Page 27 of June (New Orleans #6)

“Y eah, so you need to make sure to add this to it. If you do that, you’ll end up saving a few bucks every time you order,” Enid said.

“But I don’t need that many brochures,” Melinda replied. “We hardly go through them in the office. Everything’s booked online now. I get a few walk-ins, yeah, but they usually just look and put the brochures back when they’re done. I think I do one order a year.”

“Okay. Then, I’d suggest stopping that altogether and just investing online instead. You can use that money to post ads on travel sites or social sites. Do you put these brochures around town at all?”

“Jill usually does that. She’ll take four or five of them with her on a few tours a week and drop them in stores that let her.”

“Okay. So, keep doing that, and invest this money into online ads,” Enid suggested. “I’m no expert, but I’ve taken a class in it, so I know a few things. I can set something up for you if you want.”

“We’ve got one running on the New Orleans tourism site.”

“How much does that bring in?”

“Not much,” Melinda admitted. “It’s not that expensive, though, either. I think I break even for the most part.”

“That’s probably because no one goes to that site but maybe old people,” Enid replied with a laugh.

“I’m sure you’re right,” Melinda said, laughing a little as well. When her phone rang, she added, “One sec.” She picked it up. “Oh, hey, Myra.”

Enid returned her attention to the computer. She’d done the payroll test for Melinda earlier and had gotten it right, and Melinda had been impressed because it had taken Enid less time to do it than it normally took Melinda. They’d been sitting in the office for over an hour now, talking about a few other things Enid might be able to help with.

“Okay. Sounds good. We’ll see you for dinner, then,” Melinda said into the phone. “I’m sure she’s great,” she added before saying goodbye and hanging up. “Sorry,” she said to Enid. “That was Myra.”

“Myra?”

“Oh, I forget that you’re new here, so you haven’t been following the story of our house renovations. We should just have a TikTok or an Insta account to do time-lapse stuff about it. Myra is our contractor. Well, she was . Is. Anyway, she still is, but she’s also a friend now.”

“Your contractor is your friend?” Enid asked.

“I know.” Melinda laughed. “And she did an amazing job. She did everything on time and didn’t go over budget. That is a miracle. She’s also really nice, and we’ve known her for about a year and a half now. She’s coming to the wedding, too.”

“I don’t know that I ever thought a contractor would be invited to a client’s wedding. You usually hear horror stories. My parents had their bathroom redone recently, and that was a nightmare. My dad isn’t handy at all, so they needed a pro, and that pro took twice as long as they’d said they would and went way over budget.”

“We found ourselves a good one, I guess,” Melinda replied. “We have a double date with her tonight. She said she’s not sure about this woman and wants our opinion. They’ve only gone on a few dates.”

“Sounds like fun,” Enid said.

“Should be. So, how’s Caroline?”

Enid laughed at the change in subject and said, “She’s good. We’re together now.”

“Together? Already?”

“I know.” Enid laughed a little. “Feels fast, but not at the same time. I only want her, and she only wants me.”

“I felt the same way about Kyle, so no judgment from me. Kyle and I were just a lot older when we met. Caroline’s young, right?”

“She’s turning twenty-one in a few days. And we both wanted to be exclusive. I think me dating Jill in the beginning and knowing that I really only wanted Care had something to do with it for both of us.”

“Jill’s great. I’m sure Caroline is, too, but I want Jill to find someone. She’s had to watch all of us find girlfriends, and some of us are engaged now. She plays it off a lot, but I know it’s hard for her.”

“I’m supposed to go out with her and see if I can play wingwoman,” Enid shared. “She told me I owe her one night to help her get laid and one night to help her meet her soulmate.”

“It could be the same person, though, right?” Melinda asked.

Enid laughed and said, “I hope so, for her sake.”

“Do you think you could do the ad thing? I’m not sure how many hours you can work in a week, but I’ve got a lot of back-office things I hate doing, and if you’re willing, I can give them to you.”

