This was supposedly written by a genuine small business owner, but I supposed it could be apocryphal.
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To All My Valued Employees,
There have been some rumblings around the office about the future of this company, and more specifically, your job. As you know, the economy has changed for the worse and presents many challenges. However, the good news is this: The economy doesn’t pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job however, is the changing political landscape in this country. However, let me tell you some little tidbits of fact which might help you decide what is in your best interests.
First, while it is easy to spew rhetoric that casts employers against employees, you have to understand that for every business owner there is a Back Story. This back story is often neglected and overshadowed by what you see and hear. Sure, you see me park my Mercedes outside. You’ve seen my big home at last years Christmas party. I’m sure; all these flashy icons of luxury conjure up some idealized thoughts about my life.
However, what you don’t see is the BACK STORY: I started this company 28 years ago. At that time, I lived in a 300 square foot studio apartment for 3 years. My entire living apartment was converted into an office so I could put forth 100% effort into building a company, which by the way, would eventually employ you.
My diet consisted of Ramen Pride noodles because every dollar I spent went back into this company. I drove a rusty Toyota Corolla with a defective transmission. I didn’t have time to date. Often times, I stayed home on weekends, while my friends went out drinking and partying. In fact, I was married to my business — hard work, discipline, and sacrifice.
Meanwhile, my friends got jobs. They worked 40 hours a week and made a modest $50K a year and spent every dime they earned. They drove flashy cars and lived in expensive homes and wore fancy designer clothes. Instead of hitting the Nordstrom’s for the latest hot fashion item, I was trolling through the discount store extracting any clothing item that didn’t look like it was birthed in the 70′s. My friends refinanced their mortgages and lived a life of luxury.
I, however, did not. I put my time, my money, and my life into a business with a vision that eventually, some day, I too, will be able to afford these luxuries my friends supposedly had.
So, while you physically arrive at the office at 9 A.M., mentally check in at about noon, and then leave at 5 P.M., I don’t. There is no “off” button for me. When you leave the office, you are done and you have a weekend all to yourself. I unfortunately do not have the freedom. I eat, and breathe this company every minute of the day. There is no rest. There is no weekend. There is no happy hour.
Every day this business is attached to my hip like a 1 year old special-needs child. You, of course, only see the fruits of that garden — the nice house, the Mercedes, the vacations… you never realize the Back Story and the sacrifices I’ve made.
Now, the economy is falling apart and I, the guy that made all the right decisions and saved his
money, have to bail-out all the people who didn’t. The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly
feel entitled to the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed a decade of my life for.
Yes, business ownership has is benefits but the price I’ve paid is steep and not without wounds. Unfortunately, the cost of running this business, and employing you, is starting to eclipse the threshold of marginal benefit and let me tell you why:
I am being taxed to death and the government thinks I don’t pay enough. I have state taxes. Federal taxes. Property taxes. Sales and use taxes. Payroll taxes. Workers compensation taxes. Unemployment taxes. Taxes on taxes. I have to hire a tax man to manage all these taxes and then guess
what? I have to pay taxes for employing him.
Government mandates and regulations and all the accounting that goes with it, now occupy most of my
time. On Oct 15th, I wrote a check to the US Treasury for $288,000 for quarterly taxes. You know what my “stimulus” check was? Zero.. Nada. Zilch.
The question I have is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the guy who has provided 14 people good paying jobs and serves over 2,200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single mother sitting at home pregnant with her fourth child waiting for her next welfare check? Obviously, government feels the latter is the economic stimulus of this country.
The fact is, if I deducted (Read: Stole) 50% of your paycheck you’d quit and you wouldn’t work here. I mean, why should you? That’s nuts. Who wants to get rewarded only 50% of their hard work? Well, I agree which is why your job is in jeopardy. Here is what many of you don’t understand … to stimulate the economy you need to stimulate what runs the economy. Had suddenly government mandated to me that I didn’t need to pay taxes, guess what? Instead of depositing that $288,000 into the Washington black-hole, I would have spent it, hired more employees, and generated substantial economic growth. My employees would have enjoyed the wealth of that tax cut in the form of promotions and better salaries. But you can forget it now.
