Anna was deeply devoted to her confectionery business. She did the most beautiful food that also happened to be delicious-
Her store was small but people came from all over the city and nearby towns to
eat some of her signature products such as the strawberry shortcake with extra
flavor and the home-made candy bars that could have any flavor that people
wanted. They could be personalized at the request of the client. The strangest
flavor she had ever been asked was a mix between curry and lemon, which actually
tasted pretty goof. Business was great and she handled everything by herself,
having no need of a partner or someone else to take advantage of an idea she
had while in high school. Back then, she already knew she wanted to cook the
best desserts possible and she even tried new recipes with her family every
Thursday night.
Life was good to Anna. She was happy with her
business and had recently moved to a small but nice apartment in order to be
more independent from her family. She was also considering an offer that would
make her candy bat available at a major supermarket chain, which would make her
products even more well known and the amount of money she would make was going
to be huge. But she wasn’t really sure if to accept the proposal or not. She was
afraid of, with time, losing control of her business and finally selling to a
large company that didn’t have any love for the art or respect for her
creations. It was something she thought every single night before going to bed
and it made her a bit crazy. She wanted an answer fast, to know what to do.
She asked the advice of every member of her
family and some of her friends and most of them agreed that of her small store
could handle the amount of work, they should definitely sign the contract with
the supermarket chain. After all, it wouldn’t be an industrial sized agreement
and her products would only be sold there. It wasn’t like she was going to lose
entire control of everything. So in her next meeting with the guy from the
supermarket chain, she accepted and signed the contract. According to it, her
store had to provide a thousand hand-made candy bars of several flavors. As
they were normally personalized, they just asked her to make her top five
flavors, whichever they were. She accepted and started hiring extra hands.
They had to work on weekends and the amount of
ingredients that had to be bought was simply huge. Only her employees, the
three that had been with her since the beginning, would be in charge of the
store as such, cooking what people had learned to expect from it. Once a month
there was a new product, proposed either by Anna or by some member of her
staff. In the other hand, six people worked on weekends to produce candy bars
for the supermarket. She had only two weeks before having to surrender her
products so everything had to be very calculated and controlled.
The flavors chosen were orange yogurt, spicy
lemon, raspberries in dark chocolate, pineapple and mango and, finally, their
classic passion fruit flavor. Those were the ones people had learned to love in
her store since its opening only two years earlier and she was proud her
clients proved to be such innovative people. They were always really open about
the new sweets and were always very kind when submitting their opinions. Anna
had created, with help from a friend, a web page where clients could see all of
her products and also comment about every single one of them. She would
normally use one night per week to read the new comment and use whatever she
may find useful from them. Normally, she just laughed or felt proud but
sometimes people had interesting ideas and she credited them for the ones that
became successful products.
However, things began to decline after the
second months of her contract with the supermarket chain. It all started when
her weekend workers started to demand a higher salary. They thought they were
exploited by Anna at their current salary, working like mad from dusk till dawn
every Saturday and Sunday and even some Mondays. They argued that her store
made enough money to pay everyone fairly. Apparently, they resented the fact
that her store staff made more money than them, which she had explained once as
been simply because of seniority. The thing was they didn’t want to hear none
of that. They just wanted more money or they would stop coming and that would
be the perfect way to destroy Anna’s creation, and pride, for good.
On the other hand, the supermarket chain had
begun complaining about the quality of the candy bars that were sent to them
the third week of contract. Apparently, they lacked the flavor and they accused
Anna of sing less ingredients to make more bars which was ridiculous because
her order was always the same. She didn’t even fake to be offended and stormed
out of the office of one of the executives of the supermarket chain. Anna knew
very well it hadn’t been her brightest moment but she couldn’t stand to be
accused of doing something she would never do. Seeking a lawyer, she finally
found a good one thanks to a friend. She had a meeting with him and asked about
the possibilities of ending the contract with the supermarket chain.
The lawyer, a very serious and older man,
browsed through the contract and finally advised her not to end it as the
repercussions to her would be simply too difficult to bare. She would have to
pay a lot of money and her company would be bankrupt even before paying all of
what she had to pay, if she decided to walk away from the contract. Again, Anna
had trouble sleeping at night with so much to think about. She finally decided
to raise the salary of her workers but not as much as they had hoped. It was
clear to them by her words that no more raises would be granted before the end
of the contract. Some workers left but she hired new ones and the quality of the
chocolate began to improve.
Anna also had a conversation with the
supermarket chain, in which she announced her intentions of not renewing her
contract with them but meeting their quotas and demands for the current
contract. They really did not have anything to say because they couldn’t really
pressure her into signing for one more year or even more time. The work
relationship was tense there and they even threatened to sue if the quality of
the candy bars was ever too low for their standards. But as she begun to
closely watch the production of the candy for that damn contract, they had no
base from which to keep annoying her. The candy bars where as tasty as always
and her employees were finally happy or at least not aggressive. That was
already an improvement.
However, she never expected one of her trusted
workers in the store to go away. Her name was Linda and she had been by Anna
for many years, as they knew each other from high school. Linda announced her
intentions to leave but not for any salary reasons or because she had grown to
dislike the whole thing. It was more like the opposite: she had learned to love
making sweets so much that she had decided to became a professional. She wanted
to study a full four-year career in order to learn everything there was to know
and become the best candy maker ever. Linda had always been pretty ambitious
but Anna had failed to see that because of her own ambitions. When Linda
announced her departure, she asked her for forgiveness and hugged her tight.
Anna also told her she had a place in the store any time she wanted to come
back, even if she became world renowned.
Anna celebrated with everyone on her staff,
both from the weekends and from the store, the end of the contract with the
supermarket chain. There were rumors they had copied the recipes and now they
were going to produce the candy themselves or that maybe rival stores would
provide them with the candy that Anna had refused to give them ever more. One
or the other, Anna was glad all of that ordeal had ended because she had
realized that her dream was a place where she could do her own thing and
experiment and be close to her clients. That contract had crushed the soul of
her idea and now she needed it back in order to make it beautiful and bright
again.
The following month, she released a whole new
set of products, all with exotic fruits and ingredients that would surprise
everyone. She had been doing research for weeks and cooking at home to finally
come up with some sort of prize to her devoted store clients who hadn’t left
her in the year she had been busy doing candy bar for a corporation. The
flavors and the candy were loved by everyone and she even had to ask three of
her weekend workers to stay and help in the store. Her family grew that way and
she realized that her life was better than ever because now she knew what she
really wanted to do and what really made her happy. Her heart was always sweet
and, now, more than ever.
