Our relationship has always been a little… complicated. But in the three years since we took the reins of the business between us, allowing our fathers to ease into retirement, we’ve managed to make it work.

Avigdor takes charge of the business end, dealing with orders and suppliers and the financial operations, while I oversee marketing and sales. We have weekly meetings (at Avigdor’s insistence, I think it’s overrated since we pretty much communicate every day anyway about anything of importance) and things have been pretty smooth. I’m proud of my sales team, if I may say so myself; we’ve built up a wide clientele and sales have definitely increased.

Now, though, we had the opportunity to really make things happen. And the first thing on my agenda was getting the right team in place to do it. We needed a major overhaul of the marketing department (currently one of the sales team and a part-time graphics artist working from home) to launch our new product line. It was all about selling it right, and this would involve attracting a whole new target market. Plus there were so many talented people out there looking for jobs, people whose parnassah had been affected, who would be delighted at the opportunity.

A new beginning, a new marketing team, everyone’s happy — that’s what I call win-win.

Avigdor knocked on my office door one morning, poked his head in.

“It’s open,” I told him. “You could just come in.”

“It’s called politeness,” he told me curtly. Ooh, this was bad news. What’s gone wrong now?

My cousin brandished an email print-out in front of my face. “I just saw this. What’s it all about? Why are we adding three new employees to the payroll?”

His tone was too big-brother for my liking. He’s older than me, but that’s not the point.

“They’re marketing experts, all of them. Different specialties… one does the strategy, one’s got years of experience in marketing on social media… they’ll work well together. We need a team on board if we want this new project to work.”

Avigdor frowned. “Three employees? Long-term? I don’t think that’s necessary, Yosef. And why didn’t you ask me first, anyway?”

Whaaat? Marketing’s always been my thing, my department, and my instincts have proven on target time and again. The extensive networking to break into the world of commercial sales, that had Avigdor cringing at my expense account, lead to a contract with Homey, a nationwide chain. Researching for hours and hours to collect data on different target markets before launching our Silverluxe flatware line, one of our best-selling products. Running carefully selected promotions that multiplied our profits despite Avigdor’s initial hesitance at the risk factor.

And now, when I had lined up a dream team to launch our brand-new product line, he came along to question my judgment?

You’re my partner, not my boss, I thought through gritted teeth.

“Listen, I run the marketing and sales department, right? When you hired the junior accountant last year, did you ask me? No. When I had to let a salesman go, did I check with you? No. So now I’m expanding the marketing team. It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s not the same,” Avigdor drummed a hand against my desk.

He was angry too, but in a tight, controlled sort of way that reminded me of my father. So I was the little kid again, messing up my business decisions, needing correcting. I was so tired of having to defend myself. “This is a big investment. And we’re doing okay, but not that well, especially if we’re sinking money into this new product line. I don’t think it was a responsible decision.”

I tried for a patient tone, but it came out disturbingly defensive. “This is part of that investment money! We can’t sell a new product line without marketing it right. A few cute ads in a circular aren’t going to cut it. We need to build a brand, up our online presence, research the target market, and attract big-name clients. I can’t work with a part-time graphic designer and Yoni from sales. And seriously, all companies our size have real marketing departments, while we have a computer and a desk that has been gathering dust for the last few months while Mrs. Katz works from home a couple hours a night.”

Avigdor pressed his lips together. “Look, we don’t have time to waste on this discussion. I guess we’ll let them start, and reevaluate in a couple months, make sure they’re bringing in enough to justify the expense of keeping them on board.” He stood up, back very straight. “And do me a favor? Just for now, while money’s tight — let’s discuss big things like hiring a new team, before we go ahead and implement them.”

The conversation left me unnerved, unsettled — and angry. Instead of going through the sales reports open in my email, I left my office. I needed some air.

