Doing great things by doing… well,nothing
History is rife with examples of how a casual remark may lead to
a great enterprise.
Take Nino Imbronone, for example. About 15 years ago, he sat
down in his restaurant, aptly called
”
Nino’s,
”
with a pen and notebook and calculated two columns of
figures.
After a bit of rapid figuring, he said,
”
That’s it; we’re not going to serve lunch anymore, just
dinners.
”
Doing great things by doing… well,nothing
History is rife with examples of how a casual remark may lead to a great enterprise.
Take Nino Imbronone, for example. About 15 years ago, he sat down in his restaurant, aptly called “Nino’s,” with a pen and notebook and calculated two columns of figures.
After a bit of rapid figuring, he said, “That’s it; we’re not going to serve lunch anymore, just dinners.”
He explained that the cost of opening for the noon meal was more expensive than not opening. “When you figure in employees’ salaries, utilities and all, I’m losing money. I can save at least a thousand dollars a month by not serving lunch.”
A friend asked how the lunch trade compared to the dinner trade, and Imbronone said, “Not even half as much.” The friend said, “Then you can save at least three thousand dollars every month by not even opening at all. That’s $36,000 a year – and that doesn’t include tips.”
A week later, Stan Abbott who took the restaurant’s weekly orders for food, stopped by and saw that Imbronone was peeved. “What’s wrong? he inquired. Imbronone said, “One of my pizza deliverers called up last night, 15 minutes before opening, and said he wouldn’t be in, Some of these kids today. What are you going to do?”
“How much do you have to pay him for last night?” Abbott asked. “Nothing,” Imbronone said. “No work, no pay.” Abbott said, “Does this happen often?” Imbronone said, “About three or four times a week some employee will call in like that.”
Abbott said, “Do you realize that you’re saving at least a hundred dollars a week – maybe more – by undependable help?”
“Yeah,” Imbronone replied. “I can put that together with the $36,000 a year I can save by not opening and have enough income to retire on.”
“Think bigger, Nino,” Abbott said. “You could sell franchises to closed restaurants with the most undependable help you can find and be really rolling in the dough.”
Although he never pursued it, he found the concept interesting. “Now, when I try to give up smoking, I also give up reading Russian literature and skiing in the Himalayas,” Imbronone said. “That way, when people ask how I’m dong with the cigarettes, I can tell them that I’m still sticking to two of my resolutions.”
The idea is comforting. If there is something you have never or rarely done but have contemplated doing, put it on your list of things you won’t do this year. There is no need to feel guilty about not reading “War and Peace” or “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” if you had decided not to read them, rather than meaning to do so but not getting around to it.
There are already enough skydivers and stunt motorcyclists that we won’t be missed if we resolve never to join then, and there are more than enough scholars to read all of Shakespeare, Ibsen and Shaw.
Join me in missing tiger wrestling this week?
