Chapter Five #3
Let’s go back to the office to discuss some specifics first, I add. This entire morning has been so bizarre, we haven’t even brought up things like, you know, salary, work hours, or benefits. It’s very possible we can’t even afford Harrison, no matter how much he likes Chef’s soups.
Come back anytime. Chef winks. As we leave, I hear her and Daniel whispering very loudly—I catch something about tight shirts and filling out jeans and try to move Harrison along more quickly before Denise needs to be called in on HR business.
We walk briefly back outside to re-enter the office at the back of the building, and I motion toward one of the chairs.
Well, you’re clearly a hit around here, I say, dropping into my own seat.
He slides into the wheeled chair across from me, and his eyes catch on a blue folder on Daniel’s desk.
Hey, there’s my CV. Here you go. I went through all that trouble of printing it, after all.
He hands it to me, and I flip it open: early years spent at Coppins’ Cider, which I assume is his grandfather’s cidery.
A little cheeky of him to list that he worked there for eight years when that has him starting his career at ten years old, if I’ve done my math correctly, but I let it slide.
Two years at a coffee shop in Melbourne while he was studying, a few years around some different cideries around the UK, and then a few more in the North of France, with a brief foray into the wine industry at one point.
I see that he moved to Canada this past spring, around the same time I took over the cidery, working in the Okanagan region in BC.
I look up from the paper over to Harrison, and while he’s smiling, his legs are bouncing in his chair.
I can’t decide if it’s nerves on his part or whether he always has this much energy.
You have amazing experience, I’ll grant you, I say.
The education section just says that he spent two years studying science at the University of Melbourne, but not that he finished.
I hesitate, but it’s a reasonable question for an employer to ask.
It’s not a deal breaker by any means, but I am just curious—why didn’t you finish your bachelor’s?
For a moment, he looks down at his hands, which is unlike him.
That’s…when Grandad passed, and my parents sold his cidery, he says.
He looks like he wants to say more on the subject but clears his throat and continues.
After that, I couldn’t stay at school. I decided to go find another place like it and landed in the UK.
After getting this out, he looks a little more settled and looks back up at me.
And thus began an illustrious cider-making career, learning from greats all over the world.
I can still see that he’s a little nervous and now also a little sad, but I am horrible in these situations.
It seems like I should pat his arm or…something.
I am historically bad at consoling people.
Thankfully, I have a great team: whenever an employee is having a breakdown in the walk-in refrigerator, both Chef and Daniel always know just what to say, having been there before.
Wendy is empathetic to a fault and can pick up on my mood before I can, and she’s equally amazing with her team.
I…do my best. Say something nice, Kate.
I, um, hope you’ll like it here, I say. For as long as you want to stay with us.
So, you’re keeping me?
That sure is one way of saying that. I cough and continue. If I can afford you, to be honest. We never discussed what that would look like. How much did you make in BC?
He tells me, and I exhale deeply. It’s a lot more than the going rate around these parts.
I…uh, the cost of living is lower here, I say. And this is only an assistant position, for now. I give him a counteroffer, the best I can do. I had the number budgeted before I ever met Harrison, and I unfortunately cannot pay much more, regardless of years of experience…or added aesthetic value.
Of course, if you were to take over from Charlie someday, it would be much more, I add. This rate is for a seasonal worker. I know it’s below what you expected, and—
I’ll take it, he says. Like I said, before I met you, I was going to spend the next six weeks watching every single episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, so this is still a significant upgrade from my previous plans.
I’m happy to hear it. I smile. But that brings me to my next point.
Unfortunately, with your living situation, I will need you to sign a contract that has a no-competition clause.
Obviously, I don’t care if you help your friends around their cidery in your off hours, but you can’t share about anything we’re doing here.
Some aspects of our business are meant to stay within these walls.
At this, Harrison frowns slightly. So…no discussing the work with Ryan and Britt, you mean.
I’m sorry. My aunts put me in charge of their life’s work; I have to keep my cards close to my chest. I realize this might make things a little awkward for you. I hope it’s not a deal breaker.
He sighs. It’s a hit, I’m not going to lie. But I can manage it.
I exhale in relief. “I’m glad. Here is all the paperwork.
You can take it home tonight and take a look.
I’m off tomorrow, but I’ll see you back here on Wednesday.
Charlie usually takes off Thursdays and Sundays, and it would be great if you could come in and help him tomorrow.
You can train with him and keep his schedule for this next week, but then it’d be better if we switched around your hours and have you come in for the busy Wassail weekends.