When you have a comatose man on the verge of death, you don’t defibrillate and shock his thumb thinking that will bring him back to life, do you? Or, do you defibrillate his heart? Business is at the heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must stimulate it, not kill it. Suddenly, the power brokers in washington believe the poor of America are the essential drivers of the American economic engine. Nothing could be further from the truth and this is the type of change you can keep. So where am I going with all this? It’s quite simple.
If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, my reaction will be swift and simple. I’ll fire you. I’ll fire your co-workers. You can then plead with the government to pay for your mortgage, your SUV, and your child’s future. Frankly, it isn’t my problem any more.
Then, I will close this company down, move to another country, and retire. You see, I’m done. I’m done with a country that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, will be my citizenship.
So, if you lose your job, it won’t be at the hands of the economy; it will be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this country, steamrolled the constitution, and will have changed its landscape forever. If that happens, you can find me sitting on a beach, retired, and with no employees to worry about….
Signed, THE BOSS
I’ve become a big fan of Netflix Canada, I know the inventory isn’t that great and a lot of the stuff is old, but there are some real gems on there. I go to NewNetflix.ca pretty much daily to see if anything new has come up. Some of my favorites include:
For $8 a month, how can you go wrong? A warning: be careful your internet bandwidth!
This is where Tumblr comes in. It’s the future of social networking if your image of the future features intelligent discourse. I love reading other Tumblr users replies, because they’re thoughtful by virtue of the fact that if they’re not, they’ll bring the intellectual property value of their own blog down, and that’s a commodity on Tumblr.
— JM
“‘Tony, think about it this way. If your worst enemy drops sugar in your coffee, what’s going to happen to you? Nothing. But what if your best friend drops strychnine in your coffee? You’re dead. You have to stand guard at the door of your mind.’ He was saying that the selection of [my friends and advisors] will matter more than anything else, and that you can’t take anybody’s approach as sacrosanct.” – Tony Robbins
“If all of the Greek islands were merged with the mainland, it would be about the size of Alabama; there are 10 million Greeks – and perhaps another 4 million living throughout the world, who still think of themselves as Greek. They are, thanks to their history, magnificent patriots and nationalists – and abominable citizens, who deeply mistrust every government they’ve ever had. Essentially they are fierce individualists, who mistrust so much whatever government happens to be in power as the very idea of government. The have almost no sense of civic responsibility – Pericles complained about this at length – and History has never given them much of a chance to work out a stable system of government.”
Here with at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don’t know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise’s wife.
Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young. It’s not so bad.
Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, “Merry Christmas” to me. I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a
creche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away. I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him?
I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.
10. Tipping off the Sonics
9. Michelle Carter (his mother)
8. No More Dunking
7. All-Star Controversy
6. Injuries
5. Peterson Ejection
4. Graduation / Game 7
3. “Come on, MVP?”
2. The Trade
1. Didn’t Always Give 100% – “Do you think Vince Carter has pushed himself, as hard as he should have pushed himself?” VC: “In years past, no”.
One of the better pictures I’ve taken with my iPhone. I took this in Vancouver this past April went I went to visit a friend of mine, Rishi.
Update (May 6/09): I used 12 megs of data while in the States. Without the US Roaming package at the rate of $30/meg my total would have been $360!! With US Roaming plan $10/month + $1/meg = $22.
I’m heading to the States this weekend (I live in Toronto) and got a bit paranoid about what my roaming data (3G) charges would amount to. A quick look on the Rogers website confirmed my fears: $0.03/kb or $30/mb! That’s madness! I heard from a few people that Rogers had a US Roaming Package of some sort. I tried looking for it on the Rogers website, but couldn’t find it anywhere. I then somehow thought to search (on the Rogers website) for ‘Roaming’ and this appeared:
US Data Roaming Add-On – $10.00
Buy the $10/month U.S Data Roaming Add-On and then pay only $1/MB ($0.001 per KB) while roaming in the U.S
I called Rogers and had them add the package to my plan. You can remove it at anytime and only be charged for the month you used. Keep in mind this plan only covers data. Regardless if you have a text-messaging plan in Canada, in the States it’s $0.60 per text message. I don’t even want to know what voice + roaming would hit.
