I'm OK!

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

The flight was very exciting, having never been to Europe was already getting on my nerves… But the first class made it sooo worth it… I didn’t even need the cupcakes, and decided I would keep them for breakfast for the following day. The flight was uneventful, to say the least. No turbulence, the landing was smooth, and we got to London Heathrow without any delays.

Indeed, there was someone waiting for me, with a sign saying Ms. Richards… I figured the chances were there weren’t many Ms. Richards around, so I made my way up to him, asking if he was Mr. Shaw?

‘At your service, Miss. Nice to meet you, I am George Shaw.’

‘Nice to meet you George. My name is Shawna Richards, which you already knew of course…’

‘Yes of course… Let me take one of those bags for you, the car is waiting at the parking…’

Making our way to the car, I got a better look of what George looked like. He was probably around thirty years old, had blonde hair, impeccably kept. His shoes were shiny, his suit was freshly pressed, and he held up quite a speed when walking. I barely managed to keep up, but we made it to his car without me losing track of him.

‘Miss Richards, did you go through the plan for this week?’

‘Yes George… Please, call me Shawna… We’ll be working together a lot and I prefer to be on first name basis with everyone.’

‘Oh, ok, Shawna. Let’s see, today, Wednesday, we’ll be meeting this morning with our real estate agent, she’s found us several offices and warehouses to look into. One of them is already available from coming week, so that’s the one we’ll go to first.’

‘OK.. sounds good. Why the warehouse?’

‘We’ll need a small location initially for the main office, as well as a distribution center. When we expand our business, we can have more distribution centers throughout the country, so it’s mostly to get our offices set up .’

‘Ok. Offices, warehouse, check. Next?’                        

‘This afternoon, we’ll be having lunch with Mr. Samuel Bell. We’ve selected him to be our baker for the cupcakes and cookies. He has his own facilities, but ever since the economical crisis hit, he’s had a rough time. Of course, the bakery also functions as a local shop, so he’s managed to survive, but he’s had to get rid of most of his staff. He is an excellent baker though, very talented.’

‘OK, lunch with Mr. Bell.’

‘Ah yes, one thing you should know. The meeting is at his location, so we can check what he’s baked and give that a test drive.’

‘Oh OK. I’ve still got a pair left from what Mrs. Shaw gave me yesterday. We can compare taste, structure and size accordingly.’

‘Excellent. Ok, then after lunch, I’ll get you to your hotel. No meetings this afternoon or evening, you’ll be tired after skipping a night. I recommend you try to get some rest. Also, there will be a wardrobe waiting for you to try out, as Mrs. Shaw explained. We’ll need you to get several outfits for the coming week, and you can try which fit best. Shoes are also there.’

‘Oh, I wasn’t expecting that… Do you think I’ll have time to change into something else before our meetings today with the agents and Mr. Bell?’

‘Did you bring something? We’ve got about half an hour, we’ll find you someplace you can change.’

And so I ended up on a petrol station, changing into my business suit; skirt and blazer, white blouse, black stilettos. I also reapplied some make-up and sprayed on some new deodorant… I smelled like airplane… bleeeh… running back to the car through the rain, and within minutes, we were on the road again, meeting with our agent, in some rather dodgy looking part of town. The building itself was nice, although the location was not exactly appealing. Maybe it was the bad weather that day, or the lack of sleep, or the amount of spiders that welcomed us, but for some reason I couldn’t imagine the cupcakes being successfully distributed from there. There was something eerie about it. Especially the warehouse, I don’t know how it would be a good idea to store cupcakes here, even if only for a few hours until the distribution could be organized. And we were way out of town.

The next offices were much better, thankfully there were fewer spiders and crawly creatures. The location still wasn’t excellent, but at least all necessary facilities were there. And we were near the motorway, so could easily get the distribution done from here. The downside was that we were on the complete opposite of town to where the bakery was, so for the cupcakes to be distributed, they’d have to come through town to us, and then back to town. I don’t know much about the costs of transport but I’ve seen the fuel prices earlier and they pay the same per liter as we pay per gallon! So it’s probably through the roof…

The last offices the agent showed us were very close to the bakery, maybe about 15 minutes drive away. The building was quite large, the warehouse very modern, and the area was very nice. I couldn’t see any spiders either, that was a plus. When the agent mentioned the price, I nearly had a heart-attack though. How on earth was I going to justify the rent to Alice? I wasn’t exactly on a tight budget, but this was over the top. Quite de-motivated after this third viewing, we ended up making our way to the bakery for lunch. George seemed to be quite annoyed with the agent, his driving hadn’t improved in the past fifteen minutes.

‘I’m sorry about that Shawna. I was very specific to Ms. Eliza about the budget, so I have no idea why she showed you those last offices…’

‘Well George, I don’t know a lot about real-estate, but I think she was trying to show us what was possible if we were willing to pay for it.’

‘But we’re not willing to pay for it….’

‘She’s got nothing to lose though, does she?

‘She lost my patience.’

Nice word joke. Who would’ve thought George had a sense of humor.

‘Nice one. I think we need to keep our eyes and ears open for another place. Maybe get another agent to help us out. There should be some more places available.’

We had arrived at the bakery and ran inside to avoid the drizzle that was getting on my nerves. God this is a wet country…