Carbon Street Newsletter (008)
"Employment at the Temple Part II"
(Well, scheisse…what was supposed to be a day or two delay turned into over a week…
A couple of things to point out:
Yes, sometimes life and work get in the way and you can’t beat yourself up too much for that.
However, I DID have chances to do this and stay on schedule, but didn’t. For that, I do feel bad as this newsletter is intended to be an exercise in discipline more than anything else.
So we’ll keep trying on that front…‘because tomorrow, the sun will rise.’ - Chuck Noland
That said, this Rip Curl Surf Center multi-parter is weirdly proving more difficult than anticipated.
Apologies the delay. For Part I, click HERE)
Here we go…)
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Management Shifts
In Part I, I mentioned that the Manager who hired me at the Surf Center was a gentleman named Isaac Kirkpatrick. Isaac was from the island of Kauai - he was soft-spoken, humble, hard-working and a genuinely-good person. He also ripped.
Now, this likely borders on myopia, but I found that this trait - being a quiet underground ripper - was so much more pronounced in surf retail (maybe all of surfing) when I was younger (excluding myself from this of course…outsider, remember?). It just seemed that everyone I met through work was a really good surfer, but they kept it to themselves. I liked that, felt more substantive to me.
Now, Isaac put me on the Sales Floor (after I broke my wing, recall) meaning that there was a me-sized hole in Shipping and Receiving. So they hired a replacement - Cory Fowler - who was the first person I trained to do anything, but who improved (significantly) on what I did with the job.
Cory and I would become good friends and he eventually took over management of the Surf Center (after a few others), becoming my boss when I came back during summer breaks. He was, in my humble opinion, the best manager the shop ever had. He served with honor and intelligence, before eventually moving to Baja California to become a jack of all trades and surf empty waves.
A story for another time.
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Basic Rules of Human Engagement
Back to 2000 (successfully surviving Y2K and the scary storylines of Chris Carter’s ‘Millennium’) and when I was moved onto the Sales Floor, we had moved up the street to join the Trestles Surf Outlet while the original restaurant site was renovated. So the setup of the new space was Outlet on one side of the building, Retail on the other, with shared office space in the middle and the “Shipping and Receiving” warren taking the place of the abandoned kitchen in the back corner.
Being on the Sales Floor, Isaac had to teach me how to interact with other people…which is one of those things you presume you know how to do, but for me that was a mistake.
I am an introvert…and left to my own devices, I’d never have engaged with anyone. If I hadn’t broken my collar bone, I may still have been happily cutting boxes and tagging products, which would have been the worst thing I don’t think…but wouldn’t have forced me to grow.
Silver linings I suppose.
I’m still an introvert, but being on the floor forced me to develop an important tool - the ability to listen to others. Which, in turn, gave me the opportunity to learn how to speak to others.
I don’t consider myself an expert at this today, but it’s a tool that I’ve sharpened through years of practice and lessons.
Lessons that started with learning the value of greeting customers with a, “Hey, how are you today?” Harder than you’d think.
We didn’t work on commission so it was more of a subjective anecdotal analysis of whether or not you were good at your job. To be honest, you really had to try to get fired.
In any event, this complete lack of a pressurized sales situation actually lent itself to true learning and development for me. Learning how to greet people warmly, care about what they needed and get them the right product - not necessarily the most expensive product - was ground into us (well me, anyway) early on. I didn’t want to deal with someone that came back pissed off that what they spent their money on didn’t deliver. Much better to create happy customers that were glad to see you when they came back.
Thinking back, outside of a few pointers from Isaac and some colleagues, the place provided the freedom to develop whatever you wanted to and, for me, I wanted the validation from others at doing a good job.
Hence, I got pretty good at reading people, understanding the value of knowing the products inside and out and appreciating the opportunity of growth within pressure-less situations.
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Perks
We may as well get to it. As hinted at last week, working at the Surf Center didn’t pay a King’s Ransom in terms of wages. It was minimum, which was fine. As mentioned previously, the point of working there was to feed one’s obsession for surfing and that value came through the inherited knowledge of whiling away the hours in the temple and…discounts.
Wax was free, but don’t abuse it and be greedy. Clothing was discounted, but who was going to spend their money on that? Surfboards were all over the place, your best bet was to develop a relationship with the shapers when they came in and pray they didn’t rip you off when you asked them to make you a board.
However, as a Rip Curl Surf Center employee…one perk stood above them all.
We were entitled to ONE complimentary fullsuit every season. Such was the sacred covenant between the retail floor and the ivory tower of RC corporate. The catch was, in order to receive a brand-new fullsuit, you had to return your suit from last season (which would then go into the rental rack…gross, I know).
New wetsuit day was the most exciting day of the year - often late September each season, each employee would turn in their own old, dirty, peed-in wetsuit and receive a brand-new, still-in-the-plastic wetsuit (just like Mick Fanning, we all imagined). It was absolutely glorious. We received top-of-the-line wetsuits, wore them with unbridled pride and, smartly, used our experience to sell them to custimers.
In my seven years in the temple, this only backfire one time…the year of the dreaded EST…
One of the bizarre revelations from going behind the curtain in the surfing world is the fact that the major brands (Quiksilver, Rip Curl, Billabong, etc.) - brands that, in my ignorance, seemed worlds apart in terms of identity - all got their wetsuits from the same factory in China (I’ll give you a minute to pick your jaw up off the floor and marvel at the dent mine made when this was revealed to me many moons ago).
The process was that they (the brands) effectively bid against one another for different bells and whistles - materials, paneling, zippers, ad nauseum - in an effort to outdo one another in the sales and marketing materials each year.
