The Busboy Paradox

When "Fixing It" Breaks It

Author

R.J. A.
July 17, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Table of Contents

"If I am not fired that night because of you and your thoughtless, stupid, insensitive remarks, it would have been me. You saved my life." - Antonio (busboy)

tl;dr

Trying to fix a mess can make the mess. If you don’t understand the system, your solution might be the spark that lights the fire.

Previously on Seinfeld

In The Busboy (S2, E12), George spots a menu too close to a candle and rats out the restaurant’s busboy. The guy gets fired. Elaine jokes she’ll never eat there again.

Trying to make amends, George and Kramer visit the busboy and accidentally let his cat out. Later, the busboy returns to thank George: the new guy who replaced him? Killed in a gas explosion.

Meanwhile, Elaine tries to boot her clingy boyfriend back to Seattle, but traffic traps him in New York… long enough to get into a hallway brawl with the busboy.

Intentions? Good. Outcomes? Catastrophic.

Yada Yada Insight

Every founder has a “busboy moment.”

You see a problem. You step in. You try to help.

But like George at dinner, you’re reacting to surface signals, not the full system. And what starts as a well-meaning intervention can spiral into something worse: a broken process, lost trust, or a figurative (sometimes literal) explosion.

You fire the vendor who missed a deadline… only to find they were the only one holding the backend together.

You “fix” your pricing model overnight… and unravel the tightly packed system you didn’t know was duct-taped together. (Remember the moving van? Too close for comfort.)

You delegate a cleanup to a contractor… and lose your best customer in the process.

The danger isn’t in trying to help. It’s in helping without understanding the consequences.

Founders love to play hero. But real leadership means knowing when to pause, probe, and not pull the lever - at least not alone. George got lucky. You probably won’t.

Sometimes, the best move is restraint. Other times, it’s a phone call before you make one.

Because the moment you say, “Let me just fix this real quick…” is usually when the cat gets out.

Unlocking the Vault

The “Fixer’s Regret” Rulebook

Before you make your next “helpful” move, run it through this five-step check:

  1. Feel the urge? Freeze.

    That instinct to fix is a red flag. Pause. Ask what you really know about the problem.

  2. Map the blast radius.

    Who else touches this process? What else could break? Trace the threads before you tug.

  3. Don’t wing it solo.

    Ask your ops lead. Slack your CFO. Or bring in someone who’s solved it before. Because we’ve seen what happens when you let Kramer pick the vendors…

  4. Set a rollback point.

    If this change backfires, how do you undo it? Build the parachute before you jump.

  5. Fix the system, not the symptom.

    A fire hazard isn’t always a candle problem - it might be your entire table setup.

Helpful doesn’t mean heroic. Stay curious. Stay careful. And if you’re helping a friend, make sure it’s not one of those ‘friends with deliverables.’

Want to fix your ops without burning the place down?

I help founders clean up their finances and ops without surprise explosions.

No cats, no chaos.

Meme of the Week

When you tried to ‘clean up the numbers real quick’ and now the model’s broken, your ops lead’s on PTO, and your inbox is on fire.👇

Let’s Catch Up at Monk’s

🔥 The Heart Attack Playbook – Finding clarity when everything’s on fire

🚪 Too Close for Comfort – When your ops are packed tighter than your moving van

🤝 Friends with Deliverables – Delegation without destruction

💸 Want $500 from Ramp? Use this link — no yada yada.

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