Page 112 of June

“Jill’s great. I’m sure Caroline is, too, but I want Jill to find someone. She’s had to watch all of us find girlfriends, and some of us are engaged now. She plays it off a lot, but I know it’s hard for her.”

“I’m supposed to go out with her and see if I can play wingwoman,” Enid shared. “She told me I owe her one night to help her get laid and one night to help her meet her soulmate.”

“It could be the same person, though, right?” Melinda asked.

Enid laughed and said, “I hope so, for her sake.”

“Do you think you could do the ad thing? I’m not sure how many hours you can work in a week, but I’ve got a lot of back-office things I hate doing, and if you’re willing, I can give them to you.”

“Really? That would be great,” Enid replied. “I want to move out of my parents’ house as soon as I can. Having a girlfriend has proven to be great motivation to suck up my pride and ask them for a loan for the security deposit and first month’s rent, but I’d love to get more hours here and make that a much smaller loan.”

“Can you work maybe ten to fifteen hours a week?”

“That should be okay, but can we start with ten and see how that goes with my school schedule?”

“That’s fine with me. I’ll get you a list of the things that I need, and you can just do what you can in ten hours. Payroll is every two weeks, so you’ll want to balance that, and if you ever need more hours, just let me know. We always need someone to watch the desk. It’s customer-facing but pretty easy. You’d just ring them up for their tours and give them their tickets. Whenever the online people come in, you just scan their phones or printouts to check them in. That’s about it. I fill in whenever someone calls in sick, or Jill will if she’s not doing a tour, but the worst thing is canceling a tour because we have no one to work the desk.”

“People call in sick a lot?”

“We get a lot of students,” Melinda explained. “I hire high schoolers for the office stuff since it’s easy, but they usually last a month or two and then either stop showing up or quit.”

“Have you thought about hiring college students? They are generally a little more responsible.”

“I’ve had a few of those, too. They stay a little longer, but they’re looking to be guides and make more money.”

“What if they start in the office for a few months and work their way up? You could even have a program with the universities. They would work in the office at least a certain number of hours a week and train to be a tour guide, but they don’t get the tips until they’re actually doing the tours on their own. You could weed out the ones who won’t make it that way,too. Maybe it’s a ninety-day trial period or something. I bet you can work something out with the schools to get something in return for hiring students who are on work-study programs. This place supports the local economy and could offer students jobs once they graduate.”

“Are you sure you can only work ten hours a week?” Melinda asked.

“Is it a good idea?” Enid asked back.

“It’s a great idea. Do you know anyone at your school whom I could talk to?”

“Not me, but I’m sure I know someone who does. I can ask around,” Enid said.

“That would be great. Hiring costs a lot, but so does firing, and doing it all the time isn’t much fun, either. Even if they stuck around for the school year and didn’t work the summer, that would still be a huge improvement. I’d love it if they could stay through the summer, though. That’s when we’re the busiest.”

“Offer the best ones an incentive to stick around, like earning extra money per hour or something,” Enid suggested. “If they can commit to staying through the summer, they’ll make more money, or they can get more hours at the same rate. That might convince a few locals or people who don’t go back home for the summer every year.”

Melinda nodded and said, “I’m going to promote Jill to manager soon. She’s earned it and knows the business inside and out, but, Enid, you have some great ideas. Do you maybe want to talk about something more permanent here after you graduate? I’m considering opening another office outside of the Quarter. It would have fewer walk-ins but would give us another location to start the tours from and open us up to some different opportunities.”

Enid looked down and asked, “You want me to work there?”

“Manage it,” Melinda said. “If I do this, it’ll take more time for me to run both offices and continue to grow the business. I’d need someone to run that office. Jill would run this one, and it could be a great opportunity for you after you graduate. We’d use the year to get you caught up on everything, and I’ll get the office leased. We’d work together on it. If it works out, you’d manage the day-to-day there, hire the staff, and work with Jill and me. I don’t know how much you were looking to make out of school, but we could talk about that, and if you’re full-time, there are benefits. I want to take this company and make ittheplace where people go for their tours in New Orleans, and I’d still like to do some of the tours myself, so I need someone I can trust to be in charge of the individual offices. Would you consider it? If you end up hating it here before then, you can tell me. I know this work isn’t for everyone.”

As much as Enid had been planning for her future, she hadn’t actually planned for it. She’d been so focused on finishing school and then had spent the career fair at the booth for her program and with Caroline instead of walking around looking for a post-grad job opportunity. What Melinda was offering wasn’t exactly what Enid thought she’d be doing, but it was a great opportunity. She wasn’t sure about the growth potential since Melinda would own NOLA Guides soon, so unless she opened another ten locations or so, there wouldn’t be much movement for Enid to get promoted or make more money, but she couldn’t think about that now.

She’d been offered a job interview with Sylvie in Jacksonville. Then, she’d gone to her group meeting, and she’d taken control of the room. She’d told them all how this was going to go. She’d assigned them their tasks and gave them deadlines. It turned out, that was what they’d all needed, and the meeting had gone much better than she had expected. They still had to turn in the work, and it had to be good, but it was a start. Ithad also given Enid a bit of her fire back, and she owed that to Caroline, who had encouraged her to go in there and be the CEO.

“I don’t know yet,” Enid said.

“Okay. No problem. I don’t need an answer right away. It just kind of came to me. We can do the ten-hours-a-week thing, give you some time to get to know the business, and we’ll just keep talking about it.”

“It’s not that. I mean, yes, I want to do that, but something happened this morning.”

“Something happened?”

“I got a call from someone I used to work with. She has a job opening that she wants me to apply for. It’s in Jacksonville. I read the job description today, and it sounds good.”

---