The Boss Can Make All The Difference

The boss can make all the difference. A great boss can make a bad job better. A bad boss can make a great job suck. I have had several bosses in my life, and I have been a boss to many people. But I have never really been my own boss, until now. Sure, my wife and I briefly owned a toy store together. That was a partnership and we made all the decisions only after having thoughtful discussions with each other. And I have worked as an independent contractor as a Realtor, but that is not quite the same as being your own boss because you can only contract with one firm, which effectively makes the firm your boss. It is only now that I have started my own real estate firm that I can make truly executive decisions. And it scares the hell out of me.

 

Having never been the boss of myself, I don’t know if I am a good boss or bad boss. Will I make a potentially great job better? Or worse?  I know who my good and bad bosses have been. And I know that many people that have reported to me thought that I was a good boss. But I am aware that some did not think I was a good at all. What can I learn from my former bosses that will help me always fall in the good boss column?

 

My first lesson learned in the good boss/bad boss scenario may have been at my very first job. I worked at a family owned campground and marina on Lake Norman. I started at age twelve and left at age seventeen. I began with one boss and left with another. My first boss was Buck Teague. Buck was big in stature and good in nature. A man with a hearty laugh, a quick and short-lived temper, and two police trained German Shepherds in the back of his pick-up truck. He built the docks himself. He built the tiki themed restaurant and tiki themed bathhouses. He built the floating restaurant known as “The Outrigger” from an old barge and a giant pontoon which supported the large covered deck that spanned the length of the barge. I think the fact that he built the whole enterprise himself was at the heart of what made Buck Teague a good person to work for. He was proud of what he had built, and he took the time to teach me how make any task into something you could take pride in. He wanted the toilets in the bathhouses to be clean enough that he could eat soup from them. He personally demonstrated for me how to use Red Devil Lye to scour the showers at seasons end, until they shined like new. Most importantly, he trusted me to operate the work vehicles used on the property. The garbage Truck, the tidy wagon (mail truck), and an old Ford Tractor. My second summer there, he allowed me to be the youngest gas dock attendant they had ever hired. It was a coveted position, but also one that came with great responsibility. Handling gas hoses around boat motors and water. And the even more risky business of handling cash around water. Buck trusted me, and he also held me accountable. He was firm and fair. He was a good boss. 

 

Buck Teague died suddenly and unexpectedly when I was fifteen. His son, Earl, became my new boss. Earl worked in the office just to the side of “The Tiki Torch” gift shop. He had helped his Dad build the docks and buildings. But I don’t think Earl ever really felt like the business was his. He inherited it and that is all together different from taking something from your imagination and making it into something real. Earl grew up in the marina that his dad built. His work attire of shorts and docksiders were worn with an air of casual arrogance.  Where his father was gregarious, Earl was aloof, hiding behind his mirrored shades. He had a slow boiling temper that was not short-lived. He could be casually cool to me one day and mean as hell the next.

Most of the time, I felt like Earl was just annoyed that he had to deal with me at all. He was constantly trying to catch me making mistakes with the gas-dock cash box. He was certain that I was not counting change correctly because the meter readings and my daily cash audit were not ever an exact match. The numbers would be off by a dollar or two in either direction. He was certain it was me and not the meters on the ancient and weathered gas pumps. He told me that I would have to start paying him for all the money I was losing. I was certain that I knew how to make change.  So, I decided to add up all the overage and underage that was detailed in the thick spiral notebook I dutifully kept records in, as taught to me by Earl’s father. I brought him the final tally which indicated that, by his logic, he owed me fifteen dollars and some change. Earl turned red in the face and I swear I saw steam coming out of his ears. He put his wife in charge of me after that. And I grew more and more unhappy in what had been a real dream job for a kid like me. I quit when I found out that they had hired a friend of mine and started him at a higher wage than I earned. I had spent nearly five years of my life scrubbing toilets, cleaning out garbage cans full of maggots, and spending long days every weekend pumping gas for their customers.  Earl was a bad boss.

 

What can I learn from Buck and Earl Teague that will help me be a good boss to myself and any future staff and brokers I will manage? Hopefully, I will benefit from building a business myself like Buck did. I am creating the brand and what I believe is a unique concept in the field of residential real estate. 

 

I should take pride in not just my fiscal ownership of the business, but my creative ownership as well. I should trust myself and others to do a good job but hold myself and others accountable. Trusting yourself is harder than it sounds. I have a newfound respect for entrepreneurs. I should be firm, but fair. A simple concept that seems to be so difficult for too many bosses

 

Earl was never really emotionally invested in the business that may have been more of a burden than a blessing to him. I’m sure he would have done it all entirely different if he had the opportunity. I will try and remember to appreciate the opportunity of designing a business and not merely managing someone else’s creation.

 

Earl had no appreciation for the time and effort I devoted to his family’s business. He never noticed that I was excellent with customers. He never saw how they smiled happily at me as I helped gently guide their boats safely into the slips on the dock. He never noticed that I had learned to tie off a boat to a cleat in a clean and efficient single motion.  He never remarked that the toilets were clean enough for him to eat soup out of.

 

 I will do my best to give myself credit for a job well done and not just beat myself up for the mistakes I am bound to make. I will strive to always notice the best qualities that the people who work for me bring to the job and I will make sure that they know that I notice.

 

I am looking back now on all of my experiences of having a boss. I am reflecting on my past actions or inactions as a boss and how they factored into whether I was perceived to be a good boss or a bad one. I want to be a great boss.  And I think I may have just taken on the most challenging employee I have ever had to manage. Myself.

Jill, Genuinely Interested. My Rare Friend.

