How Many Sides to a Coin?

BY: CHAYA BLUSTEIN

If I had to write a job description for this position, I honestly wouldn’t know what to write.

It includes everything from coaching a crowd through a crisis (think fires, unexpected power outages, storms,) being a handyman on a moment’s notice, collecting and budgeting money, and mediating fights between neighbors.

Oh, and of course, actually managing the bungalow colony on a day-to-day basis. Which, on a rainy day like today, is fairly quiet and simple.

Everyone hates rainy days in the bungalow colony, and I don’t blame them. All the kids are cooped up inside and the glorious sunshine we came here to enjoy is nowhere to be seen.

But I’m enjoying this opportunity to have a quiet breakfast with my family, as nobody’s expecting anything to get done in the rain anyway. None of the maintenance men need supervision, because nothing’s getting fixed now, and if a washing machine is broken in the laundry room, I won’t know about it because no one’s doing laundry in this weather anyway.

“It’s dewishes!” little Suri announces as my wife feeds her bits of the sunny side egg. She beams when everyone chuckles.

“Who wants to go jump in the puddles after breakfast?” my wife Kreindy offers the kids. The cheers that meet her question give her the answer – everyone wants to go jump in the mud puddles.

Raincoats and umbrellas, rain boots and sweaters for the cold come out of the boxes under the bunkbeds, and the kids get outfitted in their gear. They’ll be thoroughly splashed up before day camp at this rate, but Kreindy’s easygoing enough about these things.

“Tatty, can I get a ride on your golf cart to day camp?” Sruly asks. He’s too big for jumping in mud puddles.

“Sure,” I say generously. Being the children of the bungalow colony manager means getting golf cart trips often enough for it to lose its excitement. But staying out of the rain and mud is definitely a perk.

Of course, once Sruly thinks of the idea, none of the other kids want to be left behind, so it looks like I’m on chauffeur duty this morning.

The golf cart squelches through the mud, which splatters over the wheels and sides. This vehicle is going to need a good cleaning after the rain is over.

After my last day camp run, I start heading back to my bungalow. As I rev the engine, I see Shmili Green heading in my direction.

My heart falls a little.

Shmili Green is my boss, the owner of this bungalow colony. Don’t ask me why I ever took a job managing a colony where the owner takes a bungalow on premises, because it’s not fun having my boss around to rate my performance all the time.

“Yoeli, what’s doing?” he calls out, walking over to me with his hands in his pocket.

“Good, Baruch Hashem,” I say. “Here, want a ride in the golf cart?”

Shmili swings himself into the seat near me, uncomfortably close.

“Such a rain,” he remarks conversationally. “We’ll have flooding from here to tomorrow with this rain.”

“Nah,” I say. “This rain is nothing. It’s not gonna flood anything.”

Shmili grunts without answering, and he points out to the end field, the vast grassy area past the circle of bungalows.

“Let’s go check out what that field is up to,” he says.

I hit the pedal just a little too hard and send us shooting to the middle of the field, the mud splashing all the way up to the windshield.

Good thing this golf cart comes with some kind of windshield.

I ease off and start cruising. “Pretty wet,” I concede.

“Nu, Yoeli,” Shmili says, cutting straight to the chase, “the summer is almost over. When is everyone here going to pay up?”

“There’s still two weeks left till the end of the summer, don’t be so worried,” I say languidly. He knows I like to be chilled and I don’t like asking people for the money. We have a really good crowd here in the colony, and I know everyone is going to pay up eventually. Even if it takes until the middle of the winter.

Shmili purses his lips. He’s looking at the field, but he obviously couldn’t care less about how muddy it is.

He looks stressed for some reason, but I can’t imagine why. Before the season even starts, everyone pays a huge deposit just to get to come up. A lot of the renters pay up fully then, too. What’s left is a small percent of his total income.

Shmili knows I hate going around and collecting the balance from people while they’re still enjoying their summer vacation. I mamash take away all the fun just by driving up to their bungalow. There’s no reason why the final collection can’t wait until the last week of the summer.

“Look, it’s Thursday, and it’s raining. Between both of those reasons you should be able to find everyone at home.”

“True,” I concede, still puzzled. But Shmili looks determined. If I want to make sure no one leaves before their balance is fully paid up I really should start making the rounds now. He’s right. There goes my rainy vacation. I turn the golf cart around and head back into the bungalow colony proper.

