Time now to turn from the realm of industrialists and corporate capitalism to the free market’s other branch, which doesn’t seem to have a name but which I shall call the bespoke branch of capitalism.
This is an interesting question. Is capitalism one big complex entity, or does it, in fact, have two distinct phases, the corporate and the bespoke?
As a dentist and local business owner, the main division line I see is how we behave to our customers and community. What I mean is, if I engaged in unethical behavior similar to the recent Volkswagen emissions scandal, or the recent college entrance cheating scandal, or the recent Wells Fargo cross-selling scandal, or … well, you get the idea. If I attempted any such selfish skullduggery, my patients, my neighbors, my friends would all run away from my dental practice at Mach 2.
I’m unsure if this hypothesis has ever been tested by economists, but here it is anyway:
Bespoke, localite businesses face greater and more direct pressure from their customers to behave ethically than do large-scale, corporate businesses, and as a result actually do behave more ethically than their corporate counterparts.
And this brings us to McNeal.
In our novel, Swirled All the Way to the Shrub, what The Shrub actually is is a bar. “A splintered bar in Boston,” as Tom describes her. Old, venerable and also venerated, a little creaky but a lot comforting to those who know her well. And McNeal is the bartender.
Now, as our novel takes place from 1929 to 1931, which was during Prohibition, you might naturally ask, “Wait–there can’t be a bar during Prohibition. A speakeasy, maybe, with a secret knock and a secret handshake and a secret password and … But a bar? They couldn’t run one of those right out in the open!”
But that’s not quite the case. During Prohibition the Federal government had at the maximum around 5,000 agents with which they could enforce the Volstead Act. This enforcement included dealing with Canadian whiskey smugglers, rum runners from the Caribbean, countless bootleggers and hidden micro-brewers, wine diversions from “religious use” to other uses, and many more. Plus there were all the restaurants that even then dotted the nation. Layer in the fact that it was the height of the Great Depression and most of these Federal enforcement agents–“prohis”–just wanted a little cash from the restaurant owners and the chance to drink their beer in peace. Thus, a joint such as our Shrub could put up a nice dry facade as the place to enjoy tea and coffee, and grab a sandwich or perhaps a bite of smoked jowl. But that was only a facade, acknowledged and then just winked at. Hidden away behind the bar were all kinds of sour spirits, to be had for ready cash and asking the right way.
So long as The Shrub kept its head down and didn’t raise a ruckus, it would probably never face a prohi’s fine or the G-man’s cask-splitting axe.
So back to McNeal. He does not, in this first book, own The Shrub, though such a role for him feels likely in the sequel. And yet even without the intense pressures of business ownership, McNeal still strives for excellence at all times. We might even view his approach to the work as hyper-excellence, a level of attention to the work rarely achieved by most human beings.
Here he is getting ready for an important event. And there’s even more he does in this scene–I’ve abridged it.
McNeal made one more round—perhaps his eighth—of The Shrub. Under the street-side windows, two long tables of cold cuts, pickles, hearty sliced breads, some delicate little canapés and dainties from a French bistro downtown, small plates, tableware, folded cloth napkins, an immense water jar, cool drops condensing down its sides. All in place.
Criss-crossing through the tables, set for eight, water goblets and wine glasses for all. Rented tablecloths and napkins—not all-get-out silks or satins, but all first-rate. McNeal adjusted the small centerpiece of flowers on two of the tables, and pushed in chairs an inch or two at several. An easy eye wouldn’t have made any adjustments, and none were manifestly needed, but McNeal had never settled for an easy eye.
The ceiling fans, freshly oiled, purred on their lowest setting above. McNeal scanned the ceiling, the walls, the floors, the counters. He nodded to Rochester, who moved to open the door. It was time.
McNeal also quotes to us from his great counselor to a life in bartending, Harry Johnson’s Bartender’s Guide. Here’s an example:
“It is proper, when a person steps up to the bar, for a bartender to set before him a glass of ice-water, and then, in a courteous manner, to find out what he may desire. If mixed drinks should be called for, it is the bartender’s duty to mix and prepare them above the counter, and allow the customers to see the operation; they should be prepared in such a neat, quick, and scientific way as to draw attention. It is also the bartender’s duty to see that everything used with the drinks is perfectly clean, and the glasses are bright and polished.”
“The first rule to be observed by any man acting as bartender is to treat all customers with the utmost respect. No one should make distinctions between patrons on account of their appearance. As long as they behave like gentlemen, they should be treated as such. Therefore, all customers, whether rich or poor, should be served alike, not only in the same respectful manner, but with the same quality of goods; not keeping a special bottle for rich people, and an inferior grade for poorer persons, unless you have one before you who prefers quantity to quality.”
In my first novel, The Man Who Wore Mismatched Socks, Pilot Officer (later Wing Commander) Roger Finlayson makes this assertion from time to time:
“The music’s played by a madman. But we have to dance anyway.”
In the Shrub universe, it is McNeal who most understands this striking assertion. And lives it, too.
In fact, he takes it even further than Finlayson did. For McNeal, it’s not enough to “dance anyway.”
Faced, as we all are, with an absurd and at times seemingly actively malevolent universe, McNeal’s straightforward response is to always dance his best.