Battlefield Retail

Having a store is crazy. I have been held up at gunpoint in my store, I got shoplifted a ton of times... once I caught a man with three sweaters down his pants. I yelled at him to show me what he stole and he extracted each sweater, one at a time. I had to keep asking him what else was down there. After the third sweater came out, can you blame me for not believing him when he said that was it? I demanded he show me what else he had tucked away and glanced down only long enough to notice he did not have any underwear on. I have loads of pigeon shit to deal with. A homeless man shits on the sidewalk in front of my store on occasion. I have seen him do it and then leave his pants down as he air-dries his ass. I have gotten tickets for having trash outside my store at 8 a.m. It is the East Village, for crap's sake, there is gonna be trash on the sidewalk at 8 a.m. I can't live there full time to clean up after the drinkers and the hangers. I had to install a state of the art security system, which costs a fortune to lease. I have a buzzer on my door which often offends people and they mistaken it as me trying to be exclusive. Try going back to the location where you were held up at gun-point, I want to tell them. Try sitting alone in a store with the door unlocked after that. I get so much rudeness in response to the buzzer. As people are guzzling up iphones and gold bricks as we dive deeper into a recession, I am just keeping my head above water. So why do I do it?!
Angry Shopgirl thinks she may sound too complainy. Let me just take a break from my rant to say what an amazing opportunity it is to have a business in New York City. How cool is it to be on the NYC map? The East Village may be going corporate, but there are still a ton of cool folks here. I do get some crazy people, but we also get some really awesome customers and we have a band of loyal supporters who really do make it all worth it. We small stores are often over-looked and over-taxed, but we do get love from our neighbors. Although I do need a place to let off steam, I want to make sure that the heat is going in the right direction and that I am still spreading the love.
But Barbara, if you could spread the love, or just give credit where credit is due, that would be great. You work far from the robbers and the shitters. I am here, on the ground. You guys want free stuff for your show, with no intention of even crediting me. Don't you think you could throw us little people a bone?