I stood in the back of the break room, watching Jerry Lassiter’s son walk in wearing a company polo that had two words embroidered under the logo that I’d never seen on any piece of Tidewater clothing in six years: General Manager. The meeting hadn’t even started yet. Jerry was still fiddling with the coffee maker. Troy was shaking hands with warehouse guys whose names he didn’t know.
And I was doing math in my head that I should have done years ago. Jerry stood at the front with his hands clasped like he was about to deliver a sermon. Troy stood next to him, arms crossed, chin slightly lifted. “Folks, I’ll keep this short,” Jerry said.
“As most of you know, Troy has been part of the Tidewater family his whole life. He grew up in this store. And now that he’s ready to commit full time, I’m proud to announce that Troy is stepping into the role of General Manager. ”
Scattered applause, mostly polite.
Ray didn’t clap. He was leaning against the door frame with his arms folded, watching me instead of Jerry. Troy cleared his throat and said a few words about modernizing operations and taking the brand to the next level. He used the word “synergy” without a trace of irony.
Then he looked directly at me. “Derek, I know you’ve been holding things down. I’m looking forward to working side by side. I’ve got a lot to learn from you.
”
That last part got a few nods from the staff. Like it was generous of him. Like he was being humble. Here’s what nobody in that room knew: Jerry had told me in his office less than five months earlier that he was planning to make me a partner.
Not a general manager. A partner. Equity stake. Ten percent, vesting over four years.
He described the terms. He talked about having his accountant draw it up after tax season. He shook my hand. And now I was standing in a break room watching his twenty-eight-year-old son wear my future on his chest.
For six years, I’d watched the store. Every weekend, so Troy could play semi-pro soccer. Saturdays are the busiest day in specialty building supply. That’s when contractors come in to finalize orders before Monday installs.
That’s when homeowners who’ve been researching all week finally pull the trigger. I ran the floor, handled the register, managed deliveries, answered the phone, and locked up. Alone, most of the time, because Jerry cut weekend staff to save on labor costs. Six years of Saturdays.
I missed weddings, missed my buddy’s bachelor party, missed more cookouts than I can count. My girlfriend at the time, ex now, used to joke that I was married to the store. It stopped being a joke around year four. But I didn’t just keep the lights on during those weekends.
I built the supplier network. When I took over vendor management, Jerry handed me a Rolodex with about eight contacts and said, “Figure it out. ” So I did. I cold-called distributors.
I drove to trade shows on my own dime. I built relationships with sales reps who covered our region. Over six years, I grew our supplier base from eight to twenty-three. We carried lines nobody else in the area had.
And because Jerry never formalized anything—no company procurement system, no shared email, nothing—most of those supplier accounts were registered under my name. My personal email. My cell phone number. The reps knew me.
Some of them had never even spoken to Jerry. I didn’t plan it that way. That’s just how it happened when one person does all the work and nobody else pays attention. The biggest account was Coastal Ceramic Distributors.
Their rep, Nina Vasquez, had been working with me for four years. We built their tile line into Tidewater’s highest margin product category. Nina called me directly when new lines dropped. She texted me samples before they hit the catalog.
Her contact at Tidewater wasn’t the store. It was me. Jerry knew this. He didn’t care.
Or more accurately, he didn’t think about it. Because thinking about it would have meant doing something about it. And Jerry’s entire management philosophy was to not do things until he absolutely had to. What Jerry did do was talk, a lot, about the future.
About bringing me in as a partner. About equity. About making it official. “When the time is right,” he’d say.
Always that same phrase. Like there was some cosmic alignment we were both waiting for. I believed him. I’m not proud of that, but I did.
My buddy Ray, warehouse supervisor, been at Tidewater almost as long as Jerry, used to shake his head when I’d mention the partnership talk. Ray’s one of those guys who says exactly what he thinks, which is probably why he’s never been promoted. “Derek,” he told me once over beers, “Jerry’s been saying ‘When the time is right’ since before you had a driver’s license. Ask him to put it on paper or stop losing sleep over it.
”
I should have listened. But I was twenty-eight then, and I thought hard work spoke for itself. I thought being indispensable was the same as being valued. Then Troy’s soccer team folded.
