#t-kettle

When I first applied for the managers position at T. Kettle, I was very nervous and kept wondering if it was a mistake. What if I left my job as an exterminator and things at T. Kettle didn’t work out? Could I get my old job back? Would I find myself unemployed for a while? Besides some encouraging words from friends, the big thing that pushed me over was that the company was so new at the time, having only been around for less then a year, and so as it grew they would need to hire for position such as regional manager.

During my initial interview with the company I had expressed great interest in moving up to regional manager should the job ever become available. I was told that when this position opened up that people within the company would be given the opportunity to apply. I was also told this frequently during my time with the company, as were other managers who were wanting to move up. Throughout the year the company had closed stores and opened more.

Maggie, whom you may remember was one of my seasonal staff, was able to get a managers position of her own at a new store that was roughly an hour from where she lived. It was a massive store and they gave her the same speech they gave me about how great the store looked and how the stock was there and everything was ready to go. She too was met with a dirty, partially set up store with no cleaning supplies, and even worse, because of the company no longer having a teaware supplier, she had only a little stock from a closed store to fill her shelves, but it was not nearly enough.

I congratulated her and wished her best, but I knew the best was never coming. About a week later while browsing in Indeed for jobs I saw a new posting from T. Kettle looking for a regional manager. I thought that was odd considering they had not told anyone that this position was now open. I felt so let down by this. My store had high numbers consistently. I had expressed my want to this position numerous time and was promised a chance to interview for it when the time came, and yet I never got a word. None of us did. I called the other managers and they too were shocked.

I decided to take shot and apply for the position on Indeed anyway to see what would happen. Days went by and nothing. I heard from no one. I was deflated and it was clearer now more then ever that not only was the company full of shit, but that it was gonna sink and I needed to abandon ship. As luck would have it my old employer had begun treating the mall food court and on several occasions I ran into my old boss who would always ask me if I was ready to come back.

I usually told no because in truth I didn’t want to go through the physicality of being an exterminator again, but on this particular occasion, he joked that an office position was open but figured I wouldn’t be interested. I told him I absolutely would be! Seeing that I was serious he said he would talk to the current office staff and get back to me, and a few days later he called me to offer me the job, and to let him know when I was ready to come back. At this time I decided to take one more shot at the regional managers position.

I emailed HR directly with my resume and explained that I had been promised an interview for the position and that if I was not given my fair shot that I would be turning in my 2 weeks notice. I never heard a word from and neither did any other manager. And so that was it, I was through. I put in my two weeks and shockingly the company got back to me within a couple hours to wish me luck and let me know who would be taking my position so I could train them.

I informed my team who were not happy but understood. I never kept them in the dark about the bullshit that was going on behind the scenes. Fast forward to three days before my time was up and I still had not heard back from the company on my replacement. I emailed that and they said they were still looking. I suggested having Maggie take my position as she lived close to the store and had already worked for me and with my team. They decided to take my recommendation and Maggie was transferred to take my position. It was a good thing too because her store never did get it stock and with only a couple months was shut down. And I returned to my old employer in a new position and never looked back.

I kept tabs on the store since leaving. For roughly another year my store remained open in the mall while more stores continued to close. My old stock was given the majority of the stock which helped keep the shelves full but there was still no new teaware supplier and still on going issues getting tea to stock the tea wall. Maggie’s partner also worked for T. Kettle behind the scenes and reported multiple people leaving or getting fired which created more delay.

A little over a year after I left my old store was shut down due to lease issues and transferred to another nearby mall, however it remained closed and employees unpaid until renovations were complete because in this case they had not moved to an old DavidsTea location but instead an old chocolate store, so the whole space had to be remodelled.

Finally after a long wait they reopened. I went to visit them and saw that they had been converted to also selling waffles and boba. I was also told that the company which at it’s highest had around 45 stores was now down to just 3. Upon this last visit I felt more confidant in my decision to leave then I ever had. I truly hoped to relive my Teavana days and create a new haven for tea lovers but it was not in the cards. This was truly a clear case of a company taking on too much and a subject which they new nothing about, and had no business being a part of.

But I am glad for the 10 months I had there. Yes, this was all within 10 months. I do miss my team and getting to hang with them and making new relationships with other mall employees. However, it wasn’t meant to be, but judging from where the company is at now, I have no regrets.

It was a new year and we had successfully gotten through our first Christmas season as a new store. As you would expect after Christmas, the shelves were bare and stock was scarce. We still has a handful of Christmas infuser mugs left and some left over tins of Christmas blends, but overall we sold out of nearly everything. I had to give it to the company, they really did deliver on excellent Christmas tin designs and gift boxes. The teawares left something to be desired but overall, I’d seen worse.

