I had built that thing with sweat and tears, sacrificing everything else because I was determined to succeed -for my family to thrive. I had been working too much.
My brother, also my business partner, just did the bare minimum, yet he spoke as if he was running the entire operation. My mother, in title the director, was merely a signature on documents, capitulating to my brother’s every whim. They would spend long hours at the front of the shop, while I toiled at the back, producing the goods that flew off the shelves, virtual shelves I had built, in the form of our website and infrastructure behind it. Invoices and picking lists as well came out of it. I had also setup data integration with our suppliers, to make our life easier.
I had raised my concerns: it was utterly unjust that I should juggle multiple jobs and an endless list of responsibilities while he merely printed invoices, arranged picking lists, dealt with suppliers, entertained customers up until they needed technical help and then he sent them my way. Oh, also he visited the banks. I was in the dark about our financial status. I have never seen a bank statement in years. Only ballpark numbers. Despite this, I trusted them -my family- implicitly, more than I trusted myself in a job where, objectively, I excelled.
My dissatisfaction escalated when I demanded a raise from my paltry 50 Euro weekly salary -you read that correctly- or that my brother lend a hand. They had to be aware of a situation that I had been simply closing an eye to, given my motivation and paternal instinct. Hiring skilled staff was out of the question; tumbleweeds. The skilled ones lived in big cities and were unwilling to relocate to the middle of nowhere. I’d have to train young apprentices sourced locally from scratch. Rather than investing in a newcomer who might one day become a competitor, I preferred to teach my brother. I was hedging my bets, paying a high premium for them.
He wasn’t keen on “working” and “learning”.
“If you don’t like it, there’s the door. We all work equally here. We are all equally important,” my mother declared, with the authority of both a parent and, technically, my boss.
Those words made “I quit!” resound in my head. Memories of friends’ tales of seeing my brother out and about while I worked night shifts, or of him, suitcase in hand, ready for a holiday while I waited for a big customer of ours in the shop, coding into the small hours.
That night, I broke my routine. Instead of returning to work after dinner, I stayed home. Typically, my day was a relentless loop of work, a sandwich at my desk, back and forth with the lab where I was working on multiple machines connected via a daisy-chained KVM, a brief return home for dinner, and then back to the shop until dawn, until I heard the birds chirping, fuelled by a ceaseless intake of espresso and cigarettes -10 and 40 on average, respectively.
Healthy? Not.
If you thought that 9–5 was slavery, what was what I was doing? To me, it was just working towards a goal. I had the energy and the motivation, and I was printing money for my family, certainly not for myself.
Money that I only saw coming in. Like sand, it slipped through my hands.
And whenever I was tipped by our customers, I didn’t keep it for myself, I put it in the cash register, I wanted to teach some values to my brother but it was a lost cause.
My savings, too, had been funnelled back into the business, where I was a fully invested shareholder.
The facade of mutual importance was shattered by reality.
My brother guarded his domain with passwords, lies, secrecy and with the despicable complicity of our mother, who should have been impartial and business-focused while she was son-focused. Even she didn’t have any idea of the happenings; whenever she asked questions to my brother, she was placated with a “Trust me, I know what I am doing,” and she did -trust him.
I, on the other hand, had welcomed him into my domain, hoping for our collective growth, only to be subordinated by our mother’s bias towards him. Incentives were all messed up.
The virtuous, logical, pragmatic doer was penalised, the slacker, gambler, salesman was rewarded. It could only end one way…
As mentioned, I did not return to work that night. But my sense of duty soon overwhelmed me. A loyal customer’s computer needed repair, and I couldn’t bear to let him down. Perhaps I was deceiving myself; the thought of quitting was unbearable. I craved order, respect, and fairness, not exploitation by my own kin.
Upon leaving for the shop, I found my car keys missing. Had they been deliberately hidden? Was I being deprived of my own vehicle?
Resolved to act, I set out on foot. The 7-kilometre journey along the unlit road, with cars hurtling by, was perilous, but I was undaunted. I used my phone to signal my presence to the cars coming my way, heeding childhood lessons from my mother on road safety.
Ironic.
When I got to the shop, I had a clear idea about what to do with the computer I had to fix. I had had time to think about it during my meditative walk. I went to put the key inside the keyhole, and it didn’t work; it did sometimes, I just had to fiddle with it, and it would work.
It didn’t.
The locks had been changed. I could not believe it. My family had barred me from the business I had built. I had to internalise that fact. It was a harsh awakening to my naivety and a call to grow up.
I did.
I will never know what had triggered that decision, if my brother lied or even blamed me for his fuckups.
He did that years later, while -supposedly- more mature, so it’s not too farfetched to think that he talked me out of my own creation and put my parents against me.
They fell for it and I blame them for simply listening to him and never really and seriously seek clarity with me.
I later learnt that my brother blamed me for “orders disappearing” I believe he meant “abandoned shopping carts”.
My father then called me and told me that things would have ended up… badly… as in, he threatened me with serious repercussions if the business was going to fail because of me. I assumed he referred to the fact that I had told my brother that I was considering legal action, which I never did anyway, but my father was talking about this “sabotage operation” against my own kin, my own website. Not my style, sorry. Also, completely illogical considering that I wanted a piece of that thing I had built, what was the point in destroying it?
Unbelievable.
Yet, the business’s trajectory soon mirrored my exclusion -from national acclaim and thriving e-commerce to a foreclosed shop like many others.
Mediocrity. They attempted to replace me, leaving me without a penny of my investment despite the promises. I had become a liability; even a modest capital in my hands posed a threat. I was the true asset, but only while under their control. And all the while, my brother reaped the benefits, my mother, no more than a well-dressed, well-rested pawn in the game.
My father? He was blamed for changing the locks, which he didn’t. That lie and the miscommunication that followed made me essentially estranged and disowned.
Lies are akin to doors with changed locks, standing as impenetrable barriers between us and the truth, their appearance deceptively coated in the veneer of trust. These doors not only block our access but also lead us into mazes of confusion and illusion, where the keys of honesty we hold are rendered useless by the alterations of deceit. As we stand before these doors, we find ourselves trapped in corridors of falsehood, our efforts to reach understanding thwarted by locks no longer receptive to the sincerity we offer. In this landscape of distortion, the keys to these doors are lost to the currents of betrayal, leaving us to wander, disconnected from the warmth of genuine connection, peering hopelessly through the keyholes at a reality just beyond our grasp.
I tried to move on, my love for my family kept me anchored and hopeful in a peaceful resolution.
Hope is not a strategy. Truth is.
