Confessions of a "Woman-Owned Business" Owner

How I learned to love quotas.

Tama Starr from the July 2004 issue

(Page 3 of 4)

So what was left for them to administrate but my attitude?

Which was sorely tried. I felt like a criminal waiting to be discovered. The whole setup bore an unfortunate resemblance to a parole board hearing.

I knew I was a fraud, participating in a charade for which Adam Smith should have ordered the whole lot of us taken out and shot. At the same time, I was taking lightly the principles that provided not only their livelihood but the justification for their existence. Trapped between my conscience and the wrath of scorned bureaucrats, my future appeared foreshortened.

Still, the first part of the meeting reduced me to a con-fused state of complacency. I'm used to competing for jobs, not being helped over the finish line and shown how to fill out payment requisitions. The nice people explained the advantages of being a WOB in such a way that it hardly seemed a boondoggle. After all, they told me, the contractor has to be able to perform the work; getting one's company on "approved vendor" lists is no different from any other form of marketing. Marketing, they explained, is the use of various methodologies to promote one's products or services. They paused for questions.

I'm familiar with the concept of marketing, I told them.

Oh yes, they said, recalling my hundred years in the sign business. They were amazed, they said, by the age of my company. The vast majority of WOBs and MBEs, they told me, are start-ups.

"You don't say," I said. Lulled by all the baby talk, I failed to see where this might be going.

Then came the stumper.

"Why didn't you do this before?" one of them asked me.

"Do what?" I asked, feeling the trap closing.

"You could have applied for this program nine years ago," she said -- rather menacingly, I thought. "Why did you wait until now?" Six expectant pairs of eyes, the whole Rainbow Inquisition, awaited my answer.

That's it, I thought. The jig is up. I'm busted. Trapped. The word will go out to all the banks, and I'll never get another bank job. Or a letter of credit. Or an ATM card. How will I explain this to Jimmy and the boys in the shop?

Then, revelation! I know what I'll do, I thought: I'll come clean. Tell the truth. Throw myself on their mercy. (They may like that.)

"In the past, I was philosophically opposed to it," I admitted carefully.

"And now?"

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Pingback| 10.28.09 @ 2:38AM

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…guilty to charges of Medi-Cal fraud. A third laboratory owner, Zubair Younis, 42, of Brooklyn, N.Y., is being sought on a felony warrant." UPI is almost certainly a Minority and “ Woman-Owned” Business Enterprise (I say "almost certainly" because I haven't been able to confirm that UPI is registered in a state as such—and that may be because it is being delisted).…

Pingback| 10.28.09 @ 9:51AM

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…after pleading guilty to charges of Medi-Cal fraud. A third laboratory owner, Zubair Younis, 42, of Brooklyn, N.Y., is being sought on a felony warrant.” UPI is almost certainly a Minority and “ Woman-Owned” Business Enterprise (I say “almost certainly” because I haven’t been able to confirm that UPI is registered in a state as such—and that may be because it is being delisted).…