“Really? That would be great,” Enid replied. “I want to move out of my parents’ house as soon as I can. Having a girlfriend has proven to be great motivation to suck up my pride and ask them for a loan for the security deposit and first month’s rent, but I’d love to get more hours here and make that a much smaller loan.”

“Can you work maybe ten to fifteen hours a week?”

“That should be okay, but can we start with ten and see how that goes with my school schedule?”

“That’s fine with me. I’ll get you a list of the things that I need, and you can just do what you can in ten hours. Payroll is every two weeks, so you’ll want to balance that, and if you ever need more hours, just let me know. We always need someone to watch the desk. It’s customer-facing but pretty easy. You’d just ring them up for their tours and give them their tickets. Whenever the online people come in, you just scan their phones or printouts to check them in. That’s about it. I fill in whenever someone calls in sick, or Jill will if she’s not doing a tour, but the worst thing is canceling a tour because we have no one to work the desk.”

“People call in sick a lot?”

“We get a lot of students,” Melinda explained. “I hire high schoolers for the office stuff since it’s easy, but they usually last a month or two and then either stop showing up or quit.”

“Have you thought about hiring college students? They are generally a little more responsible.”

“I’ve had a few of those, too. They stay a little longer, but they’re looking to be guides and make more money.”

“What if they start in the office for a few months and work their way up? You could even have a program with the universities. They would work in the office at least a certain number of hours a week and train to be a tour guide, but they don’t get the tips until they’re actually doing the tours on their own. You could weed out the ones who won’t make it that way, too. Maybe it’s a ninety-day trial period or something. I bet you can work something out with the schools to get something in return for hiring students who are on work-study programs. This place supports the local economy and could offer students jobs once they graduate.”

“Are you sure you can only work ten hours a week?” Melinda asked.

“Is it a good idea?” Enid asked back.

“It’s a great idea. Do you know anyone at your school whom I could talk to?”

“Not me, but I’m sure I know someone who does. I can ask around,” Enid said.

“That would be great. Hiring costs a lot, but so does firing, and doing it all the time isn’t much fun, either. Even if they stuck around for the school year and didn’t work the summer, that would still be a huge improvement. I’d love it if they could stay through the summer, though. That’s when we’re the busiest.”

“Offer the best ones an incentive to stick around, like earning extra money per hour or something,” Enid suggested. “If they can commit to staying through the summer, they’ll make more money, or they can get more hours at the same rate. That might convince a few locals or people who don’t go back home for the summer every year.”

Melinda nodded and said, “I’m going to promote Jill to manager soon. She’s earned it and knows the business inside and out, but, Enid, you have some great ideas. Do you maybe want to talk about something more permanent here after you graduate? I’m considering opening another office outside of the Quarter. It would have fewer walk-ins but would give us another location to start the tours from and open us up to some different opportunities.”

Enid looked down and asked, “You want me to work there?”

“Manage it,” Melinda said. “If I do this, it’ll take more time for me to run both offices and continue to grow the business. I’d need someone to run that office. Jill would run this one, and it could be a great opportunity for you after you graduate. We’d use the year to get you caught up on everything, and I’ll get the office leased. We’d work together on it. If it works out, you’d manage the day-to-day there, hire the staff, and work with Jill and me. I don’t know how much you were looking to make out of school, but we could talk about that, and if you’re full-time, there are benefits. I want to take this company and make it the place where people go for their tours in New Orleans, and I’d still like to do some of the tours myself, so I need someone I can trust to be in charge of the individual offices. Would you consider it? If you end up hating it here before then, you can tell me. I know this work isn’t for everyone.”

As much as Enid had been planning for her future, she hadn’t actually planned for it. She’d been so focused on finishing school and then had spent the career fair at the booth for her program and with Caroline instead of walking around looking for a post-grad job opportunity. What Melinda was offering wasn’t exactly what Enid thought she’d be doing, but it was a great opportunity. She wasn’t sure about the growth potential since Melinda would own NOLA Guides soon, so unless she opened another ten locations or so, there wouldn’t be much movement for Enid to get promoted or make more money, but she couldn’t think about that now.

