Nathan For You – Antique Shop

Emily Yep has been operating her antique shop, Magnolia and Willow, in the Long Beach area for over five years, but lately, she’s been finding it tough to get customers in the door.

“It does get hard when it’s really slow. I mean, it always feels like it’s the end of the world.”

After surveying the neighbourhood, I realised that Emily might not be taking full advantage of her surroundings, so I paid her a visit with a way to help. I noticed there are a lot of bars and nightclubs in the area.

“Yeah.”
“Is that something you like?”
“Um, it’s a little hard. Sometimes we have some problems with over-serving and that kind of thing, but most of the time, we’re closed by 6:00, so it doesn’t affect us as much.”

But maybe it should. You see, Magnolia and Willow has a strict “you break it, you buy it” policy, meaning that if an item breaks, it’s as good as a sale. So if, instead of closing at 6:00 p.m., Emily extended her hours to be open straight through the night, her chances of inebriated customers generating new sales would greatly increase. The plan: attract late-night drunks by staying open 24 hours a day.

“Well, possibly, I guess, yeah. I mean, I would—I guess so, yeah.”
“I mean, the way I see it, if you get the right drunk in here…”
“Yeah.”
“You could make more in a single night than you do all month.”
“I just wouldn’t prefer a broken item. I’d rather sell a good one, but yeah, I mean, it would be the same thing, no matter what happens, so.”
“I mean, a lot of this stuff is—probably the only way you’re gonna get anything for it is if someone breaks it.”
“Well, some of the items, but yeah.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Yeah.”

Emily agreed to try out my idea to see if it got the results I had promised, so the next day, I returned to the store and officially changed the hours. Then to help our cause, I had the aisles narrowed slightly and moved some of her poorer-selling items to an area of the store that would increase the likelihood of accidental contact.

That evening, once the sun went down, it was time to see if the new extended hours would work. But knowing that tonight’s sales would determine if Emily kept using my idea, I wanted to guarantee we had some results, so I headed to a nearby bar with a plan to befriend a drunk patron and lead them back to the store.

“Do you know the antique shop next door?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah.”
“They’re open 24 hours now.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, well…”

After a few unsuccessful attempts to connect with the locals, I finally found someone who was willing to chat.

“What’s your favourite movie?”
“‘Inception.'”
“‘Inception,’ really?”
“Yeah. Have you seen that?”
“Why? Why is it your favourite movie?”
“What’s yours?”
“‘Forrest Gump.'”

He told me his name was JJ, and he seemed like my best shot at getting a big sale for Emily, but for this to work, I needed to get him drunk while staying sober enough myself to execute the plan. So prior to my arrival, I had a vacuum-powered device sewn into the lining of my jacket that was designed to discreetly suck up the alcohol I was served through a tube into a pouch on my back. Then a second motor would deliver apple juice from a different pouch, quickly refilling the glass and allowing me to go shot-for-shot with JJ without losing my focus one bit.

“Cheers.”

Over the course of the next hour, we had several rounds, and I noticed that JJ was getting pretty tipsy.

“My roommates put this piece of paper in my pocket. Like, ‘Just in case you get too drunk and get lost tonight.'”
“That’s your address?”
“[laughs] Yeah.”
“They put a piece of paper with your address in your pocket? So you get drunk often.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Really drunk.”
“Every night.”

And I felt that we were finally ready to head out. I explained to him that the cameras were there for a documentary about nightlife in Long Beach, but in reality, my only goal was to get him inside the antique shop. There was just one more step I had to take to get him ready.

“There’s this costume party in the area that—”
“A costume party?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go.”
“You want to go?”
“Yeah.”

Safety is always my number one priority, so I came up with the idea of a costume party as a way to get JJ into a padded outfit that would protect him against any antiques he might shatter once he stumbled into Emily’s store.

“Cool—oh.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Ow, [bleep]!”

And with that, we headed out to my made-up party. I just hoped I could convince him to make a stop along the way.

“Oh, sweet, look. Open 24 hours.”
“What is it?”
“Looks like some sort of store, but look.”
“Free p—”
“Free pizza.”
“Do you see it? It’s right back there. It’s right there at the back by a heat lamp.”
“Let’s go.”
“All right.”
“You’re coming with me?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

[doorbell ringing]
“[groans] Ooh.”

