Dear Lady With The Enchanting Blue Eye Shadow,
I’m sorry. I am sorry that I was not able to procure your legal name and now must revert to addressing you by specific details of your stereotypical accouterments. But more so, I am sorry that I tried to pull the wool over your eyes.
It is true. I set out to build a rip-off joint. My master plan was to conceal the thing as a bakery that specialized in house-made bread and pastries. Then you came along with your bob-cut and long red fingernails — and ruined everything.
I can see why you were perturbed. It simply didn’t make sense that my handcrafted pastry tarts were slightly more expensive than the ones sitting in a display case for the last three days at the gas station down the road. Honestly, I’m surprised you were the first to be peeved by such a slight.
The thing is, I couldn’t in good conscience leave our meet & greet hanging like we did. You running out of the store, while screaming obscenities at me and shaking your fist. It just doesn’t feel right. So here and now, I would like to lay it on the line for you, and reveal my evil plan.
A few years back, I set out to open a small business in order to rob people blind. It was the perfect plan. I would create a front for my evil doings by building a bakery.
It struck me that if I made the pastry and baked goods by hand and from scratch, I might further the illusion of an authentic small business. However, this would require me to charge slightly more than the gas station down the road due to the extra labor and skill involved. At this point, it wasn’t a matter of the con game, but instead meeting my food and wage cost. Do not misunderstand me though, ripping the people off was always the end goal.
I sacrificed. Feeding the community with real, unprocessed foods disgusted me. I was, after all, evil to the bone. When small children would approach me exclaiming in their lispy voices, “I love your sandwiches and cookies,” I’d nearly puke myself.
Eventually, as my erroneous business grew in popularity, I was forced to contribute to charitable events in the community. Gross. But what else could I do? I was backed into a corner and had to keep up the façade somehow. So I held a few bake sales where the profits went to organizations like the local food bank or the hottest new disease campaign. I chalked it up to the life of a con-man and begrudgingly carried on with the work.
Of course, after running a business for a while, one gets to know their patrons. Some of these dupes regrettably grew on me. Consequently, I ended up catering a few of their weddings at cost as favors to the bride and groom. But it was all in the name of a higher cause. The ripping off my community cause.
Now it’s all over. My inglorious plans of cheating the people via small business tactics have been foiled. I can’t help but wonder how you caught on to my woeful ways? I really believed I had hatched the perfect scheme.
I’ll never forget the day it all ended. There you were screaming at me, little pellets of spittle flinging from your mouth and directly onto my face, and I knew the error of my ways.
“What are you trying to run here?” you asked me incredulously, as you stared down at the price of the freshly baked tart, “some kind of rip off joint?” I tried to talk my way out of it. That was stupid. You were too slick to believe my excuse of having to “cover my costs and labor” bullshit. I can’t deny your brilliance, that’s for sure. You know a rip-off joint when you see one.
Of course, I was bound to get caught when posing as a small business. Local businesses are notorious for their criminal undertakings. Why didn’t I think bigger? Why didn’t I frame myself as one of those multi-billion dollar chain gangs that slide glutinous pucks out of cryovaced baggies and claim it to be healthier than fresh-baked bread? The answer was right in front of me this entire time.
Why didn’t I create a large scale food delivery service wherein I could charge small businesses their entire profit margins to “advertise” for them on my website and deliver poorly transported food to unhappy shut-ins?
The possibilities could have been endless.
So here we are: me, the ruthless small business con-artist, apologizing to you, the woman who clearly knows a lot more about small business than the owner of said small business.
I hope this apology is enough to put your wrestling mind at ease. For it is the blue-lidded, bob-cut ladies of the world who will set right the mayhem that small business owners everywhere are subjecting this country to.
I want to thank you, Lady With The Enchanting Blue Eye Shadow, for opening my eyes. I’ve shut down my dastardly business and am pursuing the more noble career of ghostwriting erotic fan fiction for a large corporation who sells my work with no credit to me, and thousands in profit for them. I am humbled by the change of pace, that is for sure.
I hope you have not had any more erroneous encounters with “swindlers and cheats” in your recent past, and I do wish you well in all your future endeavors.
Yours,
A Humbled Small Business Owner
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Previously published on “The Hit Job”, a Medium publication.
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