This is the second or third time something has happened to pre-empt me from writing about something else I was really trying to write about. It’s as if the column I started to write almost three months ago isn’t supposed to get written. Things just keep happening. I think they call that “life,” and life is what causes the little guy in my head to switch directions and write about something else. Starting with breakfast this morning – an appropriate enough place to start talking about something under the table – it looks as if this is going to be another one of those times.If you’ve been a part of my world for a while, you know that breakfast with my mother and father has become a kind of ritual: something we’ve been doing together for almost 40 years. In many ways, it is a ritual that has served us well. There is wisdom in recognizing that no matter how bad things become, someone will eventually have to say, “Please, pass the salt…” That would probably be enough on its own, but it tends to be the only time we have an opportunity to talk about anything other than work and/or “the shop.” And, as you may already have found out, it has been an interesting source of column material from time to time. Over the years, we’ve moved from one breakfast place to another searching for a perfect poached egg or oatmeal that didn’t look and taste like two-day-old cement. In fact, we are almost ready to start the cycle all over again as the breakfast “server” we have become attached to at a restaurant – two miles in the opposite direction of the shop – is about to move to Texas … a little too far to drive for a great waitress or the perfect poached egg, even for us.In a way, there is a pretty good marketing lesson to be learned here. It goes to the heart of what business is really all about, and that is relationships and people. The “server” has at least as much to do with the satisfaction experienced while dining out as the chef does, and no where is this more apparent than at breakfast. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have to think very hard at breakfast. Getting there without killing myself or someone else is about all I’m capable of at 6:00 in the morning. Besides, I’m as much a creature of habit as anyone else is. I don’t want to have to explain why I take my French toast with strawberry jam instead of maple syrup every time I order it. I don’t want to explain why just hot isn’t hot enough for my mother or why Bob has coffee with his sugar. I’m paying for it. That’s the way I like it. And, that should be good enough. Aside from all that, my ability to communicate seems to rise with the sun.Familiarity equals comfort in most cases, and after patronizing a place for more than a couple of weeks it’s nice to have the coffee on the table as you walk in the front door and the appropriate breakfast for that morning’s weekly breakfast rotation on the table immediately thereafter. Aside from that, being a “regular” has its advantages. It’s nice to eat with the same folks every morning … or, sometimes just as nice to not eat with them. We are among the regulars at ‘our’ breakfast place along with a rather eclectic group of characters most novelists would love to observe. One of these regulars is a retired mortuary services salesman who sold what has to be one of the most difficult ‘products’ of all, and I’ll bet he was good at it. He listens well, and I think people can relate to that more than they can to someone in their face telling them what they need when they know the person they are talking to doesn’t have a clue. We first got to know him in one of his first post-retirement careers, while he was driving for one of our sublet vendors part time. That was long before we started sharing our early mornings at breakfast. We lost track of him for a while after he started another post-retirement career writing service for an automotive shop outside the area. But, then we picked him up again when his schedule allowed him to return to this particular breakfast place and our morning ritual. He generally respects our space, and we certainly respect his. It’s amazing how you can almost tell by breakfast body language whether or not someone is going to participate in the morning chatter or just sit stoically by ignoring the call to conversation. Regardless, most mornings it’s nice to have someone who does what you do, hanging out where you hang out, so that if you want to talk about what’s going on in the area professionally, you can. He returned to the restaurant a couple of months ago after he started managing a specialty shop in an adjacent community. I initiated this morning’s conversation with a question about compensation and how he was being paid. Now, try to keep in mind that I wasn’t asking how much. I was asking how: as in salary, commission, hourly or a combination of all of the above. Although, knowing how much would have been an added plus. I must not have been very clear – who is at that hour – and he just winked, smiled and said, “Very well!” I laughed and then explained what I was really asking. He smiled again and then rubbed his pants pocket with his right hand as if that was supposed to mean something to me. Being appropriately dense with less than one cup of coffee in me, I just looked at him like I didn’t know what he was