"Look it's cool if you crash here. I'm going to be over at Susan's
most of the week. Do me a favor though try and keep quiet, my sister
sleeps in this room." Joseph pointed to the door adjacent to his
"Alright, word. Done." Cless could only agree to keep the peace.
"I
have to go. Time is money, you know." Joseph left a seltzer on the
dresser. "Make yourself at home, kinda." He bunked off for the twenty
mile drive South.
"Promise I won't get too familiar." Cless wrapped up the meeting.
To
get across town by noon, he'd have to leave in the next thirty minutes.
But he reaked from the minimal air travel. What could be done with the
immediate aparatus other than shower, a swish, and a comb?
The muni ride inbound was cool enough to fit in a few selfies. Checking the gumline, hairline, eyeline.
Cless
made it into a cafe not far off the path towards his destination deep
in the Mission . Avoiding the immediate urge to shit from the double
pull, he made it to his second interview of the week with five minutes
to spare, in fact the owner of the restaurant was nowhere to be seen.
He
knocked out a five by ten spreadsheet, hypothetical "P and L" for a
fictictious year's input, including the salaries for fake managment,
level one employees, costs for goods sold, and insurances. "Can't hurt
to be a little pre-emptive," He mentioned to the passing waitstaff as
she folded napkins and reset the nearby seating.
Nearly
twenty minutes into the appointment, Morten Shipler made his entrance.
With a nearly one-hundred pound sheepdog in towe, he sat up front.
"Hey, you're early" he shot figner pistols.
"Let's take a walk, check out the grounds. Did you have coffee?" Morten cocked an eyebrow.
"Yeah, I'm still jittery, thanks." Cless held up his hand visibly shaking.
"Suit
yourself. Hehehe." The two took to the stairs leading to a sprawling
tiled floor outfitted with wooden butcher blocks, cabinets, stainless
steel counters and overhead shelving. "This here's prep, as you can
tell. We've got five people up here full time, between lunch ,and
dinner. That's everytthing, veggies, pasta, pigs, and some bread
production, standard." The propietor meant not to brag. The operation
was impressrive, and the staff seemed vibrant.
"So, let's get down to the cafe and chat." Shipler led the way
"This is nice, your company certainly has been around for a while" Cless felt his nose turn brown.
"Yes,
it's all been very steady, I mean you can understand a fairly simple
Italocentric operation, and how approachable that is by the public."
Morten said.
"...and probably how cost effective those materials are" Cless said
"well most of them, you know what gets us is the labor". Morten said
"That's where we might have something more rich to discuess". Cless drew the pad from his satchel."Take a look at this..."
Cless hit play on the video he had on hand. On his device he ran the playback on on the arm.
"This
is AA-101b, its an animatronic arm of sorts. I Can move it from this
device with only a few swipes of my thumb. It runs on an AC input and
also has some batteries. Ive got two of them back at Celes right now,
and these arms run the plancha for almost 50 fish nightly."
The
video revealed some late footaage of the arms swinging back and forth
between mise en place, pieces of sole, fillets of salmon, and chunky
tuna steaks. The arms would periodically sweep back with an underhand
motion to move the fish over. They would subsequently press the surface
of the fish to evenly brown and crisp the fillets. By the 4:00 minute
mark, the fish had been swept on to adjacent service trays, lined with
toweling to drain. The video would cut to footage of the fillets being
bisected, examined, and critiqued by Cless's voice and another female
voice.
"Woooaa. Now that seems new" Morten's face
showed a fresh cointenance, one not reminescent of your basic
interview. "I'm glad you came by".
"Oh yeah, of
course. I thought you might appreciate these. So let's get down to it".
Cless opened another adjacent folder to reveal a small sheet revealing
some color blocked contracts.
"Look these over."
"No that's fine, how soon can i get a pair of these robots on the plancha downstairs?" Morten went for it
"You
can have these two , they've been in use for the last month for these
video tests. Or you can wait until i finish the next pair, it will be
about another month." Cless offered.
"Ok, then it's settled, i'll wait" Morten clapped his hands together.
"Deal. Let's go get a drink. The bar looks intense ". Cless suggested.
"Yeahwe've got this kumquat and buddha hand mojito, it's pretty nuts, pretty fresh." Morten tucked his cahir in.
"Actually I as hoping you'd let me try some of the Zepphorstram gin in a 'G and T" " Cless jestured
"What? sure , try it in the kumquat drink, that gin is awesome". Morten hastened
How goood he though, to be in the presence of just a little more class than he had witnessed only hours earlier.
.
