Adventures with Corndog: Corndog's Fish Store

Aychamo BanBan

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I'd would be more annoyed at him thinking Facebook was an acceptable form of communication than I would for him not showing up.
Yeah, that's absolutely absurd. No way would I give someone a second chance who missed the first day of work bc he was hungover and only Facebook messaged me to tell me a lie. Fuck that. 100% agree with Lyrical too.
 

Corndog

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While I'm not thrilled. Lets be real here. It's not like I'm throwing around a 50k a year position and can fill it easily. I'm offering someone 2 days a week currently on an as needed basis. Not exactly a line forming for that kind of work. We will see his work ethic in the coming weeks. It was actually his 3rd day working he didn't report for.

Banner is finished and sent to the printers for a quote. My designer guy is saying it'll be like $400 through that company but it'll be Viynl Fabric? Cheaper sites like banners.com are like $150 for a banner. Anyone have experience in having them made etc? I'm hearing that the cheap ones start looking bad pretty quickly. This banner is to be put up until my builder has time to build and paint a wooden sign to match the rest of the shopping complex. Which would be after I finish the build out on the store. I'm wondering if I go cheap or $400 route on the sign. Once the sign is taken down and replaced with a wood one. It would be used at like trade show booths etc.
 

Hateyou

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Expensive one. It will look much better in the short run, and last longer in the long run. Especially if you're going to be rolling it up and dragging it to trade shows in the future. I'm always of the "Buy quality and take care of it" line of thinking though.
 

Corndog

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Expensive one. It will look much better in the short run, and last longer in the long run. Especially if you're going to be rolling it up and dragging it to trade shows in the future. I'm always of the "Buy quality and take care of it" line of thinking though.
I'm that way too. I've just never bought a banner and don't know where the break point is... Like crappy ones are $80. Perfectly good ones are $150 and $400 are only slightly better etc? But yeah my gut says buy the more expensive one.
 

opiate82

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Surely a probationary period applies. That would be ludicrous to be able to work 1 day, be a shithead and get fired and get to collect unemployment at the expense of that business.
You will only get charged for 1 days worth of his unemployment, but your unemployment insurance will also go up and that sticks for a while, that is the part that sucks.
 

McCheese

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I'm that way too. I've just never bought a banner and don't know where the break point is... Like crappy ones are $80. Perfectly good ones are $150 and $400 are only slightly better etc? But yeah my gut says buy the more expensive one.
Definitely don't go with the cheapest banner, but you probably don't need a $400 one, either.

My company has a banner that we use for exhibiting and trade shows, so it's been rolled/unrolled and carried all over the country several times and it still looks new. I just checked the price and we paid $264.88 for it last August. Unfortunately I don't remember where we ordered it from. I can't imagine what another $150 on top of that would have gotten us; it looks exactly as we designed and it's holding up really well.

If you're planning on hanging it outside, however, it might be worth looking into whether the more expensive banners are designed to withstand sun/rain. That's something we haven't had to deal with.
 

BrutulTM

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While I'm not thrilled. Lets be real here. It's not like I'm throwing around a 50k a year position and can fill it easily. I'm offering someone 2 days a week currently on an as needed basis. Not exactly a line forming for that kind of work.
When I was in college I was a security guard making like $6 an hour and I didn't realize what kind of shitheels that sort of job attracts. When I became the weekend supervisor I worked noon to midnight and everyone else was on an 8 hour schedule so every night I spent the hour after shift change calling people and begging them to come in to cover for people that called in or didn't show. Firing people was useless because the security company would just send you somebody that was exactly like the person you just fired except they had to be trained. What it pretty much came down to was anyone who had that job that wasn't a college student was there because they were unemployable at any real job. Aside from stealing, they only real way anyone got fired that I recalled was for masturbating at their post and using the guard shack coffee pot for a urinal and both of those were the same guy because after they fired him for the masturbation incident they hired him back like a year later. Oh and one guy got fired for bringing in porn and watching it in one of the conference rooms during the graveyard shift.
 

Springbok

Karen
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Re: the sign - I went through a similar deal with a friend that was creating a website for my company last year. He was doing it "on the side" as a favor to me (which I appreciated), but 3 months later and the thing was still in alpha essentially. Took him out to lunch and gave him $500 to finish it and it was done in 48 hours. Fucker.
 

Corndog

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First full month in the books. Put a little over 10k through the register. Here some more pics from the store. Just got the planted co2 tanks setup, more plants arriving tomorrow. Met with a sign maker on Wednesday morning. Shot him some of my graphics etc over yesterday. I'll be meeting with him in the morning tomorrow. Looks like I'm going to have a sign made out of dibond(sp).

Now for some pics.
Planted tank rack.
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340 gallon tank currently.
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$1700 window freezer with led lights etc.
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Apisto Cacatuoides Orange Flash
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Yellow Rainbowfish
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Bamboo Shrimp
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Tarrant

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That Bamboo Shrimp looks badass.

Place really looks good Corndog. How did your first months sales compare to your projections or goals?
 

Corndog

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That Bamboo Shrimp looks badass.

Place really looks good Corndog. How did your first months sales compare to your projections or goals?
I expected to have much lower sales initially. This is what has made building the rest of the store out so difficult. Right now the store is about 60% built out. Many long nights after the store closes to get things installed each and every week. I had anticipated it being very slow during the week. Admitantly the last two Mondays have been slow. But every other day has been busy.

My first year of sales goal is 100k. This is definitely a great step in that direction. Craigslist is still generating money for me daily. I'm thinking craigslist is a goldmine for anything hobby related. I'm not sure if a single day hasn't gone by that someone from craigslist hasn't come in or called the store.
 

Corndog

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Just found out I'll have a fish hobby "celebrity" in my shop tomorrow for 3 hours. It's super short notice so I've posted it on local fish forums and facebook. I've attempted to "boost promotion" on facebook for $5 just to test it.. It's been about 30 mins and hasn't used any of the money allotted yet.

I'm interested to see the results of the "boost".
 

ZyyzYzzy

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I'm curious who this fish hobby celebrity is. I can't stop picturing Wee-Bay showing up to your shop.

Hopefully you can get a nice turn out on such notice.
 

mkopec

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The only one I can think of worth meeting is Takashi Amano.

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Disp_sl

shitlord
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Banner is finished and sent to the printers for a quote. My designer guy is saying it'll be like $400 through that company but it'll be Viynl Fabric? Cheaper sites like banners.com are like $150 for a banner. Anyone have experience in having them made etc? I'm hearing that the cheap ones start looking bad pretty quickly. This banner is to be put up until my builder has time to build and paint a wooden sign to match the rest of the shopping complex. Which would be after I finish the build out on the store. I'm wondering if I go cheap or $400 route on the sign. Once the sign is taken down and replaced with a wood one. It would be used at like trade show booths etc.
This info. is probably irrelevant now since your post was a few weeks ago, but I just looked at our signage invoice from when we moved a little over a year ago. Our printing was $400 total for all of our signage and window decals. Was done by a reputable local place, and is very nice quality. We paid for 2 window decals and they ended up cutting us 6 total for no additional cost.