Relax and Take It Easy!

Easter has come and gone already, and many customers have bid me farewell until next season. It was time to put a fork in me, Christmas to Easter…I was well done on one side! Is it just my imagination or did the island rise about six inches when the seasonal crowd left?

So it’s time for EVERYONE TO RELAX…That’s easy to say unless like myself you have a more than mild case of A.D.D. Although I have never been professionally diagnosed; you only have to ask my daughter and anyone I work with and the one other person who will so swear to it…my wife. 

The real cause is because of the business I’m in; multi-tasking is a mandatory requirement, especially during high season. I can be seen on most days whirling from the showroom to the shop doing five or more things at once… such as eyeballing a diamond ring for prong wear, answering a phone call while ordering diamonds from The Big Apple on another line, all while changing one person’s watch battery and someone else’s a watch strap, then jumping up to clean and polish another person’s vintage Marco Bracelet, then back to the bench to do a quick solder on someone’s broken chain, tighten or reset a loose diamond, next adjust a clasp that does not clasp, get up and do a quick engraving on something we just sold. Needless to say, how I perform is not for the weak-hearted and not everyone can do it without eventually having a nervous breakdown. I know the people in the hospitality biz during season can relate.

My favorite coffee shop on the island is Wake Up Marco, which happens to be an amazing one man operation. Just watching how quickly Oscar greets and handles the crowd with a smile while producing a perfect cup of coffee every time (No decaf can be found here folks!) and what this barista creates is always a delicious thing of beauty. If you haven’t experienced this skilled master and the coffee he creates, you are truly missing out on one of life’s greatest pleasures.

It’s a thing of beauty to watch someone “in the zone” from a spectator’s point of view, while watching me, I may appear to be a blur while my sales staff is moving and pirouetting like a well-orchestrated ballet, everyone working on their own missions for individual or multiple customers. I try to stay out of the way. Occasionally, I’ll answer the phone when everyone is tied up. Just my luck, someone from “Up North” saw something in the window the day before they left and wants to know “how much?” “It’s the dolphin with diamonds in the eyes!”  Well, that narrows it down to twenty dolphins with diamond eyes in the window! “Oh, can you send a pic of each one to my phone and the price of each one?”Seriously??

 An hour of my time later,  “Oh! Thanks, I’ll think about getting one next year!”

In one of my last articles I mentioned the teaching the old dog new tricks metaphor. These past weeks it has been six straight days of swinging at balls in a batting cage from Hades, coming at you constantly from four different directions! After six days of this, when 2:00 closing time Saturday afternoon comes along, this old dog is headed home to the couch to join my three already snoozing old dogs. (It is carved in stone that absolutely no one, nobody, including immediate family disturbs me on a Sunday for any reason and that could include you requiring bail money.) 

I have trouble relaxing, even on vacation, and last year, to the chagrin of many including my staff, I took a rash of time off and mixed that with some working vacation time. I’m still sorta kinda but not working full time at the age of 70… I like to think I’m in semi-retirement mode. My kids (Kids? They are 30ish and 40ish) and talented staff do an awesome job running things when I’m not around…So I don’t look a gifted horse in the mouth. 

I don’t know about you, but it takes me days not hours to relax… It has to be that New England inbred work mentality I was raised on and it's hard to shake that “I should be working or doing something productive feeling” to leave my body. I even have trouble sitting still in a lounge chair on the beach, sangria in one hand, cigar in the other. I know about the word “chill,” but even at this point in my life I have no idea how to just relax, let alone do it immediately.

Relax, take it easy… It's April, the worst is over. I admit I have been a bit choosey on what projects or repair jobs I now accept. It is not about me being lazy, it’s a case of gold being at a mind-boggling all time high with no end in sight, and the parts that are needed to complete the work are expensive or no longer available or on back order, meaning it will take just too long. 

RELAX… To make matters worse everybody has the “I can’t wait and I want it now, I want it cheap!” mentality. In case you have not noticed, besides the These, Them & Those, and the recently added Beautiful Dreamers, I realized I also have a low tolerance for Impatient People. Guess I will have to add IP’sto my hit list too. It just dawned on me that the general population is getting weirder by the day and not a day goes by without personally dealing with yet a new variety of sociopaths. In this business, I have come across people who I thought could not be any shallower, then they let out more water! My list continues to get longer; eventually, there won’t be many people in the Northern Hemisphere left for me to tolerate and the only thing left to do would be retiring in solitude to my own self-sufficient, off-the-grid underground bunker in the Ten Thousand Islands. 

I love the jewelry business but the internet has slowly but surely taken some of the joy out of it. The making or repairing of fine jewelry used to be an art form - it is not supposed to be like ordering burgers to go in a drive-thru. It takes time to do it correctly and professionally. I cringe when someone shoves a pic on their cell of a piece of jewelry they saw on the internet, “Can you make this for me cheaper?”Cheaper? It’s $129 for Pete sake! Buy it online!!!!

If and whenever I get in a creative mood I may listen to soft jazz or classical rock while at the bench - that relaxes me. I’m all about avoiding aggravation and the pain that accompanies it. I’m better off passing on certain repairs or rush orders; I don’t need the stress doing rush jobs any longer. I hate sounding like a broken record but a lot of the stuff coming in for repairs is, to say the least, beyond pitiful and there is no hope of it staying in one piece even after being repaired. It’s not a question of not having the skill to repair it - there is no point in even trying to. Some pieces purchased elsewhere would come in on a regular basis. One dude bought a hollow gold chain online last December and has brought it in for repair four times already. I advised him to scrap it, take the money and buy something worthy of wearing - it makes no sense throwing money at a hopeless case. Then again, what makes sense any longer? 

Some folks take my advice, some don’t and go elsewhere to continue the endless circle and pay and pay to fix the unfixable over and over. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

I love it when some say please repair this, it’s a sentimental piece, whatever the cost. Then they hear the actual repair cost… “Oh. No never mind!” I guess it’s not so sentimental anymore. 

Remember the golden rule… The one with all the gold makes the rules!