talking about. Because, well, frankly I didn’t.He took that same hand and just moved it forward and back under the table with his palm up and all of a sudden the faint glow of enlightenment began to wash over me: He was being paid under the table. Suddenly, it was if the floodgates had been opened and this rush of unsolicited information spilled forth. Not only was he being paid ‘under the table,’ all the technicians in the place were being paid the same. And, to compound my frustration, he didn’t hesitate to share that everyone in the place he had worked just before he moved to this place had been paid that way as well. Ka-ching! I could hear the cash register ringing in my ear! Can you imagine? Just think of all the money you could save with no federal or state taxes to pay: no Medicare, no disability insurance, no social security, no health insurance and no worker’s comp. Just think about how much more money you could make as an employee without having any of the above taken out of your paycheck. It would be like having an annuity or hitting the ‘Mother Lode.’I don’t know about you, but I just went through that exercise in our shop and I can tell you exactly how much you could save: my contributions for federal and state taxes, disability, Medicare, all that other ‘stuff,’ totals just under 30 percent. Think about your cost of labor for a moment. Could you use an extra 30 percent of that number added to your bottom line? I could. In fact, I’m not sure I know anyone in business that couldn’t use that kind of a ‘bump.’ The only problem appears to be how you get it. And when all is said and done, I’m not sure that either paying or being paid under the table is the best, the right or even the only way. Now, it may be the easiest way if you really don’t care who you short-change (not my original choice of words). It might be acceptable if you don’t mind cheating yourself, your family, the people who work for you, the industry you serve or anyone else. This isn’t just about getting away with something. It isn’t about being clever either. It’s not about your acumen as a businessperson or your skill, ability or aptitude. This is about honesty and integrity. It’s about faulty logic and bad numbers as well: the kind of logic that suggests it’s all right to take advantage of one person, but not another. It’s also about numbers that just won’t add up – numbers that don’t work out. These kinds of numbers say it’s OK for you to be paid under the table and maybe even for me to be paid under the table because, well, what harm would it do if it was just us? But, what happens when it’s more than just you and me? What happens when it’s us – so many of us that the whole system falls down around our knees? Perhaps the problem is the way we frame things: The words we use to paint a verbal picture of what we mean. After all, we talk about “beating” and “cheating” as if it was a good thing sometimes, and I guess sometimes it is. We love to beat or cheat the book, for instance. But, there are two ways you can do that. The first requires skill, ability, special tools and knowledge. The other, well that just takes a little bit of larceny and a sharp pencil. We talk about cheating and beating the odds, too. But, that takes just about the same recipe of skills, abilities and luck. But, cheating the government? Cheating the government doesn’t take much more than a little larceny, the absence of morality, a willingness to try, a bit of luck and not much else. This whole business of putting something over on someone else brings out the very worst in me, perhaps because of the times I’ve been that someone else. Getting away without paying your fair share stinks. Taking advantage of someone – anyone – is reprehensible. Cheating the government is cheating everyone, and everyone includes you and me. It’s not just the unfair advantage that 30 percent difference in expense can present when translated into an hourly labor rate that is 30 percent lower, although that is certainly enough. It’s more than that. It’s about responsibility, or the lack thereof. It’s about the people who worry more about what they will get away with and/or how they will get away with it than they do about their real products or services. And, it’s about their willing prey, the vehicle owners willing to be cheated while searching for the ‘cheapest’ price: The vehicle owners who don’t care who gets hurt, so long as it isn’t them, and that they get their ‘deal.’ I don’t know when it suddenly became acceptable to put one over on the government by passing cash under the table, and I guess I don’t really care. Probably because it is something we would never do, something we have never done. You see it isn’t just a matter of liability insurance and whether or not the person working on the vehicle or even the shop is properly insured. It’s not about workers’ compensation, the taxes paid or not paid, or even the law. It’s about fairness, honesty, integrity and the responsibility we all share to contribute whatever we can in return for the privilege of living and working in a free society. It isn’t about whether or not you can defend paying or being paid that way either. In the end, you can defend just about anything. And that includes the crumbs and everything else that seems to fall … under the table.
