“We had four girls on staff, and me, of course. Well, that was for the design room. And then two girls who ran the counter, but they also had a big gift shop. If you’re not going to have that and you’re just doing flowers—“
“Just flowers,” Sumi clarified quickly, hoping the troll didn’t notice her gulp.
She hadn’t counted on needing staff. Somehow, in her decade worth of daydreams of running her own flower shop, she was the only one present, standing in a warm ray of sunlight, surrounded by the soft pastel of her chosen interior, putting together an elegant vase arrangement with nary a single customer or other employee in sight. She was rather sheepish to admit that her long-held daydream of running her own flower shop was more akin to Meredith’s living room bookstore than an actual frantically paced business.
At least, it seemed frantic to her.
She had been sent to a shop in Bridgeton, Urban Narcissus, to do her training. Training hadn’t even occurred to her at all, but fortunately it was an automatic part of the Bloomerang partnership. Unfortunately, it meant she needed to cut her teeth in record time, and considering the first and only time she had ever worked a retail job was back in high school, everything felt brand-new.It doesn’t help that they sent you to the snootiest shop in the city. Sumi didn’t know that for sure, but she was willing to place a bet.
She had been excited at first, learning that the shop was nymph-owned, thinking she and the dryad might have something in common, but she was quickly dissuaded of that notion. The dryad who owned Urban Narcissus was as sleek as her shop. Cool and sterile, black and white with minimalist, box-like displays and stark lighting coming from tiny spotlights on a track. Even the tree exploding through the roof didn’t soften the atmosphere. The whole thing gave Sumi the impression of a high-end shoe boutique, rather than flowers.And this is why you’re not a chain. Because every shop is different.They specialized in orchids and tropicals, expensive architectural arrangements sprouting from black cubes and opaque white vases, given height with twisting sticks. It was the complete opposite of everything she wanted her own shop to be, right down to the arrangements they made.But all of this looks expensive. Bet she makes a fuck ton of money.
The dryad gave Sumi a fast up and down the first day she’d entered, sniffing. She had been told they had a dress code. All black.I get that funeral flowers are part of the job, but this is ridiculous. Whathadn’tbeen communicated was that the staff wore sleek black trousers and matching blazers.
She stood out in her black dress, but Sumi had decided, after the second day of feeling self-conscious, that she didn’t care. She wasn’t going out and buying a black blazer for a two-weektraining.Look at it this way, it’s not like you would ever get a job here. She would never hire you, you’re too fat. There were several other sylvans on staff that she had met, a few other dryads, all of them just as sleek and reed thin as their employer.She clearly has a type, and you’re not it.
She’d never had a significant amount of self-consciousness over her size. She knew that probably seemed counterintuitive to most other women, but she had enough to be self-conscious about as it was. She liked the way she looked, thought the face staring back at her in the mirror was pretty, and if people disliked someone of her size having self-confidence, Sumi had long ago decided that that wasn’t her problem. This dryad wasn’t any different.
Despite their owner, she found most of the staff to be friendly, even if only superficially, but they all had one thing in common: frantic, slightly panicked anxiety. Sumi understood, for she would be anxious everyday with an employer like this as well, but there was more to it than that. The dryad ran a tight ship, all of her employees knowing exactly what they needed to do each day. The most significant takeaway, she had decided by the end of it, other than the fact that she was going to need to practice making schedules and that she would probably cry the first time she had to process payroll on her own, was that the orders never stopped.
They never fucking stop.Every time she turned around, one of the girls would be scurrying from the office with a fresh printout, gathering up sticks and stems of expensive tropical flowers and colorful moss to place at the base of the arrangement.Maybe it’s because she’s in the city. There’s no guarantee you’ll be this busy.
“You’ll need to accept orders hourly. I assign someone to the task each day, but we also keep the alarm set, just in case they are otherwise engaged with a client. We keep ours set to aspecific dollar threshold so that we’re not wasting time reading through the throwaways.”
“What are throwaways?” She hated interrupting the dryad, who pursed her lips at the intrusion, but if she didn’t, Sumi knew the woman wouldn’t bother offering a more in-depth explanation.