“Look, you’re a very good manager,” Shmili offers as I near his bungalow. “But you can’t be so scared of asking people for money. You could think you were schnorring, or something. It’s not such a big deal. You don’t have to feel so bad for this one and that one that they can’t really afford this summer vacation and you’re nebach taking the money from them. They wanted to come? Now they need to pay up.”

Shmili jumps down agilely from the golf cart seat.

He waves, “Hatzlucha,” and sticks his hands back in his pockets as he walks back to his bungalow.

Shmili’s really right. These people owe him the money, having enjoyed his beautiful bungalows for nearly two months now. Our bungalow colony doesn’t sell any of the bungalows, everyone’s renters, so that’s a lot of rent collection to take care of.

For some reason though, I just can’t picture starting with Goldman, who has 12 kids and needs to send most of them to camp, plus I know he just made chasunah. The guy works like a horse at his supermarket overseer job, but still, how much money can he make? So I mentally scroll through the names of people as I drive slowly through the bungalow colony and pass screen door after screen door.

Tillerman! That’s who I’ll start with. He’s a successful realtor, she works for some government special ed agency. I think they’re pretty well-off. If I can cross the first family off the list right away it will be great.

I can probably knock right now, because Tillerman has a flexible schedule with his realty job, so he’s usually up in the country already Wednesday night, unless he has a showing.

Sure enough, Tillerman opens the door himself when I knock, and he looks like he’s been hanging around over a coffee.

“Hey, Yossi, want to let me in?” I say in the friendliest tone I can manage. But the darkness that settles into his eyes as soon as he sees me tells me he knows exactly what I’m here for…and that he has little interest in my errand.

“What are you here for?” he asks suspiciously from the other side of the screen door.

“Umm, you know, the summer’s finishing, so I wanted to ask-“

“You want my money?” Tillerman demands. “I don’t have the cash yet. I’ll pay next week. Tell Shmili to wait a little longer, okay?”

“You know, the season is almost over,” I try lamely, but Tillerman’s direct approach has left me winded. What’s up with the guy?

“Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna pay, just give me a little time to put everything together. You’re too nervous about money, Yoeli. Stop it. You know I’m good for the money.”

I shrug. “As long as you know how much you need to still pay,” I say.

Tillerman nods, and I wave him goodbye. So there was one fruitless endeavor to report to Shmili about. One day I would get an assistant to handle this. I could manage a bungalow colony better than anyone else, but when it comes to collecting money, I’m just not made for it.

My heart’s not in it as I make a few more attempts to meet with late payers. Some are not home, others fob me off, more politely than Tillerman though.

I feel sympathy for all of them. And when I come home, I feel mostly resentment. To Shmili Green, for being so busy with collecting the money right now, when there’s still a nice amount of time left to the summer, and to Tillerman, for showering me with his blunt words.

So what if it sometimes takes until the middle of the winter for me to get everyone’s full payment? I always get Shmili the money in the end. And Tillerman could have been nicer than that. If he’s paying already, let him pay up now, and let him be nice about it. Did he accuse me of being nervous about money? Here were two people who had no reason in the world to stress about money and look at their behavior in this situation.

I come home exhausted, although I didn’t do any work today. ***

Shmili Green speaks:

Yoeli’s a great manager, he really is. But when you’re not the boss, no matter how much you crunch the numbers, you never know how much money the owner is really making.

There’s a huge income coming in from the rental bungalows every year, but the expenses eat away at like 85% of it. Sometimes I even wonder if it’s still worth it financially. But I love the atmosphere that this cozy, non-pressured bungalow colony has, unlike so many others that have social pressure through the roof. My family enjoys it, I enjoy it, and for two months of the year it’s not a bad income. The lump of cash that comes in helps me with the rest of my businesses.

That’s why I needed Yoeli to collect the money already. I applied for financing for a big project recently, but so far my application was rejected. If I could only get all the outstanding payments from this bungalow colony together now, I wouldn’t the financing so badly. I know Yoeli hates when I pressure him to get the money together, but I really didn’t have a choice. I need the cash.

I saw by the look on his face that he thinks I’m just money-hungry. Here he knows how many digits the profit of the bungalow colony is, and I’m running after every last penny. He thinks he knows the whole story, but he really doesn’t. And I can’t tell him, because I can’t have anyone knowing that I’m a shtickel strapped for cash right now.