As January slowly passed, we spent the final remaining weeks with our seasonal staff. They really had come through for the store and delivered on everything I had taught them. Around this time one of my original team members had come to me with his two weeks notice as he had gotten a full time position in his field. I was sad to lose him as even though he wasn’t the biggest fan of tea, you would never be able to tell from watching how he sold it. He was a good kid and I wished him well. I initially took this opportunity to extend his soon to be open position to Maggie, but she turned it town because she didn’t feel she could handle two jobs at the time which was fair.

I then extended it to Zack who accepted. I was grateful to have him with us permanently as he was hard working, always early no matter how many times I told him not be arrive an hour early, and he was great to work with and was great with customers. Initially I decided not to extend the offer to him first because I knew Maggie really wanted to have a permanent position in a tea shop again, but she end up circling back around later.

Soon the store was back to three people, but because mall hours had extended and our sales were high I was able to schedule more hours and didn’t have to work alone four days a week anymore. At this time we were focusing on selling off the remaining Christmas stock and awaiting the arrival of new stock to replenish the shelves. But it never came....

Managers were submitting stock orders weekly, trying to push for more stock to refill our shelves, but as time passed and the shelves became more bare, we waited on word of when to expect our orders. But it wasn’t just teawares, ordering the actual tea became an issue too. We placed orders weekly but like the teawares, nothing was coming. Then one day a shipment of tea did arrive, only it was not what we had ordered, but was instead the new Valentine’s Day blends.

It was something but didn’t fill much space. Finally though we got word of the missing teas and teawares on our next conference call. We were told that due to supply issues, as many retails stores were going through that at the time, stock orders had been placed but that when it would arrive was unknown due to lack of supply. This seemed believable at the time but as I’m sure your not surprised to hear by now, this was a bold faced lie.

The actual truth was that the company had become fed up with their teaware supplier failing to fulfill orders and thus decided to cancel their contract with them. However, before doing so they had failed to first obtain a new contract with a new supplier. This meant that not only did they no longer have their old supplier, but they now had no supplier at all, which meant teawares and stock was never coming. As for the tea itself which was supplied through a separate company, the delays were due to the company’s new manager of operations deciding that store managers were not properly capable of keeping track of and ordering their own tea stock.

This was due to an internal issue during the distribution of the Christmas stock. At the time, some stores received large amounts of Christmas stock, while other stores received less stock, and few received almost nothing. This issue was no fault of any store manager as we did not have the option to order Christmas stock, instead it was shipped to us automatically. In either case due to this error the manager of operations decided he himself must sign off on all tea orders made by stores, and he would compare the orders to recorded stock, and decide from there if he wanted to sign off on the orders.

Not only did this create more delay but it came with an extended delay because just before Christmas, Toys R Us was going out of business in the United States and the company had bought the rights to Toys R Us Canada. This meant the same team that was already responsible for our brand as well as three other bigger brands now also had to run operations for Toys R Us Canada. And as you can imagine this meant the new manager of operations had no time to look over and sign off on tea orders.

And so day by day out shelves became more bare and the tea wall became more empty. On occasion we would get random mixed stock from stores the company had decided to close, but this stock was usually very little and last no time at all. And with this everyday my faith in the company diminished and I couldn’t help but think to myself, I need to get off this sinking ship.

I was none too happy with someone new coming to my store to do display staging. For months now this has been my responsibility and my layouts had been given excellent reviews from upper management. I had turned this store into one of the top rated stores in the company. Besides the gigantic malls, we had the highest sales of all store locations. What could I do though? I had no choice and so I waited for dreadful hour when the new staging rep would arrive. From the moment she walked and I introduced myself I wasn’t impressed. She was a bit stand offish and immediately gave that impression of “what I say goes”.

She began tearing down shelf displays and dropping merchandise everywhere she could. It was covering the counters, the floor, the back counters, and everywhere in between. And all this while customers were coming in trying to browse, but were met with an unruly mess. You see she was not there just to adjust our displays but to create all new displays for which all store would be modelled off of. Issue was that not only had she never been to any of the other stores, she was also not aware that not all stores has differing product, display bays and shelving set ups. I tried to explain to her how certain things might work here but not for other stores but she had no interest in hearing it.