“Orders less than one hundred dollars. Although,” she went on in a clipped voice, giving Sumi another disapproving once over, “that might be too high for your area. You’ll have to judge that for yourself. Butthisis a high-end establishment, and we don’t need to waste time with forty-five dollar little vase arrangements.”
It was a good point. Sumi had no idea what the average spend would be for her area.One hundred dollars is way too high.
“And I don’t want my drivers disappearing all day for orders that will hardly cover the gas. You have to balance what you’re willing to spend to make money, which is why we don’t take the throwaways, and I don’t leave on the automatic approval. Some people will try to slip in an order outside the delivery zone just to save on the higher charge, and once it’s yours, you’re responsible for eating the cost.”
She had partnered with her Bloomerang area manager, once her training was finished, getting the appropriate job listings posted. She would need to hire a full-time floral designer. She was going to have to be someone’s boss. Sumi couldn’t conceive of it. Hedda was maybe ten years older than herself, had been working in the industry for more than two decades, and it was decided the troll would be the perfect hire to guide the rest of the business.
“How about this,” Sumi said after a moment of contemplation, tapping the end of her pen against her lips, “when you go through this list today, pick out the six that you think are most promising. Then we’ll interview them in batches. I’ll talk toone, while you have the other two back here. We’ll give them something simple, just a basket arrangement, but I want to make sure that you like them and that you’re happy with their work.”
Hedda smiled, nodding her agreement to the plan. Sumi liked the troll enormously, was thrilled for her experience and grateful that she was willing to take on the responsibility of head designer.
“Offer her ten dollars more an hour than she was making at her last shop,” the Bloomerang manager had advised. “She’ll be willing to take on more responsibility and she’ll be less likely to quit.”
She’d thought that last bit of advice seemed ominous, but Hedda was thrilled for the raise and ecstatic that she got to be in charge of the design room. “That’s perfect. And two together is smart, that way we can get them talking. It only takes one drama queen back here to ruin everyone’s week.”
Sumi laughed weakly, not wanting to even contemplate the possibility of a drama queen to manage. “We’ll hire two of them right off the bat, and keep the other names for backup.”
It was as good a plan as they could come up with. It was nearly impossible for her to believe that they would be opening in just a few weeks time. Bloomerang had said the process would be fast, but she couldn’t have conceived the construction moving as quickly as it did.We don’t want to waste any time in having you operational.Hedda exited out the back door, and once she did, Sumi tiptoed to the front.
It was almost done. The walls were a dreamy wash of mauve and dusty pink, with slate gray fixturing and shelves, pink marble flooring, and bright track lights. There was lighting around the base of her tree as well, and its soft silver leaves lended their own impression to the color scheme she had tried to create. It was almost done, and it was going to be hers.
She had never in her life felt as on top of the world as she had in the past month.
Everything was coming together: the house, the shop, the club, and she woke each day feeling energized and excited, in a way she never had at the school. In a way she hadn’t ever. She didn’t feel as though she was ever going to be fully unpacked, particularly when she sat in endless gridlock getting out of the city for those two weeks she trained at Urban Stems, but now that was done with, she promised herself that she would empty one box a night.
She had already made a friend, Yuriko, who insisted that Sumi had dinner with her family, just a few days after they met that afternoon at the community center. She’d met Yuriko’s husband and her adorable daughter, Mai. Her serious-faced brother, Kenta, had also come to dinner that night, and Sumi had collapsed from relief when Kenta’s girlfriend Ava turned out to be human-passing.
“Just human-adjacent,” Ava had joked cheerfully. “My father was a faun, but he skipped town right after I was born, so I grew up in human neighborhoods.”
She had never had more in common with a group of people, and had needed to remind herself at several points throughout the night that if she broke down crying, they would likely not invite her back.
Her shop was going to open soon. Yuriko was fierce and funny and vulgar and would be a very good friend, Sumi was certain. She had joined the Japanese club, had met another half-human like her . . . There’s only one thing missing from the recipe of her perfect life reset.
