beneath. The movers took a step back.   Again, at the same time, the remaining two of us started to give directions. Our laughter muted us. I could only point and the movers began to load the dolly and fill the cart.

When Cracker returned, she was sober, or at least somber. Without words she carried boxes to her car and moved others toward the door for the movers. When the trunk and seats were loaded with her personal belongings she came over to me. We hugged. I lamely said “thanks.” She eloquently said, “I love you” and left.

Moving out of the way of the movers, Mitsy stood shoulder to shoulder with me and asked if I needed anything else. “Not really” I exhaled … a death rattle, the understatement of a lifetime. We hugged too. I watched her turn, pick up a plant from her desk and disappear through the door.

The movers grabbed the last of the file boxes and took them to the truck. I’d made arrangements to leave most of the furniture for the landlord in payment for the incomplete lease. I looked around, tossed the pizza box, plastic cups, and flutes in a garbage bag and left a $50 bill and a thank you note for Cornelius, the cleaning guy. I looked around again, a little slower this time, dusted Mitsy’s desk with my hand where a circle implicated the place the plant sat, and turned off the lights.

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