I found out on a Wednesday in March. Jerry came into the store with this energy I hadn’t seen in years. Almost giddy. He pulled me aside near the loading dock.
“Big change is coming, Derek. Troy’s done with soccer. He’s ready to commit to the business full-time. This is going to be great for all of us.
”
I nodded. Said something like, “That’s good for him. ” Kept my face neutral. But something cold settled into the back of my skull, and it didn’t leave.
Over the next two weeks, Troy started showing up every day. Every day, he was shadowing Jerry, sitting in on calls, asking questions about accounts he’d never glanced at. He asked me once how our tile inventory system worked, and when I started explaining, he cut me off and said, “Can you just email me a summary? I’m more of a big picture guy.
”
Then on a Friday afternoon, Jerry sent an email to all staff. Subject line: “Team meeting Monday 9:00 a. m. Exciting announcement.
”
I stared at that email for a long time. After the meeting, I walked into Jerry’s office and closed the door. “Got a minute? ” I said.
He looked up from his desk. I could tell he already knew what was coming. There’s a specific look people get when they’re about to pretend a conversation never happened. Sort of a half-smile with tight eyes.
“Sure, Derek. What’s on your mind? ”
“The partnership. ”
Silence for a beat.
“What about it? ” he said. “You told me in October you were drawing up papers. Ten percent equity.
Your words. ”
Jerry leaned back in his chair and exhaled through his nose. “Derek, that was a conversation. An idea.
I was thinking out loud. The business landscape has changed. With Troy coming on full-time, the structure’s going to look different. ”
“Different how?
”
“Troy’s family,” Jerry said. “The succession plan has to reflect that. You’re still a critical part of this team. Nothing changes for you day-to-day.
”
“Something did just change,” I said. “I now report to someone who’s been here five Tuesdays. ”
Jerry’s face tightened. “That’s not fair, Derek.
”
“Neither is walking back a handshake. ”
He didn’t answer that. He just looked at his desk, shuffled some papers that didn’t need shuffling, and said, “Let’s give it some time. See how the new structure shakes out.
We’ll revisit. ”
Same family as “when the time is right. ” I’d heard the language enough times to translate it. It meant no.
I went back to the floor. I helped two contractors with tile orders, processed a delivery, and restocked the hardware aisle. Normal Tuesday, except that something in me had finally clicked into a different gear. That evening, I sat in my truck in the parking lot after close and called Ray.
“You were right,” I said. “About which part? ”
“All of it. ”
Ray was quiet for a second.
“So, what are you going to do? ”
“I’m going to think. Then I’m going to be smart about it. ”
“Good,” Ray said.
“Don’t be stupid and don’t be emotional. Those are the two things they’re expecting. ”
I spent the next week watching. Not sulking, watching.
I wanted to understand exactly how dependent Tidewater was on me before I did anything. The answer was almost completely. I had the relationships with twenty-three suppliers. My personal cell number was the primary contact on at least fifteen of those accounts.
My email was the login for the ordering portals on nine. I was the only person at Tidewater who knew the pricing tiers we’d negotiated with Coastal Ceramic because Nina and I had worked those numbers out directly, and I’d never been asked to document them anywhere. I had the contractor relationships. Pat Whitfield alone spent over $200,000 a year with us, and Pat didn’t call the store.
Pat called me. He had my cell. He texted me photos of job sites to ask what material to spec. Four other contractors were the same way.
I had the product knowledge. Troy couldn’t tell you the difference between a three-quarter inch and a five-eighth inch subfloor, let alone advise a contractor on load-bearing tile adhesive. And I had something else. Something I didn’t discover until Ray dropped it on me the following Thursday.
We were in the warehouse during lunch. Ray was eating a sandwich on the tailgate of a delivery truck, which was about as close to a dining room as Ray ever got. “You know, Jerry almost did it,” Ray said. “The partnership.
”
I stopped chewing. “What do you mean, almost? ”
“I mean he had the papers drafted. His accountant put them together in January.
I saw them on his desk because Jerry leaves everything out. Your name was on them. Ten percent. Just like he told you.
”
My chest went tight. “So what happened? ”
Ray looked at me. “Marlene happened.
