HARRY'S GANG: It's not the government's fault

“Sorry to bother you on a Saturday, but my walk-in cooler isn’t working and if you can’t fix it today, I’ll have to throw everything out ... or do an awful lot of eating tonight!”

That’s the voicemail I left Bruce Welman, co-owner of Aire Serv in Scanlon. (You’ve probably heard of them; they advertise more than McDonald’s, it seems.) Bruce is a pretty good guy. He started Bruce’s Refrigeration about the time I opened my pizza joint in Esko, and then teamed up with Dan Veno to start “Aire Serv” about 5 years later. We’ve become friends, I think, even though we have very different political philosophies. He has a lot of qualities I respect: he’s a good family man, is active in his church and community, and he’s a fellow small business owner.

Now, I’m not kissing up to Bruce to get a better deal on my HVAC and refrigeration needs; he already gives me a pretty good deal. And kissing up to his partner, Dan Veno, is impossible: he hates lawyers, as he says instead of ‘hello’ whenever I call him.

No, it struck me that Bruce returned my call just 5 minutes after I left my message Saturday. He, too, was working on the weekend. “Welcome to small business ownership,” he said. (He also promised to stop out and recharge my walk-in.)

Small business is the backbone of American prosperity. Bruce Welman is a good example: he worked for a big company, Upper Lakes Foods, for years before he went out on his own. (Upper Lakes Foods, by the way, is a major employer in Cloquet but it, too, started as a small business.) Bruce was a refrigeration “guy with a truck” before he teamed up with Dan Veno (a HVAC guy with a truck) to start Aire Serv.

Knowing I like politics, he and I discuss issues frequently. Bruce complains about business regulations quite a bit, and I suspect one reason conservative politics resonate with small business owners is that there are, indeed, way too many government regulations that interfere with a guy who just wants to help keep furnaces running.

For example, bleeding heart liberal that I am, I had no idea my pizza place needed to keep “Material Safety Data Sheets” in a centralized location, conduct annual training and develop a program to respond to hazardous materials found in the pizza workplace.

I had an employee complain to the Minnesota Department of Labor that they were getting headaches at work, so I got a visit from a very pleasant investigator. She told me their department usually lets the Health Department deal with restaurants, but she was obligated to respond to the employee’s call. It turns out the employee had brain cancer and my pizza oven had nothing to do with her headaches, but during the investigation they noticed I didn’t have a MSDS notebook.

What materials do I deal with at a pizza place that needs a MSDS program? Soap. It turns out that the dishwasher soap is pretty concentrated and can cause irritation if directly spilled on a young teenager washing dishes. I was fined $450. I am now sure to keep that notebook handy and updated, which isn’t too much effort, but I didn’t even know I had to have it.

Now, regulations are important and we need to follow them to keep people safe and healthy. Without regulations, people died from lead poisoning, unsafe food and even lawn darts (which actually killed little children!). Regulations are why Esko doesn’t have any dairy farms left.

But the primary business of business is business, and responding to regulations can interfere with taking care of business. Refrigeration breaks down when it wants to; weekends and holidays are no exception.

Bruce was here for 10 minutes Saturday afternoon; he spent 5 minutes fixing my cooler and 5 minutes telling me I’m wrong on politics. I’m sure he felt that extra 5 minutes was better spent on me than on following obscure regulations.

Pete Radosevich is the publisher of the Pine Knot News community newspaper and an attorney in Esko who is finally hosting the longtime cable access talk show Harry’s Gang on CAT-7 again. His opinions are his own. Contact him at [email protected].