Lately I’ve noticed a lot of businesses promoting themselves as family-run companies. (SC Johnson and Coors come to mind; and this morning I read about a local family-run fruit-packing company in the newspaper.) I’m sure they’re trying to project some sort of family-friendly image to the public; but to me, when I think of family-run companies, I think of nepotism.
I don’t approve of nepotism. I admit, I got a job or two because of it. I’d like to think I was well-qualified to do those jobs regardless of family connections, but I can never entirely be sure. I also lost a job or two because of it; the bosses preferred to hire family over someone who, while well-qualified, wasn’t family. Some of the worst pastors I have ever experienced were the result of hiring family (and some were the result of hiring someone with anointing instead of training; you need both, people!—but that’s another rant). The theory is that you’re hiring someone with an inherited knack for the family business. But for every instance of that being true, you have three instances of some inept idiot, who is forgiven for his petty mistakes (or grand larcenies) when anyone else would be fired, whose company’s success is more often because a
I don’t care if a company is run by a family. I care more about whether the families who work for the company are taken care of. But you seldom see that in the advertising.
…And since I’m at it, I also don’t care about how old a company is. Disneyland is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Big deal. If anything, that’s not a good thing to promote; it implies the rides’ machinery is 50 years old, and after that roller coaster accident at Disney’s California Adventure, that’s not an idea you want to evoke.
To bring up Coors again: What strikes me as odd about breweries reminding us how old they are is that one has to wonder what on earth they were busy doing during Prohibition. Remember, laws against selling alcohol were written into the Constitution, so it seemed really unlikely that the law was going to change back. Yet breweries like Busch and Coors and Miller were ready to go as soon as the amendment was repealed. What’s up with that?
(I know what their “official” stories are; but don’t tell me they were perfectly happy to “get by” making malted milk products, rubbing alcohol, and near beer. It reminds me of all those rich “farmers” in Columbia that say they’re only growing “coffee.”)