Moonlighting whilst contemplating a visit to Salzburg

Whilst having one of my regular sort-outs I found an old article I’d written, lying around at home. It’s about the lovely Austrian city of Salzburg; birthplace of  Mozart and the setting for a musical about how a singing nun became involved with a family of children. The article doesn’t mention these famous sons and daughters of the city; instead it mentions beer, so no surprises there, but before diving into the story, there’s a considerable amount of background to wade through, as to how and why I took the trip to Salzburg in the first place.

My visit took place at the tail end of 2006, and was my first proper visit to the city. Thirty years previously, whilst I was still student, a friend and I had passed through Salzburg by train, whilst undertaking a four week Inter-rail journey through western Europe. As we didn’t stop there on that occasion, it doesn’t really count as a visit, but I thought I’d mention it anyway, as what did matter is the trip in 2006 was just what I needed following a very stressful period of my life.

During the second half of that year, I was juggling two jobs, whilst at the same time struggling to sell a business. It was all getting too much; I was having trouble sleeping, finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate and feeling like I was at the end of my tether, so when Mrs PBT’s suggested I take a short break I jumped at the idea. The perfect window of opportunity opened up between Boxing Day and New Year, so my kind and caring wife booked the flights for me, whilst I found a suitable (cheap) hotel.

If any of you have read the biopic on the side of this blog, you may have noticed that,  in conjunction with my wife,  I once ran my own specialist beers, off-license.  We’d been trading around five years and whilst we weren’t exactly making a killing, the business was sufficient to pay me a wage so we could manage our bills and pay our way.

The downside was it involved being open long hours, seven days a week, with no time off for holidays or much time to ourselves.  We had only taken a six year lease, so we weren’t committed for too long, but even so, despite generally enjoying the work, I was wondering what  the future might bring, and what sort of retirement I could look forward to.

It came as something of a shock then when, out of the blue, I was offered a job back in industry, working in my old field of quality control. The offer came from a customer, who also happened to be a fellow CAMRA member, and came about whilst we were comparing careers and talking about mutual professional acquaintances at a CAMRA Christmas dinner. My companion asked me if I'd ever considered resuming my career in industry, as if I had, he reckonned his company could make good use of my skills and experince.

I mulled the offer over, but it didn’t take too long for me to decide. I concluded that whilst I would miss being my own boss, there were far more benefits to be had by accepting what was a very good offer. A regular monthly salary, considerably in excess of what I was drawing from the off-licence business, combined with paid annual leave, sickness and pension benefits far outweighed the relatively minor kudos which went with being the person in charge. What’s more the new position would be 8.30am – 5pm, Monday to Friday, so with no weekend or evening work my free time would be increased by several orders of magnitude.

After discussing the matter with my family, I took the job, but told my new employer that I would first need to dispose of the business, as it wouldn’t be a good idea running that alongside my new position. This proved easier said than done, as having put a considerable amount of effort into building the business up, I didn’t want to just walk away. If I did, not only would I be kissing goodbye to the profit and good will we’d accrued, but we also stood to lose a substantial amount of money.

This was because when you take out a lease on a commercial property, you are legally obliged to fulfil your all your obligations until the end of the agreement. Basically, if you decide to quit, you are still  obliged to continue paying rent on the property, along with any business rates. It therefore made scene to either re-assign the lease or, attempt to sell the business as a going concern.

The latter option made the most sense, certainly from a financial point of view, and with the business turning in a reasonable profit, I thought we’d have no trouble in selling it. Unfortunately  it was nowhere as easy as I’d thought, and with my new employer becoming increasingly eager for me to start, and more and more frustrated by me not providing a start date, I reluctantly decided I would somehow have to start in my new position, whilst continuing to run the off-licence during the evenings and weekends.

Whilst I could manage these extra hours, for a short period at least, I needed someone on the premises to take charge of deliveries and also place orders with our many suppliers. I managed to persuade a recently retired friend that he might like to supplement his pension, by acting as my manager, by looking after the shop over the relatively short lunchtime period from midday to 3pm.

So far so good, the only trouble was my friend wasn’t the most organised of people, so I ended up having to place the bulk of the orders. I made the necessary phone calls during my lunch hour, leaving my friend to look after the relatively quiet lunchtime trade, and get the stock priced-up and on the shelves.

I started in my new position mid-way through July 2006, and my first day was the Monday following the 2006 World Cup Final. I won’t go into much detail about my job as twelve years down the line, I’m still there. It wasn’t exactly plain-sailing to begin with, as I was thrown in at the deep end and had to start from scratch. What didn’t help was the fact that one particular, long-serving member of my new team thought that he should have been offered the position of departmental head, rather than it being handed to an upstart who just happened to be a friend of the General Manager.

As well as having to deal with this individual, I was also involved with trying to sell the off-licence business, so it was quite a stressful  period, all round. We employed a business sales agent, to market the shop to prospective buyers, and after a few false starts,  received and accepted a firm offer by the end of August.  Things seemed to be going well until the various solicitors involved, started throwing their weight around, and that’s where the fun and games started and the stress levels began to climb.

There were three sets of lawyers in total; ours, the buyers and finally the landlord’s, and it was the latter who proved the most obstructive. Leases should be relatively straight forward, but then so should house purchasing, but as we all know these  people have perfected the art of dragging things out, just to ensure the maximum return for themselves.  It was quite a complicated process, but eventually things started to slide into place, but with Christmas fast approaching, and the busiest time of the year upon us, we ran into trouble with the tenants in the flat above the shop.

I won’t go into detail, but I was concerned that the unreasonable behaviour of this young couple could end up scuppering the deal by putting off our buyers. Contracts had not been exchanged, largely due to our solicitor taking himself off to the ski-slopes for the whole of December (see why I hate the legal profession), and this was the reason for me wanting to take myself off somewhere during that lull between Christmas and New Year.

I’ll save the article about Salzburg for next time now, as I’ve dragged this introductory section out much further than I intended, but suffice to say we concluded the sale of the business during the first week of February 2007, and I was a free man at last.

My wife and I didn’t exactly come out as rich, but we didn’t lose out either; even after the solicitors and business sales agents had taken their cut. I’m not sure I’d run a business like that again, as whilst it allowed me to indulge in my passion for beer, it also robbed me of time which I could have spent with both family and friends.

Looking back it did teach me resilience, patience and determination, but most importantly it led me to my current and well-paid job. It also covered the expense of my trip to Salzburg – which was undertaken solely in the interests of “market research”.