”
“Marlene? ”
“She came in one afternoon. They were in his office for about an hour. Voices were low, but I caught enough.
She told him that giving equity to a non-family employee would complicate things when Troy eventually took over. That it would create legal problems. That you would be taken care of through bonuses and raises, and that was the smarter path. ”
I sat there for a long time.
“When was this? ” I said. “About eighteen months ago. ”
Eighteen months.
I’d worked every Saturday for eighteen months after a woman I barely spoke to talked her husband out of keeping his word to me. And nobody told me. Not Jerry. Not Marlene.
I found out from Ray over a sandwich on a tailgate. “You’re not surprised,” Ray said. “I’m not,” I said. “I’m just done pretending this is something it isn’t.
”
That night, I typed up my resignation letter. Two weeks notice. Professional. No emotion.
I thanked Jerry for the opportunity, said I was pursuing other plans, and wished the store well. I put it on his desk the next morning at 7:45 before anyone else was in. Jerry read it. Looked up at me.
“Derek. Don’t do this. Let’s talk about it. ”
“We’ve talked about it,” I said.
“Multiple times. ”
“You keep revisiting. ”
“I’m done revisiting. ”
He looked lost.
Actually lost. Like a man watching something fall and not knowing how to catch it. For a moment, I almost felt bad. “What am I supposed to do?
” he said. “You’ve got a general manager,” I said. “I’m sure he’ll figure it out. ”
My two weeks went by fast.
Troy shadowed me twice and both times spent more time on his phone than listening. I documented what I could—delivery schedules, open orders, pending restock from our hardwood vendor. Standard professional stuff. I didn’t go out of my way to hand over the supplier contacts.
Nobody asked me to. On my last day, I was carrying my box of desk stuff through the hallway near Jerry’s office when Marlene appeared. She must have come in through the back. She was dressed like she was going to brunch.
Silk blouse, earrings, the works. She smiled at me the way you smile at someone you’re relieved to see leave. “Derek,” she said. “I hope there’s no hard feelings.
Family is family. You understand. ”
I stopped walking and looked at her. “I do understand, Marlene.
Probably better than you think. ”
Her smile didn’t quite hold. “What’s that supposed to mean? ”
I shifted the box in my arms, walked past her, and didn’t answer.
I could hear her heels stop on the tile behind me. She said my name once more, sharper this time. I kept walking. The first Monday after I left Tidewater, I woke up at 6:30 out of habit, stared at the ceiling for ten minutes, and then made breakfast.
It was the first weekday morning in six years where I didn’t drive to that store. It felt wrong. Almost guilty. Like skipping church.
I spent that week doing inventory on my own life. I had savings. Not a ton, but enough to cover six months of rent and bills without sweating. I’d been living cheap for years.
Partly because I was always at the store, partly because I’d been saving for something I now realized was never going to materialize. The partnership fund, I used to call it privately. Now it was just a savings account. I also had something more valuable than money.
I had a contact list. Let me explain what I mean by that, because I think some people will read this and assume I stole client information or did something underhanded. I didn’t. I didn’t take a single file from Tidewater.
I didn’t copy the customer database. I didn’t download anything from the company server, which was basically an old desktop running QuickBooks anyway. What I had were relationships. My cell phone was full of numbers I’d been calling for years.
Suppliers had my personal email as their primary contact because that’s what Jerry told me to use when I started reaching out to vendors. “Just use your email for now,” he said back when I was twenty-four. “We’ll set up a company system eventually. ” They never did.
Those contacts weren’t Tidewater’s property. They were in my phone under my name because that’s how Jerry ran things. Informally, right up until informal stopped working in his favor. During that first week, I made calls.
Not sales calls. Just check-ins. I called Nina Vasquez at Coastal Ceramic first. We’d been working together for four years, and she didn’t even know I’d left.
“Wait, you quit? ” she said. “Derek, you’re my only contact there. I don’t even have the store owner’s cell number.
”
“Yeah,” I said. “That might become a problem. ”
“For who? Not for us.
”
Nina laughed. “Okay, so what’s the plan? ”
I told her I was figuring it out. She told me to figure it out fast, because she’d rather keep her business with me than start over with whoever Tidewater put in front of her.
