By the Toledo Tribune
Back in the days when folks still paid with checks and the sound of a bell above a shop door meant you were likely to meet someone with a story, there was a man—a decent man, far as I could tell—who owned a small business on Main Street. Let’s say it was a hardware store, though it could’ve just as easily been a coffee shop, feed store, or funeral parlor. The business itself isn’t the point. What matters is what he did with it.
He’d been running it for a few years, got tired of the day-to-day—early mornings, ledgers, and arguing about where the pliers ought to go. So he decided to hire someone to manage things. Not a bad idea in itself. Even God took the seventh day off. The trouble is how he went about it.
He sifted through a few resumes—paper ones, probably, still warm from the printer—and chose someone mostly because the fellow spelled his name right and didn’t list “napping” under hobbies. There was no deep interview, no checking of references, no long conversation over pie at the café. He just handed the manager the keys and said, “Good luck,” like he was tossing the car keys to a teenager and heading back inside.
Then he walked away.
Didn’t check in. Didn’t stop by. Didn’t look at the books, peek at the shelves, or ask how business was going. And time passed, as time always does, quick and quiet. And before long, things started to smell a little off—like old paint or secrets in a musty garage.
Employees were quitting. Money wasn’t making it from the till to the bank. The reputation of the place went downhill faster than a greased sled on Graham’s Hill. Costs ballooned, customers dwindled, and by the time our hardware store owner noticed, he was staring down bankruptcy and wondering who had stolen his dream.
Now, who do you blame?
The manager? Maybe. It’s possible he was in over his head, or dishonest, or just plain lazy. But how would we know? He was never evaluated. Never trained. Never supported. Never even asked how things were going. He was just handed the keys and told to drive.
And here comes the hard truth.
This story isn’t about hardware stores or shady employees. It’s about you. And me. And the way we treat this whole idea of governance.
We, the people, are the business owners of this country, of this state, of this town. We vote for folks to manage the place—hand them the keys to the front door of democracy—and then most of us walk away. We don’t show up to town halls. We don’t read the budget. We don’t ask questions, send letters, or hold anyone accountable. And when things go bad, when the potholes go unfilled and the library closes early and the trust in our institutions crumbles like a dry biscuit, we ask, “Who’s to blame?”
Sometimes it’s the folks we elected. Sure. Sometimes they make mistakes or let power puff them up like a toad in mating season. But more often, the root cause is neglect. Our own.
You wouldn’t hire someone to run your business and never check in on them. But we do it with our votes all the time. We mistake the ballot box for the finish line, when really, it’s the starting gate.
So maybe the lesson is this: if you care about the store, you don’t just hand over the keys and walk away. You stop in. You ask questions. You show up.
Because if we don’t take ownership of the business of our shared life—this great, messy, wonderful democracy—then we shouldn’t be surprised when the shelves are empty, the customers are gone, and the lights are about to be turned off.
And that, dear reader, is the hard truth.
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