Why I Work in The Sweat Shop...

One of the things that attracted me to going into management with my company so long ago and has kept me there is that it's a cash based company. We have NO debt. That's pretty darned unusual in this day and age and it's something other large corporations should take a look at, particularly really big top-heavy companies where no business for a week would just shut down. Look at what happened to the airlines after 9/11 for instance.

We could close the doors to all of our businesses today and still continue to pay people for the next year before we start to worry. That's because we own most of our land and buildings, only occasionally leasing, we own both jets, we own the land and buildings where our corporate offices are and as a matter of fact we lease buildings to several other companies in the vicinity, we are privately held which means that the stock market has no effect on us. As a matter of fact when things are going sour in the rest of the economy we always seem to do better. Everyone has to eat and if you are broke it's more likely that you will take your family out for a $20 meal rather than a $50 meal.

Over the last 20 years that I have been there our stock has earned something like 15% earnings. I beat myself whenever I think about it. Although I probably have around $90k in stock options right now I don't have what I consider to be very much in solid stock. I have taken money out of the plan several different times over the years for various reasons, emergencies, college, etc...and that has hurt my total. It's coming back though. I have somewhere around 5% of my gross going into our stock and I will increase that to around 10% by January I think.