Meditations on Ms. Diana and 15 Hour Days

I sometimes take a car service from the airport back home into PA. Sometimes it's a bit last minute because of the vagaries of litigation. I use the same company every time. The other day, around 1pm, I left them a message asking if someone could pick me up from BWI around 5:30 that evening. I said sorry for the short notice. Totally understand if you can't. And when I got on the plane, I sent them an email and let them know I wouldn't have text messages until it landed. But that it was all good either way.

We hit the ground at BWI, all my new text messages came through, and it was the car service. Jessica was texting me to say that Diana - Ms. Diana herself, who owns the company - was on her way to come pick me up. She was already en route and would be there in 45 minutes. I hadn't eaten anything all day, so I swung through the Firkin & Flyer. Got a Greek salad with chicken and a crab cake. Nice kid from Baltimore City was my waiter who looked 25 but was 37. We talked about fatherhood and how it changed our lives and gave us so much to live and build for.

Around 6:15 I get a call from Ms. Diana herself. She's 4 minutes away. We coordinate logistics and I meet her up on the top level, second curb, door 8.

Ms. Diana is 79 (rather, she will be in a couple weeks). She drives me out of the city and out past the suburbs into the countryside. And we talk about everything. Mostly she talks and I listen. I've gotten better at that. I listen more these days. And take it all in. And think. Reflect on what I can learn.

Sunset comes on. We cross the border into Pennsylvania and we're passing through Littlestown now. She was born there and grew up there. We pass a restaurant. Only restaurant for miles around. It used to be many different things. She tells me it's a Middle Eastern place now. She knows the owners. They're lovely people. And she knows the place because her and her husband used to own the building and run a little country market there. They sold the basics and they also sold hoagies. They opened at 6 in the morning and closed at 9 at night. She worked the whole day. Sometimes, folks would come in at 8:55 wanting a bunch of hoagies and she would stay to make them. Because that was the difference between making it or not. She worked 15 hour days. Sometimes more. I asked if they were closed Sundays or kept shorter hours. She says no. They were open all day, 7 days a week. She tells me she did that for 7 years. And then we go quiet for a few moments. And I reflect on the magnitude of that.

I have so much respect for her -- and for people like that. But I'm a small business owner myself and have been for 12+ years. I get it. I understand. My dad is 73 years old. And he owns a business that he started nearly 45 years ago. He still loads trucks sometimes if he has to. My mom's dad was a dry-cleaner. None of us ever made very much money. I had so many blessings and made it further than them. But it's still a grind. It's still a scramble sometimes. We do whatever it takes to get it done and survive.

I think one of the biggest divides in America is the divide between small business folks and everyone else. I don't mean small business in the sense of the official, government definition. Hell, AutoNation is a "small business" for purposes of getting t $77 million in PPP loan money. And that's a load of shit.

I mean real small business. Small. As in you have to bust your ass and figure it out and make a couple late-arriving customers a total of 8 hoagies at 8:55 in the evening because that's $20 in extra profit. And if that happens 5 nights a week, that's $100 extra each week and $5,000 a year and that's the difference between new shoes for all the kids and braces for your daughter and enough money to take a little trip down to Virginia Beach for a couple days -- or none of that.

I've worked a lot of 12 and 15 hour days. To make a difference, yes. To make a dent in a corrupt, dysfunctional system. To keep the hope alive that justice is possible (it almost never is, but still we fight). But also to build my own thing, chart my own course, do it my way.

When I was maybe 7 years old, my dad told me something about having his own business. My dad was not a very nice dad. He said and did a lot of really bad things. But I remember being 7. I remember him telling me that he had to work hard. And he didn't make very much money. But that he got to be his own man. And that he reserved the right to tell anyone that he didn't want their business. And that they could go fuck themselves. And that matters to him. That means something, something more than money. I always remembered that.

You see, all of us small business owners are actually dreamers. We just have a different sort of dream.

JP