Quitting Time

Some people celebrate their birthdays with cake, or going out for a night on the town.

On his 81st birthday, Bob Moore of Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods, celebrated by giving the business he had co-founded with his wife to his employees. Despite many offers to take the privately owned company public or sell it outright, he refused all proposals and opted to create an employee stock-ownership plan, or ESOP. The stock will be held in trust for the benefit of its employees for their retirement. Mr. Moore will retain his role as head of the company for now until he decides to retire, and I’m sure all of the employees of Red Mill Natural Foods are glad to know that they’re in such good hands.

What makes this story so amazing is that it takes place in an atmosphere of ever-increasing greed in corporate boardrooms. This year will be a record-setting year for corporate bonuses — bonuses paid out for lack of vision and massive failure — and if we don’t start to wake up, all that will happen will be another bubble inflating until it pops, taking with it more of our hard earned prosperity.

People often talk about the American Dream. Nowhere can I see it more clearly played out than in this story. Mr. Moore certainly knows what the people working for him go through every day to make his company a successful one, and is grateful for their hard work and the blessings that have been given to him. This is commendable, if not terribly impressive. What is incredible, and terribly impressive, is that he chose to remember and protect those people rather than simply cash out and retire.

This is the difference between working for someone and working with them.

People aren’t just resources to be managed. We need to remember that and start to make stuff again, just like Bob Moore and his new stockholders.