The best thing about management, they taught us at uni, is that a manager doesn't have to do anything he does not want to do. It's all about delegation. As a manager, you educate the team, and then you just do nothing, but supervise - overlook - monitor - and review. (As you can figure, strategic management was one of my favourite courses indeed). Now, some time ago I coughed up a wish list, where, alongside with a trip to Antarctica and botox, I put a line about wishing to quit ironing at the age of 30. Five more years to go, I thought, but alas! Some beautiful mind above us must have heard me complain, as a miracle has been discovered. For mere $30 a nice wee van would come to the door step, pick up about 12 items to be ironed, and return them - all hanged and plastic-wrapped - within 24 hours. Pure bliss, and of course I deserve it! I mean, in Germany they call a housewife a hausfuhrer, so there I am, delegating. But apart from somebody who hates ironing and unashamed of it, I am also a socialist. Which, admittedly, has got me thinking over the whole housework thing. OK, I will leave my grandma out of the discussion (if she only knew! She would have ironed it for me for half the price), but nonetheless. That ironing franchise is for sale. What kind of business is that, where you spend an evening doing something (12 shirts is no joke) and then you get only $30? Does not sound too good to me. I have no idea who would buy that sort of business- there is hardly anything else there, which is more mundane AND less profitable at the same time. I happen to know some people, who, before buying a ten thousand dollars car, would do all the research they can lay their hands on. And yet, when it comes to buying a business, they just think they know it all - and they go ahead with the purchase, the house being a collateral. Six months later it's a flop, and now they really know it all, but it is too late. I would presume that ironing is for those who cannot do better than that. Newly come immigrants, people with no command of English, no education, no nothing. But I would never understand how can anybody NOT from a hospitality background end up buying a restaurant. I just envisage a guy who has had a few nice meals out, enjoys setting up a barbecue once a year and who is glued to the food TV thinking he can just walk around his restaurant lounge schmoozing the customers and counting thick hospitality bucks at the end of the weekend. What happens next is Chef Ramsey comes around, fixing all the damage. It never occurs to such guys to go and work in a little cafe in a busy suburb, where customers have a stopwatch on when waiting for their coffees in the morning. When no one cares about haute cuisine, but everybody screams if the sandwich arrives cold. Where the real hospitality is - at the bottom. And if they survive six months at such pace - well, maybe then they can move on to owning a fine dining place. I still don't know why I care. My husband has enough shirts so I myself could do it once a month, yet I get it all done within the 24 hours. I try to avoid as much as I can going to sad, dying restaurants, and I am moderately tolerant with the slow cafe staff. Yet every time I come across such businesses I get wind up for no reason. Hard being a socialist, that's all.