Sunday, April 5, 2009

Working at the Pre-Passover Carwash

My 11-year-old son Zeve and his two friends are running their annual pre-Passover car wash this year. As a result my house is a mess and while they are all making money, I am pretty sure that I am in the hole for about 100 shekels so far.

The reason for the car wash's success is because bread and all of its offspring are forbidden during this holiday. When Moses told the Israelites that he was taking them out of Egypt and out of slavery, they had about 20 minutes notice. In other words, they didn't have time to pack much food and they left before their bread had time to rise. Hence, a week of eating matzah. Technically it is unleavened bread but I think that is putting it kindly. Bread is tasty. Matzah is not.

The one good thing to come out of the preparation for the holiday is my son's entrepreneurial spirit. At a rate of approximately four or five cars a day, for six days, they each make enough spending money to splurge for the following few weeks.

Last year the car wash was operated out the garage of one of his friends. In other words, I didn't see the inner machinations of the car wash in action. This year, I was not so lucky because the car wash was moved to its new location – my driveway.

Rather than go on and on about my son's acumen, let me give you a few brief examples of how 11-year-olds run a business:

• When one of my friends pointed out that the boys had missed a patch of sticky gunk in her car, my son told her "we don't do sticky stuff. You'll have to clean that yourself."
• When another friend delivered his car early, instead of his pre-assigned appointment time, my son simply didn't clean his car. When the client returned, my son said: "We told you to bring it at 12:30 and you brought it at 8:00. What did you expect us to do?" After a brief renegotiation, they cleaned the car.
• And yet another friend paid an extra 2 shekels to have her car sprayed with a nice smelling scent. Clean is one thing, but two spritz' of lemon scent costs extra.

I keep telling myself that this is good for them. And I really believe it is. The more accurate question is whether or not it is good for me. Unfortunately I don’t have any time to ponder that right now because I just noticed that they have slacked off and the car that is sitting half done in my driveway (with the radio blaring) is mine.

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