Page 73 of The Reboot
‘Um … yeah. Reminiscing about the old days.’
‘Okay, good work. Good work.’ Roly could practically see the cogs turning. ‘What did they order?’ he asked, then held out a hand, like a lollipop lady stopping the traffic. ‘Don’t tell me, don’t tell me. Two cappuccinos, right? Extra foam.’
‘Er … no. Just a couple of Americanos.’
‘Americanos,’ Ray nodded knowingly as if that would have been his next guess.
Roly liked Ray. He was a squat, chubby man with thinning dark hair and slightly crooked teeth that looked too small for his face. Roly had described him to Ella as middle-aged after his interview, but had since been shocked to discover Ray was only a couple of years older than him. Maybe the cafe business had taken a lot out of him.
Roly began making the coffees, and Ray leaned against the worktop beside him, arms folded. ‘When you bring those over, ask them if they want a muffin or…’ He shifted his gaze to the two women, narrowing his eyes. ‘A brownie. Yeah, they look like brownie people.’ Ray liked to think he was an astute judge of character – insofar as character consisted in what sort of drinks or snacks people would order. He was almost invariably wrong.
Roly liked working at the cafe, but he hated this part of the job – what Ray called ‘upselling’ – which meant trying to get people to order stuff they didn’t really want. He especially hated doing it to Oh Boy! fans because they’d order anything he suggested, and then he felt guilty that they were spending money on stuff they didn’t want just to please him.
‘If you want to succeed in business, Roly…’ Ray often gave him little pep talks and business tips as they worked, and Roly pretended to be interested and grateful. He didn’t have the heart to tell Ray that he had zero desire to succeed in business. The little neighbourhood cafe was Ray’s pride and joy, and he’d been good to Roly, taking him on with no experience or qualifications, and sending him on a one-day barista course, so that now he could make fancy coffees and he had an actual transferable skill to put on a CV. He even had a certificate. So if Ray fancied himself as his mentor, he thought it was only fair to play along and act the part of the eager pupil.
‘If you want to succeed in business,’ Ray said to him that evening, continuing the lesson as they cleaned up, ‘it’s all about the bottom line.’
‘Right.’ Roly nodded as he wiped down the coffee machine.
‘You see it all the time in America. They’re great at it. You buy a pair of shoes, they ask would you like some socks with that. In McDonalds, “would you like to supersize that” – same principle. So if someone orders a tall, ask them if they’d prefer a grande. Emphasise the value – it’s only ten percent more for seventy-five per cent extra.’
‘Is it?’ Roly frowned, trying to work out the maths in his head.
‘It’s close enough. They’re not going to start doing the calculations on a napkin.’
‘Okay.’ Roly had no intention of trying to sell someone bigger coffees with dodgy maths.
‘If they don’t order something to eat, suggest something. Sell the benefits.’
‘The benefits? Of, like, a brownie?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And … what are they?’
‘It’s the feel-good factor, isn’t it? Serotonin and dopamine and all that. Use your imagination. We’ve also got the gluten-free muffins, don’t forget, so there are the health benefits there too. Flapjacks – full of fibre, very important for our older demographic.’
‘Huh?’
‘Constipation, Roly. Old ladies are obsessed with it.’
‘Oh, right.’ Was he going to have to start talking to old ladies about poo? At the same time as he was trying to sell them cakes?
When they’d finished cleaning and closing up, Ray made tea for them both in the back room. He liked to sit down with Roly for tea and a chat after the cafe was closed. He called it a debrief, and he went over the day’s business while working his way through the remaining baked goods that had reached their sell-by date and couldn’t be put out in the glass display case for another day.
‘Tuck in there, Roly,’ he said, grinning as he put a plate of assorted flapjacks, brownies and Danish pastries on the table. ‘Everything must go.’
‘Thanks.’ Roly didn’t want to be rude when Ray was trying to be nice, and if he said he was on a diet, it could make Ray feel self-conscious about his own weight. It might even sound like he was fat-shaming him. So he took a flapjack, figuring it was probably the least fattening option - and maybe all the fibre would make him poo the calories off again.
‘Okay, I’ve got an idea,’ Ray said, taking a Danish pastry from the plate. ‘Those two you served earlier – the Oh Boy! fans?’
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s got me thinking. They just came in for a coffee and they ended up staying for lunch, buying sandwiches, cakes, the lot. So good work, Roly!’
‘Uh … thanks.’
‘It’s made me realise that we haven’t been maxing out on the potential of having you here. And I’ve come up with an idea!’
