Monday....life in the world of a Cigar retailer

[El Presidente]

I was asked to post a week in my life. I thought I may as well start this week :-)

_______________________________________________________

Monday

I live a 25 minute drive from our clubhouse at Bowen Hills, Brisbane Australia. Home is 2 ½ acres with a simple house with verandahs and decks overlooking a few sheep, cattle (not mine) and horses (also not mine). To be honest….I have never trusted any animal larger than myself. The weekends are full of kids sporting activities. My oldest son Ben (14) plays 14A Rugby for Gregory Terrace. My daughter Becky (11) plays soccer for the local Moggill club. My youngest son Tom (7) ambushes me every minute of every day ala “Kato” from the Pink Panther. He got me in the gonads the other day which had me in a fetal position for close to an hour. My wife Angela is a saint. Met her in 1982 at University of Queensland. We were both big drinkers and party hounds. One of us has never grown up. I have two dogs with “Cohiba” (Chesapeake Retriever) my soul mate. I don’t know how any animal can read your mood so well, give so much and ask so little in return.

I love Mondays. I get to leave home and go to work !LOL!

I start every day at Harveys Café ….7am where I sit down and have breakfast with the local version of the Seinfeld crew: Dean Merlo (CEO of best coffee roasters and blenders in Australia), Shagga Bowden (CEO of “Touch and Go” electrical….wild child), Graeme Marriot (CEO of GMD Packaging…..wealthy, 46, never married and blissfully happy), Gerard Kerr (CEO GKP Plumbing…..”I tell my apprentices two things…water runs downhill and paydays Friday”).

We have a few guest appearances during the week…Qantas Pilot Scott…(You should have seen who I shagged on the last stop over), Builder Ralph ( company is called “Rack Off “…nuff said). All in all it is a Motley crew.

I pull out the laptop at 7:30am while at breakfast and check the e-mails. Average day is near enough 100 genuine e-mails. I like to shoot a quick e-mail to Lise (she starts 7:30am) just to gauge what her mood is.

“Lise…how are you honey?...would you like me to pick up a muffin for you? ….are you feeling queezy?”

I toss and turn at night thinking of Lise being pregnant and leaving me to run the business by myself for 12 months. Truly the stuff of nightmares. Yet, I know the time is nearing and one day I will find a bucket next to her as I arrive at work. Don’t worry I have given it a lot of thought…..Work her until the day before birth…..and then be struck by “Jewish Lightning”…...the business burns down and I claim insurance.

Time to leave breakfast when my laptop battery gives in and it goes into Hibernate mode.

8:30 am and I pull into Czar House. I drive a 4 dr Jeep JK Wrangler. I like to have the roof off and the Focal stereo system loud blaring out a mix of hard rock or melancholic melodies. The mood depends on the percentage of bills to cheques I picked up from the post office.

Walk up the stairs and find Lise at her desk. How are you honey? “Not feeling great”……I looked for a bucket but could see none. Turns out more of a cold than anything else. I sigh with relief…..empathise…make her a coffee and head into the humidor..check the RH/Temp…and select a few cigars to put in the dry box residing in my office. Today it is a Por Larranaga Robusto, Bolivar Corona Gigantes, Bolivar Simones. I will get to them in a few days.

Diana arrives (head of shipping) ….and she gives me a run down of what is coming in and out shipping wise. All good.

Unpack my laptop and plonk it down on a table on the outside deck of Czar House. Pull up a rocking chair and select a cigar from the dry box….Cohiba Robusto. I look at the band (I write the box code on the back of each one) DIC 06. Fire up the Robusto, the Lap top and take a long sip of the long black Coffee. Check the remaining difficult e-mails

Issues at hand:

• PCC Price rise August. Write blistering e-mail….will get me nowhere.

• New client questioning authenticity on Monte 2’s. Band different to that on Cigar Nexus Website. If I write an e-mail it will take 20 minutes. I call him instead. Nice guy, no idea. All good.

• Ignored Kens five innate e-mails.

