Staff Appreciation

I am squeezing things tight, as I have a few other things that I would’ve ideally liked to have published before the year end, balls crashing down around me, but of course I could not let the year go without a staff appreciation post.

In the span of this pandemic, we have shut down and opened up and shut down again and all of the things in between have made for a challenging year. Staff have come and gone from our team, and we are missing some faces, but our team continues to be what keeps this whole thing humming and moving along. In this awful and endless year, our team has been here day in and day out, from making sure the normal things continue to happen—answering emails, shipping out orders, managing inventory, tidying things up—to all of the new, awful, unusual, difficult, and unpleasant things.

Monitoring customers' mask usage, affixing Spanish language one way circulación stickers on our floor because the English language ones were sold out, trying to convince people they have to take off their gloves from outside and sanitize their hands at our door instead of continuing to wear their gloves into our shop, dealing with understandable frustrations from our customers who have had delayed Canada Post shipments, dealing with understandable frustrations from customers who are wondering why we’ve had so many out of stock items, moving inventory back and forth from the shop to the warehouse and back again, moving buckets under leaks, moving fans to circulate the smoke coming into our warehouse from a neighbouring restaurant barbecuing inside with a broken vent (safety first!), listening to Caleb’s cello practice, cajoling Naomi into finding the inventory she has hidden somewhere in the shop that we now need, new rules, haha! Tricked you! Old rules actually, but now slightly tweaked, all of us waiting on Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau. With grace, and good humour, and patience, and getting through the year with us. This final slog through Christmas, with bins and bins of orders carefully packed up.

In the midst of what has been a difficult year for us both professionally and personally, we couldn’t be more grateful for these people we’re in the trenches with.

Alas we could not have a Christmas party, and so everyone, in their rotations and shifts, stood next to each other for photos. Our team in disparate parts, but united in one heart.

Our full time team (Amber, Josh, Jon, Brendan), along with someone we found off the street. Just kidding! Derrick, an old hand, has rejoined us recently, and we are grateful to have him. These people have been the ones you have spoken to on the phone, answered your questions on the website, packed up your orders, and have kept the ship going.

Our part team team, Dylan and Elaine, plus Brendan, our manager. Dylan has been missing from our website on our staff page for a while, but that is soon to be remedied. The extra support when we’ve needed it, and this year, have we ever needed it.

A photo I found of some vague celebration early on in the pandemic, possibly a birthday, although the timing is a bit loose.

Grateful for these people to celebrate with.