The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Bar Owners: Habit 2

Habit 2: Procrastinate and Never Have a Goal In Mind

First, never ever create a mission statement. I can't emphasize this point enough. Never. Ever. Mission means work and statement means putting stuff in writing. Putting stuff in writing is bad because writing means more work and writing means committing to something which means employees or patrons could bring it up later under oath in litigation. Lord knows we all have enough commitment issues in our personal lives that we don't need to deal with them in our professional lives. Never commit to anything. Besides, how is one supposed to build on highly ineffective habit number one of taking everyone one knows completely by surprise to gauge their honest reaction if one commits to something ahead of time?  

Since you will never ever craft a mission statement, don't even bother envisioning your ideal bar or the ideal characteristics for you or your employees. It is a complete waste of time. Employees will always let you down.

Plus, envisioning the ideal work environment only means more work and you need to have the flexibility to completely dismantle your highly-abstract concept of the ideal work environment when that one customer comes in one time right off the street after a long-day of trying to figure out the baffling Washington Metropoitan Area Transit Authority metro system in which more than one train runs on one track and that train is always completely full and the train doesn't even drop them off by the museum they wanted to see and they're happy because they're on vacation and everyone else is not and maybe that's why does everyone looks so sad and these tourists are coming back after a long day of wandering around the National Mall in the hot hot sun where a bottle of water costs more than this family vacation they planned and they're hot and they're sweaty and they're mad and they're in the right frame of mind to offer solid business advice to the owner of the first restaurant they pass between the metro station and their hotel and no bar owner wants to be mired in an untenable position in which they cannot use the recently collected pearls of wisdom to the utmost strategic advantage because they're hamstrung by the completely useless business plan that the completely incompetent accountant made them draw up for the completely imaginary county regulators.

This was the view from the top of the Caps bandwagon as it traveled down H street and just for the record I was only on the bandwagon because bandwagon Caps fans saw my red jersey and just assumed I was a Caps fan because they don't know any better and I had to hitch a ride because the Metro wasn't running because the WMATA in all of its infinite wisdom decided to close stations between Foggy Bottom and Metro Center on a holiday weekend with major events downtown and college students returning to GW & AU and people returning from holiday travel, but luckily enough I have Caps bandwagon fans as friends, let's call them Keno and Priss, who were able to save me a seat on the Caps bandwagon as it sped through downtown.