Muahahahahahaha!

I really shouldn't be enjoying watching the demise of Cafe O, but I can't help it. It's like not being able to rip your eyes away from a train wreck. That doesn't mean I don't feel any remorse, guilt and pity at the whole situation because I do. I'm just not going to let it be the overwhelming majority of my emotions because I just don't owe that to anyone anymore.

So my mother decided to open the cafe all by herself on Monday, which I knew she would do. She likes to try and prove to people how so easy things are that she can do it all by herself. Except she was utterly failing at running the restaurant, and in my honest opinion, will continue to run the cafe into the ground with each passing day.

It started off with her not knowing how to use the cash register, which let me tell you, was a BITCH to figure out for me and Chris in the first place. If you want to stress yourself the fuck out, go read a cash register manual. I had to program that sonofabitch and then teach myself how to use it correctly. Of course, she doesn't have the patience or ability to do that, so she just wanted to be shown how to work it. I wrote her a quick one-page tutorial and emailed it to her! hahahaha!

Chris, being the good-hearted man that he is, went over to help out a little bit and it was obvious she really wanted him to stay and help her out. Which he did, to my annoyance. But I can't blame him, he's not as fed up with her as I am and he's a nice guy. He had to show her how to make everything, even though it's pretty damn simple and self-explanatory AND we had to figure it all out from scratch ourselves. Do you think I knew how to turn on, much less USE a commercial deep fryer? Hell No! I almost blew myself up trying to work the damn thing. Oh, and I bet she's really enjoying having to use a prep table that's broken and having to run back and forth to get cold items out of the fridge to prepare it for the customer while they wait.

At one point I was asked how many strawberries go into a smoothie and what is on a greek salad. I could just picture her there, trying to do all this with the customers that we have to deal with (not exactly the politest people sometimes) watching and waiting. Chris told me that many of our regulars walked out. I know she's lost a good bit of our clientele because A) She was out of a lot of food because we didn't have the money to re-stock. and B) We actually made friends with our repeat customers and they LIKED us. C) We know what they like, how they like it, and much of the time, will actually hand-deliver it to them if they are busy and need to get back to their shop. I know my mother can't handle any of that.

Then this is the kicker. This is why I see all this happening and actually feel kind of smug deep down inside my heart. Because I actually worked hard to get this place up and running, and not only that but SUCCESSFULLY, with hardly any money at all. It took a lot of creativity, thought and planning and stress to pull off the kind of restaurant we had. I planned the shit out of that menu. And the whole time, all my mom did was criticize and tell me how I had to put whatever the customer wants on the menu if I want to be successful. I had to do whatever it took to please them to build a clientele, and that was how to be a business owner. She liked to say, "Welcome to the Business world" like I just didn't know what the hell I was doing. Which, for the most part, I didn't. I had to learn as I went, the hard way. NO HELP. At the same time, she would tell me how I had to manage my business so that I would attract the right people, bring decent people with money into the ghetto so the place would improve. A little bit contradictory from the whole "please everyone no matter what it takes" philosophy, isn't it? I pretty much stuck to my guns, kept my menu the way it was, with some small changes to reflect what people were liking. Basically, it boiled down to, she wanted me to serve fried rice. Almost every time she came in, she would tell me to put fried rice on the menu. I was absolutely dead set against it. Why? Because you can get fried rice at about 15 different greasy chinese takeout restaurants within a 3 block radius of my cafe. Because that's what the crackheads come in and ask for, at least one crackhead per day comes in there, looks at my menu and asks me, "you got scrimp fried rice?"

If I were to put fried rice on my menu, 2 things would surely happen. 1.) I would be attracting all the kinds of people that I wasn't supposed to be attracting. namely, the ghetto crackheads that only eat wings and rice. 2.) Next thing they would ask for is egg rolls and Mongolian beef and broccoli chicken to go along with their scrimp fried rice and within a month the cafe would turn into yet another greasy Chinese takeout restaurant in the ghetto. Which is exactly the OPPOSITE of what I was trying to accomplish with the cafe. It's fundamentally ANTI-Chinese food.

So what does Chris tell me when he gets back from helping out my mom at the cafe? That she's getting set up to serve fried rice. HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!! Good fucking luck with that, Mother! Ms. successful business woman of the fucking ghetto. I HOPE she starts serving fried rice, because the downward spiral that will happen really quickly after that will serve the bitch right. It will be my revenge, and her own self-fulfilling prophecy. I can just smell the caked-on grease now. Speaking of caked-on grease, you have no idea how hard it is to remove 6 years of Chinese takeout restaurant grease from every surface, equipment, and utensil from the restaurant. We know, because we had to do it! I hope she buys herself a wok and becomes a slave to it. MAYBE then, just maybe, she will think to herself, "wow, Heather and Chris we actually doing a good job by themselves". Cause we did. Chris and I were doing an excellent job running that place, just the two of us. We made a great menu that everyone (minus the crackheads) absolutely LOVED. That's why we saw the same people come in every single day, sometimes several times a day.

I intentionally created a menu that nobody else in the neighborhood had, and that's what made us popular. We had absolutely NO BUDGET for advertising, but the word of mouth spread like fire and we were getting people in from across town that had heard about us. Now all of that is going to go down the drain, and the people I feel bad for is our customers, who were so happy to see something new and fresh finally in the ghetto. I know I let them down, but I made my choice and I don't regret it one bit. I know now what I am capable of, and that's all I need. The proof was in the pudding in this case and I actually didn't need my mom's appraisal to feel like I did a good job. What's happening now is the best proof of what a good job I did that I need, and that's why the demise of the cafe makes me feel like the cat that swallowed the canary. Guilty, but deeply satisfied.