Why don’t we end this chapter with a wonderful story about the relationship between the owner of a hair salon, the employee, and the customer.
One day, Janet was getting ready to go home when one of her clients came in without making an appointment. This was a $5 tipper. She wanted her hair cut and colored as well. This would be $120 which is on the low end of this hair salon. Janet said “it’s the end of the day and I’m going home. Someone else can help you. It’s 6:00 and I would like to get home in time to cook dinner for my husband and three children.”
Of course, the customer would not hear any of this. Other people in the salon didn’t want to work with this woman knowing that they would get $5 for working with this woman for over an hour without commission.
The owner would settle this. He told Janet this is your client so you can stay and serve this customer. Or else.
After more than one hour, she was done. And of course, her reward for her work was a nice crumpled $5 bill. Fortunately, she told her husband she would be late so he brought in pizza for dinner. She could just throw her slice in the microwave when she got home.
How about another box of tissues for owners of hair salons who do this and say they don’t like ObamaCare. Maybe one day we’ll see them on Fox News.
And not to sound biased, let’s give a big hand to GMA producers for having two sides of a story on hairdressers and non-compete agreements since this isn’t a subject that you would talk about. How about doing a google search by going non-compete agreements and hairdressers. You can see a lot of wonderful stories such an owner of a salon taking out an injunction against three of his hairdressers because they didn’t work far enough from his place. Maybe it would be hard for you to get a story like this but it wouldn’t be hard for you to have Scott Kirsner on your show so he can tell you about hairdressers who represent themselves in court cases because they don’t have the money to hire a lawyer because it’s over $10,000.
Chapter 7
DeRegulation
As I outlined in this book earlier, there seems to be a very popular belief that one of the biggest problems we have in this country is that big government is always getting in the way of big business and that needs to stop. As the Republicans would say - along with Tim Allen and Fox News - what this country needs is smaller government and allow big business to do whatever they want to do.
In many ways, this idea seems to be spreading to just about anyone who wants to be brainwashed. I mean, here I was one day in the supermarket and I saw a friend of mine named Richie stocking the shelves. I went over to him and started talking to him about the Wilpons and the New York Mets. Yes, there I was, minding my own business, talking to Richie about baseball when this guy comes over to us and says this.
“You know who is the worst owner is? That would be Barack Obama. Look at what he’s doing with Obamacare. Isn’t it terrible how he’s managing this country?”
This was a moment where I wanted to put my hands over my ears and run out of the supermarket. Instead, I looked at this guy right in the eye and said, “You seem like a very bright and intelligent man. I bet you watch Fox News and Last Man Standing with Tim Allen. Good luck in 2016.”
No, I did not say that. I wanted to tell him that he should watch CNN News to get some balance especially since it’s 70% liberal. I mean, if something important happens in the world, you’re watching a station that has I don’t like Obamacare on a 15 minute rotation in the news. Let’s face it, I’m in the supermarket so no point in getting into an argument. If he is reading this book though, I think that at this point, it’s worth pointing a few things out since all this nonsense about big government getting in the way of big business is one of the biggest reasons that non-compete agreements are not regulated by the state and local government.
My first thought regarding this is who came up with this wonderful idea in the first place. Let me see, if I had to go and think about Republicans who may have started this, would my first thought go to John McCain?
I guess I think of John McCain since he was one of five politicians involved in the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal. This all started with the idea that the Savings and Loan industry shouldn’t be regulated by the government. Yes, let the people do whatever they want and that will make this industry so much better. Yet, as a result of this, the S&L industry was a disaster.
People were defrauded and others lost their life savings. Yes, there were some Democratic politicians that were involved in this scandal as well. In any case, that was just one example. This idea that big government should stay away from big business can still work, right?
Well, I have to wonder if Ronald Reagan would agree with that. There seems to be proof that when he was President, he had the belief that the big problem with the government was that it was interfering with big business and that needed to stop. There seemed to be a lot of problems with people investing money recklessly as a result of Reagan’s policies. What was that called? Oh yeah, Reaganomics. As a result with the banks, there was no government oversight and loans were done recklessly. Once again, disaster struck.
Yes, I can hear people saying well, didn’t that happen with Bill Clinton as well. What about the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act where Clinton allowed commercial banks to be deregulated. They allowed just about anyone to get a loan and where did that get us.
Maybe it’s me but why are we ignoring this? Maybe I’m just an employee with a non-compete agreement that’s unregulated by the government but doesn’t all this demonstrate that all this talk about big government staying out of the way of big business means that we’re ignoring this history of an idea that doesn’t seem to work after it has been tried three times. Or are we saying that the past doesn’t mean anything?
If you want to ignore this and continue to go along with Republicans, Fox News, and Tim Allen, then that’s fine. 2016 is around the corner. Yes, the Republicans are here to solve all our problems that we have and the first thing that should be done is to eradicate Obamacare. That’s the priority. Forget the fact that unemployment is at it’s highest in the country in decades. That started when Bush was President. Let’s just keep ignoring what has happened in the past and continue to believe that things will change because big government should just stay out of the way of big business. Maybe it will work this time.
In any case, as long as we’re going to ignore history and continue to believe that companies are so wonderful and that they can’t do anything wrong, then let me give you some other things that you can ignore as well.
How about what happened at Enron? Some nice work on creating fraud in this company in the accounting department, making Enron file for bankruptcy in 2004. Let’s forget about all the people who lost their jobs and their investments in this company.
How about AIG? There’s a great story. Selling products that were considered illegal. What was our reaction there? Giving them and Wall Street the largest bailout in history in the tune of $182 billion. And how did Wall Street thank our government that doesn’t want to get in the way of big business? Oh, let’s use that money as Christmas bonuses for all the executives.
I can go back further than that if you want. How about Prudential Bache. Check out the book, A Serpent And The Rock. Great story of how the brokers were selling fraudulent securities. In fact, many of the people involved in this were convicted felons.
Now, we can’t even begin to have a conversation about people like this unless we were able to include Chainsaw Al Dunlap. Yes, here was a wonderful CEO who went into a company and fired thousands of people. The ones that remained got his wrath since he was one of the nastiest CEO’s who was famous for saying this to his employees. “I don’t get heart attacks, I give heart attacks.” Besides giving heart attacks, he also cooked the books on the sales parts of his earnings, claiming that he was making more money on summer products that hadn’t been completely purchased during the winter.
Let’s end this with a little price fixing scandal from Archer Daniels Midland. Remember that. 1993. Companies in Japan, Korea, and Archer Daniels wanted