She spent over five hours tearing apart displays, reconstructing them, and then tearing them down again. And she also had me assisting here to do this while I also tried to deal with customers. It was clear she had no real idea of what she was getting into or what was available. I remember she has me drag out this massive old DavidsTea floor display stand to set up all the new Christmas tins on. I dragged the stand out onto the floor and she asked me leave it to her. We had around seven new tins to display and of the seven tins, three where red in colour.

She set up the tins on this round display so that one shelf had tins broken up by different colours but then decided that all red tins should be displayed side by side on one shelf. It goes without saying that this cause the three different tins to blend in which each other and hard to tell apart. She asked me what I thought of her display and I explained the issue with the colour layout. Unsurprisingly she didn’t understand what I meant. I had move things around on my own in order for her to understand the issue and even then it wasn’t sinking in. But finally after several hours of this back and forth nonsense she was done and my shift was over!

Admittedly and rearranged some things the next day.

Christmas shopping was starting of slowly this year due to Covid which was understandable. It was so nice to have the hours available to not only have a proper team, but to also have someone to work with and lunch break relief. Prior to the Christmas season, with only three teams member including myself, and only enough hours to staff equal to the number of hours the mall was open, I often worked full day alone. Because of how I was forced to schedule, at least four days a week I would work alone from open till close, and would have to close the store in order to take any kind of break.

I hated these times, especially through the week as it got quite lonely at times. It worked out so that I didn’t work weekend because I worked most of the week alone, and my other team members had more availability in weekends due to school. The company wanted managers to work all weekend, but due to the circumstances surrounding scheduling I said no. And because our store non the less was a high sales store, upper management usually left me alone about it. Now I could work a full shift with a partner to keep me company and keep the store running for lunch breaks.

I was glad I had such a knowledgeable and strong team behind me because I needed to leave the store for a week during busy season to get married. My original team members were amazing at picking up the ball and keeping operations running smooth while I was away. However, if you could believe it I got a call on the day of my wedding from an operations rep wanting to discuss an issue at the store. Apparently the day after I had left for my wedding, upper management had asked the manager on duty to make up eight $100 gift cards, and that someone would be coming to get them. The manager on duty did this as instructed. When the person arrived at the store, the manager had them pay for the gift cards and handed them over. However, this person was not told nor instructed not to charge this mystery person for these cards and upper management wasn’t happy.

I explained the this rep that not only was I unaware of this incident, but that I was about to get married, and has informed the company of this months ago, and asked why I was being contacted. I could tell the rep was red in the face and she quickly apologized and hung up. Thankfully I never heard from the again during the rest of the time I was away. I later learned they contacted the manager on duty and had them do a full $800 refund and that our store numbers would be affected by it even though this was a company error.

Christmas was coming and I was ecstatic. I used to love Christmas time at the mall during my time at Teavana. There’s always been something about a mall at Christmas I loved. Most people on the other hand can’t stand the mall at Christmas, but I am also a big Christmas guy. I loved helping people pick out gifts for their spouses and friends. I love walking around the mall on my break and looking at all the Christmas store displays and the fancy decor the mall puts up for the season.

This was gonna be my first Christmas working at the mall in many years. The company had given the green light to hire seasonal staff and given us an actual useful amount of hours to use. I was able to fight for more hours since our store had the highest sales consistently and we would need more then what was given. The company did agree so long as we stayed above as certain sales point which was no issue for us. I went straight to work a hiring my seasonal staff.

I hired Zack, who would go onto stay with the team after the Christmas season was over, replacing one of my original staff. And I hired Maggie whom I met when she came in as a customer before Christmas. She had just moved here from Detroit to be with her husband who was from Canada. In Detroit she had also worked for Teavana and was an assistant manager for DavidsTea. At the time I had no room to hire anyone but as soon as a spot opened up she was the first person I called. She wanted to work for us so badly that she said she would put us first, even if she had another job at the time. How can you argue with that right?

When I hired my new staff, half had secondary part time jobs and half did not. I asked my entire staff how they would feel about me doing up the seasonal schedule in advance so they could work it out with their other jobs. They all agreed this would be best and so I made and sent out the entire seasonal schedule. Not too soon after issues began to arise with Maggie. She had another part time job that was roughly an hour away from our store. When I hired her she said she wanted as many hours as possible and given her experience I made sure to fill her up, but her boss at her other job would not even look at the schedule I gave her in advance and began double booking her for days I already had her booked.

This caused Maggie either have to give up hours with us and greatly reduce shifts. She was my most promising new hire that was quickly becoming my least dependable. I hired a third seasonal employee who at the time did not have another job. About 2 weeks into working with us she got another part time job. However, in this case she failed to give them her other schedule so more double bookings occurred. The difference between her and Maggie was while Maggie gave advance notice of the double bookings, the other new girl did not. Instead, she would call me a couple hours before her shift saying she can’t come in because she has to work at the other store.