I had similar conversations with six other supplier reps that week. Not all of them were as direct as Nina, but the theme was the same. They had relationships with me, not with the store. If I landed somewhere or started something, they’d follow.
The contractor side was even more personal. These were guys I’d helped problem-solve on job sites. Guys whose emergency orders I processed at nine o’clock on a Saturday night. Guys who trusted me to know their projects and recommend the right product without upselling them.
I didn’t poach anyone. I didn’t call a single contractor and say, “Leave Tidewater. ” I didn’t have to. What I did was let three or four of my closest ones know I’d moved on and that I was exploring starting a supply brokerage.
Basically a matchmaking service: contractors tell me what they need, I source it directly from suppliers at better prices because there’s no storefront overhead. Pat Whitfield was the first one to respond. He called me two days after I told him. “I don’t care where you are,” Pat said.
“If you can get me the same product at the same price or better, I’m working with you. Period. ”
I told him I wasn’t set up yet, that I needed a few weeks. “Take your time,” he said, “but not too much time.
I’ve got a kitchen remodel starting next month, and I need someone who actually answers the phone. ”
So that’s what I did. Over the next three weeks, I set up a simple LLC. Cost me a few hundred bucks.
I built a basic website—nothing fancy, just a landing page with my contact info and the supplier lines I could access. I opened a business bank account. I set up a dedicated email. The entire operation fit on my kitchen table.
No warehouse, no storefront, no employees. Just me, a laptop, a phone, and six years of relationships that had never belonged to Tidewater in the first place. Meanwhile, I was hearing things. Ray and I grabbed lunch every Thursday.
He was still at Tidewater, still running the warehouse, still doing his job the way he’d always done it. But the stories he told me were something else. Troy’s first week as GM, he tried to rearrange the entire showroom floor based on something he’d seen at a home design expo. He moved the tile displays away from the front entrance and replaced them with a lifestyle vignette—his words—featuring a fake kitchen island with no plumbing and a bowl of decorative lemons.
“Contractors were walking in and thinking we’d converted to a furniture store,” Ray said. Week two, Troy decided to streamline the ordering system, which apparently meant canceling the standing restock orders I’d set up with three suppliers and replacing them with as-needed ordering, because he said we were over-inventoried. By week three, two product lines had gaps. A contractor came in for a specific hardwood plank that we’d stocked continuously for two years.
Out of stock. Nobody had reordered. Troy also discovered that he couldn’t log in to several supplier portals because the credentials were tied to my email. He emailed me from his personal Gmail—not even a company address—asking if I could share the logins real quick.
I didn’t respond. Then he called me, left a voicemail. Casual, friendly. “Hey Derek, it’s Troy.
Quick favor. Some of the vendor portals are locked to an old login. Can you shoot me the passwords? Appreciate it, man.
”
I didn’t respond to that, either. Then, about three weeks after I left, Troy called me again. This time his voice was different. Tighter.
“Hey Derek, so I’m trying to reach our tile supplier, Coastal Ceramic. I’ve been calling the number on the invoices and it just goes to a general line. Nobody’s getting back to me. Do you have a direct contact for their rep?
”
I paused, because this was the moment I realized something Troy hadn’t figured out yet. He didn’t know. He didn’t know the Coastal Ceramic account was registered under my name. He didn’t know that Nina Vasquez’s direct line was in my phone, not in any Tidewater file.
He didn’t know that when I left, I didn’t just take my experience. I took the access. Not because I schemed. Not because I planned some elaborate revenge.
Because Jerry never built systems. He built dependencies. And the dependency was me. I held the phone for a second, looking out my kitchen window at the parking lot of my apartment complex.
Troy was waiting on the other end. “I’ll see what I can dig up,” I said. “Let me get back to you. ”
I never got back to him.
About five weeks after I left, my brokerage had its first real month. Nothing earth-shattering. I placed orders for three contractors through two suppliers and made a modest margin on each. But the transactions went clean.
The suppliers delivered on time. The contractors were happy, and nobody had to walk into a showroom or deal with decorative lemons. I was sitting at my kitchen table on a Tuesday evening updating a spreadsheet. Yes, I was doing my books on a spreadsheet like it was 2004.
