fandomtownies | Bluth's Original Frozen Banana Stand

Try a Simple Simon today. Not sure what it is, but I bet it's good.

Turtle knew she'd been slacking off on tracking down all the other new businesses in town, so, after that bizarre assembly, she went to go do some homework. Leaning on the counter of the banana stand, Turtle asked, "So what's all this then?" even though she had mostly figured it out. Still, one could tell a lot about a person's sense of business by how they talked about their business. She was feeling that the banana stand wasn't exactly something she had to keep high on her Caution Radar.

George Michael Bluth looked confused. "The docks are over there, not far. There are the seagulls too. They can be distracting."

"...What?" Turtle looked over her shoulders to see the seagulls he was talking about. "Oh. Right. I meant the business you've got here. Banana stand?"

...Yeah. Not an ounce of threat here.

"That's what Pop-Pop first called it." Didn't matter that it looked like one giant yellow joint. It was in fact, a banana stand.

Ah-ha. An inherited franchise, although, really, since the majority of her fortune was an inheritance, she couldn't think too snidely regard it. However, she had earned that inheritance, so there was enough of a difference that she couldn't be a little disdainful.

"I see," she said. "Well, my name is Wexler. T.R. Wexler, but everyone tends to just call me Turtle. I own Turtle & Canary, the little shop in town, you know, the one that sells practically everything. I noticed there were some new businesses moving into the town, and thought it would be good to extend a greeting to my comp-- errr, my fellow business associates here on the island."

"Nice to meet you Turtle. I'm George Michael Bluth, Mr. Manager of Bluth's Original Frozen Banana Stand." Just like the sign up above says. "I need to visit your shop because I have a kitchenette in my room and I have peanut butter in there and that's it."

Turtle's eyes narrowed slightly. Bluth. How did she miss that? She leaned back for a better look at the sign, eyes narrowing a little more with added scrutiny. Yup. She'd missed it, completely and utterly. She looked back at George Michael. "So you're one of them, huh?" She made the breakneck decision not to underestimate this establishment based on the supposed incompetency of the manager. After all, that was how they got you...

"I'm one of who? Not a banana," he stuttered. "Too hot for that again today."

Turtle took a moment to observe George Michael carefully. Maybe he wasn't a threat after all. Then again, Mister GOB was a complete moron, too, and he was her biggest competitor...

"A Bluth," Turtle clarified. "Unless you actually have no relation to Mister GOB?" Oh, geez, this was an inherited business, too. That suggested that there might be even more of them, in other varied business endeavors....Oh no! What if there was real estate?

"Uncle GOB is my uncle," he stated seriously. "I don't have anything to do with doves." And he would never admit to being dressed up like a girl and sawed in half. Father daughter day was different.

"You know Uncle GOB?"

"Well, yeah," Turtle said. "Of course I do; his establishment is the most successful individual business in Fandom, with my store coming up second. A very close second, might I add, making him my biggest competitor."

While George Michael might be inwardly proud that his Uncle GOB was evidently so successful, as a new business owner himself, it sort of sucked for the banana busniess. "Uncle GOB wasn't cut out for the banana busniess. He tried it and failed."

Turtle's eyes widened, straightening eagerly. "Really?" she gushed. "How so?" Getting to hear a story about Mister GOB failing would brighten her day and, hopefully, give her some ideas.

George Michael shouldn't talk about his Uncle GOB; he had talked to him about coming over and wearing the banana costume for a day to help promote business. If he downed his Uncle, there goes George Michael's idea of a great payday.

"I can't discuss it."

Turtle's shoulders slumped, mood shifting with breakneck speed. "Oh, come on! Sure you can! And if you don't tell me, I'll just go bother him about it anyway, so I'll find out eventually somehow."

"He might be smarter now." Flail. "I don't even think he eats bananas anymore. Do you want one? Half off on nuts today."

"But I thought you sold ba-- Oh! For, like, toppings. You put the nuts on the bananas..." Why was Turtle feeling like she shouldn't be talking about this? "Um, no, that's okay. I already had lunch and everything so I'm not that hungry."

"You just came to see me?" Well, that stained his cheeks pink.

Turtle gave George Michael a confused look. "Noooo," she said, with emphasis, so this guy didn't start getting any ideas. "I came to see your business to gain a better awareness of the general market activity over the island."