This is the second or third time something has happened to pre-empt me from writing about something else I was really trying to write about. It’s as if the column I started to write almost three months ago isn’t supposed to get written. Things just keep happening. I think they call that “life,” and life is what causes the little guy in my head to switch directions and write about something else. Starting with breakfast this morning – an appropriate enough place to start talking about something under the table – it looks as if this is going to be another one of those times.If you’ve been a part of my world for a while, you know that breakfast with my mother and father has become a kind of ritual: something we’ve been doing together for almost 40 years. In many ways, it is a ritual that has served us well. There is wisdom in recognizing that no matter how bad things become, someone will eventually have to say, “Please, pass the salt…” That would probably be enough on its own, but it tends to be the only time we have an opportunity to talk about anything other than work and/or “the shop.” And, as you may already have found out, it has been an interesting source of column material from time to time. Over the years, we’ve moved from one breakfast place to another searching for a perfect poached egg or oatmeal that didn’t look and taste like two-day-old cement. In fact, we are almost ready to start the cycle all over again as the breakfast “server” we have become attached to at a restaurant – two miles in the opposite direction of the shop – is about to move to Texas … a little too far to drive for a great waitress or the perfect poached egg, even for us.In a way, there is a pretty good marketing lesson to be learned here. It goes to the heart of what business is really all about, and that is relationships and people. The “server” has at least as much to do with the satisfaction experienced while dining out as the chef does, and no where is this more apparent than at breakfast. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have to think very hard at breakfast. Getting there without killing myself or someone else is about all I’m capable of at 6:00 in the morning. Besides, I’m as much a creature of habit as anyone else is. I don’t want to have to explain why I take my French toast with strawberry jam instead of maple syrup every time I order it. I don’t want to explain why just hot isn’t hot enough for my mother or why Bob has coffee with his sugar. I’m paying for it. That’s the way I like it. And, that should be good enough. Aside from all that, my ability to communicate seems to rise with the sun.Familiarity equals comfort in most cases, and after patronizing a place for more than a couple of weeks it’s nice to have the coffee on the table as you walk in the front door and the appropriate breakfast for that morning’s weekly breakfast rotation on the table immediately thereafter. Aside from that, being a “regular” has its advantages. It’s nice to eat with the same folks every morning … or, sometimes just as nice to not eat with them. We are among the regulars at ‘our’ breakfast place along with a rather eclectic group of characters most novelists would love to observe. One of these regulars is a retired mortuary services salesman who sold what has to be one of the most difficult ‘products’ of all, and I’ll bet he was good at it. He listens well, and I think people can relate to that more than they can to someone in their face telling them what they need when they know the person they are talking to doesn’t have a clue. We first got to know him in one of his first post-retirement careers, while he was driving for one of our sublet vendors part time. That was long before we started sharing our early mornings at breakfast. We lost track of him for a while after he started another post-retirement career writing service for an automotive shop outside the area. But, then we picked him up again when his schedule allowed him to return to this particular breakfast place and our morning ritual. He generally respects our space, and we certainly respect his. It’s amazing how you can almost tell by breakfast body language whether or not someone is going to participate in the morning chatter or just sit stoically by ignoring the call to conversation. Regardless, most mornings it’s nice to have someone who does what you do, hanging out where you hang out, so that if you want to talk about what’s going on in the area professionally, you can. He returned to the restaurant a couple of months ago after he started managing a specialty shop in an adjacent community. I initiated this morning’s conversation with a question about compensation and how he was being paid. Now, try to keep in mind that I wasn’t asking how much. I was asking how: as in salary, commission, hourly or a combination of all of the above. Although, knowing how much would have been an added plus. I must not have been very clear – who is at that hour – and he just winked, smiled and said, “Very well!” I laughed and then explained what I was really asking. He smiled again and then rubbed his pants pocket with his right hand as if that was supposed to mean something to me. Being appropriately dense with less than one cup of coffee in me, I just looked at him like I didn’t know what he was