I was offering more hours then her other job and for less physical labour, and I would ask her, “Did they book you to work today first, or did I book you first?”.

“You booked me first.”, she would answer.

“So then why is it that you can’t come in, when as you said you were booked here first?”, I asked.

“I don’t know”, she would answer.

This was becoming a pain in the ass, however Zack was a super trooper and would pick up several of these extra hours, as well as my original staff. It was very sad how things had been turning out with Maggie, because when she was in to work, she was a superstar at it just like I thought she would be. However, she would become very important to the end of the story.

Zack excelled beyond belief. I also met him when he came in as a customer and said I would call him as soon as I was hiring. He had no prior experience but picked it up like lint. He had a very annoying sales tactic though that somehow worked, hence why it was annoying. He loved Lapsang Souchong, which for those of you who don’t know, is a pine smoked black tea. It’s a tea you either love and adore or hate. It was very hard to sell because most people didn’t like it’s smokiness, but Zack on the other hand had no issue.

He would ask the customer what kind of tea they were looking for, and no matter what they said, he would pull down at least 2-3 options for what they did ask for and he would pull down Lapsang Souchong. AND IT WORKED! That was his thing, and as annoying as it was I let him have it because why not?

During a conference call with all the managers to go over Christmas promos, bundles, and products, we were also told of a Christmas bonus program. We had been asking upper management about this as most of us had come to know this kind of thing through Teavana and DavidsTea. Usually the way it worked was through a tier system, where the more you sold, the more of a Christmas bonus all team member would make. The system they introduced made very little sense to say the least and many of us managers could not follow it. They had taken a very simple idea and made it as complicated as they could.

Here’s the kicker. During this meeting we were told that this bonus program was for managers only. Meaning our team was to sell, sell, sell, and build up the store’s bonus tiers, and whatever you ended at, the manager, and only the manager, would get a bonus based off this. And we were also strictly told not to tell our staff about this. Well, I was not standing for that! How low and sleazy can a company be? My team is supposed to put in the hard work and only I get the benefits? Absolutely not! This is also how the other managers felt and we all agreed that not only were we going to tell our staff about this little bonus program, but we would use the bonus to go towards something for the team.

But after a couple headache filled weeks, and as things in the mall picked up, the store was ready to go, or so I thought. Then one day I got a call saying that the new T. Kettle store staging rep would be coming to make some changes...

One of the most basic components to running any business is making sure your store(s) are able to get the stock and supplies they need, easily and quickly. The people running T.Kettle behind the scenes did not get that memo. From day one when I had buy my own cleaning supplies, and provide my own mop, bucket and ladder to the day I left, getting what was needed was always a challenge. I did get reimbursed for the cleaning supplies thankfully.

When the store opened we were still under Covid restrictions. One of these restrictions was that there was no sitting in the food court and all public seating in the mall had been removed. Normally this isn’t an issue for mall staff because most stores have a backroom, and most backrooms have some kind of small table and chairs for staff to eat on their lunch breaks. We did not. In the summer this wasn’t an overly big deal except when it was sweltering hot outside, but we were now in the middle of fall, and getting lots of fall rain and cooler temperatures, so no one wanted to sit outside for their breaks.

At this time the company had set themselves up with Amazon Business and we were able to order whatever we needed for the store once a week through Amazon Business. However, all orders had to be approved by the head of operations before Amazon could fill them, and since we were the lowest on the totem pole, quite often these orders would sit until Amazon cancelled them due to no approval and we would have to place the same order again. The other issue was that the company only gave each store $150 per month spending allowance. Any further spending would have to be approved.

I battled for a small table and chairs set for our backroom, and explained to upper management that my staff had no place to sit and rest and eat during their breaks due to restrictions and weather conditions. Once I finally did hear back from them, they said they understood and I could purchase my own table and chairs and send them receipts for reimbursement. I went out to Ikea and bought a cheap table and two chairs which is all we needed and sent the receipts. I never did get reimbursed.

Christmas was also on the way and seasonal stock began showing up to the store. Boxes and boxes of it, and it wasn’t long before it had already filled all our storage space on the floor and was now piling up in the backroom. It took two weeks of back and forth emails telling the company we needed new backroom shelving as the old shelving had been removed and left us with no proper storage space. Eventually I took a chance and ordered three shelving units from Amazon Business and sent an email saying what and why I had ordered them. Shockingly the order was approved and we finally had shelves just in time for the season.