What a way to spend Good Friday. I just sent this email to a few people at Big Blue explaining what happened…
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Hey guys,
You may have noticed I was offline for most of the afternoon. My timing belt broke on the highway (401) while I was driving. I heard a (really) strange noise — the car lost all power and I quickly moved to the shoulder. I called some people and eventually got it towed off the highway. What a way to spend Good Friday (I’m Greek Orthodox). All that said, is it too early to ask for a raise? Ha, just joking. Have a good weekend guys.
"Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. More nations have acquired these weapons. Testing has continued. Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread. Terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal one…. Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked — that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable…. So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. I'm not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change." – Obama, Prague, 2009 [April 11-17 Economist]
“I built my first computer when I was twelve in Amarillo, Texas. At the time I was into hardware because you couldn’t really program things. No courses or books existed, and, as a twelve-year-old boy, I couldn’t ask my peers for help. So, I pounded the doors at the local IBM sales office until a salesman took pity on me. After we chatted for a while, he handed me a Fortran [manual]. I’m sure he gave it to me thinking, “I’ll never hear from this kid again.” I returned the following week saying, “This is really cool. I’ve read the whole thing and have written a small program. Where can I find a computer?” The fellow, to my delight, found me programming time on an IBM 1130 on weekends and late-evening hours. That was my first programming experience, and I must thank that anonymous IBM salesman for launching my career.” – Grady Booch (link)
The 24th video is up on Thursday for Dinner:
Tzatziki is a popular Greek sauce that is often used as a dip with pita bread or enjoyed with various types of meat dishes such as souvlaki and gyros. It is best made with yogurt, but if you prefer not to use yogurt you may substitute it for sour cream.
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For the written recipe click here. Subscribe by Email & iTunes.
The 19th video is up on Thursday for Dinner titled Chole (Indian Chickpea Curry).
Chole is a North Indian chick pea dish. The base is a tomato gravy and to this you add either canned chick peas or if you prefer dried ones which you have soaked overnight. In this recipe we will be using canned chick peas. Like most Indian curries you can adjust the spice so that the dish is spicy or mild depending on your taste. This recipe will make the Chole on the milder side.
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For the written recipe click here. Subscribe by Email & iTunes
Our 18th video is up on Thursday for Dinner titled Chicken with Red (Tomato) Sauce (Kokkinisto in Greek).
This dish is a guaranteed family favourite! It is made with only a few simple and healthy ingredients and takes less than an hour to make. It is absolutely delicious and one of our favourite comfort foods. We grew up on this dish and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do. This dish is usually served with rice but feel free to substitute the rice for pasta if you prefer.
Want to watch this video in full HD? Click here to watch it!
For the written recipe click here. Subscribe by Email & iTunes
The 14th video is up on Thursday for Dinner titled Swiss Chard and Black Eyed Beans.
Here is another wonderful vegetarian dish that uses only a few simple and healthy ingredients. Both Swiss chard and black eyed beans are rich in nutrients and very high in fiber. In Greece, this dish is usually eaten as the main meal, but it also makes a great side dish.
The 13th video is up on Thursday for Dinner titled Kulfi (Qulfi) Flavoured Frozen Indian Ice Cream.
Kulfi is a type of frozen Indian dessert similar to ice cream. It comes in many different flavours such as, mango, pistachio and rose. In this recipe we are going to keep it simple and just use a combination of ground almond, cardamom and saffron to provide flavour.
The 12th video is up on Thursday for Dinner titled Chicken Avgolemono (Egg-Lemon) Soup.
This is another classic Greek dish which has been handed down from generation to generation. It is made with fresh and healthy ingredients, and it is the perfect meal to serve on a cold winter’s night. There are different variations of Avgolemono soup, but in this video Irene shows us how to prepare it with rice and chicken.
The eleventh video is up on ThursdayForDinner.com called Oven Roasted Chicken with Lemon Potatoes.
This is the perfect meal to make on a weekend afternoon. It is simple and healthy and fills the house with wonderful smell. Add a side of salad and it is perfect for family gatherings!
