Speaker 1: Welcome to on the Job. This season, we're focusing on
Speaker 1: how people and businesses are getting back to work. Let's
Speaker 1: call it a great transformation, a change in the way
Speaker 1: workers are thinking. Employers need people to work more than ever,
Speaker 1: putting laborers in a sort of position of power. We'll
Speaker 1: be hearing from people navigating this new normal for themselves
Speaker 1: as they find their life's work. Across the US, small
Speaker 1: business owners are facing a huge hiring crisis. COVID put
Speaker 1: a lot of people out of work and displaced even more. Now,
Speaker 1: businesses need people back and just can't find them. In
Speaker 1: rural Vermont, Karen Banks faces this issue if she manages
Speaker 1: a general store, which is the lifeblood of little towns
Speaker 1: like hers. Well, today we talked to Karen about her
Speaker 1: fight to keep the store open as the number of
Speaker 1: her employees dwindles and the population of her town skyrockets. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're just gonna get started here. Um. On a
Speaker 1: rainy winter evening, I drove over to Bondville, Vermont to
Speaker 1: meet Karen. Karen Banks, and I am the manager of
Speaker 1: a large boutique style country grocery store in Bombville, Vermont,
Speaker 1: the wind Hall Market. We have the fortune of doing
Speaker 1: an in person interview in her cozy apartment, which is
Speaker 1: very conveniently located above the market she manages. I should
Speaker 1: should mention for the tape that we're joined by Crispy.
Speaker 1: Crispy is a big, fat white cat. She's twenty years
Speaker 1: old and very needy. Okay, So the Windhall market that
Speaker 1: Karen manages, it looks like a typical country store in
Speaker 1: the center of town. If you walk into a smallest
Speaker 1: room with a delhi a cash register, but you take
Speaker 1: a right right around the cash register counter and there
Speaker 1: is a lot more to it. We have a produced section,
Speaker 1: we have a wine room, we have a big grocery section,
Speaker 1: and everybody that comes in says, wow, this place is
Speaker 1: way bigger than it looks like. Karen is the face
Speaker 1: you see on any given day you walk into the market,
Speaker 1: and her job basically is to run the entire show
Speaker 1: from the time it opens until the time it closes,
Speaker 1: take care of customers, put out fires. Literal fires are
Speaker 1: like metaphorical metaphorical fires. You know, if there are any
Speaker 1: problems in the day, I take care of it. I
Speaker 1: receive I order, I make a lot of phone calls,
Speaker 1: I sell a lot of groceries. Karen is a creature
Speaker 1: of habit and statistics. She pours over her sales history,
Speaker 1: constantly reads about new and trending products you can bring
Speaker 1: into the store. She knows good business, but at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, her job is to know people
Speaker 1: do and have relationships with them. I can know a
Speaker 1: customer and know when they come in what they're going
Speaker 1: to pick up and put in there in their basket.
Speaker 1: I order everything, every box of cereal, every Cannabians it
Speaker 1: comes to me. I just know what they like. The
Speaker 1: Windhall Market is at the base of Stratton Mountain, which
Speaker 1: means it's a busy, rural ski town. We have a
Speaker 1: very broad base of customers. Uh we have a lot
Speaker 1: of visitors. We have some international traffic here, high income millionaires,
Speaker 1: regular people, just the working class like me. Uh So
Speaker 1: we cater to all of those people. Besides being where
Speaker 1: you get your stuff, a general store is also the
Speaker 1: social hub a little towns like Bondville. If you want
Speaker 1: to know any gossip, if you want to know anything
Speaker 1: that's happened, you come down to the store and you
Speaker 1: can find out. So one of the roles I guess
Speaker 1: for us is to communicate with the community, meaning they're
Speaker 1: heavily involved in all community events, everything that's happening. If
Speaker 1: there's a fire somewhere in town during the night, they'll
Speaker 1: open up and deliver coffee to the fireman. They're involved
Speaker 1: in the summer concert series in town. The post office
Speaker 1: is right next door. Just if you live in a
Speaker 1: town like this, the store is a central part of
Speaker 1: your life. Oh it is. Everybody that lives in this
Speaker 1: town comes in the store at one point or another.