But he did seem kind of young to be managing his own business, even if it was inherited. Turtle's head tilted slightly, starting to feel a little....distressed. "How old are you, anyway?"

"Oh." Okay, that shot him down a little. Was it only his bananas people wanted? Or in this case just to see his bananas? That wasn't nice he didn't think. He wouldn't go into her store just to gain awareness of a store. Or what it had in it. He would probably buy something while he was doing it.

"I'm nineteen. Why?"

Turtle let out a breath of visible and clear relief. Good. Still the youngest proprietor on the island. There were going to be major issues if that was usurped from her by a dork in a banana stand. "Whew," she breathed, and then shook her head. "And I was just wondering. You seem kind of...young to be the manager of such an....auspicious business endeavor." Ironic, maybe. But oh, well. Turtle considered herself to belong to an entirely different set of rules.

"Mr. Manager," he said. "'Cause you know." He tapped his fingertips across the counter. "How hard can it be to run a banana stand, right?"

"Since you're here, you should try a banana. I'll make the GOB for you."

Well, Mr. Manager Bluth here did have a point there, but the moment of logic was completely derailed.

"...you have a banana named for Mister GOB?"

"No. Just GOB. Small medium or large." Cause he was intent on making a sale. And he thought Turtle deserved a GOB.

"Um, I think I'll pass this time," Turtle said, making an executive decision that anything that combined Mister GOB and bananas needed to stay far, far, far away from her. But it was really all sadly cute, though, in a way, this poor guy trying to do the pushing of a sale thing and just not having that special spark that Turtle had exploited so well in her own business. She felt almost a little sympathetic, a little bit of pity. And, if he was going to be going to Turtle & Canary for his banana stock...

"Well, but maybe I'll try a small of the original one there."

George Michael gave her a winning smile. Even though it wasn't the limpy GOB, it was a banana all the same.

He did the dipping thing and handed it over with plently of napkins. "I hope you'll enjoy it and maybe you can tell your friends about how good it is."

"I just might," Turtle said, looking at the dipped banana a little skeptically as she pulled off of the counter a little. "Especially if you look to Turtle & Canary for you business supply needs." She smiled. "That way, better business for you means better business for me, and, as a business, I'm sure I can get you a supplier discount."

Ahhhh, networking.

He seemed to consider that. "I'm not sure. I would need crates of bananas which hold a lot of bananas. Say you only tell a couple of people then I only have two bananas coming out of that crate I've purchased from you. The demand would hardly equal the supply." Did he just sound smart?

"Simple," Turtle said. "That's why you carefully chart and record your progress of selling, and only purchase from the supplier based on those records. It's all simple algorithms, really, of projecting your success based on advertising, previous sales, and a few other miscellaneous factors. Clearly, if you're not making enough business for a crate, you don't buy a crate, you buy maybe a bushel or something. Buying fewer bananas from me at a time benefits you twofold because I will want to tell more people so that you buy more bananas from me. So you get all that advertising from an already established source of reliable business in the area. That's how a good business partnership works, George Michael. Both parties benefit each other for the sake of similar success..."

She gave him a very important and knowledgeable look, one that suggested that he should appreciate this free advice and her forgetting that he was a Bluth.

George Michael Bluth, banana entrepreneur extraordinaire, realized that this girl was smarter than he was. "Would you wear the banana costume in your store sometimes to help promote the Bluth banana industry?"

Turtle didn't even have to think about that one. "No."

There was a pause. "But Apu would." Especially if Apu wanted to keep his job.

George Michael reached across the counter to shake her hand. "It's a deal. Wait. He has to wear it twice a week."

Turtle gave George Michael a very professionally strong handshake back. "Perfect, as I work the shop twice a week. Pleasure doing business with you, Mister Manager. I assure you, you will not be disappointed in your bananas."

He shook her hand back, first time he's touched a girl in ... well ... no need to think about that now. Not around bananas.

"And your customers will not be disappointed when you send them over here for their banana treat."

"They better not be!" Turtle said. "I have a reputation to maintain."

And, after a bite of her own banana treat, Turtle figured her customers would get exactly what she would tell them they would get: a banana, dipped in stuff.

George Michael almost saluted her. Almost.

Mr. Managers did not salute people of another busniness. It just didn't happen.

And watch the weird people.

yo.

Bluth's Original Frozen Banana Stand

George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Re: George Michael Bluth

Enjoy your banana

OOC