• Angelo from PCC wants input on forward Regional Releases. Need to think about it.

• Checked currency…..Can the USD plunge any lower?

• Last minute arrangements for our function Wednesday night ( You will see some interesting photo’s later this week).

• Mate reminds me I am committed to Lunch in 3 hours. Bring cigars (what’s new).

• Director of sports for school reminds me I am coaching 2 teams this afternoon (Rugby) at 3pm. This will be a short day.

• New non cigar projects (I am involved in a few). Updates, timelines etc.

• Update on revised forum. Multi Language issues. Tired of writing cheques. Reply to “sort it out”

• Update on 2008 LE.

• Check forums

• I check about 30 boxes of cigars I have been requested to by clients. Send my recommendations.

11 am by the time I am finished e-mails and the Cohiba Robusto (Good…not great). Diana brings me a fresh coffee. Lisa runs a new special past me. Simon (packaging) runs the delivery numbers past me (all good). I check Lisa’s customer feedback e-mails (all good). Fire up a Partagas D 4 (Feb 07 and great start). I toss up calling for a Poker game on FOH but no time as I have to go to lunch in an hour and Football training at 3pm. Toss up ditching the coffee and opening a bottle of Shiraz……no time. Damn.

Travel agent calls and runs over July 11 trip (NICE/Vegas/Tampa/Chicago/Havana/ Australia). All good. All paid for. Need to finalise accommodation.

Pay PCC outstanding invoices.

On the way to lunch I do banking and pick up a bottle of Two Hands Shiraz. Have three HDM Robusto (07) with me.

Arrive at good mate’s (Ken….not Ken Gargett) house for lunch at 12. I lunch with him most Monday’s since his wife passed away last year. He has a chef cook lunch for us in a kitchen designed by one of the great chefs on this planet (Tetsuya). Rack of lamb today which is sublime. We are joined by Brisbane Bullets head coach (Joey Wright.. ex University Texas). Joey is a great guy and a lover of cigars…albeit he loves Dominican Cohiba’s. We retire to the smoking room and enjoy the HDM’s. Joey looks at me and gives a wink……”Damn fine cigar Rob” …..I reply “I know”…… but avoided saying “better than that Dominican Cohiba Crap.” We spend the next couple of hours laughing about cigars, loves, Texas, Brisbane.

Head back to work at 2:15pm and check in with Lise. She assesses if I am sober ( I pass)….and then I get changed for football training. I finish off the D4 I left behind (blasphemy to many) and answer a few e-mails. No clouds on the horizon. The Czar team is working like a well oiled machine and I am the odd man out. I sometimes feel like a fraud but the sensation quickly passes.

3pm and I head off to Rugby training where 38 14 year old lads are waiting for me. I drill them hard today. We work on drawing in defences and spinning the ball wide. Two throw up at 4:30 pm and I wasn’t far behind. Called training off early, picked up my son Ben and headed home.

Walk in the door of Ranch Relaxo at 6Pm to be attacked by Thomas who was hiding behind the couch. I deflected his fist before he hit the gonads. Pinned him to the ground belly first and dropped his pyjamas below his arse so I could hook the Pj’s on his upturned feet. That gave me enough time to have a shower.

Sat down to dinner and caught up with family life.

Went to bed at 8:30 pm and read for an hour.

Wasn’t a tough day. In fact it was pretty piss weak in terms of work but I had plenty of laughs and Lise isn’t pregnant. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

[Guest rob]

Nice write up... I look forward to upcoming chapters :-)

[Guibou]

Rob,

You obviously do need an assistant... which is ok, 'cause I'm looking for a job :-D !

I'm not taking much, just to have enough smoke every day !

And Lisa thinks I could be valuable, especially to bring some seriousness to this house ...

ok, i'm out...

