What a different view you take of things when you become a boss yourself! Already I felt that the people working for me should consider my interests, and not hesitate to work hard for me; and yet when I was a clerk only two weeks before I used to begrudge doing the least thing more than my bare duties called for, and I had always felt I ought to get an immediate cash return for anything extra I did. For the first time I realized that I used to panhandle along through the week just working for the pay envelope without much thought of Barlow's welfare at all.
Well, I had surely learned a lesson. I was a wiser man than I had been two weeks before. In that brief time more things had happened to me than had ever happened before, I guess. I had inherited $8,000.00 cash and a farm worth $8,500.00; I had bought out Jim Simpson, and then found only $8,100.00 worth of stock when I thought I was getting $9,460.00; I had given him a demand note for $3,500.00 which I thought was for twelve months; I had assumed over $400.00 worth of bills of which I didn't know anything at all; and, finally, I had found that the business amounted to only $22,000.00 a year instead of $28,000.00.
I was reciting this tale of woe to Betty when she remarked:
"Well, you can't do anything else wrong just yet, can you?"
"I don't know," I declared. "It seems to me that I can't do anything right!"
I promised Betty to follow the accountant's advice and set a deadline of expenses.
He and I had worked that out. It seemed that my expenses were far too high for the business I was doing. Said he:
"Ye are doing noo only aboot $22,000.00 a year. Ye hae a stock of approximately $8,000.00, and ye really should be doing $42,000.00 a year wi' it."
"How do you figure that out?" I asked.
"That's on the tur-rn-over."