I wish he would just trust me, after all these years working together, that I’m not pushing him for nothing. ***

Pinchas Tillerman speaks: Why did Yoeli have to pick today of all days to come to me? I knew right away he was going to ask about money. It’s been that kind of day. I already regretted reserving my bungalow again a few months ago, but I didn’t want to cancel. Mindy needed the vacation really badly.

But I knew already then that things weren’t looking so good. I think I’m good at what I do, but when you get paid a commission-based only salary, you have to be the best. And with the amount of closings I had this year, I was definitely not the best. But it wasn’t my fault. Our little Bruchi was born three months early in the middle of the winter. Taking care of a preemie is a full-time job, so Mindy had to quit what she was doing. And while she was busy with Bruchi all the time, guess who was taking care of the rest of the kids?

There are so many organizations out there, and a bunch of them were really amazing at giving us tons of help. But none of them can compensate for losing two salaries just at a time when our expenses soared higher than ever.

Still, I didn’t want to take the country away from Mindy and the kids after such a hard year. And based on the hints I dropped between the lines, my father-in-law offered to help us out as well.

Either way, I was hoping this was just a temporary stage. We’d eaten up our savings, but next year Mindy would go back to work, now that Bruchi was doing so well. I also decided to look for a non-commissionbased job, so that I would know that when I worked, I got paid. It was too hard to live on commission alone anymore.

But just today, Mindy had been told that her job was no longer available. They were very sorry, but they didn’t have another job to offer her.

And when I tried to call the recruiter who’d helped me apply for a new job, he told me that the position I’d applied for had been filled too.

So when Yoeli came to ask for the money, I wasn’t too excited to talk to him about it. It’s a pity he came today.

Yoeli’s not a bad guy, though. I’m sure he realizes why I acted like that. ***

Yoeli speaks:

“You were out for a while,” Kreindy says when I walk into the kitchen.

I tell her the whole story, trying to disguise details so it isn’t lashon hara.

“Nebach, they’re both probably so pressured about money,” Kreindy says right away, and I realize she must be right, even if I don’t know why.

“It’s a mazel that you were the one asking for the money,” Kreindy says. “Imagine if Green would have asked this guy for money, and they’re both so stressed out about money already. A disaster! Like this, you were the middleman, and both of them took out their stress on you.”

I chuckle. “So now being a manager means I’m a punching bag also?” I ask in jest. Kreindy doesn’t laugh. “No, really,” she says. “Everyone has a story, especially when it comes to money.”

I nod thoughtfully. I should have realized right away that they both were stressed out for a reason, but I was happy Kreindy had pointed it out. There are two sides to every coin, and so many more to every person’s story. •

Photo Credit: JDN

E: info@jdnmail.com

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טסערק לערואלב הרות רפס תסנכה Hachnusas Seifer Torah in Laurel Crest Bungalow Colony

ירטנאקב החונמב םילהעצ ץ”מוד צ”הגה Tzehlim Dayen in Country

ליווסרענרעטב אווארבמאדמ ר”ומדא ק”כ Dombrova Rebbe in Tannersville

ואלעסיטנאמב ק”שצומ הכלמ הולמב ב”הרא וואנישמאמ ר”ומדא ק”כ Amshinov Rebbe By Melavah Malke Motzei Shabbos in Monticello

ירטנאקב החונמב ץיוואנרעשטמ ר”ומדא ק”כ Chernovitz Rebbe in Country

ןאשיטלאפ - ןארפאש תיבב הוצמ רבה תחמש Bar Mitzvah in Courts of Shopron and Faltishan

שטאקנומ םולשו םייח הנחמב רוקיבב שטאקנוממ ר”ומדא ק”כ Minkatch Rebbe visits Camp Chaim Veshalom Minkatch

ליווסרענרעטב אצילוסמ ר”ומדא ק”כ Sulitza Rebbe in Tannersville

Photo Credit: JDN

E: info@jdnmail.com

ירטנאקב 45-בובאב ק”דבא צ”הגה Bobov-45 Rov in country

ירטנאקב אקניפס יבצ לאומש תיבמ ר”ומדא ק”כ Beis Shmiel Tzvi Spinka Rebbe in Country

סנאמשיילפב דאווקיעל ןעלוקסמ ר”ומדא ק”כ Skulen Lakewood Rebbe in Fleischmans