Guibou

[zuma]

Bloody hard life you have there Rob! :wink:

If the load ever get too hard to bear, please give me a call... :-)

[Ken Gargett]

what the hell is an innate email? my understanding (and yes, i know that the school you went to did its best but really...) is that this would be an email going to the essential nature of itself? are you pissed?

i read through all that rubbish waiting for the punchline.

what you could have said is simply that you get up, have breakfast with mates while lisa runs your business, drop by for a cigar, go to lunch (why did you leave out the bit about watching porn?) and then if you are vaguely sober (and who's a lucky boy that there were no cops between my place and yours last week?) have another cigar and go and play with young boys (i assume the bathhouse closed).

some of us work - my day, get up in the coldest house on god's earth, try and do some exercise, a bush walk or exercise bike or both if feeling good. overnight emails, waste time, sort out crap, clean up bottles and butts if you or your ilk have been there night before, only one abusive call to telstra this morning, try and get some work done. then off to a rhone tasting. had to leave that early as a dom lunch. now more work etc. presumably that bored everyone reading it as much as it did me to write it.

[El Presidente]

» presumably that bored everyone reading it as much as it did me to write

» it.

I assume so as well ;-)

[Ken Gargett]

» » presumably that bored everyone reading it as much as it did me to write

» » it.

»

» I assume so as well ;-)

dear pot,

take a close look at the long post above.

yours,

the kettle

[Ken Gargett]

» I was asked to post a week in my life.

by the way, just who asked you?

what poor soul is so mind-numbingly brain dead as to want to know more about you and the way you waste your time?

[El Presidente]

» » I was asked to post a week in my life.

»

»

» by the way, just who asked you?

» what poor soul is so mind-numbingly brain dead as to want to know more

» about you and the way you waste your time?

A very good member requested an "average" day in my life.

I tried to make it interesting.....failed miserably :-D

[Thomas]

I'm fixing a hole, were the rain gets in, to keep my mind from wandering...:-)

I coundn't possibly write out my monday without checking the schedual to see were I was all day....

[Tampa1257]

"Lise isn’t pregnant. "

So, is there something about this situation you want to share here?;-)

The way you work Lise, does she even have time to try?:-P

[anacostiakat]

» Went to bed at 8:30 pm and read for an hour.

I dont feel so bad about getting to bed so early any more! I am considerably older than you.

[Colt45]

I wonder which version is the closest to reality.......

[smokum]

Prez you forgot one item:

1) Look over Smokums last order and devise a way to have a sale on those very items just to piss him off !:-D

[havanaclub7]

» I start every day at Harveys Café ….7am where I sit down and have

» breakfast with the local version of the Seinfeld crew: Dean Merlo (CEO of

» best coffee roasters and blenders in Australia), Shagga Bowden (CEO of

» “Touch and Go” electrical….wild child), Graeme Marriot (CEO of GMD

» Packaging…..wealthy, 46, never married and blissfully happy), Gerard Kerr

» (CEO GKP Plumbing…..”I tell my apprentices two things…water runs downhill

» and paydays Friday”).

» We have a few guest appearances during the week…Qantas Pilot Scott…(You

» should have seen who I shagged on the last stop over), Builder Ralph (

» company is called “Rack Off “…nuff said). All in all it is a Motley crew.

Prez,

I hope your friends at Harvey's are careful about where they purchase their eggs served at your daily breakfasts. I read quite a story about a "discovery" inside a chicken egg from Darwin, Australia. You can read about it here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics...cko-inside.html

[El Presidente]

» Prez you forgot one item:

»

»

» 1) Look over Smokums last order and devise a way to have a sale on those

» very items just to piss him off !:-D

....no you miss the point. It was just unfortunate you purchased exactly the same cigars as Ken ;-)

[smokum]

Ken...please let me know what you are buying 2 weeks prior to your purchases.

[n2advnture]

Awesome Rob, thanks for sharing.

I from now on deem you the "Golden Boy"!

~Mark

[Miami101]

Sounds great...I did not know about Lisa........I feel for you Rob...

My wife was kind of crazy....You just have to been extra nice to her.

[Jay Hemingway]

great read rob. looking forward to tuesday.

:-D