Chapter Fourteen

The experiment didn’t arrive as a trumpet blast.

It arrived as a shrug.

“We could sell our own line,” Marcus said, leaning against the glaze room door as if he’d been born there. “Mayfield Originals. Cups, plates, the lot.”

He said it like a man who had never met a spreadsheet.

I nodded the kind of nod that buys you time.

“Let’s think about it.”

Thinking turned out to be code for buying clay, ordering bats and hiring two enthusiastic throwers who looked like they’d say yes to anything.

Ella and Sam arrived with nervous portfolios and the light in their eyes you only see in people who haven’t done inventory at midnight.

“Just to be clear,” I said during interviews, “this is an experiment. If it doesn’t work, we stop. Also, you’ll cover Clay Soirées when needed. That’s how any of this gets paid.”

They nodded fast enough to create a breeze.

January settled onto the warehouse roof like a sleeping dog.

Fans spun bravely. Clay dried before you could persuade it into becoming a cylinder. Ella and Sam threw their hearts out. Shelves filled with bowls that leaned, mugs that questioned their handles and plates that appeared uncertain whether they were plates at all.

Ruth wrote Mayfield Wares on a whiteboard and drew a star beside it as if that might help.

Out front, the booking platform continued doing what booking platforms do best: making us look successful while quietly stealing the furniture.

Weekends filled. Then months.

Reviews arrived like sugared almonds.

“Best night ever!”

“Didn’t know clay could be spiritual!”

“Sally is chaotic but hilarious!”

I read them at midnight with my forehead against the espresso machine.

“It’s only because they can’t see the back room,” I whispered.

The back room was maths.

Commission off the top. Food. Glaze. Wages for the wares experiment. Deposits on more wheels. Three thousand dollars disappearing into equipment that might never earn itself back.

I wrote columns of numbers.

The numbers stared back and asked who exactly I thought I was.

By the third week, I called a meeting.

Everyone gathered glowing with heat and minor grievance while I gestured toward the racks of unglazed work.

“Let’s play a game,” I said. “Tell me what you think we can realistically make from these.”

“Three grand,” Sam said brightly.

“More if a celebrity comes in,” Ella added.

I pointed toward a tray of mugs staring back like hostages.

“From these?”

“They’re artisan,” Marcus said solemnly. “You can charge for the story.”

“The story,” I replied, “is that you were paid to make them and they are now quietly costing us rent.”

Silence settled across the room except for a fan squeaking like a cricket with opinions.

Then came the complaints.

People were overworked. Burnt out. Emotionally exhausted.

“We need sustainable pace,” Marcus said. “We need space for our feelings.”

“Feelings are free,” I said. “We can have those without a budget line.”

“That’s hostile tone,” he replied.

Finn inhaled sharply, sensing the possibility of emotional weather.

“What if we do a landing?” he asked.

Dawn materialised almost immediately.

“We are landing,” she announced solemnly to the air.

Half the room closed their eyes. The other half looked at me like I was reversing a forklift into their self-care.

We breathed for five minutes.

I thought about payroll.

When everyone reopened their eyes, Marcus had somehow acquired a clipboard.

“We propose,” he read, “longer paid breaks, a quiet zone for emotional processing and an end to unpaid emotional labour.”

“What’s unpaid emotional labour?” I asked.

“Answering beginner questions.”

“That’s literally the job.”

“That’s your view.”

I stared at him gently.

“You’re assistants in beginner classes. We invite beginners. We charge beginners. Then we answer beginner questions.”

“Debate is violent,” Marcus said carefully.

“Talking is violent?”

He wrote something onto the clipboard.

I sincerely hope it was:

Sally asked if talking is violent.

Because that will read beautifully at my future tribunal.

I tried logistics.

“We get two applications a week. If people are exhausted we can rotate shifts—”

“Threat,” someone snapped.

“No,” I said. “Data.”

“You’re telling us to leave.”

“I’m telling you to swap shifts and honour the arrangement you already signed.”

“Verbally,” Sam said dramatically.