The season of the dreaded EST was brief but brutal. Attempting to corner the market on flexibility, Rip Curl opted to forgo the stitching that bound the panels together in favor of glue that formed a zig zag along the seams - the EST (I’m hunting down what this meant for next week’s installment as I’ve repressed it from memory). This was marketed as REVOLUTIONARY! And nowhere is the kool-aid drank with more enthusiasm than on the pre-launch sales floor.
So, one by one, we traded out our belowed Rip Curl Ultimates in for the EST…the end of stitching!
What. A. Disaster.
Not only was the zig zag glue uncomfortable, it proved to be less flexible and infinitely less durable. One of the easiest sales points to drive home with customers was “lifetime warranty on all stitching”. Meaning that, if your suit had a seam blow out, we would repair or replace for free.
Since the ESTs had no stitching, there was no warranty. So when, within a few weeks, all our wetsuits started falling apart, panic took over the retail floor. Customers came back furious! Employees were furious! The customers got their money back. The employees were forced to suffer through the winter.
Fuck that wetsuit.
Progress is rarely a straight line, as they say.
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The Hours of Nothing
Working in the retail side of the outlet store made foot traffic pretty slow. After all, who wants to spent full retail on anything when the price of getting a discount is literally steps away. We were essentially in a holding pattern until the new building was completed and they could separate us again.
As a show pony on the sales floor during this era…you had a lot of time to yourself to watch videos, read magazines, bullshit with employees every day. If you did a six-hour shift, it wasn’t uncommon for four of those hours to be spent doing exactly this.
It was during these hours of nothing that we came across a magazine article featuring Rip Curl teamrider Mike Losness. Mike was a San Clemente prodigy, an NSSA superstar, good-looking and destined for future greatness (or so all the hallowed voices decreed it to be). As a teenager, Mike was already traveling the world as part of Rip Curl’s vaunted “Search” team (every Surf Center employee’s dream) and this particular magazine feature became a month’s worth of discussion for us.
In it, Mike - again, only a teenager - lamented the fact that his profession was to travel the world and surf and compete. He said he was burned out and he missed home and he wanted to do something else.
Sacrilege!
Jealousy!
Anger!
How could he?!!? We were flabbergasted. We all vowed…to ourselves and to one another…that we would never become this jaded. We would give anything to travel the world and surf…
Which, brings us to the actual point that spawned this series…
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The Pointy End
I referenced this in the intro to last week’s substack, but this series of newsletters was spawned from an idea that occurred to me during a morning beach walk here in Ventura.
It was a grey June morning and I walked the beach alone - trying to move my body and clear my head, while failing to appreciate the privileged circumstances I continued to find myself in.
The low-tide smell of algae filled the air, and small, shapeless closeouts crashed on the sandbar between the jetties. The water had a late season chilly temperature of the high 50s and the thought of myself surfing hadn’t crossed my mind for days. My back was sore, I had things to do, I was behind on work, etc., etc.
My professional life, working and traveling on the Championship Tour, had afforded me personal surfing opportunities I could never have dreamed of working at the Surf Center (and I dreamed big and I dreamed often while there). I had enjoyed years of experiencing the world’s best waves, surfing them by myself, warm, clear water, strong, young back, few-if-any real responsibilities.
And I had all the warning in the world and I constantly tried to check myself, but…I had become what I promised I wouldn’t. I had become jaded to the thing that brought me a lot of joy.
Victory - or at least my narrow-minded definition of it - had defeated me.
A pod of dolphins cut through the grey June water and forced me to take a breath, bringing all my strands of thought into a single simple thread that allowed me to speak to myself honestly.
Surfing is beautiful. Life is beautiful. Knowing myself allows me to enjoy both, regardless of the circumstances. I can surf bad waves. I can surf no waves at all. My body and mind can sleep in the deep and awaken when the ocean calls it to be. I can rest when I need to. I can be there for others when I need to. I can live and let live.
A fleeting thought, but one I try to focus on more and more.
I still think back to that Mike Losness article often. I judged him too harshly in my youth and inexperience. It is easy to miss home. The grass is always greener, but when you can breath and accept things for the right reason, you can be at peace. I hope he found it. I hope I find it. I hope we all find it.
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Graduation
I swear that, looking back, the two years I spent at Rip Curl during High School feel like multiple lifetimes. I guess that tracks in the sense that 16, 17 and 18 are very formative years for anyone…still though, seems extra intense through the lens of retrospection.
My time…at both the original restaurant building and the new temporary building…was robust with life lessons. My colleagues at the shop were genuinely supportive of me when I graduated (something that, at least in my own home, was never a cause for celebration but rather an unaddressed expectation). They threw me a party and were really complimentary and generous…I didn’t appreciate that kindness and care at the time. I was incapable of understanding it or accepting it then. I’d still struggle with it today.
After graduation, I worked through the summer on preferred hours, and the Surf Center provided an underappreciated-at-the-time home for me as my world changed, friends left and I prepared for college.
The temple was stabilizing.
I spent the summer saving money, gearing up and planning for the journey ahead. Come September, I said goodbye to the shop (promised to come back), and just like that, I had my quiver (including 6’10” Tom Hogan Semi-Gun for the very specific reason of KNOWING I’d need it Rincon at a minimum of once a week), I had my wetsuits and I was off to school under cover of pole vaulting and academics, but really…I was training for the QS. Another stepping stone to the World Title.
That’s it for this week.
Be good to yourselves.
- Dave Prodan (Monday, June 21, 2021)