Speaker 1: The thing about general stores that makes them unique is
Speaker 1: that each one needs to be so specifically catered to
Speaker 1: the area that they're in to be successful simultaneously. It's
Speaker 1: usually the only shop for miles, so its purpose is
Speaker 1: right in the name general store, meaning you generally have
Speaker 1: everything we try. There are very few times I've had
Speaker 1: to look at somebody and say, no, we don't have that.
Speaker 1: I'm very competitive, so I'm very competitive about not being
Speaker 1: out of anything. She says. She sees it as a game,
Speaker 1: and it's the game she likes. There's about six thousand
Speaker 1: products in the store, and it's her job to meticulously
Speaker 1: look at all her reports or buying history, seasonal trends,
Speaker 1: just to keep the right things on the shelves at
Speaker 1: the right times. It's a thoughtful process ordering for the market.
Speaker 1: It's a competition with myself. I guess I like to
Speaker 1: stay right on it, make sure I have everything that
Speaker 1: everybody needs. Probably one of the biggest overachievers you'll ever meet.
Speaker 1: Running a place like this is hard in any environment,
Speaker 1: but with COVID and complications like short staffing, supply chain issues,
Speaker 1: and keeping the store COVID free, Karen's competitive attitude has
Speaker 1: really been put to the test, and she is constantly
Speaker 1: in a battle to keep the store from closing. But
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what would happen. I mean, you'd be
Speaker 1: driving fifteen miles one way or another to go to
Speaker 1: a grocery, which, in a place like this is a
Speaker 1: really big impact on your day. It is. It is
Speaker 1: a big impact on your day. It's gas, it's your time.
Speaker 1: Are the roads good or are the roads bad? It
Speaker 1: just would be unbelievable for us not to be here.
Speaker 1: You might have picked up on Karen's accent. She's not
Speaker 1: from Vermont. Young Karen is from the South, and she's
Speaker 1: an army brat and grew up all over the country.
Speaker 1: I was born in Virginia, lived in Alaska, Missouri, Georgia, Alabama,
Speaker 1: just grew up all over the place. She had a
Speaker 1: loving family, says that they were huggers. She was the
Speaker 1: only girl. She grew up with three brothers. Big tom boy,
Speaker 1: I can fight. I could give you a black eye.
Speaker 1: Pretty great childhood, do you. Went to University of Kentucky
Speaker 1: where she came out a highly trained dentist assistant. And
Speaker 1: we were trained to be the dentist's right hand. We
Speaker 1: could do anything that wasn't permanent. The dentist would come
Speaker 1: in and he would prep the tooth. I'd come in
Speaker 1: and finish it. Very unusual to see that in any state,
Speaker 1: which made it a great career. She got paid well.
Speaker 1: She did that for about twenty five years. She had
Speaker 1: a son named Kelly. They moved to Vermont, and the
Speaker 1: laws were different here. So she was making less as
Speaker 1: a dentist assistant because she was allowed to do less,
Speaker 1: not what I was used to making. And so my
Speaker 1: son and I we like to do some expensive stuff
Speaker 1: that ski. We love Nascar, We like to travel to races,
Speaker 1: and that's not cheap. So um I decided to segue.
