Aunt Minerva's Linen Shop

 I gotta be real honest here because I'm sick to death hearing about how tough it is to be a small business these days!  It's never been "easy", trust me.  Beating the COVID drum has become a thing and okay, I sorta get it, however it's like pretty much everything else that's gone to shit over time.  It's a reality and has become a convenient excuse.  Way back in time when you hung a shingle on the door proudly displaying "Open For Business", the community took it literally and responded appropriately by checking you out.  Depending on your custom, said peeps decided for themselves whether good, bad or indifferent and you were off to whatever race; uphill or down. 

I've retailed physical music in 4 different haunts in two cities touching 5 decades.  The playing field today CANNOT be compared to what was whenever!  There is no getting ahead these times.  I will not go on and on here (although I certainly could).  Suffice to say, humans are easily sucked in, fucked over and completely bereft of giving a fuck about your Aunt Minerva opening up a linen shop in some shit strip mall on the outskirts of town in this day and age.  It'll never float.  Humans have now become totally dedicated to sitting around in dirty drawers ordering lettuce on line, picked out by some pimply faced teen at the grocer's, having it delivered and thinking it's cool. They no longer have to go anywhere to get anything, much less put pants on, so fuck Aunt Minerva eh !  Things went awry for most humans when home computers became the family braintrust by my estimation and totally dulled down the already predominately dull by nature aspect of humanity.

Covid has scared people off sure, but people been lazy fucks for way longer than that guaranteed and that's why the word Covid has become an excuse every 6 ways of a Sunday!  Everything costs more nowadays,  of course it does!  A bag of chips for a nickel and a coke for a dime were the ancient glory days and records were also stupidly cheap, get the fuck over it !  Respect to anyone who has the balls to even bother to start any sorta small business this day and age, even poor old Aunt Minerva and I hope she survives!  We are living in troubled times from any angle you look at shit!

This week was a reality check for me, cuz' it's the fucking xmas season where everyone gets ahead right ?  You know what? That's a fucking crock!  I just looked at my daily ledger from 2019 (pre-pandemic) and on December 14th that year in history,  I was - $2935.75 into overdraft...fucking sad...some shit never change...Déjà vu...Support small business wherever you may be and happy holi-daze 👽

Editor's note...It should be added that the following usually abundant expenses are the always increasing bane of existence for the small business owner...at the end of any day, you are more than likely fucked when the math is done...rent, hydro, heating source, phone, internet, insurance, alarm monitoring fees, point of sale terminal rental costs, credit card fees, debit fees and all other bullshit bank charges attached (total scam), inventory, paying landlord's property tax, parking etc. etc. etc.  Gotta sell one fucking large load of Dirtbombs LPs to pay for that eh...?