I'm not a big television watcher in general (unless of course it's a show I'm on), but every once in a while the idiot box actually has some compelling things to teach small business owners.

Those who watch the TV series "Desperate Housewives" on Sunday nights have this season been treated, among other things, to the adventures of Lynette and Tom Scavo, a married couple with five kids who leave the rat race of the advertising world behind to open Scavo's Pizzeria, a local family joint where there are crayons on the table and everybody knows your name (sorry, that's another show, isn't it?).

While the Scavos' adventures in self-employment are far more melodramatic than what most of us experience, the scriptwriters have gotten more than a few details right. Here are a few scenes from recent episodes, and the lessons they teach.

Scene one: Tom, a former high-powered advertising executive, announces to Lynette his dream of opening a neighborhood pizzeria. Lynette, while previously encouraging Tom to pursue his own career goals, is shocked. She expected that Tom would pick something in the corporate or professional world.

A lot of people in the corporate world are unhappy because their loved ones forced them to stick with a job they hated because of the perception that you're nothing if you don't wear a suit and tie to work every day. When choosing an entrepreneurial path, it's important to sit down with your loved ones and get them to buy into your dream. If they do, great. If they don't, you have one of the toughest choices you will ever make in life — either find a new dream, or find a new family. Whichever way you decide, commit yourself 100 percent, and don't look back. Learn to live with the decision you've made (and yourself).

Scene two: Tom is getting the restaurant ready for his grand opening, and wants everything to be perfect. He delegates a last-minute task to Lynette: ordering 50 restaurant chairs. Lynette, distracted, misreads the SKU in the supplier's catalogue and orders 50 high-chairs for infants, which arrive the day before the opening. Frantic, Lynette borrows chairs from all of her neighbors to use in the restaurant until the situation can be corrected. No two chairs are the same.

Perfection is something the small business owner will never achieve. The only law that will never be changed or repealed is Murphy's Law: Everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Mistakes will happen, often embarrassing ones, and there won't always be time to set things right. Sometimes you have to just go with the flow, and come up with a creative way of turning lemons into lemonade.

Be sure to cut yourself (and your errant employees) some slack when mistakes happen. You are always your own toughest critic, and if you get even 90 percent of the way toward your perfect ideal, it's probably a lot more than most of your customers expect. If you run a restaurant, you will be surprised how few people notice (or care about) things like mismatched chairs or wallpaper stains as long as the food and the service are good.

Scene three: Lynette falls in love with the restaurant life and quits her advertising job. Tom hires Lynette as restaurant manager. Lynette immediately begins running things her way. Tom criticizes Lynette in front of the staff. Lynette is furious because she bankrolled the restaurant out of household funds and believes she has a say in how the restaurant is run.

While democracy is generally a great thing, small businesses cannot be run by consensus or committee. Somebody has to be in charge and be accountable for making decisions. I don't know how Scavo's Pizzeria is organized legally, but clearly in accepting Tom's offer to become the restaurant's manager, Lynette chose to act as Tom's employee, not his partner. And an employee has to do things the way the boss wants them, whether she agrees or not. If Lynette had wanted to be Tom's equal partner, she should have gotten a good lawyer and made sure that was written into the contract. While we sympathize with Lynette, Tom is doing the right thing by reining her in and showing the employees who's boss.

Even if you and your spouse are equal partners in a business, you should never air your disagreements in front of the employees. Not only do you lose their respect and confuse them, but you also send the signal that they can play one of you against the other. That's a formula for disaster. Few people will patronize a business where the inmates are in charge of the asylum.

More next week ...

Cliff Ennico ([email protected]) is a syndicated columnist, author and host of the PBS television series Money Hunt. His latest book is Small Business Survival Guide. This column is no substitute for legal, tax or financial advice, which can be furnished only by a qualified professional licensed in your state. To find out more about Cliff Ennico and other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit our Web page at www.creators.com.