“Uh—”
“You okay, man?”
“I’m all right right now.”
“All right. You better be careful.”
“It’s all right.”
“Watch your back.”
“There’s no way.”
“Should—”
“I can’t even fit through that. It’s too tight.”
“Well, what do you—I mean, do you want the pizza or what?”
“I’m kind of wedged here.”
“You broke this stuff.”
“Right, I see that, and that’s why I’m, like, eh, I don’t really want to break anymore ’cause it’s [bleep] super expensive.”
“You have a ‘you break it, you buy it’ policy?”
“Yeah.”

The plan was a success. JJ had destroyed a large selection of antiques, and once he freed himself from the aisle, all Emily had to do was catalog the broken items and ring up the sale.

“It’s about $280 worth of damage, and that’s probably getting off easy ’cause I couldn’t really assess all of that broken—”
“Right.”
[laughs]
“Boo.”

So with that, Emily got to make a sizable sale.

“Well, lesson learned, huh?”
“Right.”
“Sorry.”

And JJ even got to take home some antiques.

“If you look at it this way, it looks like it’s brand-new.”
“Right.”
“So…it’s kind of a blessing in disguise.”
“Right, right, right.”

I was so happy everything worked out, and Emily seemed really won over by the idea, but as we left the store, I noticed that JJ was still pretty drunk, and since he made such a big purchase, I felt the least I could do was be a gentleman and give him a ride home.

“Do you often do stuff like that without really thinking it through?”
“Um, yeah.”

As we drove to JJ’s apartment, I thought my night was over, but that’s when he started talking to me about his sex life.

“Tag team a girl, yeah.”
“Tag team a girl?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“It’s when you have a threesome with two guys and one girl.”
“And you do that?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I do it with my brother a lot, actually.”
“Oh, really?”
“Me and my brother are dogs.”

JJ began going into detail about the threesomes he has with his brother, and at that point, I really just wanted to get home. But when I dropped him off, he insisted that I meet the guy, so I waited outside as JJ went in and brought out his brother.

“You guys have sex with the same girl.”
“Yeah.”

“I told him about—I told him about tag team.”
“Yeah.”
“I told him.”
“So you guys are brothers?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Yeah.”
“And you guys, you’ll have sex with the same girl?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Shit, I’ll be [bleep] a girl when he’s [bleep] a girl right next to me. Two…even, like.”
“And then you’re looking at each other during it?”
“No.”
“It’s dark in the room. Lights are off all the way, and you don’t see shit.”
“It’s fine.”
“But if you’re not looking at each other, and you’re having sex with a girl, why not just one of you do it, and then the next one does it later?”
“‘Cause it’s something we do, it’s [bleep]—”
“Right, it’s just something we’ve done. I mean, all my homeboys from back in Ohio, they do it. Everybody does this shit, Max, [bleep] George.”
“J-squad. Shout out to J-squad, you—”
“Shout out to that J-squad.”
“J-squad.”

“I mean, the one—I do look at you guys, and a part of me is envious that, you know, I don’t have someone in my life that is—I’m this close with.”
“[snorts and spits]”
“It’s nice to see brotherly love taken to that level, in a way.”
“Yeah, I definitely see where you’re coming from.”
“It’s just—”
“And, like, you know—”
“To us, it’s just, like—it’s nothing.”
“It’s just, like, that’s what [bleep] we’re used to. We’re used to all this shit.”
“Right.”
“It’s great meeting you.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“All right, man.”
“See you, guys.”
“Yup.”
“All right, buddy, yup.”

With a successful night under our belt, I could finally return to Magnolia and Willow to get Emily’s thoughts on how it went.

“I mean, that’s a pretty big sale, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, it helps, yeah.”
“So how’d you feel about that? That’s—”
“It’s good, yeah, and, you know, anytime we’re moving…”
“Great, right?”
“Any product, it’s always beneficial to the store, so—”
“That was a lot of product.”
“Yeah, I mean, it was good. It’s just kind of awkward…”
“Definitely.”
“Having people that might be having a little too much to drink. It’s a little harder to control in your store, that kind of thing.”
“Well, a sale’s a sale.”
“Yeah, for sure.”
“Yeah, definitely.”
“Yeah.”
“All right.”
“Yeah, thank you for all your help and your suggestions. This is all really great.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Good experience to try it. Thank you.”
“Yeah.”
“Have a good day.”
“Yeah, you—no, you too.”
“Thanks.”

[playful music]
♪ ♪
“Thank you.”