(A screenshot of our Christmas Infuser Mugs)

The other issue we faced with Amazon Business was orders constantly went missing or went undelivered. Drivers used to call me saying our store didn’t exist and that they had looked through the whole mall and our store wasn’t there. Almost every time I’d look out into the mall and see the delivery driver and I’d say “turn around”. They would turn around saying “I swear this wasn’t here 5 minutes ago.”

Other times drivers refused to come into the mall and would call asking me to come outside, which usually wasn’t an option as I was often working alone. Sometimes I would check emails in the morning and find an Amazon notification saying a package had been delivered. Attached would be a picture of the package that the drive left in some random spot in the mall, so I would have to lock up the store and go on a treasure hunt to find the package.

As for actual merchandise stock the company made an excel spreadsheet we would fill out and send in with what we needed ordered for our store. Our merchandise was through a secondary company unrelated to the company that owned us. Their products were good. Not great and far from outstanding, but good. But they had a thing for only making items available in solid plain colours and were very overpriced. The issue with this company is they also sold the same products on their own website which made no mention of T.Kettle. And because they sold from their own website, distribution to companies such as us whom they supplied to was notably low priority for them. This meant often times when our orders did arrive, anywhere between a quarter to half our order would be missing.

(One of our hardest selling and most overpriced items. I have covered the name of the company out of respect)

They supplied our matcha whisks and sent each store two boxes for the matcha roll out. We sold out of them quickly and it took over two months to get more, and when we did it was only half a box or so. And regardless of how many complaints we sent to upper management we would always get the same answer, “it’s on the way”, which meant we might see stock in a month or two.

However, a small step in the right direction soon came in the shape of a – refrigerator. One day the company informed is that each store would be getting a new fridge because they had finally, after over a year of requests, decided to carry milk options at the tea bar. Finally! No more looking stupid telling customers our tea back didn’t provide milk options. Maybe this meant lattes were soon to come as well. All us managers were eager for the conference call discussing the new milk options, but we were all less then thrilled by the end.

The company had no faith in the idea of milk options, and wanted to try an experiment to see how carrying milk would go. To do this they were sending each store a prepaid visa card worth $120. And with this card managers were to go to whatever local retailer (in their own mall preferably) that carried milk and purchase two cartons of milk at a time and no more. Should this visa card run out they would send us a new one if approved. Now for the real kicker. Absolutely no dairy free options, which was of the most requested milk options.

Many of our clients were vegans or had allergies to dairy and lactose so dairy free was essential. We heavily expressed our concern with this decision on the call but our concerns were shot down fast, and the needs of our clients with such demands could be narrowed down to “too bad for them”.

During the call someone asked if lattes would be made now that we had milk. And you guessed it – they said no. This was because once again, they didn’t want to compete with Starbucks. We even tried suggesting at least doing iced lattes. We explained this would not require the use of the steamers and that by adding milk to iced drinks and calling them an iced latte we could charge an extra dollar or two for little to no extra work. This too was shot down quickly and was followed up with, “if they want milk in a hot or cold drink, only put in a splash”.

Anyone who has ever worked in a tea shop with a tea bar, a cafe, or any establishment that serves lattes and other hot drinks can tell you that matcha is popular. From nearly the first day the store opened people had been asking for matcha. It took a while but we finally got T.Kettle brand matcha. At first though, it was only available to purchase on our wall in either prepacked tins or in weighed amounts.

I always hated scooping and weighing matcha. It gets everywhere so easily, and if you have pure and flavoured matchas then you need separate scoops and someone always ends up forgetting which is which. Thankfully our prepacked tins of matcha sold fairly well. The pure matcha wasn’t anything to go crazy over, nor was it something that left you wishing you hadn’t just drank that. It was a very nice medium grade. Not even close to a Grand Cru but very far from a culinary grade. It was just a good, fairly priced everyday drinker.

Our flavoured matchas on the other hand were really hit and miss. A couple were very nice and made a great iced matcha while the others were terrible. No sugar coating it. But as the company rolled out the tins of matcha along with the new flavours, the next demand was for matcha to be served at the tea bar. Well, it just so happened that that was the next thing to be rolled out, starting with the company sending us the “tools” needed to make matcha at the tea bar.

Now there isn’t a ton of tools needed for this. Really all you need is a good matcha whisk and a proper bowl. Doesn’t have to be a matcha bowl made specifically for the purposes of matcha, but a nice wide bowl with a flat bottom will go a long way. When our box of “tools” arrived we found the company had sent us two electric whisks and a stainless steel milk frothing pitcher. Yep.