She’d been offered a job interview with Sylvie in Jacksonville. Then, she’d gone to her group meeting, and she’d taken control of the room. She’d told them all how this was going to go. She’d assigned them their tasks and gave them deadlines. It turned out, that was what they’d all needed, and the meeting had gone much better than she had expected. They still had to turn in the work, and it had to be good, but it was a start. It had also given Enid a bit of her fire back, and she owed that to Caroline, who had encouraged her to go in there and be the CEO.

“I don’t know yet,” Enid said.

“Okay. No problem. I don’t need an answer right away. It just kind of came to me. We can do the ten-hours-a-week thing, give you some time to get to know the business, and we’ll just keep talking about it.”

“It’s not that. I mean, yes, I want to do that, but something happened this morning.”

“Something happened?”

“I got a call from someone I used to work with. She has a job opening that she wants me to apply for. It’s in Jacksonville. I read the job description today, and it sounds good.”

“Jacksonville? You’d move?”

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t had a lot of time to think about it. They want the person to be in the office, and part of me wants that, too. I know most things can be done online now, but I worked in an office before the layoffs, and I liked being around everyone and working on things together. I’d have to change my program to the longer one since that’s the only one they offer online, which means I’d be in school for longer, but I’d have a job, so it’s just complicated now.” Enid sighed.

“Because of school or because of your new relationship?”

“Both,” she said. “Why do things always happen like this? I went to school because I didn’t think I had a choice, but I wasn’t really enjoying it. I was lost and unhappy in my old bedroom, and I wasn’t planning on dating or finding a girlfriend. Then, it’s like, I have this good meeting with my project group today, and I think I might actually like doing this project and I want my degree. I got a job, and I’m going to ask my parents to help with my apartment for a month or two, and I have a girlfriend whom I really like.”

“And she lives here,” Melinda added.

“And has another couple years of school left. Then, I don’t know what she’s going to do, but it’s fine; I don’t need her to have that figured out yet. I just doubt her plans would include moving to Jacksonville.”

“Are you going to talk to her about it?”

“I don’t know. I mean, yes, I will, obviously, but we just started going out. I can’t make a big decision like this because of her. Besides, I need time to look into the company and the city. Sylvie is a good manager, though, and I liked working with her before. She called me specifically for this, so I think I should at least interview. I might not even get it, so there would be nothing to worry about then.”

“Do you want to live in Jacksonville?”

“I didn’t really want to live in Tallahassee when I got my first job. It was the job I wanted, but I wasn’t planning on living in Florida forever.”

“Jacksonville is in Florida, Enid,” Melinda said with a laugh.

“I know. I know.” Enid chuckled. “I just have a lot to think about, and it’s happening all at once. Where was any of this when I was bored and uninspired?”

“Murphy’s Law, right?” Melinda shrugged.

“Fuck Murphy,” Enid replied.

Melinda laughed and looked up at the open door behind Enid.

“Hey, Jill.”

“Hey. I’m back,” Jill replied. “Hi, Enid.”

“Hey,” she said.

“Sophie just texted and wanted to know if I wanted to hang out tonight. Bryce is here.”

“They don’t want to be alone?” Enid asked.

“She got in last night,” Jill replied. “They’ve done the alone thing and will probably do it more, too, but they usually hang out with us at least once or twice when Bryce is here. You in?”

“I’m supposed to go out with Caroline, and she didn’t exactly enjoy hanging out with everyone before.”

“She didn’t?” Melinda asked.

“She likes you guys. It was just intense.”

“Oh. Well, if it’s that, Kyle and I are busy, remember?”

“Yeah, it’s just probably me with Sophie and Bryce,” Jill added. “You can use this as one of your help-me-find-someone nights. We’re having dinner and going for a drink after.”

“I’ll check with Care,” Enid replied. “But you know you and I can just hang out, right? I don’t need an excuse to spend time with you, Jill.”

“Good. Come out with us tonight, then,” Jill said with a smile.