Don’t judge me. When my phone rang. Pat Whitfield. “You sitting down?
” Pat said. “I’m at my kitchen table, so technically yes. ”
“I went into Tidewater today. That kitchen remodel I told you about?
I needed to finalize a hardwood order. Had a meeting set up with Troy. ”
“How’d that go? ”
Pat made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a groan.
“Troy wasn’t there. He was at a networking lunch. So one of the floor guys tried to help me, but he couldn’t pull up my account, because apparently the system got migrated last week and half the customer records are missing. ”
“Missing how?
”
“As in gone. The kid behind the counter couldn’t find my pricing history. Couldn’t find my standing order specs. Couldn’t even confirm what I’d purchased last quarter.
I’ve been spending over $200,000 a year at this place, Derek, and they looked at me like I was a walk-in. ”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. This wasn’t funny, but it also kind of was. “It gets better,” Pat said.
“I waited around for an hour because they said Troy was on his way back. He finally shows up, shakes my hand, calls me Pete. My name is Pat. We’ve met four times.
”
“Did he fix the order? ”
“He said he’d personally handle it and have the order confirmed by end of day. That was Thursday. It’s Tuesday.
No confirmation. No call. No email. I followed up this morning, and the floor guy said he didn’t see any order in the system.
”
The line was quiet for a moment. “Derek,” Pat said, “tell me you’re set up. ”
“I’m set up. ”
“Then I’m moving my account to you.
All of it. I don’t care if you’re working out of your kitchen. You answer the phone and you get it right. That’s all I’ve ever needed.
”
Pat Whitfield became my first anchor client that week. I placed his hardwood order through a supplier I’d been working with for three years. Confirmed it the same day. Delivery scheduled for the following Monday.
The whole thing took me forty-five minutes. Pat told two other contractors. One of them, a guy named Marcus who did commercial bathroom renovations, called me the next day. He’d already been frustrated with Tidewater’s recent service gaps, but hadn’t had a reason to leave.
Now he did. Things were moving. Not fast, not dramatic, just steadily, like water finding cracks. Meanwhile, Tidewater was running out of cracks to paper over.
Ray’s Thursday lunches had become my favorite source of news, and the news was consistently grim. Troy had apparently hired a part-time social media manager, a college kid who posted photos of the showroom with hashtags like #tiletuesday and #builddifferent. The actual business operations were in slow-motion free fall. Two more supplier accounts had gone inactive because Troy never followed up on renewal paperwork.
One of them was a specialty hardware line that I’d personally brought in. Their rep emailed me to let me know they tried to reach the Tidewater team for six weeks and got nothing back. “You want us to set up through your new company? ” the rep asked.
I said yes. But the biggest hit was Coastal Ceramic. Nina had been patient. She’d given Tidewater about six weeks to establish a new contact after I left.
When nobody reached out with proper credentials or account information, she escalated it internally. Her company reviewed the account and confirmed what Nina already knew: the account holder was Derek Calloway. Personal email. Personal phone.
No corporate documentation on file from Tidewater Building Supply. Coastal Ceramic sent a formal letter to Tidewater informing them that the account was inactive and that reactivation would require new account setup, credit approval, and a meeting with their regional sales director. Standard process for a new customer, because as far as their system was concerned, that’s what Tidewater now was. Troy apparently lost it when that letter arrived.
Ray told me he stormed into Jerry’s office and said, “Did you know all the supplier accounts were under Derek’s name? ”
Jerry didn’t answer right away, which told you everything. Troy called me that evening. No preamble this time.
“Derek, we need to talk. ”
“About what? ”
“About the accounts. You know what accounts.
The supplier logins, the contact info. That stuff belongs to the store. ”
“It doesn’t actually,” I said, keeping my voice flat. “Those accounts were set up under my personal information at Jerry’s direction.
I used my own email and phone because there was never a company system. Your dad can confirm that. ”
“That’s—” He paused. I could hear him breathing.
“That’s not how business works. ”
“That’s exactly how your dad’s business worked for six years. ”
“We could pursue this legally. ”
“You could talk to a lawyer,” I said.
