We all knew to expect some sort of backlash from what had happened. We couldn't do anything with out getting someone's attention, so something like this would definitely not fly by unnoticed.
Kris was expecting a liability lawsuit, what we got was inevitably much worse.
The mother of the girl didn't call asking for money to fix her daughters nose, to anything like that. She decided that reason her daughters nose got broke was because we had way to many people in the building.
So she called the fire marshal.
He showed up one day while I was there for my mentorship. Kris also happened to be there, thank god!
"Hello!" He called as he climbed our stairs.
I peered through the window. "Hi?" I said suspicious of the man in the suite standing in our lobby.
"Shit..." Kris said under his breath as he went out to meet him.
Kris talked to the man a little, and walked him around the gallery for a while.
Then the man left.
Kris came in and sat in his chair.
"So, who was that?" I asked.
"The fire marshal." Kris said. Then he explained that even though we have three rooms in the gallery our max occupancy was 35 people.
Apparently since we only have one bathroom and no fire exit, our occupancy limit goes way down. I could see him telling us we wouldn't have 200 people in the place, we all knew that was pushing it. But 35? That is a death sentence.
"So what happens now?" I asked.
"I mean as long as we aren't obviously over capacity, we'll be fine." He said smiling. "You know. We could probably still have shows with 50-80 people and it'll be ok. As long as we don't get inspected during a show."
This is why I liked Kris. He was willing to take risks. Yea, we were going to actively double our capacity. But as long as we didn't get a complaint, we'd be fine.
The problem was.
We couldn't do anything without getting attention. So of course we got complaints.
We skidded by most of them. Someone would call in a noise complaint, or a customer of the bistro next door would wine that they couldn't eat a decent meal without being scared of teenagers or something. And we'd count heads and move people around, and do whatever we could to make sure we never got caught with more than 35 people in the building. It worked for a while. But then we had another issue on our hands.
The police had been getting so many complaints from people at the Bistro that they told Kris his customers could no longer "hang out" in front of Kronos. So shuffling people around became impossible. What was even more infuriating, is that some of the people who hung out in front of Kronos never actually came in. And a lot of them would actively harass passer-byers, well you know, because teenagers. And I know it's hard to pass up harassing the Bistro customers. I mean think about it. The people eating at the Bistro are either eating there casually, or maybe a date. Maybe occasionally a family. Now think about your average "at risk" teen ager. They can't even dream of eating out "casually". Let alone at a place that over charges for a cheeseburger. I mean really they serve Filet Mignon that costs more than school lunches for a MONTH! You get the drift. Of course not only will they be the kind of people that feel harassed by just the presence of teenager, but also be harassed by teenagers for being an easy and accessible target. I speak from experience.
So now we couldn't simply push people out the door to try and "appear" to be sticking to our head count policy.
"What are we going to do?" I asked Kris.
"I don't see how we can be responsible for people outside of our building." he said. "That is city property. And besides, what am I supposed to do if people hang out down there? I mean I can't physically remove them."
I daydreamed about Kris tossing punk kids around the wharf parking lot. It would be good stress relief.
"I can be your security guard!" Zane said walking into the room.
We all laughed.
"What?! I can!" he snorted.
"Ok." Kris said still laughing. "If you can keep people away from the entrance and side walk that will be helpful."
"Thank you!" Zane said sarcastically.
We all left the gallery that day feeling uneasy. We needed a better plan.
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