My sales team worked in a large room next door. There were separate cubicles, mainly for show, since most of the time they were clustered around the conference table in the middle of the room, working on laptops and cell phones. Here was where the company breathed, where sales were made and orders processed, where billing and receipts were filed, where customer complaints were deftly resolved, where connections were made and meetings held and companionship reigned.

“Yosef? I have a message from the manager of Homewares Unlimited,” Abe called across the room. “He said there was a problem with some flatware that we sent them, but I’ve been looking up the records, we haven’t supplied him with anything since January, do you know what he’s talking about?”

“Let me see the email.” I strode between the desks, slapping Yoni on the back and tossing a one-liner at Moish about his haircut.

“By the way, those new hand blenders have been selling like hotcakes,” Zvi, a recent hire, told me. “Three stores sold out of them already, and we’ve been getting a ton of online orders as well. I hope the warehouse is keeping count, because we’re going to be out of stock in those pretty soon…”

“Speak to Josh directly, don’t take anyone else’s word for it,” I advised him. Then I headed over to Abe, decided to speak to Mr. Hauser from Homewares directly, and high-fived some of the guys on my way out. My team was awesome, the way they kept the place buzzing, and were so dedicated to their jobs.

Across the hallway was accounting, where two of Avigdor’s guys sat with calculators and painfully neat desks. The senior accountant, Marty, looked up as I passed, gave a brief nod, and flicked his gaze back to his screen. The silence was unnerving compared to the congenial atmosphere over in the sales room.

And of course, Avigdor’s office at the end of the hallway was a model of organization. His desk could’ve been clipped from a catalogue of office furniture. I didn’t bother going past there, though; I’d had enough of conversation with my cousin for one day.

The conference rooms were empty, Mrs Katz’s small office was as well — she’d continued working from home since coronavirus forced it on everyone back in March. I pushed open the door and dust rose from the carpet, ugh. We needed to do a good cleanup job before I put any of the new employees to work in here.

Then I realized we had a problem. The room was far too small for three. Maximum, I could put two of the new guys in here, and one… where? With the sales crew? That didn’t make any sense. I wanted to create a team feeling, generate ideas, let them bounce off each other. Marketing was its own department, they needed their own space.

I looked back at the conference rooms, sparsely furnished with the ubiquitous glass-topped table and a handful of chairs. We didn’t really need the smaller one as a conference room, how often did we host two meetings at once? I could convert it into a nice office for the marketing team in time for next week, let them start fresh in a room with some natural light and windows, spacious enough to work together or retreat to their own corners.

But… I would have to let Avigdor know about this first.

Reluctantly, I headed to his office. He was on the phone, holding another printout (did the guy never read his emails on-screen?) and speaking fast and furiously into the mouthpiece. Great.

I sent off a quick text to let him know that I’d be repurposing the smaller conference room. Then I set myself to the task of outfitting a brand-new office within a few short days.

We needed furniture. Three top-of-the-line computers. They would have to be set up, installed, and connected to the company network. I called the tech guy, but he wasn’t available until Thursday. We need an in-house tech, I keep telling Avigdor that. But of course, he didn’t feel we could justify the expense, so that was that.

I went to take measurements of the office space. Have to market this right for the marketers. If we set them up in some half-furnished room with mismatched furniture and a lingering smell of tuna fish (Avigdor must be the only business owner on the planet who still brings school-lunch sandwiches from home every day), and peeling paint on the walls, they’ll never be able to sell us as the brand we want to be. We need sleek, modern, chic, up-to-date. We needed to sell ourselves first, and then they could do their job.

I had until Thursday. This time, as I headed back for my own office and passed Avigdor in the hallway, I managed to smile.

Iwas deep in a pile of invoices when the phone rang. It was an internal call, coming through to the phone on my desk: Avigdor.

I pressed the hands-free.

“Yosef?”

“Good morning.”

He didn’t respond to the greeting. “What’s going on with the interior decorating?”

I rolled my eyes. “Do you the mean the guy who’s here to paint the conference room?”