I have a rare kind of friend. Jill has been a part of my life since my first year of middle school. She was that girl on the bus that would make sure a new kid like me felt welcome. I was shy back then. She made me feel a little more at ease. We became friends. As we transitioned from middle school to high school, we had only grown closer. I could tell Jill anything. She would never betray my confidence. She never judged me in any way that I could tell. You see, a rare kind of friend.

Jill was one of those lucky kids that had a "children's phone line" in her house. It was upstairs where she and her sister slept. I never saw that upstairs, even though I spent countless hours at her house.  Late at night, after our parents had gone to bed, I would call Jill on the kid's line. She would scoop that phone up before one ring could finish, not wanting to wake her parents. And Jill and I would talk. For just a couple of kids, we talked about big things. We dared to ask questions about the nature of things and we could get pretty philosophical for two teenagers with very sheltered and limited experience. But we talked about the teen stuff too. You know, like who she liked, or who I liked. Or who I liked that didn't like me back. Jill would always console me when that happened. She'd say that the girl was the one who was missing out. I don't think I could do much wrong in Jill's eyes. She saw something in me that I'm not sure was ever really there. But that is what a rare friend is all about.

Jill and I shared a love for writing. She was and is the better writer. (She wrote such an amazing letter to Lee Smith that the author took her to lunch!)  She was diligent and studied hard. I was  disorganized and easily distracted.  But we shared what we wrote and respected each others abilities. So, on occasion, I send her something and she sends me something. Earlier today, I sent her a recording of a song I wrote. This is something that I took up late in life, but knew I could count on Jill to be not only supportive, but a cheerleader! Even though one of her other closest friends is a nationally known musician, it never occurred to me that she might judge my amateurish attempts at this new endeavor. And true to form, she replied enthusiastically!  "OMG that is so awesome! ... What inspired this song???" 

 Note the multiple question marks!  I do that too!! 

 "When can I see you play in a club???"

I decided to send Jill an email with a link to the whole song and write a little about my inspiration to answer her three-question-mark inquiry. And I found myself opening up about my feelings that had insisted I write something about them. Just like all those late nights on the kids phone line. I hope she does not mind, but I am sharing what I wrote here:

Here is the song link.

I hope this link will work for you.  

So here is the deal. It all has to do with vacation coinciding with tragedy.

But it starts with just a vacation. I had never been to the Outer Banks until several years ago. So, I decided one year that instead of our usual beach trip to SC or Ocean Isle, we would go to OBX.  I loved it down there. Watching the sunset from Jockey’s Ridge on Kill Devil Hills was amazing. A total calm washed over me, watching twirling kites silhouetted by the sun’s descent. Magic. 

I had brought books with me all about the Outer Banks. The legends, the myths, the ghost stories. The pirates, the Wright brothers. I fell in love with  the mythical, romantic idea of this harsh and yet, beautiful place. I became fascinated by the local obsession with Virginia Dare. Her claim to fame, as you well know, was simply being born. First white child born in the new world. And then of course, tragically lost forever along with the rest of the colony. The legend is that Virginia somehow was cursed and turned into a deer. A “white doe” that roams Kill Devil Hills and Kitty Hawk to this very day.

I don’t know, but I really got caught up in these stories. I think because they represent the mythological America. This harsh land, braved by those early settlers. We came and made it a beacon of freedom to the world. But that is not really the whole story, is it?  Maybe Virginia Dare represents innocence lost. Maybe she represents European civility delivered to the Indian savages. Maybe she represents the Eurocentric superiority complex that haunts our country still.

So a couple of years later, we were at Carolina Beach (your old stomping grounds) when we heard about the church shooting in Charleston. A young white supremacist prayed with parishioners before using a gun to kill them all. I was sickened. I had felt like that kind of hatred was losing its place in the United States.I thought that bigots were old and dying off. This horrific event flew in the face of my complacency.

A couple of summers later, back at Carolina Beach,  and Heather Heyer is killed by a white nationalist just for participating in a protest that simply said that black lives matter. 

I was distraught, so I went for a walk on the beach. I sat on the sand. Every beach trip since that Outer Banks trip, I had this feeling  like I was connected back to that place and to the mystical legend of Virginia Dare. I sat in the sand looking at the ocean. I thought about Jockey’s ridge in Kill Devil Hills. The words kill and devil rang in my ears. I remembered how it felt when the wind whipped stinging sand at my skin on that giant sand dune, Jockey’s Ridge. I thought about the sting of the whips that landed on the backs of slaves. That sting that has been a part of the American experience from the start. I envisioned the African slaves in chains, in the cargo hold of a ship crossing the Atlantic. I thought about the captains of those ships being enslaved to a way of life that was cruel and rotten at its core. I thought about all of America being held captive by a system dependent upon the most unholy of sins: denying other humans their very humanity.

And I thought , “What right do I have to stand on this beach and look at that ocean?” I thought about never having to know what it feels like to be treated like chattel. Or to have to fight for the right to vote. Or to have to teach my kids to fear the police. And I thought about how me and you and all the other white folks here have benefitted from the systemic suppression of black people. We could own land. They could not. We could use whatever toilet or water fountain we wanted. We were given the benefit of doubt by the police. So I thought, I am the devil’s beneficiary. Whether I like it or not he made a plan and named us the beneficiaries of his evil deeds. And we gladly accepted the privilege it afforded us. 

The song is simple. A love story. A man betrayed by self-deception as to the purity of the woman he so desired. Or a people betrayed by self-deception as to the purity of their own country. A people that one day will wake up and realize that they have been lied to. And they will understand that they overlooked the “white lies” Virginia had told them and that they did so because it was to their benefit.

I know that seems like I think this simple song is some huge revelatory work. But I am proud of this song. And all of this is the answer to your question about what my motivation was for writing it.  

Thanks for listening Jill. You have always been someone who gets me. I appreciate that. 

Love, Scott