Former Tucson IWW Branch Secretary, Allie Whatcom, talks about one of the stupidest jobs they have had. For those of us who have worked for the oft-lauded small business “entrepreneur,” the boss here appears familiar as a mash-up feudal lord/poet dilettante.
by Allie Whatcom
I am going to tell you about my job at the cat café. You can actually find an entire sub-reddit dedicated to the “Litter Box Fire”, they called it, that was Purr Cat Café. Basically it was the first cat café to open up in Boston and because of that there were some zoning issues that the owner apparently did not take care of. This meant that we couldn’t actually be a real cat “café” – where we sold food or drinks. We were only able to “exhibit” animals.
The boss was a sixty-something-year-old woman with a Caryn hair cut, who acted like a Caryn, who did not know how to run a business. Literally, she didn’t even want to start a cat café. She wanted to open a small business that had to do with animals. That was all she wanted. She actually had intended to start like a dog shampoo and grooming place. But when she was on her way back home, she stopped at a diner. She saw someone pitching a cat café and she said, “Ah yes! That’s what I’ll do!” Also, she would get wine drunk and respond to Facebook comments, which is part of what got the café the awful reputation it did.
I worked there for maybe like 3 or 4 months total. For a while there, maybe like the first three weeks, there were other workers. But by the end of the first month, I did not see anyone else at the store. At that point, it was just me and her. The thing was, she had to drive like 2 and a half hours to get to the cat café in Brighton and it only took me an hour and a half. So I would go everyday, everyday that I had to, and I’d get there at like 10 in the morning, open it up, feed the cats and everything. And then we wouldn’t have any business! I would close around 9pm, 10pm. I’d spend like 12 hours with 11 cats. That was my life.
All in all it wasn’t that bad. But the funny thing was: I was the only employee! It was horrible, she was losing so much money every month. She was paying me minimum wage. I don’t actually know how many hours I worked each week. I did everything. From cleaning the 7 litter boxes, to feeding the cats, to cleaning up the place. I was working on taxes. I was working on getting rent and the water and the electric bills paid for the place. Stuff that I had no experience doing! Artsy, making social media and stuff as well. That was what I did. It was really weird. I ended up not having any coworkers eventually because they all quit.
I loved cats. That was kind of entertaining. But it was pretty fucking crazy how horribly she did everything. I just kinda lived with it.
[editor’s note: The boss had hired a manager who quit and exposed all the problems with the business on the internet. The manager was owed $2,000 in back wages. Hopefully the boss finally paid up, plus interest and late fees.]