“If that’s what he’s doing, yes.” Avigdor’s tone was ice.

“Um, he’s, like, painting? Getting things clean and fresh in there, ready for our new staff to move in…”

“There’s new furniture too, I take it.”

“They need desks and stuff,” I said stiffly. “This used to be a conference room, remember?”

“But painters? Seriously?”

My fist clenched around a pen. I was so sick and tired of being interrogated, held to account, made to explain myself. Especially when everything I was doing was so completely in order.

“It’s an investment, Avigdor. You have a business head, you know that we need to invest in a project to make it work. Money doesn’t come from nowhere.”

“Invest, yes, but not throw around money we don’t have!” He kept his voice low, but the accusation came through loud and clear. “Why didn’t you discuss this first?”

“Actually, I did ask you — about using the conference room in the first place. I thought that was all that was relevant. You see to your offices when they need work done, and I see to mine.”

“Of course it’s relevant! We don’t do these kind of renovations without discussing it, the accounting, if we can swing it…”

“We’re hardly talking renovations here,” I said drily. “I did a paint job, got some furniture in, and computers. Or do you want our new team members to use paper and pen?”

“Don’t misinterpret me,” Avigdor took a breath, modulated his tone. I hated when he did that, put on his patronizing voice, don’t be juvenile, and just learn a lesson for next time. “Listen, I know we have different opinions here, I mean, just the fact that you hired a whole team still seems over the top to me. You have to remember that we may not even succeed with this new product line. Then what? It’s so much money down the drain. We need to be responsible.”

“That’s the problem, then. Your approach to this. It’s not about ‘we might not succeed’ — it’s about how can we make sure we do? And that’s about marketing it right, first to ourselves, then to our clients.”

He wasn’t listening. I could tell he wasn’t listening. He was fixated on numbers, on facts and figures and the bottom line, on low risk and small gain. This wasn’t how the real world worked. This wasn’t how anyone made real money.

“We just need to be responsible about it,” he repeated, and before I could decide on a suitable response, he’d hung up the phone.

If I could tell Avigdor one thing, it would be: I want the business to succeed as much as you do, but you can’t make money without spending money. We need maximum investment to see maximum returns.

Avigdor

When Ta and Uncle Sholom ran the place, things weren’t like this.

I mean, they were brothers. They were also partners, and they were so similar that the workers sometimes got confused between Mr. Rothstein and Mr. Rothstein. But life moves on, things change, and when it came time for my cousin Yosef and I to step into our fathers’ roles, nothing was so simple anymore.

Yosef does things differently than I do. Take just one example: His first week as manager, he awarded a companywide bonus to every single employee, “just because.” Thousands of dollars, tossed away, just on a whim. How is that responsible?

I’d asked him about it, at the time, surprised — and also a little hurt to have been shut out. He’d blinked, surprised, and said that he wouldn’t have thought twice if I’d done the same. Eventually, we’d realized that we had very different management styles, and the best way forward would be to keep the division of labor as clear as possible. We split the departments between us, each supervised our own staff, and of course, met regularly to update each other and keep things running smoothly.

And it worked well enough, even though I had to bite my tongue every time I saw Yosef hanging out with his employees and cracking jokes (“Workplace environment is so important these days!”), inviting one of the sales guys to an executive meeting (“He has an idea, let him share it in his own words”), or letting the graphics designer create her own ideas from scratch (“It’s called collaborative leadership, haven’t you heard of it?”). As long as his methods weren’t harming anything, work was (basically) getting done, and the bottom line was okay, I tried not to get involved. His department was his business, and mine would be mine.

Still, it wasn’t always easy. Especially now. Coronavirus hit us hard, like it hit everyone. Productivity dropped with our staff working from home. There were mix-ups and miscommunications and delays. Our suppliers weren’t open, the stores selling our products couldn’t sell, and business suddenly moved to 90% online — and not all of our staff had the technology to handle it. We spent a few frantic days trying to get the company network shifted to home computers and eventually found some sort of rhythm, but it was a challenge.

