The Republican candidate for mayor of my tiny town knocked on my door earlier today and accused me of removing a lawn sign promoting his candidacy. He was whiny and petulant about it and woke me out of a nap to boot.

I live in a four-unit apartment building and one of my neighbors recently put up a lawn sign for this guy. I’m not crazy about it but I don’t own the place and other people live here so I just grimace and bear it. I’d certainly never take the sign down. When I got back from chores this morning, I noticed it was missing, didn’t mourn its loss and didn’t really think anything about it until my doorbell rang.

Through the dissipating haze of my nap, I told him that I didn’t touch his sign and quickly shooed him away.

Then the post-nap caffeine hit and I realized that I should be offended by his accusation. Why me? Why didn’t he ring anybody else’s bell? Seriously, what information did he have that made him think I was the kind of person who would do that?

Here’s the thing. Though planning to vote in the congressional race and on statewide initiatives, I had already decided not to vote for either mayoral candidate. It would take effort for me to care less about whose buddies get no-bid municipal contracts; I am utterly indifferent as to which set of pockets gets lined in the corruption that is local Jersey politics. My son graduates from high school in the spring and unless something goes majorly wrong with my plans, I will not be living in this town when whichever of theses clowns is up for reelection.

Now, somebody is definitely getting a vote against. And I just might get a lawn sign for his opponent.

There’s a bagel shop one town over. By me, everything is one town over. Nothing here but a pair of 7-Elevens and a dozen nail salons.

In the ten years I’ve been going, there’s been almost no staff turn over, a core of eight or ten people manning the shop. That kind of stability in a small business, food service no less, implies a good boss and a good workplace. I’ve never met the owner but his name is Sy. His interactions with his staff never struck me as being as notable, good or bad, but everybody works hard and they don’t leave.

It does get me wondering about the people, though. Their ambition can’t be aimed at working the register or schmearing the cream cheese or hand-carving simple html pages so I figure they all have something else going on in their lives. A stable income can support so many things, a family, a dream. Who’s putting their sibling through college? Which one trains as an MMA fighter? Who smokes way too much pot? Who’s scratching out the poetry in her mom’s attic?

And what is Sy’s secret? Whatever their dreams, keeping a staff of bagel counters, counter people and short order cooks stable and employed for a decade suggests he’s doing something right.