I have a feeling the tour buses are going to love you. “
Guess I’ll do my best to become a Sparks Cidery expert by then, he says and holds a hand out. I take it, and it’s a good handshake, strong without trying to prove anything. See you Wednesday.
He smiles and waves as he leaves, and I watch him from the window as he walks back out to his ridiculous vehicle, shining bright purple in the sunlight.
Britt and Ryan did him dirty on that one, but I guess a free ride is a free ride.
As I watch him drive away, I have to confront a few facts: there are a lot of problems with my new hire.
While I am thrilled that Charlie has help that he and I are both happy with, I have to be careful with Harrison when it comes to certain trade secrets.
It’s not that I think he’d intentionally feed information to bitter&sweet, or I wouldn’t have hired him, but you can tell immediately that he’s a very open, chatty guy.
And we’ve still got a few things around here that I’d like to keep under wraps.
Namely, while our visitor spend has been down for the past year, two of our ciders won awards last year from the Cider Association of Canada, and that gets us a nice little ribbon when our bottles hit the store shelves, declaring our ciders the best. Charlie’s expertise comes with decades of trial and error, and he’s earned every one of those awards.
As a result (and the only reason I have not had a full panic recently), our sales in stores remain high across Ontario and Quebec.
bitter&sweet has only just started putting their stock into one or two local stores, but I don’t need to give them a blueprint for success on how to overtake us on that front as well.
So, no information on sales or distribution around Harrison.
He can talk cider with Charlie all day long—it’s his job, after all—and do all the soup shooters he wants with Chef, but all information about our business practices stays firmly within the walls of this office.
Even before I became general manager of Sparks Cidery, I did not spend years helping my aunts with logistics and distribution to let it all slide now.
It’s funny, when I went to Toronto for university to get a business degree, I figured I was done with the cidery, done with tourism, done with Prince Edward County in general. It was only while I was getting my MBA that I decided to use the cidery as a case study that I was sucked back in.
My aunts created an amazing business, there is no denying it.
They expanded their tourism offering in all the right places, and at the end of the day, they made an amazing product.
But when I tell you that their pricing structure was a disaster, their sales growth strategy non-existent.
Even their website at the time kind of sucked, if I’m being honest. It made for a great subject for my MBA thesis, and by the time I was done with my master’s, I was fully reinvested in the success of the cidery.
After graduation, I worked a well-paying corporate sales job during the day but then continued to help my aunts with their business from afar, in whatever spare time I had.
And that was the setup for years. I had a nice but very tiny downtown condo, a boyfriend named Sean who cohabitated with me, and eventually, Steven the cat.
Sean had been a fellow MBA candidate in my program, who worked long hours in advertising.
He schmoozed clients most evenings, and I never minded because that was when I did work for the cidery.
It was a fine, comfortable couple of years, with long hours and a decent pay cheque.
And then I got the call. When Aunt Jenn and Lauren reached out to let me know about their retirement, I knew I couldn’t let the cidery be left in the hands of a stranger.
I had worked there every weekend and every summer during high school.
Hell, I worked there illegally even before then, getting paid under the table to do odd jobs.
And ultimately, my Toronto job was pretty easy to leave, in the end.
I agreed to take over the cidery operations, and Aunt Jenn had cried, and Lauren had sighed in relief.
I thought the move would be better for my career and for my work-life balance since I was working at the cidery in my spare time anyway.
Predictably, Sean did not want work-life balance, and he definitely did not want to live in the County.
We tried long distance for a month or two, but honestly, our relationship had already become that of cordial roommates long before then.
Roommates who canoodled, but still. You would think the dissolution of a three-year relationship would have hit me harder, but it didn’t.
It felt like a different life altogether, like it wasn’t so much a breakup as a full exit from a completely different world and into another.
Ultimately, Steven was the only one who made the step into the new world with me.
Which all leads to the second major problem with Harrison.
I have been single for about eight months now—happily so, even, focused only on my work, with no distractions, ever since my last relationship imploded shortly after I took over the cidery.
Until yesterday around 9:47 p.m., when I suddenly became very, very distracted.
If someone were to design the perfect spy to infiltrate the place and get all my secrets, Bond-villain style, they did a bang-up job recruiting Harrison.
That scenario is obviously ridiculous, but the distraction factor remains, as does the impropriety.
I am his boss, and he is here to fill a business need within the company.
Not a Kate need that was apparently awakened around twenty-four hours ago with a giant, stupid crush.