Speaker 1: Someone in town said that she might be perfect for
Speaker 1: a job organizing banquets at a nearby resort, and I
Speaker 1: was really good at it. From there, she got hired
Speaker 1: at Stratton, the big ski mountain in town, where I
Speaker 1: met the former owner of this market. I was a
Speaker 1: middle manager at the private ski club where she and
Speaker 1: her family were members. This woman's name was Lorraine. Then
Speaker 1: they hit it off. Immediately after Karen's son graduated high school,
Speaker 1: she wanted to move closer to work and moved to
Speaker 1: this apartment above the store which Lorraine owned. When Lorraine's
Speaker 1: GM left the store, she asked Karen if she'd take
Speaker 1: the job, and I did. The rest is history. What
Speaker 1: were your first impressions? I knew nothing about grocery she
Speaker 1: she brought me in here knowing that I knew absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing about running a grocery store. But what I am
Speaker 1: is very detail oriented, great memory, great customer service skills,
Speaker 1: and knew a lot of her customers. Unsurprisingly, Karen was
Speaker 1: really good at it. She jumped right in and has
Speaker 1: been the face of the wind home market ever since.
Speaker 1: I know Karen makes it sound easy, but to give
Speaker 1: an example of how hard a business this is. In
Speaker 1: my little town of Belmont, Vermont, I've seen the general
Speaker 1: store passed through five different owners in twenty five years.
Speaker 1: The burnout ray is high. And anyone going into this
Speaker 1: business knows that what did you have any like reservations
Speaker 1: when you first came in and like thinking if I
Speaker 1: don't know if I could do this? Now I'm full
Speaker 1: speed ahead. I'm that kind of girl that that just
Speaker 1: jumps in with both feet. I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: there's anything you can't learn to do. I raised a
Speaker 1: child with a rare genetic syndrome, less than a hundred
Speaker 1: cases in the world, Karen's son, Kelly. He has ours COG,
Speaker 1: which is a rare disorder that can prevent physical growth
Speaker 1: and messes with your short and long term memory. So
Speaker 1: on any given day, he may or may not be
Speaker 1: able to tell you what his birthday is. He almost
Speaker 1: stopped growing when he was a little over two years old,
Speaker 1: but they got him on the right medication and he's
Speaker 1: five ten now. Don't feel sorry for him. He's got
Speaker 1: two degrees. He graduated Magna and Simicum wild from his colleges.
Speaker 1: He's a smart kid. I didn't raise him to think
Speaker 1: that he had a disability. I raised him to believe
Speaker 1: that he can do anything he wants to do, and
Speaker 1: he does anything he wants to do. He never whined
Speaker 1: about it. No whining in our family and absolutely not
Speaker 1: allowed because look around, there are so many people in
Speaker 1: the world that are disadvantaged and not able to work,
Speaker 1: not able to provide for themselves with their family. If
Speaker 1: you can get up and walk on your two legs
Speaker 1: every day and go to work and earn money and
Speaker 1: and make a decent living, you're incredibly blessed. You seem
Speaker 1: like a very stubborn, class half full person. Oh my glass,
Speaker 1: my glass is running over. Let me get back from
Speaker 1: the break. The unstoppable force that is Karen Banks meets
Speaker 1: the immovable object that is COVID. A strong work ethic
Speaker 1: takes pride in a job well done, sweats over the details.
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Speaker 1: the Express Jobs out. The winner of twenty nineteen was
Speaker 1: a busy one in bond Bill, Vermont. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of snow, a lot of terrorists, and when COVID
Speaker 1: hit that march, everything changed. It just was. It was crazy.
Speaker 1: It was unreal how difficult it was and how fast
Speaker 1: we had to react in the food chain business too,
Speaker 1: to get the things that our customers needed. The store
Speaker 1: actually didn't close right away. It was chaotic. They hustled
Speaker 1: to get their website streamlined for online ordering, and then
Speaker 1: they locked the doors and they went curbside. We went
Speaker 1: tremendous curbside we had and we had a lot of
Speaker 1: employees here at the time. I bet we had fourteen employees.
