Still sleepy at 8am, I watch my daughter, bubbly with energy, at the breakfast table. Our time as a family is in the morning. While most family men work during the day and spend the evening at home, breakfast-time is my quality time with my wife, Jennifer, and our 20-month-old daughter.

Soon I will bathe Jayanti and we will play. When I return at night she is already asleep. My souvenir shop is in the heart of Paceville, a place that buzzes by night rather than by day. The main problem is that employees usually dislike working evenings so I often must work alone.

However, the sales assistants open the shop for me at 9am. While it is somewhat difficult to find trust-worthy employees, I continue to prefer to be as a friend with them rather than a boss – I show them the system at the start and then allow them to work on their own initiative.

It is about 10am when I go to my grandparents’ land near San Gwann. This is my time with myself... I take care of some dogs I keep there, and feed the pigeons, and have a chat with my granny, and take a walk in the fields.

By 11.30am I am already at my mother’s. There I take a much-needed shower. I prepare for work. On the way to the shop I run my errands. By now I am running against time. As I go from one errand to the next, I use my mobile to check about mobile repairs for clients. While I am driving, the pesky thing will not stop ringing – I receive endless calls from agents, my sales assistants, and even customers – so I put it on silent and pop it under the seat in an attempt to forget it!

I finally arrive at the shop at around 1pm to find people waiting for me! I begin to deal with the more urgent matters. Although I have sales assistants, I still maintain sole responsibility for mobile repairs, stock orders, wages, accounts and so on.

Two suppliers’ agents are among the people requiring my attention. Thankfully, most agents feel like their visit to my shop is their time in the day or week to chill and relax, have a drink and hang around with no real rush to get the business done! One of the busiest wholesalers in Malta, who comes once a fortnight, spends four to five hours in my shop! It is his break from the madness, he says. I like that people feel comfortable in my shop, perhaps because I consider them all as my friends!

Another agent walks in with a delivery – an emergency order I made over the phone this morning. While most suppliers have their scheduled day for visiting the shop, many of them will assist me out of a fix even outside their schedule, just to help me out. All things being equal, being a prompt payer really helps! And word spreads... an agent may hook you on to another, and while I sometimes seek them out, more often they find me.

Some more experienced agents even remember me as a child in my father’s shop! I would help in my father’s souvenir shops from the age of seven up to 12. Then he turned to brand name clothing. Throughout my growing years, I learnt much about shop management, so when I saw a sign advertising this shop to let, I decided to open my own venture.

Since I also had much experience in catering, initially I considered opening a wine bar. However the type of permit available finally led me to going for a gift shop. Many people advised me not to, because there were a dozen or so similar shops in this area alone, but I went ahead anyway. By now there are only half as many competitors, while suppliers tell me that my gift shop makes among the largest orders in Malta, so I feel very satisfied.

Gytha Gifts has been in operation since five years. The shop next door turned into competition after the first year, but by the end of my second year I took it over. I attempted clothing initially but soon decided to simply expand on the selection of souvenirs and gifts.

I experiment with different items and assess what is more popular and what is most profitable per item and shelf space. In winter I analyse the sales and plan for the summer accordingly. Anyhow, I try to offer something to suit everybody’s taste and every occasion. Having noticed some particular trends, I now even have some items specially made.

I am partial to items that are made in Malta with traditional methods. Although these items are sometimes less popular or not so profitable, I still display them. Artists also approach me to display their paintings of Malta in my shop, in exchange for a commission on their sales.

I have also made contacts abroad. Now I also import items that I have specially made according to customers’ requests – this is where marketing plays a most important role as opposed to hard-selling. When one’s heart is in one’s work, even while on a family holiday some ideas of how it may fruit may sprout!

The day goes on in between serving clients and making orders. And in between all that we have to do the mundane jobs, such as dusting the endless number of items on the shelves! Yet, certainly, one of the hardest things I have experienced during my shop managing career was the switch from Maltese Lira to Euro – I have thousands of different items in my shop and re-pricing them all was near-hellish!

For some time during the afternoon, the sales assistants take a break. In the busy times, it is often essential to be two, or even three, dealing with customers at the same time in order to keep up with them. Sometimes we have up to forty customers inside the two shops at one time! May to October is the busiest period while weekends are busier due to the European trend of weekend get-aways.

I know it is around 5pm when the shop begins to fill steadily. The shop is busiest from 9.30am till 11.30am, before people go on tours, and from 5pm till 10pm, after the beach or dinner. Many tourists make a habit of coming to my shop to browse quietly and pass some time. I spontaneously joke and smile with them.

I really believe in giving tourists a positive experience and I like to offer them a little something when they first enter my shop, as a friendly gesture and an incentive. They quickly realise that a smile will always be found here – we promote ourselves as well as the stuff we sell.

I believe in never cheating tourists but making them my friends. I notice that this positive attitude attracts them repeatedly either to browse, to shop, to say hi, or to ask a question. Those staying nearby may gravitate into my shop each time they pass by because they feel they belong!

While the thing I like most about the job are people, the thing I hate the most is... also people! When people are nice, contact with them is wonderful, but when they are arrogant I really dislike having anything to do with them!

One woman from Uzbekistan once came to the shop and proceeded to give me the prices for the items herself, in sign language. After being unable to communicate with her in English, she finally threw down the things she had selected and strutted off in a huff. It is unusual for me so I was a little upset by this episode! It is also not easy for a man to keep his cool when a Russian woman may enter the shop wearing nothing but a white net dress!

Thankfully, most people are nice. Tourists are on holiday and they are relaxed. Many Maltese also come to my shop, especially before going abroad, to purchase gifts for foreign friends. We also have many gifts suited to the Maltese taste, like angels, blown glass and silver photo frames... even for wedding gifts. I have also earned quite a good reputation for mobile phones!

Yet another Spanish student buys a Maltese flag – their friends from the English School will sign it before going home! Students can also be surprisingly good spenders and I am told that the Spanish government offers each student e1,000 to study English in Malta! Students tend to like things bearing emblems of Malta, like the Maltese Cross, and they like Maltese handicrafts like glass and silver. This year I have seen lots of students from Slovenia, Hungary and Russia.

I particularly like the temperament of the Dutch and the Spanish while the Japanese are my favourite customers – they are the sweetest nation, in my opinion, and they are good spenders too! Meanwhile Italians can be the most difficult! August is the Italian month – it is as if there is no-one else, not even the Maltese! They spend hours in the shop and make themselves noticed but in the end they do not spend much!

September brings lots of Russians. They are high spenders – I do a quarter of the work compared to August and sell more! Interestingly, Russians like knights – the bigger and heavier the better! Russian women love glass and silver. They like plates too. It is amusing to see the trends and preferences of different nations and I often wonder why it is so!

I am about to close the shop at 10pm when a man pops his head through the half-closed door, “Do you have any paracetamol?” It is not an unusual request. Oddly, I keep being asked for pharmaceutical products, and even sliced bread! I tell him that I am sorry but I do not. I smile. It is also not unusual that I have to fully shut the door so no more people enter the shop, whether it is midnight in the height of summer or 8pm during the winter.

It has been a long day, but I love the challenge my work presents. The challenge is to manage to sell while still leaving the impression that Maltese people are nice and friendly. Especially because we are so small, we need to look after tourists. Some of them have been to Malta seven or eight times, or have been coming for twenty or thirty years... what brings them back is not the sights to see, but the friendliness and home comfort they find among the locals. I feel like I am one of the faces of Malta, because I provide a direct service to the tourist.

This is the 11th in Melanie Drury’s, “A Day in the Life of...” series. The next one is due on 29 September

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