The decision under the counter

A man runs a phone accessories shop on a side street in Ismailia. He opens at ten, closes late, and is busy the whole time. Cases, chargers, screen protectors, a cable for someone who swears the last one broke by itself. He answers suppliers between customers. At the end of the day he is tired, and he has earned it.

For three years he has been turning over a few questions. Whether to move to the main road. Whether to stop selling the cheap chargers that keep coming back and stock only what he would use himself. Whether to start repairing phones, which is what people keep asking him for.

Any one of those choices would matter more than a year of good days at the counter. None of them has been made.

This is not laziness. It is the most normal thing in the world. Work arrives and asks to be done. Decisions do not arrive. They wait quietly under the counter and let you stay busy.

In a large company, someone is paid a great deal to do mostly this one thing: decide. Which line to drop, which city to enter, what to stop. Everyone else does the work. A surprising share of the value sits in the choosing.

Most of us are both people at once, the one who works and the one who ought to decide. The worker wins almost every day, because the worker is louder and the day is full.

His counter will be just as busy tomorrow. The real question is whether, in five years, it will be the same counter.