The Family Business

The concept of a family business is very interesting to me. In America today, there are a multitude of family businesses that have been successful and many that have failed. The family business may consist of brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, fathers and sons, but almost always involves the children of all those who have a stake in the business.

You may ask, why do I write about this today? Well, my parents have a “family business,” except because I am only one of two children, it is mostly about my parents and me. So what do you do when you find yourself inadvertently part of that family business, even though you never asked to be that involved with it?

For me, at first it meant helping my parents attain financial independence, helping them reach a goal they wanted for themselves, and also proving to myself that we had the brains to run a business. But today, it mostly means, no extra time for me, worrying constantly about how to help the business succeed, never reaping any of the rewards, because “helping” is reward in itself. It also means arguments, disagreements, frustration, contrasting work ethics, and basically no rest for my parents or me.

It also means that family time is no longer fun, it is about how many hours I can help at the store, how soon I can get there, what days off I have from my job to be available for the family business, and because it’s a retail store, it’s about missing other important events because we are open seven days a week. It’s about not having good memories anymore; about worrying what business will be like tomorrow, next week, or next month. It’s about not having vacations, missing meals, missing doctor appointments, and it’s about the customer always being the boss.

So how can a family business mean freedom from the 9-5 grind? I work at my regular job every day of the work week and I help at the store on Saturdays, but I love working my everyday job and I prefer doing that any day! It’s because that’s the career I prepared for, it’s the job I wanted, I worked for, I studied for, and is far more rewarding than the stress the family business brings.

The day my father conceived the idea about opening a family business, I believed in the initial plan and what it meant to have a business of their own. But three years later, it has taken its toll. I question its real worth today, and I don’t see it as a “family business” anymore -- just because I work there doesn’t make it spending quality time together. I miss the meaning of what family used to be.

~A