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Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Budget Anomalies
The butter on Gwen Harding’s everything bagel is very nearly the perfect amount; she takes the final bite as she notices a bulk order of merino-stuffed pillows on the end-of-the-month purchase orders. Expensive stuff, and it doesn’t stop there. Thousand-count sheets, eiderdown duvets. Swanky window treatments in a rainbow of colors. A gold-plated toilet seat?
“This doesn’t look right,” Gwen whispers at her screen. “And what about these lamps?”
She hops out of the bookkeeping program and switches over to send a chat to her boss, Neil.
NEIL, she types, and then backspaces it away. Too excitable, Gwen thinks.
“Hey, Neil.” Better.
“What’s happening?”
“You see the weird purchases in the system?”
“Such is life in the finance department. What’s weird today?” Neil asks.
“Sheets. Lamps. High-dollar pillows. Decent-sized quantities.”
“Lemme take a look.”
Gwen leans her head back into her chair for a quick breather. Her days as Senior Accountant at Kingshorse Boutique Hoteliers were generally fast ones, and she finds the cyclical nature of life as a bookkeeper pleasant and predictable. Payroll weeks are an occasional grind, to be sure, but she finds much to like about her position.
A couple hours later, Gwen hears back.
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Disruptive Innovation
The white walls help to brighten the Kingshorse Boutique Hoteliers meeting room as the foggy sunrise creeps through the office windows. Boxes of donuts line the long counter and each seat is furnished with a cold bottle of water. Small talk fills the room, varying between the light sarcasm of the tired and the saccharine tones of the bright-eyed. Chairs creak and folks find their seats.
Kevin, lead developer on the Digital Experience team, stands at the front of the room, hands pocketed, watching everyone settle. Kev the Dev, Gwen calls him to herself.
Antero Johnsson leans against the wall opposite the long counter, legs crossed and hands behind his back, squinting his eyes towards the floor. He takes two steps away from the wall and the room quiets somewhat. He speaks slowly and carefully.
“Since I started here earlier this year, I’ve been so pleased and happy to get to spend at least a little time with each of you, learning about the Kingshorse brand and how we’ve run things in the past. I’ve worked with the ops team and the marketing team on identifying gaps in both the market and KBH’s business and we’re trying to see what we can do to fill those market gaps.
“Over the last couple months, we’ve knocked out some fixes to our web experience and made it easier for guests to make reservations. We’ve made some changes to how guest services work and business has been seamlessly healthy since I started. All this has served to put Kingshorse in what we think is a pretty good position to try something new in the hospitality space that we think will shake things up a little.”
Nerves make their way into Gwen’s stomach, twisting her into a state of turmoil. What are we in a position to do? she thinks.
Johnsson continues. “Take it away, Kev.”
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The New Standard
It takes only ten minutes for the first truly weird reservation to come in at Kingshorse Boutique Hoteliers. It’s signaled to Gwen by giggling emanating into her office from the guest relations team, so she wanders onto the floor to find herself among a crowd of six or so co-workers chattering about it: a fully custom reproduction of the interior of the bedroom at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, complete with in-floor lighting—the statues, the wainscoting—the whole nine.
“Someone was always going to order something like this,” she figures. “That can’t be real. Have they paid the upcharge?”
Her guest services co-workers assure her it’s real, that they’ve called the guest for confirmation, and that it’s been paid for.
Is this what we’re in for? Gwen thinks.
Customized reservations continue to roll in a few at a time for a few weeks; Gwen watches KBH payables fluctuate wildly—small construction crews are perpetually in hotels handling small jobs here and there and they’ve got to be paid. Orders for oddball items have become a constant, all in small quantities.
Three weeks after the Stay Your Way launch, the company finds its warehouses are beginning to fill; the Toledo location has to pay for the corporate uniform vendor next door to move to another warehouse a few streets down.
Orders have been managing to more or less keep up, but it’s obvious to Gwen that the app and its room customization capabilities have served to knock the company’s business model off its moorings; the expenses associated with broadening choice for guests have narrowed KBH’s margins to razor-thinness.
Soon, the guest relations department begins flagging rooms charged to a film production company run by a famously eccentric director. There was always going to be a stress test, Gwen thinks. Maybe this is it.
*** abbreviated version for website ***
External Review
Gwen scrolls through the last of this month’s payables, clears her queue, and puts her attention on her resume for a quick polish. Her machine chimes; it’s a message from Neil.
I have the rec letter you asked for. Assuming you’re writing one for me, too? Thanks again for toughing this out. Couldn’t have done it without you.
Gwen taps a response. We still work here, you know.
Yeah, I know, Neil replies. Can’t help but see the writing on the wall. It’s been a whirlwind.
It’s true, she says.
Even though the fallout was modest after their now-most-recent boss left, Kinghorse Boutique Hoteliers became a different company. When Johnsson left after the interview and took the development team to build a premium interior design app, the new KBH CEO, Big Pete Mullins, said he was interested in getting the company back to where it had been—a calming, like-home experience.
That meant final redecorations on everything and selling off inventory. For a short time, everything in the warehouses were pennies on the dollar, and Gwen managed to get her hands on some very nice pillows and a duvet at a sharp discount. A nice consolation in light of a turbulent few months. Two shake-ups in a year is a lot, but merino wool-stuffed pillows have had a way of improving Gwen’s attitude.
There’s no denying the place feels different now, she thinks as she navigates back to reviews of the Stay Your Way app, which had promptly ceased being maintained when Johnsson & the dev team left.
Most of the reviews are pretty pedestrian and the number of stars tail off over time. There are still fans of the app’s alternate use as an interior decoration tool, and the reviews show it. The reviews show a lot, for what it’s worth.
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Credits
JASON W. MCGLONE
Writer
DALLAS CRISCOE
Editor
EZANA DAWIT
Contributor
About
Delivered by our SOURCE Newsletter, Short Stories explores the drama of work through real and fictional storytelling. All characters and storylines are fictional unless otherwise specified. To sponsor, collaborate or report an issue, please use the suggestion button in our main nav.
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