People often imagine that small business owners have it easy — that we sit behind desks giving orders, delegate the hard work, keep all the profits, and enjoy flexible hours with plenty of freedom.
Reality couldn’t be further from the truth.
In a small business, when someone calls in sick, quits suddenly, or simply doesn’t show up, it’s the owner who fills the gap. One day you’re the manager, the next you’re the forklift driver, delivery handler, or cleaner. Sometimes, all at once.
According to a 2025 CIPD and Simplyhealth survey, the average UK employee takes around two weeks of sick leave per year. For a company with ten people, that’s half a year of lost time — and small business owners feel every one of those days.
Sometimes I wonder who’s really in charge.
I work twelve-hour days — 7am to 7pm — while most of my staff arrive at nine and clock out at five sharp. Yet if an employee feels unhappy or overworked, I’m the one who could end up in a tribunal. Tell me — who’s the real boss here?
Back to the racking nightmare.
After hours of trial and error, we finally found a workable unloading method. You’d think the rest would be easy. It wasn’t. It turned into one of the most exhausting 24 hours of my life.
From 9am to 9pm, I didn’t eat, didn’t drink, and didn’t sit down. I ran up and down the containers, guided forklifts, adjusted rollers, shouted instructions, and prayed the next bundle wouldn’t collapse — or crush someone.
By early evening, I was drenched in sweat and running on fumes. Just when I thought we’d built some team spirit through shared suffering, the first cracks appeared.
Two agency labourers clocked out at five — fair enough, they were temps. But then my warehouse manager walked up to me and said,
“It’s almost five. I’m heading off now — anything you’d like me to tell the office staff before I go?”
I could have cried.
Still, I stayed calm and asked him to bring my General Manager for backup. He came, stood by the container for ten minutes, then announced that the job was “beyond his ability anyway” — and reminded me that he needed to attend the company’s Christmas dinner with the sales team.
So there I was — knee-deep in steel, sweat, and frustration — while my managers and staff were somewhere warm, clinking glasses over turkey and wine. Now tell me again — who’s the real boss?
“What a bunch of ingrates,” I muttered. Though in truth, my actual words were probably less polite.
In the end, only two staff members stayed with me until every piece of steel was finally offloaded.
A few months later, when my General Manager wanted to fire one of them, I refused.
“He stood with me at my hardest moment,” I told him. “Even when you didn’t.”
Some moments remind you exactly who’s in your corner — and who never really was.
Next Chapter: The Installation Challenge
free to my BSS journey — because after surviving the unloading, surely the worst must be over… right?
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