talking about. Because, well, frankly I didn’t.He took that same hand and just moved it forward and back under the table with his palm up and all of a sudden the faint glow of enlightenment began to wash over me: He was being paid under the table. Suddenly, it was if the floodgates had been opened and this rush of unsolicited information spilled forth. Not only was he being paid ‘under the table,’ all the technicians in the place were being paid the same. And, to compound my frustration, he didn’t hesitate to share that everyone in the place he had worked just before he moved to this place had been paid that way as well. Ka-ching! I could hear the cash register ringing in my ear! Can you imagine? Just think of all the money you could save with no federal or state taxes to pay: no Medicare, no disability insurance, no social security, no health insurance and no worker’s comp. Just think about how much more money you could make as an employee without having any of the above taken out of your paycheck. It would be like having an annuity or hitting the ‘Mother Lode.’I don’t know about you, but I just went through that exercise in our shop and I can tell you exactly how much you could save: my contributions for federal and state taxes, disability, Medicare, all that other ‘stuff,’ totals just under 30 percent. Think about your cost of labor for a moment. Could you use an extra 30 percent of that number added to your bottom line? I could. In fact, I’m not sure I know anyone in business that couldn’t use that kind of a ‘bump.’ The only problem appears to be how you get it. And when all is said and done, I’m not sure that either paying or being paid under the table is the best, the right or even the only way. Now, it may be the easiest way if you really don’t care who you short-change (not my original choice of words). It might be acceptable if you don’t mind cheating yourself, your family, the people who work for you, the industry you serve or anyone else. This isn’t just about getting away with something. It isn’t about being clever either. It’s not about your acumen as a businessperson or your skill, ability or aptitude. This is about honesty and integrity. It’s about faulty logic and bad numbers as well: the kind of logic that suggests it’s all right to take advantage of one person, but not another. It’s also about numbers that just won’t add up – numbers that don’t work out. These kinds of numbers say it’s OK for you to be paid under the table and maybe even for me to be paid under the table because, well, what harm would it do if it was just us? But, what happens when it’s more than just you and me? What happens when it’s us – so many of us that the whole system falls down around our knees? Perhaps the problem is the way we frame things: The words we use to paint a verbal picture of what we mean. After all, we talk about “beating” and “cheating” as if it was a good thing sometimes, and I guess sometimes it is. We love to beat or cheat the book, for instance. But, there are two ways you can do that. The first requires skill, ability, special tools and knowledge. The other, well that just takes a little bit of larceny and a sharp pencil. We talk about cheating and beating the odds, too. But, that takes just about the same recipe of skills, abilities and luck. But, cheating the government? Cheating the government doesn’t take much more than a little larceny, the absence of morality, a willingness to try, a bit of luck and not much else. This whole business of putting something over on someone else brings out the very worst in me, perhaps because of the times I’ve been that someone else. Getting away without paying your fair share stinks. Taking advantage of someone – anyone – is reprehensible. Cheating the government is cheating everyone, and everyone includes you and me. It’s not just the unfair advantage that 30 percent difference in expense can present when translated into an hourly labor rate that is 30 percent lower, although that is certainly enough. It’s more than that. It’s about responsibility, or the lack thereof. It’s about the people who worry more about what they will get away with and/or how they will get away with it than they do about their real products or services. And, it’s about their willing prey, the vehicle owners willing to be cheated while searching for the ‘cheapest’ price: The vehicle owners who don’t care who gets hurt, so long as it isn’t them, and that they get their ‘deal.’ I don’t know when it suddenly became acceptable to put one over on the government by passing cash under the table, and I guess I don’t really care. Probably because it is something we would never do, something we have never done. You see it isn’t just a matter of liability insurance and whether or not the person working on the vehicle or even the shop is properly insured. It’s not about workers’ compensation, the taxes paid or not paid, or even the law. It’s about fairness, honesty, integrity and the responsibility we all share to contribute whatever we can in return for the privilege of living and working in a free society. It isn’t about whether or not you can defend paying or being paid that way either. In the end, you can defend just about anything. And that includes the crumbs and everything else that seems to fall … under the table.