“And in writing,” I replied. “Remember the HR packet everybody hated?”

“The roster app is confusing,” Finn offered.

“Software is confusing,” I agreed. “But we cannot continue writing preferences in haiku inside the comments box.”

Ruth suggested colour-coding the rooms.

The room ignored her completely.

William wandered through with tea and asked:

“Should we simply be kind?”

Someone replied:

“Kind is structural.”

That was the exact moment I realised I would die inside this warehouse.

Eventually we reached the compromise all creative workplaces eventually reach:

slightly fewer complaints and slightly more resentment.

Shorter classes where possible. A five-minute mid-session stretch break. Rotating weekends. Wares production during weekdays and soirées on weekends.

If the wares experiment didn’t pay for itself by Easter, we would stop.

Everyone nodded.

Someone cried.

The kettle boiled.

The first Saturday under the new system began with a pep talk and ended with me mopping at midnight.

The middle felt like a fever dream.

Ruth navigated trays of olives through crowds with military precision. Finn performed miracles with collapsing bowls. Ethan welcomed guests so warmly one woman asked if she could sponsor him.

Ebony carried a clipboard titled:

Things That Will Break Today

and ticked items off calmly as they occurred.

Between sessions, Ella and Sam confessed they were exhausted.

Of course they were.

They were artists, not machines.

Their art circle had begun describing weekend work as exploitative.

Their art circle, notably, did not pay rent.

“I need you tonight,” I said quietly. “Every ticket sold keeps your weekday throwing hours alive.”

“We’ll be here,” Ella replied bravely. “But we’re naming that it’s unsustainable.”

I wrote the word sustainable onto a Post-it and stuck it to my forehead so future conversations could proceed more efficiently.

By February, the shelves sagged.

The wares multiplied like promises nobody intended to keep.

Customers picked up mugs, admired them thoughtfully, then placed them back down once they saw the price.

“Forty dollars?” they’d ask.

I swallowed lectures about glaze waste, labour, electricity and the fact that a mug is also ten years of practice nobody wishes to pay for.

Then the rumours started.

Someone online called me a cruel employer.

Someone else called me transphobic.

One memorable comment accused me of “weaponising emotional ambiguity.”

I reread that one three times trying to understand whether it was about pottery.

The politics-free rule still hung on butcher’s paper beside the espresso machine:

Everyone is welcome. Nobody campaigns. The wheel is Switzerland.

Now politics seeped under the roller door like damp.

“Should we respond?” Ruth asked carefully.

“No,” I said. “We’ll bake pots and remain boring.”

We were not boring.

We were actively combusting.

The wares team began refusing weekend shifts.

Weekends, apparently, were no longer sustainable for artists.

They wanted:

permanent security, casual flexibility, emotional spaciousness and higher rates simultaneously.

The technical term for this arrangement is childhood.

We held another meeting.

I tried humour because numbers had failed.

“If we sell every item currently on these shelves,” I announced, “we will earn enough money to purchase one bag of clay and possibly a chocolate frog.”

“Wholesale,” Sam suggested brightly.

“To whom?” I asked. “We have one hundred and sixty mugs and only twenty-nine are technically edible.”

“Artisanal,” Marcus corrected.

“Wobbly,” I replied.

“You’re anti-artist.”

That one landed in my ribs.

“I’m pro-numbers,” I said quietly. “Numbers don’t change depending on who is looking at them.”

Finn intervened gently.

“We’re all tired,” he said. “Can we begin again?”

Everyone wanted to begin again at the version where they earned more money while working less.

That version exists mostly in France.

Then came what is now remembered internally as:

The Feelings Meeting.

I printed contracts, award summaries, payroll records and the proof that superannuation had always been paid because the bookkeeper — assisted quietly by the KC’s accountant — had apparently been protecting me from myself for months.

Marcus looked at the contracts.

“They feel carceral.”

“They’re protective,” I replied. “They tell people what they can count on.”

“We can count on being threatened.”

“How?”

“You said there are job applications every week.”

“Because people need jobs.”