Speaker 1: We worked eight hours, nine hours a day. All we
Speaker 1: did was shop, shop, shop, shop, shop, no talking, no
Speaker 1: no lunch, no brakes, sometimes eighty orders a day, eight
Speaker 1: orders a day. It's common knowledge that most businesses face
Speaker 1: supply issues around this time and still do. But in
Speaker 1: a general store with six thousand items, the supply chain
Speaker 1: issues of COVID affected virtually everything in Karen's life. And
Speaker 1: we had to do something that I didn't think I
Speaker 1: would ever have to do and I hope I never
Speaker 1: have to do it again. Um, I had to rash
Speaker 1: in toilet paper. I had to tell somebody, no, you
Speaker 1: can only have three rolls of toilet paper. Two things
Speaker 1: of strawberries and chicken wings were non existent, and um,
Speaker 1: it was. It was just awful to have to tell
Speaker 1: people that they couldn't have what they wanted, because your
Speaker 1: job is to provide what people want more than anything.
Speaker 1: The biggest challenge for Karen was to see all of
Speaker 1: those people that she saw on a daily basis adjusting
Speaker 1: to their new reality. It was heartbreaking to see people afraid, afraid.
Speaker 1: A lot of people came to pick up their groceries
Speaker 1: and h we couldn't have any contact with them, and
Speaker 1: we would leave their groceries outside. They'd wear gloves, they'd
Speaker 1: be masked. Um, they'd have disinfectant wipes. It was just
Speaker 1: sad for me to see how scared people were. In
Speaker 1: addition to that, a ton of people swarmed to towns
Speaker 1: like this from cities terrified of the pandemic. She remembers
Speaker 1: a young couple coming into the store right before they
Speaker 1: went curbside, and the wife was obviously pregnant, and he
Speaker 1: was asking some questions about the neighborhood and I said, oh,
Speaker 1: you guys just getting here and he said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we just came out from Manhattan. We're trying to get
Speaker 1: out of the city. And I said, oh, do you
Speaker 1: realize you need to quarantine? Have you quarantined? And he said, no,
Speaker 1: we haven't. He said, you're not going to call the police,
Speaker 1: saw me, are you? I just needed to get my
Speaker 1: wife out of the city. She's pregnant. I'm afraid for her.
Speaker 1: And then well, of course I'm not going to call
Speaker 1: the police. I'm just I'm just saying, you know, you
Speaker 1: need to quarantine, be careful. He was afraid that I
Speaker 1: was going to call the police on him. How sad
Speaker 1: is that as a pandemic went on, the Windhall Market
Speaker 1: eventually did open their doors up and we're not strictly curbside,
Speaker 1: but Karen was facing a whole new set of challenges
Speaker 1: in this new normal. A big one was population. You
Speaker 1: know that young couple that was coming from the city
Speaker 1: to escape with the pregnant wife. Thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: people did that. A lot of them stayed. We had
Speaker 1: three to five thousand extra people living here during COVID.
Speaker 1: That's I don't say it's I don't think people understand
Speaker 1: how big that is for a small place like that.
Speaker 1: That's double the population. So now in do you have
Speaker 1: more customers coming into the store than you ever have? Yes,
Speaker 1: at the moment. How many people do you have working
Speaker 1: in the store for how many should be? Really, we
Speaker 1: should be fifteen strong. We have not had a break,
Speaker 1: I would say since nineteen Just to remind you listening,
Speaker 1: they had fourteen people when the pandemic started. This specifically
Speaker 1: is a huge problem in rural areas like this. All
Speaker 1: the properties around here got bought up by people coming
Speaker 1: from out of state, and any extra rooms that locals
Speaker 1: do have are being used for Airbnb instead of apartments
Speaker 1: for potential employees that live there. You can't find people
Speaker 1: to work because there aren't people here. No, No, there aren't.
Speaker 1: Alien abductions That's what I think. If you have more
Speaker 1: customers than you ever have and you only have four
Speaker 1: when you think your stuff fifteen, how do you do it?
Speaker 1: We work long hours. The employees that are there are
Speaker 1: very high integrity, high production employees. We we can get
Speaker 1: a lot done in a short amount of time, but
Speaker 1: we work a lot of hours. I work anywhere from
Speaker 1: Oh I think my paycheck this time was seventy two hours.
