At 11:58, right before the countdown, Jasmine stood up on a lawn chair and said she had a resolution to announce, and her grandfather Roy, who never says ten words at a party, handed her a folded business card from his wallet, and Blake stood there in his quarter-zip sure he had already won the night.
Jasmine held the card up. It was her own. New. It said Jasmine, and under her name it said Regional Manager, and under that a district number covering nine stores across three counties.
The company had watched the girl who ran her rural store almost single-handed, who never missed a shift on those county roads, whose store had the lowest shrink and the highest morale in the whole region, and they had promoted her over people twice her age to run nine stores. Roy had been keeping the card in his wallet for two weeks, waiting, because Jasmine wanted to tell it at midnight, in front of everybody, on her own terms.
My granddaughter was not the punchline CEO of one dollar store, she had just been handed nine of them and a district of her own at twenty-nine, because doing the humble job better than anyone is exactly how you stop having a humble job.
Blake, private equity, quarter-zip at a fish fry, actually said, wait, seriously? Nine stores? Thats a real P and L, cuz, thats, honestly thats impressive. And he meant it, the way his kind means it when they finally see real numbers.
Jasmine just smiled and said, Happy New Year, Blake. Somebody has got to sell the off-brand Tide. Turns out it is nine stores worth now. And then the countdown hit zero and the whole yard cheered, and I do not think it was only for the new year.
Roy put his wallet away with the smallest grin. Jasmine drove her hour of county roads back to her store on January second, only now eight more stores answer to her, and she still knows every one of her cashiers by name, because that is the thing Blake will never learn in private equity, and the thing that got my granddaughter the card in the first place.