one of those "why bother" days again
For those of you who don't know, I opened a shop near the town centre where I live on 16th May. Since then, I haven't gone a single day without wishing I hadn't bothered. This is going to be a rant so if you can't be bothered, then please try another thread because I really need to vent before I explode.
First, there is the joy and friendliness of the Barnsley area. I've now been assaulted four times since opening the shop. I've had to call the police six times to deal with people attacking me, my shop, my customers or my stock. I daren't leave anyone in charge of the shop for even an hour because I am scared what could happen to them based on the hassle that happens on an almost daily basis. Today's visitors causing fun were around 12 years old who wandered in, swiped stock off the shelves smashing some items when they knocked them to the floor, and left shouting "eat some salad, you f***ing fat c**t". No idea who they are or even why they felt the urge to trash the shop. The time before, about two weeks ago, a smackhead trapped me in the shop (there is only one door in and out and he was in the doorway), and started wrecking the shop, pulling over display units. I had to slip my mobile phone under my desk and text my sis to ring the police - I was too scared to ring the police myself because I was scared of inflaming the guy any more than he already was. The police just escorted him home with friendly advice to sleep it off at his home, which was three doors away from the shop, then they left. Hardly leaving me safe! The one before that was about a few weeks before that, where two women came in and smashed up the shop, grabbed armfuls of stock and ran off with it to the gang of about eight or ten drunks outside the shop.
I have smackheads spitting on items on the clothes rails, adults buying food from the shop next door and wiping their hands on the clothes deliberately to clean them, people setting fire to the items on the clothes rails with cig lighters, squirting ketchup from the chippy all over my stock, through the shop doorway etc etc. We have a communal post box in which the post is generally wet and stinking due to people peeing in bottles and tipping it through the letterbox opening. I have kids of 8 years and upwards playing on the shop roof and spitting on passers-by and customers, this is happening at least once a week.
Today's post has brought me the joy of a court summons courtesy of the council for non-payment of business rates which I have paid and have receipts to prove it. The only issue has been that they have sent me letters demanding payment over ten days after I have paid, and I have the money disappearing from my account through the council system to prove I have paid. In fact, I have paid five months business rates in only three months and it still isn't good enough for them, so I am going to get my good name and the good name of my store dragged through court because the arseholes at the council can't be bothered to check whether payment has been made, and send me letters asking for payments I made long before. I have already complained to them twice and got nowhere. Their last letter came on 16th August, demanding I make payment before 12th August or they would take me to court. Well, you would have thought paying it on 8th August would have been enough for them! Quite where they would stand in court for sending out final demands asking payment to be made days before their request would be interesting to find out. They sent out forms for businesses who want to offset some of their business rates to future years, and although I sent all that paperwork back six weeks ago, I have still heard nothing.
The only thing keeping me going is that if I close the shop, then there isn't anything to get up on a morning for; it would mean me going to go back to the depression of being just another out-of-work pleb desperately scraping round, and being turned down for, every single job I apply for, the same as it has been for the past couple of years. I'd have to go back to the depressing and demeaning reality of having to supplicate to housing benefit and have them carrying out their regular visits to snoop on me and snoop around my home, and I would be left to going back to what I have had before from my brother-in-law who insists I am a lazy scrounging parasite, living off his taxes, with no intention of ever working. And if I close down the shop now, I am left with display units and stock and nowhere to store them, and no way to pay back the £1,000 business start-up loan I took out to part-finance the shop.
I daren't even tell my kids or my mother half of what happens in the shop because I don't want to frighten or upset them; I think my mum already has sleepness nights worrying about me living and working in dodgy areas to start with.
Does anyone have any suggestions what I could do next, where I could go from here, who I could contact to get me through all this? At the moment, I just can't see any way forward in all this, it is all just getting on top of me. I thought I could cope but now I know I can't cope with all this being thrown at me at once. There are so many issues that I don't even know where to start because I am just overwhelmed with it all.
Thanks, someone - anyone - for any advice that might help.
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Originally Posted by ejean9
