Bryan Metzger/Business Insider
- Isaac Stein, 31, has been working as a lawyer at the IRS for 3 years.
- He was recently furloughed as a result of the ongoing government shutdown.
- That’s given him more time to pursue a passion project: running a hot dog stand.
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been sent home amid the government shutdown. One of them has been using his newfound free time to sell hot dogs.
“This is self-expression,” Isaac Stein, the 31-year-old owner of “Shyster’s Dogs,” told Business Insider at his hot dog stand in Washington, DC’s NoMa neighborhood. “This is me having artistic fun.”
Stein has a day job: He’s been working for three years as a lawyer at the Internal Revenue Service, where he handles tax regulations around employee benefits. But for the last three weeks, he’s been working as a full-time hot dog vendor on the corner of First and M Street NE.
The hot dog stand idea came to Stein months before the shutdown cleared his schedule. He said that he first made the decision to start the business in June, though it took months to obtain all of the necessary permits. Stein said he invested a “five-figure sum” into buying all of the equipment.
By the time he was ready to go, it was September. He had originally planned to operate the stand outside of work hours, on Thursday and Friday evenings and over the weekend. “To be real, Thursday was a bit ambitious,” Stein said. “It’s hard to function in the office without enough sleep, and I want to be good at my legal job.”
Then, on October 8, he was “furloughed” — essentially suspended from his job until the shutdown ends. That turned his side gig into a nearly full-time job, and he now typically sells hot dogs from noon to 5 p.m. on weekdays.
Stein’s hot dog stand is laden with humor. The name “shyster,” a slang word referring to a deceptive or unethical lawyer,” is about wanting to “bring a laugh to the legal community,” he told Business Insider.
“Part of what I’m doing with my expression here is there are many layers of irony,” Stein said. “One of the layers is that I’m a lawyer, and I’m doing everything correctly. I have all the right permits, and I pay taxes.”
Bryan Metzger/Business Insider
On his menu, he offers the “SHIRT OFF MY BACK” for $1,000. And the menu itself is fairly simple: if you order “The Only Choice,” you’ll get a hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut for $10. If you order “Hot Dog with the Wrong Toppings,” you can have other toppings, such as ketchup — but you’ll be charged more. That option costs $11.
“From a young age, I have wanted to punish people for putting ketchup on a hot dog. It’s utterly mystifying to me as to why someone would want this. But to be commercially viable, you have to have it,” Stein said. “The pricing difference is reflective of incentives: I want people to do it the right way.”
So far, Stein says his hobby has worked out well for him. He’s been serving 40 to 50 customers per day, he said, and has been making $200 to $300 in profit each day. But for him, the hot dog stand has been less about making ends meet and more about taking on a creative project.
“It’s given me a chance to be in the community more,” Stein said. Some of his customers, he said, have very particular orders and have become regulars. “If I can bring that to their life, that makes me really happy.”
Bryan Metzger/Business Insider
Still, Stein said that he’s looking forward to returning to his day job, whenever that may be.
“People who are tax lawyers for the government aren’t doing it for the money,” he said. “Everyone wants to get back to work, because we actually like what we do.”
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