We were told that proper whisks would be arriving “at some point” and that when they did we could mark out a couple to use at the bar instead of the electric whisks, but for now that was the best they could do. A few day later they sent out a communication that included a matcha making instructional video, and how they wanted the managers to train the staff on making matcha. What they wanted was for each manager to watch the instructional first and then once they felt confident on making matcha correctly, each manager would have a teams meeting with a rep who would ask us to make a hot matcha and an iced matcha. If the rep okayed how it was prepared, we would be “certified” and could then train our teams.

Now not to toot my own horn, but I don’t need training on how to make matcha. I came from Teavana where we made matcha frequently on a daily basis. Now with that being said, not all managers had a background in tea or previous experience working in a tea shop. But for the sake of argument I watched the instructional video. I want to be clear when I say that this instructional was made by the head of tea development. The rep who had worked previously for DavidsTea and had all this experience and knowledge of tea. Please keep that in mind as you read the instructions we were provided for making matcha.

1. Place 8 teaspoons of pure matcha into your pitcher. If using flavoured matcha, added 10 teaspoons.

2. Add 1 cup of boiling water.

3. Blend well with electric whisk until thick and frothy.

4. Serve.

8-10 teaspoons??!!!

No I’m not joking. Was this a joke? This had to be a mistake. There was no way that anyone with even thimble of tea knowledge would tell you to use 8-10 teaspoons of matcha in a single cup of water. Even 4 teaspoons would have been overkill. But no, I watched the video over and over and sure enough that is exactly what he made, then drank it and said it was perfect.

Well, I wasn’t the only manager in the company who knew just how wrong this was. Manager reached out to manager, discussing the same issue, and before long the company had gotten concerned emails from the majority of store managers. All of them explaining just how incorrect these instructions were and that we were not going to train our teams this way. I even offered to volunteer my time and make a new and correct instructional video.

It was radio silence for the better part of a week. Then just before the due date for virtual matcha making certification to start, the company sent out a communication telling us to disregard the previous instructions, saying that they were “mistaken” with the head of tea development saying, he decided 8-10 scoops because the matcha wasn’t high grade and therefore needing more added. Now I’m not sure what their teaching people behind the scenes over at DavidsTea but I’m pretty sure this kind of logic isn’t it.

Even before I heard back from the company I told my staff to disregard the instructional video and that I would train them with proper instruction, but that should the company insist on using their ridiculous instructions that they should be ready to do in case anyone ever came in to test them. Luckily no one ever did, and the instructional video was revised. A few days later I logged on for my teams meeting with the rep for certification. I had no idea who this person was and had never seen them before, and it turned out she was someone from HR???

I asked her what she wanted me to do. She told me to make a hot matcha, and so I did just as a I normally would. Then she asked me to taste it. I took a sip and she asked me how it tasted. I told her it tasted how a pure hot matcha should taste, and she said, “Okay great! Your certified”. And that was the end of it. I wondered why someone from HR was conducting these certifications and what made her qualified to do so? I know I was wasn’t the only manager to question this.

Now that that was over and my staff has been trained we were ready to roll out serving hot matcha. I still remember the first person to come in and order a hot matcha. I made it for them perfect and passed it to them. “Do you have any milk?”, they asked.

“No, sorry”, I answered. “We don’t carry milk options.”

“Why?”, the customer asked with obvious confusion. I didn’t know what to say. Because the company wants you the customer to taste the tea the way it was meant to be tasted? I couldn’t give them that stupid line, so I said the only thing I truthfully could.

“I honestly don’t know sir, I apologize.”

Now I am no stranger to getting visits from head office reps. I happened all the time during my run at Teavana, just as it does at most retail stores. When I was at Teavana it was usually just the regional manager, who at the time was a real piece of work. He was the type of person that made you nervously sweat just from walking into the store, so you know, not a very good manager.

He was an average sized man with a shiny balled head and I remember he had this ability to make it seem as though he was staring into your soul. He had these big wide bug eyes and when he would speak to you, his stare got deeper and his eyes got wider every second. He was a real putz.

I remember he used to give the female staff members a hard time for "not looking work appropriate" either cause their skirts or shorts were too short or showed too much cleavage or whatever. Again, he was a putz. But I remember the day we were expecting his visit and we saw him walking on up the hallway to the store wearing a collared gold shirt and tiny black tennis shorts that were so short they barely covered his thighs. I looked at him and said to my co-worker, "so she got in trouble for showing to much leg, and here he is with a full on hairy man legs and shorts so tight they outline his package?".

