The Book

Boss wrote his first book about his life and the people he met along the way before the store became the Store.  It was a fairly successful book with a modest start.  In order to get the book in a lot of people’s hands, he gave a lot away after signing him. He was no celebrity so I don’t know who would want his autograph, but I read the book and it was well-written and received.  Each time someone booked one of our event space, all the guests went home with a goodie bag and in the bag was a copy of the signed book.

He gave away so many books, but he wouldn’t give them to the staff.  I was given a copy and said you have 7 days to read this and pass it on to the next person.  I felt like I was given a homework assignment with a book report to follow.

The signed copies were a big deal and getting Boss to sign them was sometimes a task if he was out of the country on business, so I know for a fact that some of those signatures are not authentic.

One night I was working the small room for a dinner for 4 people.  Gertrude forgot to get signed books for the guests as their parting gifts.  She wanted me to forge them and I was like “no way!”  She signed all 4 of them, and this is now commonly referred to as forge-gate.  Upstairs similar occurrences happened.  Boss has some family on the staff, and one in particular forged his name often.  Again, good thing he’s not a real celebrity or this might have mattered to someone.

The book makes mention of some rare wine that Boss was given access to, to make sure that the wines got into the hands of people who understood them.  These wines were in the wine cellar and were quite mysterious.  Sometimes some of these wines were left over from various meetings the Boss had and the Salespeople would gather around to divvy up the remaining liquid gold.  We were lucky enough to get a sip of each and the wines were quite interesting as well as old.  The wines used to be sold as a 12-case package deal – one of each type and year, but later we started marketing two and three together with the Book.  Those sold really well and before we launched it, the Salespeople were invited to a real tasting of the wines.

After I left here, I bought 24 of these bottles.  One set I opened up for all my wine geek friends on my 39^th birthday.  The other set I hope to sell down the line.  They are ridiculously rare and as people start to drink them down into near non-existance, I can make a few bucks.

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