Yes, we still were in business, we were lucky like that. People bought a lot of kitchen supplies for Pesach, and there were still weddings and gifts. But everyone was spending less, and we could feel the pinch. Yosef and I had committed to keep our employees on payroll as long as we possibly could, and I was happy we could keep our word even though the output wasn’t anywhere near the usual, but what can I say? It wasn’t simple.

Then things started to pick up again… and with the easing of restrictions came an incredible opportunity.

An acquaintance of mine owned a company that sold home-office supplies, and he was looking to sell. We’d thought about branching out a few times — actually, Yosef was the one who’d suggested it originally — but I was always hesitant about the outlay. Now, we could get a warehouse full of products for which demand was up and a solid client base — all at a really great price. I thought we should go ahead. Predictably, Yosef jumped right on board.

There were a lot of details to iron out though, lots of overtime to pull, and (I had to take a deep breath here), a significant initial payment. We could swing it, I’d checked the numbers, but still. I always preferred the tried and tested to large-scale investments.

That’s why the email from Yosef, casually adding three new employees to payroll, got me worried. What was going on? This was not a time we could afford to be spending extra money.

Yosef, of course, had a whole explanation. “They’re marketing experts,” he explained. “They have different specialties, you know… one does the strategy, one has years of experience in marketing on social media… they’ll work well together. We need a team on board if we want this new project to work.”

Lots of words, lots of fluff. It really irritated me when he spouted these vague, broad terms like making things work. It sounded great in theory, but if you’re running a business, you have to be practical, too.

I tried to break things down, get the facts straight. “But three employees, and long-term?” Couldn’t he see that it was irresponsible? What if this whole line didn’t work out? What if we decided to cut our losses and forget the new enterprise? What would we do then — fire three new workers, severance pay and all? Invent new projects for them to work on? This was ridiculous.

Yosef was petulant, and that made me even more frustrated. He knew he was in the wrong, why couldn’t he admit it for a change? “It’s not a big deal,” he insisted. “Marketing and sales are my department. You do your hiring, I do mine.”

But it was a big deal. And this wasn’t a one-off, this was always Yosef, jumping in with enthusiasm, spending money we didn’t yet have, glossing things over and making it sound glamorous when logically he didn’t have a leg to stand on… it wasn’t going to work. A marketing department for a new product line? Couldn’t we start small? One new employee, fine, but three?

And then it got worse.

The first thing I noticed when I came into the office a couple of mornings later was that Yosef’s light was already on. I was always there first; this was strange.

Then I noticed the smell. Fresh paint.

Huh?

I quickened my pace, following the strong scent to the small conference room. Something prickled dangerously in my chest. He wouldn’t have —

I saw the boxes first. New furniture, stacked in the hallway. Computers.

Inside the room, a workman in overalls was slapping paint over the walls. Teal paint.

So this was what Yosef had been so busy with the past two days. Too busy, apparently, to even fill me in on his grandiose plans.

What would be next? Was he planning to redo his own office? The hallways? Install a mini-bar, so this high-tech marketing department wouldn’t, chalilah, have to walk down to the small kitchen and grab a coffee like the rest of us?

I was seething.

The painter glanced up, gave me a relaxed smile. “Heya there, how you doing, mate?”

I gave a curt nod. “Good, thanks.” Then I moved away from the door. I had nothing to say to him. I definitely wasn’t about to ask him what he’d been hired to do. As for who had done the hiring, there was no question about that.

I turned toward my cousin’s office, then changed my mind. I didn’t have to go running after Yosef asking him questions. I was partner here. He would need to find a way to explain himself.

I headed to my own office, slammed my briefcase down, and picked up the phone.

If I could tell Yosef one thing, it would be: We both want this business to succeed, but growth has to be cautious. How could you spend so recklessly when the economy is so shaky?

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 819)