We were glad the day he announced he was leaving the company.

So when I was given the message that the head of operations wanted to come and visit the store, I wasn’t too worried. The store had only been open for a few months now and he likely just wanted to meet me and the team and see how things were going, especially since we were a “special” store. By that I mean, my store was the closest of any of the other stores to head office and the warehouse. Actually we were within a twenty minute driving distance. This meant my store would be able to get supplies or assistance more easily then other stores. I know how that sounds considering how long it took for a proper ice machine and a locksmith.

It also meant that we were the first store to try new ideas and products before being sent off to the other stores. Often times we would just have things dropped off to us by reps from head office since we were so close. But what made this upcoming visit different and more worrisome was that not only would the head of operations be there as well as the rep who had initially trained me, but so would the head of accounting as well as the head of tea development and merchandising. I had a whole pack coming to visit my store. Great!

I had to make sure that the store was perfect as you could imagine. I had to make sure all the shelves were full of stock, which wasn’t easy considering all the issues surrounding getting stock. Luckily about a week before their visit I was informed that a store from another province was closing and that the merchandise stock from their store was going to be sent over to my store. I had no idea what was in it or even how much there would be, so when the boxes arrived it was kind of like opening a present on Christmas morning.

This is what the company did whenever a store closed. Instead of selling the store stock at a reduced price, they had the staff box it up and ship it out to other stores. And as you can imagine when the stock arrived it wasn’t very well packaged or organized. This was no exception. I received around four large boxes full of stock. However, many of the unpackaged, ceramic, display pieces has been wrapped in paper towels and stacked on the bottom of the boxes. This resulted in countless broken mugs, creamer and sugar sets, and other damaged product I wouldn’t be able to use. I boxed all these items up and set them aside to show management when they visited.

But now it was the big day of the big visit. I was really nervous like you would expect anyone to be. Luckily it was a very quiet day so there weren’t any customers to get in the way. This was especially good since I only had enough hours to book only myself in at the time, with no counter coverage since at this time the company only allowed me equal number of hours as the mall was open to book my team. Meaning at the time the mall was open for only 9 hours per day, 63 hours per week, which is all I had to book my team with. And since I needed to book myself in for a minimum of 40 hours per week to keep my salary it left very little to use.

All four reps arrived at the same time. They all walked over to me at the tea counter and gave a quick introduction and shook my hand then they scattered around the store like ants looking for sugar. The rep from accounting walked over to the tea bar and started picking up spoons and checking under towels, and looking through boxes of hot cups? What was he looking for? He looked like Sherlock Holmes trying to find a clue.

The rep from tea development and merchandising nosed around the tea wall and picking through stock on the shelves. He was the least talkative of the bunch and dressed in leather boots, with bleached denim jeans and matching denim, button down shirt. The head of operations was very easy going and easy to talk to. However, he wasn’t happy when I showed him the box full of broken and damaged stock sent over from the closed T.Kettle store. He immediately pointed the finger to the rep who trained me as she at the time was the only one communicating with all the stores on daily operations due to lack of a proper regional manager.

He was pissed but thankfully not at me. I asked him what should be done with all the odd pieces that could no longer be sold due to the other half of sets being broken or missing. I was told to leave them in the backroom and they would send me a communication. They never did. After a few months I ended up throwing out anything broken and letting my staff take home any odd pieces they wanted. Until they day I left, the box of broken product was never discussed again.

After roughly 30 minutes, the group said their goodbyes and left. No comments at all other then “everything looks good”.

Odd considering usually when higher ups visited stores they usually had a list of changes they wanted done, or had some tips or advise to give. Nope, not this time. I never saw most of them again after this, besides the head of operations who would pop in on occasion to say high and grab an iced tea. The one thing that did come out of this meeting was the news that we would soon be carrying and serving T.Kettle brand Matcha. This was exciting and something that customers has been demanding. Soon a communication would going out to each store with more details and tea bar instructions for making Matcha...

As time progressed and more and more people started to find our store, we got mixed reactions. Some customers were former Teavana fans who were still searching for Teavana replacement teas from years prior. I even remembered some of these customers and they remembered me which was pretty cool. The rest of the customers could be evenly split into two group.

Group one were customers who were big DavidsTea fans and were glad to see a new tea shop open up in their place. Many had heard about DavidsTea’s mass closures during the pandemic, and were searching for DavidsTea replacement teas. These clients were very easy going and we were able to help them bridge the gap between us and DavidsTea and set them up with familiar teas and products.

