La Petite Patisserie was not one of my favourites. Restaurants or cafés, I preferred “mum and dad” businesses, where you were instantly recognised and welcomed as family. Upon entering, you would feel as though you’d arrived home. You’d exchange banter. Not so with La Petite. Korean or Japanese counter staff served you. After excruciating struggles to communicate, the service was slow, the prices exorbitant, yet the place buzzed with customers. Even if I had visited daily for a year, no one would recognise me. To the staff, we customers were all non-entities. Perhaps I was as disinterested in Mike as the servers were in me.
I nudged my host to continue his epic odyssey.“Mike, you were happily settled in Magaluf, Mallorca. What made you up and leave to choose Calgary?”
“My scooter rental business was booming, along with the soaring number of tourists. My penchant for speaking languages really helped. Local competitors took me for lunch and plied me with questions about my success. I was happy to oblige. During the off-season, I took a month off to travel. On my return, my shop was surrounded by three competitors offering low rental rates. I was soon out of business, returning to England with my tail between my legs.”
“Another friend introduced me to a wholesaler of clothes—exclusive leather jackets at bargain-basement prices. I invested my remaining £100 in buying half a dozen. Instead of trying to make individual sales, I decided to target small, family-run shops in the suburbs of London. I had no car. My reach was limited to the precincts of the London Underground.”
“I chose the right group of buyers to sell to. My price for a jacket was £10. The selling price was £25. Each shop I visited wanted a minimum of five jackets but offered to pay £15 per jacket. I countered with £18 for up to five jackets. I would reduce to £15 each on an order of ten or more. It worked. The jackets sold, and my volume increased. I bargained for a discount from my supplier. I began to make £500 cash a week.”
My first impression of Mike—and it still is—was of someone who would put you to sleep with the glacial speed of his patter. Someone who seemed to lack any initiative; who would follow the status quo until he died. How could this man, so ordinary and conventional, have the chutzpah to approach hard-bitten shop owners and then negotiate with them?
“Mike, why didn’t you go back to being an interpreter?”
“Magaluf taught me there was more money in being an entrepreneur. How could anyone live in London on an average wage, stripped to half by taxes?”
“The business was going well. I bought a van. It increased my sales area. I was content.”
I thought to myself, “Too good to be true. What happened to persuade Mike to emigrate to Calgary?”
“One day, a friend invited me out to lunch. The restaurant had a long queue. I joined it, ever looking out for my friend. It began to rain. I was pressed forward as we all sought shelter under an awning. The queue had compressed to half its size. I was jostled along until I reached the front of the line. No sign of my friend.”
“A commissionaire, dressed in a military cap and outfit with white braid dangling from his shoulders, asked, ‘Which department, sir?’ Before I could answer, he directed me up some marble stairs. This wasn’t a restaurant.
What was it?”
“It turned out to be the immigration application section of Canada House.
At that moment, a server interrupted us to take our plates without asking. She knocked Mike off his train of thought.
I waited for him to recover.