“I’d encourage it, actually. I think you’ll find the conversation educational. ”
He hung up. I sat there for a minute after the call, turning my phone over in my hand.
Part of me expected to feel satisfied, some rush of vindication. But I didn’t. I just felt tired and a little sad, honestly. Because Jerry wasn’t a bad person.
He was a man who built something real and then let his family convince him to hand it to someone who wasn’t ready. And now the thing he built was bleeding. The following week, Jerry called me himself. First time since I’d left.
“Derek. ” His voice was quieter than I’d ever heard it. “I think we both know things went sideways here. ”
“We do.
”
“I’d like to fix it. What would it take to bring you back? We can talk about compensation, a title, whatever you need. ”
Not partnership.
Not equity. Still, after everything, he couldn’t say the actual word. “Jerry,” I said, “I appreciate the call, but I’ve started something of my own, and I’m not interested in coming back. ”
Long pause.
“Is this about the partnership papers? ” he said, quietly, almost a whisper. So he knew that I knew. Ray must have mentioned it, or maybe Jerry just assumed.
Either way, there it was. Eighteen months of silence, finally acknowledged in a single sentence. “It’s about a lot of things,” I said, “but yeah, it’s partly about that. Marlene thought—I know what Marlene thought, and I know you agreed with her.
That’s your right. It was your business. But I’m not the one who lost something here, Jerry. ”
He didn’t say anything for a long time.
Then: “I hope you do well, Derek. ”
“Thanks,” I said. That Friday, Pat Whitfield walked into Tidewater to return some excess material from a previous order. He told me about it later.
He said Troy was behind the counter, arguing on the phone with someone about a missed delivery. Two contractors were waiting. One of them eventually walked out. The showroom had a gap where the tile display used to be.
They’d moved it again. Pat handled his return and walked out to the parking lot. He sat in his truck and called me. “I’m looking at this place,” he said, “and I’m telling you, Derek, it’s not the same store.
”
“Three months. That’s all it took. ”
“Sometimes less,” I said. Pat was quiet for a second.
Then: “You need any help getting the word out about your business? Because I know about twenty guys who need to hear about it. ”
I told him I’d take all the help I could get. The next three months played out like gravity.
Nothing dramatic. No courtroom showdowns or screaming matches in parking lots. Just the slow, inevitable math of a business losing the person who made it run. By month two after I left, Tidewater had lost Coastal Ceramic entirely.
Nina Vasquez formally closed their account and redirected the territory relationship to my brokerage. She told me later that when she’d informed her regional director, he’d shrugged and said, “We follow the account manager, not the storefront. That’s how this business has always worked. ”
Two other specialty suppliers followed within weeks.
One was the hardwood distributor whose standing orders Troy had canceled to streamline. When they didn’t hear from Tidewater for eight weeks, they reached out to me. I was already in their system. Same name, same email.
The transition took a single phone call. Tidewater didn’t die. I want to be clear about that. The big-box distributors, the commodity stuff, the bulk fasteners and basic plywood—those relationships were corporate contracts tied to the store’s name, not mine.
Tidewater could still order two-by-fours. What they couldn’t do was get the specialty product that had made them worth the trip. The custom tile, the architectural hardware, the premium hardwood lines that contractors specified by name because they trusted the sourcing. Without those lines, Tidewater was just another building supply store.
And there were three big-box chains within fifteen minutes that did that better and cheaper. Troy lasted about four months as general manager. I didn’t get the story from Ray. I got it from Marcus, the commercial bathroom contractor, who heard it from a Tidewater former employee at a trade event.
Apparently, Troy had a blow-up with Jerry in the middle of the showroom. Customers present, staff watching. The argument was about a vendor payment that Troy had forgotten to process, which had resulted in a shipment being held. Troy’s position was that the accounting system was broken and it wasn’t his fault.
Jerry’s position was that the accounting system was QuickBooks and a notebook, same as it had been for thirty years, and maybe Troy should learn to use it. Troy told Jerry he was done being set up to fail. Jerry told Troy that nobody set him up. They gave him an opportunity, and he’d spent four months proving he wasn’t ready for it.