Group two was the worst. This group of customers were people who were convinced, beyond a doubt, that we were not a new tea shop, but instead we were DavidsTea rebranded. And no matter what I told these people, they would not believe otherwise. Some pointed out idiotic observations to prove their case. For example, DavidsTea had tea canisters behind the counter, and so do we, so we must be DavidsTea rebranded. My favourite was “well DavidsTea sold loose tea, just like you, so you must be DavidsTea.”

Really people? Every tea shop in existence has had tea canisters behind the counter. This is not an exclusive to DavidsTea idea. And on the subject of tea shops, DavidsTea was not the first to sell loose leaf teas. Teavana, Teaopia, Citizen Tea, all sold loose leaf teas, not to mentioned countless independent shops throughout the country. Some even tried to prove we were the same shop rebranded by using the article that had been published about T.Kettle.

They argued that the article said that T.Kettle would be opening up in former DavidsTea locations, but that DavidsTea had also left four locations open as flagship stores. “See it says right here! It’s just DavidsTea rebranded.”, they would argue.

I loved to point out the other parts of the article they missed while cherry picking their evidence. Like the article stating clearly that T.Kettle was owned by a totally different person, and this person had bought out the leases for closed DavidsTea locations. You think they would understand right? No. These customer still argued that that was just DavidsTea tea rebranding itself. And with these clients I had a simple policy of keep your ignorance to yourself and either buy or leave. While I never said to a client most did leave... and drive to DavidsTea!

Why on earth would you leave a drive to a DavidsTea while under the impression that the store your currently standing in is the same store, and same company with a different name???

Now on the other hand I can’t blame these customers too much, or at least not the ones who pointed out the most obvious similarities that could cause confusion. And believe me, all the T.Kettle managers reported these issues to the company as we were all facing this dilemma. You see besides T.Kettle switching the colour scheme from baby blue and white to navy blue and white, that is pretty much where they left any changes. The stores kept the same DavidsTea layout with the same counter tops, same display bays, same floor display stands, they even left the DavidsTea stickers of the hot water dispenser and told us to “scribble over the name with a sharpie”. They even took down the tea type decals above the tea wall, and replaced them with cheaper, but almost identical versions.

(A shot of a T.Kettle store. Notice how it looks almost exactly like a DavidsTea store, besides the name change and canister color change.)

On conference calls when almost every manager complained that these clear cut similarities were causing an issue, they company gave us a whole speech on how they understood and were working on it. While I’m sure to some extent they did understand, they were for sure not working on it, because to make changes would cost money and they whole reason no other changes were made to begin with was because that would cost money.

The one other change T.Kettle did make was the creation of their mascot “Teddy”.

We actually really loved Teddy. He appeared on many stickers and labels we used and was on our tote bags. And because he was only depicted from the waist up, we spent much time entertaining ourselves with what he wore underneath. It being Covid times and many people worked virtually on a webcam, it was a known fact that many people who appeared to be in work or business attire were in their pajamas or boxers from the waist down since the camera couldn’t see this. So we decided to debate on what we thought he was wearing from the waist down.

The popular opinion was that he was in silk, polka dot boxer shorts, with long twig like legs, covered with stubble, argyle socks running up his ankles, but still wore really expensive, long pointed toe dress shoes. I decided to that he was never without a tea cup in his hand and if you were to knock it out of his hand, another would instantly appear. We had a lot of fun talking about Teddy.

The other issue we spent the summer dealing with was that we had a staff of three people, and only one key for the gates. Remember I said at the end of orientation I was only given one key? This was because the others had gone missing. Why is this an issue you ask? Because unless the same person is opening every day, other staff members also needed a key to open the gate in the morning. I reported this issue to the company and it took two months for them to send a locksmith.

In the meantime I had to make sure every end of day shift was scheduled so that the person who was to open the next day would be in store so they could take the key with them for the next morning, or if possible one staff member would drive to the opener after their shift. This was a major pain in the ass to say the least. What if the opener called in sick and no one else had a key? We’d be screwed.

I called the lock company who installed the locks and I learned that DavidsTea had purchased the rights to this particular lock and key set and that normally they could give new keys, however DavidsTea had stopped paying their fee to the lock company and therefore they were not going to do anything for us. I reported this to the company as well thinking maybe it would give them a push to get someone to us sooner, but no.

Finally the day came when the locksmith did arrive. Two months of waiting for a job that took him 20 minutes. But we finally had one key for each staff member plus and extra key for new hired. Crisis averted. Now the next task was preparing for the first store visit from... HEAD OFFICE!