When I first started Flag and Banner, I waitressed at Sir Loin’s Inn to supplement my income. I was young and my boss at the restaurant, Mr. Aaron Ross, was a business mentor, of sorts. One day, I asked, “What’s it like to be the boss?” I’ll never forget what he said because it’s proved true over and over again. He said, “Being the boss is doing all the things you can’t pay other people to do.”
Those words have never rang truer than this week, when we found – for the second time – human feces on the sidewalk of the Arkansas Flag and Banner building.
A Messy Morning
I’m in the warehouse, helping the shipping department, when Adrienne, our showroom manager, rushes in, pale-faced, and announces, “I need help.” My first thought leaps to a misbehaving customer. Then, she begins to describe how she went outside to water the plants and, there on the sidewalk, is a turd; black as coal and hard as a golf ball. In hindsight, all I needed was a golf club to send it sailing and fix the problem; instead, I got a water hose.
My first thought was to call my husband, Grady, for the waste removal. It wasn’t that long ago that he suited up in gloves, a mask, and what looked to be a hazmat suit and handled the last such episode on our property but, lucky for him, he wasn’t at work, yet. So, I did the next best thing and paged my son.
Passing on the Lesson – and the Hose
When son Matt arrived, he took one look at the situation and complained, “Why me!?!” I handed him the hose and repeated the words I heard so long ago, “Because I can’t pay anybody else to do it.”
And there you have it.
