You Know You Are The Business Owner When.......

It occurs to me that all my best friends are self-employed. It takes a defiant personality type. My one friend has a hand painted plaque on her front counter that reads “Natural Child Birth and Owning Your Own Business Are The Two Most Overrated Ventures.”

When I walk into a business and an overdressed person is taking out the trash, I know instantly it is the owner. Business ownership is challenging, hard and rewarding. One day I did the math and figured I was consistently making $4.00 an hour. With no one to call in sick too (or no sick pay), vacation time a joke, I still can’t work for anyone else.

Therefore, I complied my own list of business owner rewards:

You know you’re a business owner when:
Scanning documents at 10:30 pm to email them to the client because you know your assistant will not be in until 10 AM, then spend an hour fixing her makeup, getting coffee, a bagel and bitching about her boyfriend, so she won’t get the job until around noon.

You know you’re a business owner when:
You clean and take out the garbage can with the maggots growing on the bottom of it because it is where everyone throws the half-full coffee cups.

You know you’re a business owner when:
You are the only one to File that one large group of papers that grows and grows and no one knows where it goes.

You know you’re a business owner when:
You let three employees go home sick at the same time and run two business by yourself (quite grumpily, I might add.)

You know you’re a business owner when:
You clean the spider dung out of the windowsill, the corners of extraordinary cobwebs, and piles of unknown bug parts in the packing peanuts.

You know you’re a business owner when:
You have no hesitation of calling and yelling at UPS for overcharging you, EVERY week.

You know you’re a business owner when:
You seek and find just where THAT SMELL is coming from and deal with it.

You know you’re a business owner when:
You will be nice to smelly-barefooted-whack-jobs that come in only to get out of the rain. They never buy anything, but eat all your free candy.

You know you’re a business owner when:
You will fight software until it bends to your will and does what the sales guy promised.

You know you’re a business owner when:
You also will fight with lying purveyors that randomly change their prices and attempt to screw you.

You know you’re a business owner when:
You have to cut back F'way (Fucking Half Way) employees by telling them their energy just doesn’t work well with the others.

You know you’re a business owner when:
To avoid a $500 charge, unplug the toilet because employees flush tampons (did you know the plumbers call them “Mice” because they see the tails when they look in the pipes).

You know you’re a business owner when:
You don’t think twice about picking up piles of termite larva that has fallen from the ceiling, same goes for dead rats that you and your customers hear being caught in the trap in the attic.

You know you’re a business owner when:
You take time to read the entire 500 page manual for the new digital copy machine so it works like it is supposed too.

You know you’re a business owner when:
You throw away that open umbrella that has been sitting outside your store for a month. Same goes for sweeping up the cigarette butts.

Believe me, I’m not complaining, just stating the facts. For those you like me, that are unemployable, you know I’m not lying.