Making the most of the situation

My mom would have been proud of Dino Redzic and five of his employees at Uncle Paul’s Pizza in New York City. Redzic and crew were caught in the middle of a tough situation­—a hurricane was blowing through town. But rather than letting the situation get the better of them, they made the most of their circumstances. While other businesses closed, they kept the pizza restaurant open and pumping out pizzas.

One of my mom’s admonitions over the years was to make the most of a bad situation. And I think she would have agreed that Redzic and crew did just that.

Uncle Paul’s Pizza is a startup business, less than four months old, located on 46^th Street and Vanderbilt Avenue in NYC. Hurricane Sandy, one of the most devastating storms to hit the East Coast in many years, arrived about the time of a planned grand opening celebration for Uncle Paul’s. Instead of receiving keys to the city in a celebration, the pizzeria remained open as the storm blew in and, according to a Fox Business News story on Wednesday, Redzic and his five employees produced more than 1,000 pizzas, even delivering some.

“In this location, we built our store up from scratch,” Redzic said. “We were stranded, anyway, so it was a pleasure to be open. People need to eat, and we were the only people in the area. Looks like we are again today (Wednesday) as well.”

Most of the orders were picked up at the store, but Redzic said some deliveries were made to Battery Park and Second Avenue. Redzic said he and each of the five employees helping him had been up for more than 30 hours and were planning to keep going. He expressed hope that other employees, who lived in outer boroughs, would soon be able to make it to work.

Until then, he said, he had no plans to slow down.

Circumstances often are something over which we have no control. When those situations occur, it can be easy to bemoan our fate, hold a pity party, or drop into depression. We let our circumstances get us down.

The alternate course, which often is more difficult, is to heed the admonition to make the most of our circumstances. Don’t let them get us down. Redzic and his five employees could easily have shut the door and spent their time crying over the lost business. Instead, they chose to see and seize the opportunity the circumstances presented. They strove to control the situation rather than allowing it to control them.

Many discouraging or disheartening circumstances come our way in life. When we choose to make the most of the circumstances, we may find that they bring with them unexpected opportunity.