Tuesday, February 17, 2015

THE LOVE BIRDS OF LUMINARIAS

We did great business those first 3 years, even though it was hard to find down that lonely stretch of road. but that's not why the business went away. We lost business because it was horribly mismanaged.
Luminarias Restaurant was bastard child away from its mama.
Corporate didn't want to make trips to Fort Worth...there was nothing here...they came to inspect but never quite made it west of the two Dallas stores, Baby Does and 94th Aero Squadron.

At the beginning of the end, one of our bright managers decided that money could be saved by installing a washer and dryer in the employee break room. The Employee break room was only 10' by 10', and also housed the cashier. So, after a busy Friday night there were about 500 napkins and tablecloths that had to be laundered.
It wasn't long before there was a huge pile of soiled linens built up that was never going to go completely away.
It wasn't long from there before we discovered that the plumbing system couldn't take all the extra water. Drains backed up. On a Saturday night we might be running out of clean napkins, and the washer would be going, and the dryer too, and the cashier is sweating their ass off, and 8 waitresses are trying to take a smoke break, and the drains are backing up. It was hell.

One of the drains that would back up was in a glass atrium behind the hostess stand. It had a tropical plant and two love birds in it. 
Prior to the Washer-Dryer, customers at the Hostess stand would coo at the Love Birds in the Atrium, and the Love birds would rub their necks together and coo back.
The Atrium was about the size of a phone booth, and when water began to rise in there it would come up about 3 feet high, and the birds would get nervous, and it would start to laek at the Hostess stand, and run like a river right out into the dining room.
Yeah, the business dropped off pretty quick.

2 comments:

AnitaNH said...

Good story! Oh yes, you can end up paying a lot more when foolish attempts to save money back-fire on you. A local guy who is also a bead customer was trying to convince me to buy a snow-blower to save the cost of having my parking lot plowed! I looked at him like he was crazy. But they're Self-Propelled he insists. I can just picture myself out there at the crack of dawn in -10 degree weather. NFW!

Bulletholes said...

Yeah, self-propelled. You know what that means. That thing will wear you out.
I saw a guy with a motorized post hole digger. He cranked it up, and the first roch he hit the blade jammed and it threw him about 20 feet that way---->.
Hi Nita!