Opinion: Opportunities exist - with assistance

As I opened my spring 2020 University of Houston College of Engineering magazine, I am reminded of an incident that occurred some time ago.

Bobby, a friend of mine, challenged me to a shoestring tying contest. Bobby tied his shoestring so fast that I was astonished. I just stared at him. I never even got started.

Now you are probably thinking this was when I was a kid. No, picture two 50- to 60-year-old men challenging each other to a shoestring tying contest.

What is incredible is that Bobby only has one arm.

On the cover of the spring magazine was a picture of Faith Malton. She is a one-armed, female, senior civil engineering major.

Having just one arm is very challenging. Try it sometime. Try to open a bottle or zip a zipper. All the things that we do everyday are difficult if you only have one arm.

(Watch the movie “Soul Surfer” and observe the scene where the one-armed main character tries to cut up some fruit.)

But Faith and Bobby look at the challenges differently than we do. They look at them as opportunities to do things differently than two-armed people. Many times, differently means better, as in shoestring tying.

Often, we do the same things the same way over and over again. We never think out of the box.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented businesses with many challenges. One particular industry that has been ravaged by the shutdowns is the restaurant industry.

Waiters, cooks, hostesses, and business owners have lost everything.

Perhaps we can think like Faith and Bobby and look at the challenges as opportunities to discover new ways to conduct business that are better than what we were doing before.

I recently visited with a restaurant owner and was asking how bad has it been for them. He said “Actually, we found out a lot about ourselves. We discovered that our drive-up is so much more efficient than our dine-in that we will wait until the very last minute before we reopen our dining area.”

Another example was when I went to lunch last week. I was a customer of a local restaurant that created an outdoor seating area due to COVID-19. The owner has been quoted as saying that he believes the outdoor area is going to add a whole new experience and ambiance for the customer.

Could there be opportunities for the government to assist the restaurants in opening up new ways to conduct their business? Could the businesses work hand and hand with the governor?

It would be nice for the governor’s office to say “We are going to have to shut down your inside dining, but we have some ideas that I think you are going to like that will expand your business and we are willing to give you some grant money to implement them.”

Just a thought.

Calvin DeWitt is president of Southwest Business Solutions, Inc. in Clovis and a former associate professor of Computer Information Systems at Eastern New Mexico University. Contact him:

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