“So we can be replaced.”

“You can also take holidays,” I replied.

Then someone requested a dedicated feelings room.

Marcus proposed:

“A feelings mezzanine.”

Finn immediately asked whether it would be air-conditioned for emotional regulation.

William proposed a beanbag beside the street library called:

The Listening Post.

Ebony, elbow-deep inside the pugmill, simply announced:

“No one is putting feelings in the tech room.”

Then Marcus requested paid feelings time.

“You want to be paid to feel?” I asked.

“Yes.”

No irony.

Eventually I agreed to two-minute hourly “micro-breathers.”

Paid.

Because my life had become satire.

After the meeting, Ruth stayed behind helping me stack chairs.

“We might have to end the wares,” I admitted.

“Or change them,” she said gently. “Small batches. Seasonal. Things we can actually make well.”

“We were never a factory,” I muttered.

“No,” Ruth replied softly. “We’re a studio pretending to be a shop.”

Then:

“And lately we’ve become a shop pretending to be a union.”

That landed harder than the arguments.

The next week someone appointed themselves manager while I was collecting clay deliveries.

When I returned, a handwritten notice on the whiteboard declared:

Today We Make Less and Rest More.

Signed:

Collective.

I erased it and replaced it with:

Today We Make Sense.

Someone photographed me erasing the original.

The caption online read:

Censorship.

That’s how I discovered I had enemies with Instagram accounts.

By March, I was working sixteen-hour weekends.

I woke at four checking kilns. Answered emails at five. Wrote rosters at six. Opened at nine. Taught all day. Hosted soirées all evening. Counted cash drawers containing no cash. Fell asleep standing beside the wedging table.

At one point I genuinely dreamed of a civilisation where people completed single tasks quietly without narrating their feelings during them.

The rumours evolved.

Apparently I forced staff to wedge clay barefoot under moonlight.

Apparently I hoarded kiln heat selfishly.

Apparently feelings were banned except during licensed periods.

I briefly considered printing that last one onto tea towels.

Ethan adapted fastest.

“Welcome to your legally compliant feelings,” he began telling customers while making coffee.

Guests adored him.

Staff remained uncertain whether he belonged to management or morale.

He belonged to the room itself.

That was always Ethan’s true loyalty.

One afternoon Finn pulled me quietly aside.

“You are allowed to say no,” he said.

“I know.”

“You keep not saying it.”

I tried.

I paused one wares day and asked Ella and Sam to each make a single object they genuinely believed deserved its price.

They made two beautiful mugs.

Then immediately resumed discussing the future feelings mezzanine.

Finally, we did the stocktake.

Every mug. Every bowl. Every warped plate.

We priced everything honestly.

Then we added the totals while pretending commissions, rent, EFTPOS fees and wages did not exist.

The final number barely covered electricity.

“Let’s pause the experiment,” I said quietly.

“That’s punitive,” Marcus replied.

“That’s arithmetic.”

“You’re punishing ambition.”

“I’m protecting the room.”

Something settled inside me after I said it.

Ruth placed her hand gently on the table.

“We can try again later,” she said. “Small. Seasonal. Sane.”

We removed the Mayfield Wares sign.

We left the hooks behind.

You can always hang hope up again later.

That night William brought me tea while I sat with the ledger.

“We could donate the unsold mugs,” he suggested.

“To whom?”

“Loneliness.”

I didn’t have the heart to explain that loneliness rarely buys forty-dollar ceramics.

William looked at me carefully.

“People think you’re muddled,” he said. “That’s your disguise. You’re actually very tidy-minded.”

“I’m frightened,” I admitted.

“Of course,” he said. “That’s why you’re tidy.”

Then:

“The wares were making us unkind.”

Outside, the river exhaled softly through the dark.

Inside, I wrote ledger lines like fingernails scratching back toward daylight.

I locked the studio, checked the kiln one final time and walked past the turquoise street library toward home.

Someone had left a book about boundaries.

I picked it up.

Then put it back.

Boundaries, I thought, should probably remain shared.