Troy quit that afternoon, drove off in the middle of a shift. Marlene called Jerry three times before dinner. From what Ray told me later, the conversations between Jerry and Marlene that week were the worst they’d had in their marriage. Marlene blamed Jerry for not supporting Troy enough.
Jerry, for maybe the first time, pushed back. He told her that he’d lost his best employee, his key suppliers, and his biggest contractor client because she’d convinced him to give their son a role he hadn’t earned. I don’t know all the details of what happened between them privately. It’s not my business.
But Ray said the dynamic shifted. Marlene stopped coming by the store. Jerry stopped talking about succession. By month five, Jerry scaled Tidewater back.
He let go of two floor employees and reduced hours. The showroom shrank. He stopped carrying the specialty lines he could no longer source and focused on the commodity business. It was still open.
He still went in every day. But it was a smaller store now. A simpler one. Maybe closer to what it had been thirty years ago, before he started building it up.
Part of me felt for him. I won’t pretend otherwise. Jerry gave me my start. He taught me the business, and in his own flawed, avoidant way, he did value what I brought.
He just never valued it enough to protect it from his wife’s agenda or his own inability to have hard conversations. That’s the thing about loyalty in business. It’s not a currency you can beg. You can be the most loyal person in the building and still be the first one traded when family politics come to the table.
I learned that the hard way. Six years’ worth of hard way. My brokerage, by contrast, was growing. Not exploding.
Growing. There’s a difference. By month three, I had eight regular contractor clients. By month five, twelve.
I’d added a second supplier line in architectural hardware through a contact I’d made at a trade show two years earlier. One of those relationships that never meant anything at Tidewater because Jerry didn’t want to carry hardware from a new vendor. Now I didn’t need Jerry’s approval. I just needed a phone and a handshake.
I was still working from my apartment. My warehouse was a storage unit across town where I kept samples and occasional overstock. My staff was me and a part-time bookkeeper named Carol who I found through a community college job board. My marketing department was Pat Whitfield telling every contractor he knew that I was the guy to call.
It wasn’t glamorous. But it was mine. Ray finally left Tidewater about six months after I did. He’d stuck around out of loyalty to Jerry, but once the store scaled back, there wasn’t enough work to justify a full-time warehouse supervisor.
Jerry gave him a decent severance, credit where it’s due, and Ray took a job at a lumber yard closer to his house. He said the commute was shorter and nobody asked him to attend meetings about synergy. We still grab lunch on Thursdays. That hasn’t changed.
Ray orders the same thing every week—club sandwich, no tomato, extra pickle—and gives me updates on the industry gossip. He’s the closest thing I have to a business advisor, although he’d punch me if I called him that. Last month, I ran into Troy at a gas station. I was filling up my truck.
He was at the next pump. We made eye contact, and there was that brief, charged moment where you both decide whether to acknowledge each other. He nodded at me. I nodded back.
“How’s things? ” he said. “Good,” I said. “You?
”
“I’m doing some consulting,” he said, which is what people say when they’re between jobs and don’t want to admit it. I recognized the phrasing because I’d almost used it myself during my first week out. “Good luck with it,” I said, and I meant it. Troy wasn’t the villain of this story, not really.
He was a twenty-eight-year-old kid who got handed a role he wasn’t ready for by parents who loved him too much to tell him no. That’s not evil. It’s just unfortunate. The damage wasn’t caused by malice.
It was caused by entitlement that nobody ever checked and avoidance that let it compound. I thought about calling Jerry a few times. I never did. I don’t think there’s anything left to say that would change the math.
He made his choices. I made mine. The numbers speak for themselves. Here’s what I’ve learned, and I’ll leave it at this, because I know some of you are in situations like mine and you’re reading this trying to figure out if the loyalty is worth it.
It’s not. Not unless it’s mutual. And you’ll know it’s mutual because it’ll be on paper with signatures, and nobody will have to promise you that the time is right. If someone keeps telling you to wait for the right time, the right time already passed.
They just didn’t choose you when it came. I’m not rich. I’m not running some empire. I’m a guy with a laptop and a storage unit who finally stopped doing other people’s jobs and started doing his own.
My Saturdays are free now. I spent the last one helping Ray move a couch into his new place and then watching college football until I fell asleep on his recliner. Best Saturday I’ve had in six years.
