Danni made her way up the staircase in the lodge's impressive lobby to what used to be the management offices. The log cabin theme continued upstairs. Despite the warm decor, it was decidedly chilly in the lodge, so Danni kept her winter coat on.
She quickly found the door marked "OWNER AND GENERAL MANAGER - JENNIFER CAMPBELL" at the end of the upstairs hall. Hmm, that didn't check out. Jennifer Campbell was not the woman she had purchased the building from. Danni opened the rustic wooden door to reveal... an office. It was pretty normal in terms of its decor, really. It looked as if it hadn't been touched in a long time, like the people who worked here left one night intending to come back the next day, only never to do so.
It made Danni somewhat uncomfortable to rummage through the desk of Ms./Mrs. Campbell, but she did it anyway. If Jennifer cared, she would have come and taken her stuff. Said stuff was mostly paper records of things like finances, staff rolls, guest counts, and the odd customer complaints about mild things like slow service on high volume days and it being too cold. It was all very boring paperwork, but fascinating to a numbers person like Danni. She read everything thoroughly, and soon thought she had the full story.
After a while, Gloria and Nicole had returned to the lodge lobby. They sat on wood-frame couches and stared up at the big wooden chandelier that hung over them. There was a massive hearth on one of the walls, and Gloria was considering relighting the fire when Danni began to come down from the mezzanine. Gloria happily called to her. "Oh, look who came to join us!"
Danni carried a manila envelope filled with papers in her arm. "You seem pretty pleased."
"I am!" Gloria stood up from her seat to face her, putting her hands on her chubby hips. "Danni, this place is incredible. We really made the right choice in getting it. I was walking around the guest rooms for a while and I was thinking, fuck making this a waffle stop. Let's make this a waffle DESTINATION. Not just a restaurant. Not a hotel with a restaurant. A restaurant... with a hotel! What do you think, Danni?"
Nicole piped up before Danni could answer. "I think it's a great idea. I was looking at the kitchen, and it's decked out. We could do great things here with minimal renovation."
Danni smiled. "It sounds great. Really quick though..." She sat down on a chair near the couches, opening up her folder. "We need to talk about the people who were running this place before, so we don't make the same mistakes as them."
Gloria sat back down. "What do you mean? Is there a problem?"
Danni cleared her throat. "Not at this point, no. See, we didn't acquire this place from the original owner like I had thought when I made the sale. I bought it from a firm that had acquired it before us to sell."
Nicole spoke up. "So, what does that mean?"
"That means this place went totally belly-up. It got bought dirt cheap and sold to us for a profit."
Gloria almost rose from her chair. "So, why did they go bankrupt? It wasn't the location, was it? Please, don't tell me it was something with the building."
"Not really? Kind of."
"Fuck." Gloria sunk back into the couch cushions.
Danni stammered. "B-but! It was more of a management problem!" She shuffled some papers around, pointing to the one now on the top. "Look at this. Look at how much they're spending seasonally on transportation."
Gloria picked up the paper and her eyes practically popped out. "You're kidding."
"No. It seems they were ferrying employees to and from the mountain multiple times every single day, even in inclement weather. I have no idea why they expected to make any money doing this, as you can see it was an incredible stain."
Gloria sat forward. "So, what's your solution? This place is pretty out of the way, we might have difficulty getting our most important staff here every day."
"M-my solution?" Danni cleared her throat again. "I think we should have live-in staff. Offer room and board for workers during the ski season, and offer our most important staff, like the manager and kitchen heads, apartments here. It won't be cheap, but I think it will end up being less expensive having to deal with shuttle services, especially during the winter season."
Gloria breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay. Sounds good. I was worried for a minute there." She turned to Nicole. "You should start looking for a chef. Someone who would want to live here." She turned back to Danni. "And you should come with me for a minute. I need to talk to you for a moment."
The two of them stood up while Nicole started tapping out a form on her phone. Gloria lead Danni down a hallway flanked with hotel rooms. Danni's heart was racing. Was she in trouble? She thought she aced that! Luckily, when they were far enough down the hall and Gloria turned back to her, she didn't look angry. "Danni...
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