Speaker 1: Whenever they can, they pick up some part time help,
Speaker 1: like a fourteen year old high school student that comes
Speaker 1: by sometimes. Great kid. He comes in a couple of
Speaker 1: days after school and gives me an hour. Another guy
Speaker 1: who works full time at the Scheme Mountain nearby, and
Speaker 1: we'll come in and sweep and mop and do some
Speaker 1: heavy lifting for me in the evening. A couple of
Speaker 1: days a week. She takes extra hours from them whenever
Speaker 1: she can. Karen all So again conveniently lives in the building.
Speaker 1: So the administrative part of it is easy for me.
Speaker 1: I'm not ashamed to say it. I'll sit with a
Speaker 1: glass of wine and do the grocery order. I've earned it,
Speaker 1: yeah I have. And that grocery order takes about five hours.
Speaker 1: I'm constantly thinking of ways to work smarter and not
Speaker 1: harder in this grocery. But there are literally six thousand
Speaker 1: things and they have to you have to get them
Speaker 1: on the shelves and it's not a piece of cake.
Speaker 1: But that's where with all of this I said, this
Speaker 1: market is not going under, it's not going down. We're
Speaker 1: going to maintain a standard of excellence, a standard of
Speaker 1: service to the community because they need that. It would
Speaker 1: be terrible in my heart, in my mind not to
Speaker 1: provide that for this community. I spent a long time
Speaker 1: away from my hometown, a town just like this one,
Speaker 1: and going to the store growing up, you grab what
Speaker 1: you needed. You saw the same people every day. Often
Speaker 1: you'd have the same conversations with those people, generally about
Speaker 1: the weather. It's routine, and I admittedly you took that
Speaker 1: for granted. Because when I ended up back in Vermont
Speaker 1: during COVID and couldn't see my friends, you couldn't see
Speaker 1: my family, I would look forward to going to the
Speaker 1: store in a way that I never did before because
Speaker 1: it was the one place that you could go and
Speaker 1: check in to make sure that everyone you knew was okay.
Speaker 1: And at a certain point, that's what Karen was providing
Speaker 1: not just things people needed, but human connection in a
Speaker 1: time where there wasn't much. This is a small community,
Speaker 1: and we know each other, and we care about each other,
Speaker 1: and we check on each other. You know. They wanted
Speaker 1: to know if we were okay, and we wanted to
Speaker 1: know if they were okay. Karen had to shut her
Speaker 1: doors in the beginning before she went curbside. My town's
Speaker 1: general store did the same, so we got a taste
Speaker 1: of what the town would look like without it temporarily.
Speaker 1: But the idea of it closing and the idea of
Speaker 1: it not being there is something I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever considered, and I'm sure that people are here never
Speaker 1: considered like it's the it's the general Store, it's the
Speaker 1: wind Hall Market. It will be there, and there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of uncertainty in the last few years, and
Speaker 1: and it seems that you maybe are like the one
Speaker 1: certain thing here. Well, we we like to think where
Speaker 1: the rock, you know, it's like, what would people We
Speaker 1: had to help people. There was no question that we
Speaker 1: had to help them through the lockdown. There's just not
Speaker 1: a question that it won't be here, regardless of staffing issues,
Speaker 1: supply chain or whatever the world throws their way, the
Speaker 1: town of Bonville can rest easy knowing that Karen Banks
Speaker 1: is not a whiner and if she wants to do something,
Speaker 1: she is going to do it. I agreed to it,
Speaker 1: and I believe that if you take it on, do
Speaker 1: it with a smile. And I'll do it with a
Speaker 1: smile at eight o'clock in the morning, and I'll do
Speaker 1: it if I'm there at eight o'clock at night. I'll
Speaker 1: still have the same smile. Just so you know listening.
Speaker 1: Karen has a vacation coming up. She's going to the
Speaker 1: Philippines with one of her co workers in the store.
Speaker 1: It'll be the first break they've had since two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: For on the job. I motuscry there to do these things.