And Now You Know the Rest of the Story

For nearly six decades, Paul Harvey would tell you a story. The facts seemed clear. The conclusion seemed obvious. And then he'd pause, lean into the microphone, and say those five words that changed everything.

“And now you know... the rest of the story.”

The genius wasn't the reveal. It was the structure. Harvey understood something that most people never figure out: the same facts, with additional context, produce a completely different conclusion. The surface-level answer is always confident. It's always obvious. And it's almost always wrong.

Which brings us to a conversation I had this week that started simple and ended up here.

The Question

A colleague and I were discussing AI subscriptions—Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, the whole lineup. The question was straightforward:

Easy question. Obvious answer. Right?

Let me tell you a story first.

The Accountant and the Calculator

There's an accountant at a mid-size firm. Good employee. Reliable. Been there six years.

Lately, things have slipped. There have been a few off-by-one errors in client reports. Response times are slower than the rest of the team. The quality isn't what it used to be. Management has noticed. Not enough for a formal conversation yet, but the kind of noticing that precedes one.

The obvious question: should the company provide better tools to help this employee perform? Of course. That's what good employers do. They invest in their people. They provide the resources needed to succeed.

And now... the rest of the story.

The accountant is going through a divorce. Custody battle. Can't sleep. The mental overhead of personal crisis is consuming the cognitive bandwidth that used to go toward catching transposition errors and double-checking formulas.

There is a $20 calculator sitting on the shelf that would eliminate every arithmetic error. There is a $20/month AI subscription that would catch the pattern mistakes, verify the formulas, and serve as a safety net for a brain that's running on four hours of sleep and pure anxiety.

Should the company buy it? Yes. Absolutely. In principle, without question.

Can the employee afford to wait for that to happen?

This isn't a story about corporate policy. It's a story about who has more to lose. The company loses one underperforming accountant. The accountant loses their income, their health insurance, and their ability to survive the personal crisis that's already crushing them.

When the downside is asymmetric, waiting for the “right” answer is the wrong move.

But here's the thing—I almost stopped the conversation there. Surface-level answers are comfortable. They let you pick a side and move on. But Paul Harvey never stopped at the surface. And when you start scratching, you find the same pattern everywhere.

The Mechanic's Toolbox

Mechanics buy their own tools. It's an industry norm so deeply embedded that questioning it feels strange. A seasoned mechanic might have $30,000-50,000 in personal tools. Snap-on trucks make weekly rounds to every shop in America. Obviously the employee's expense.

And now... the rest of the story.

The shop just signed a contract with a local fleet to service their electric vehicles. EVs don't have transmissions to rebuild or exhaust systems to weld. They need high-voltage battery diagnostic scanners, insulated toolsets rated for 1,000 volts, and specialized training certification.

The mechanic's $50,000 toolbox—accumulated over a 20-year career servicing internal combustion engines—is suddenly incomplete. Not because the mechanic failed to invest. Because the job changed.

Sound familiar? “Employees have always managed their own productivity tools.” Sure. But you didn't used to need an AI subscription to keep pace with the employee at the next desk who has one.

The Teacher's Supply Closet

Teachers buy their own classroom supplies. Markers, decorations, supplemental materials, sometimes even furniture. The average teacher spends $500-800 per year out of pocket. We've normalized this so completely that the IRS created a specific deduction for it. Obviously the employee's expense.

And now... the rest of the story.

A teacher in a low-income district is subsidizing a government function with personal income. The district is funded—through taxes, through state allocations, through federal programs—to provide educational resources. The money exists. It just doesn't make it to the classroom.

So the teacher fills the gap. Not because it's their obligation, but because the kids are sitting right there and waiting for a purchase order to work through the system means losing three weeks of instructional time. The teacher absorbs the cost because the alternative—doing nothing while the process catches up—is unbearable when you can see the consequences in real time.

The Nurse's Certification

Nurses are required to maintain certifications and complete continuing education. Some hospitals pay, some don't. When they don't, it's framed as professional development—your career, your investment. Obviously the employee's expense.

And now... the rest of the story.

The hospital requires the ACLS certification to bill insurance at certain rates. The nurse's credential is literally a revenue enabler for the business. Without that certification, the hospital can't staff certain units, can't accept certain patients, can't bill at certain levels.

The nurse who self-funds their $200 ACLS renewal is subsidizing the hospital's ability to generate revenue. The framing is “professional development.” The reality is “business requirement that the employee finances.”

The Truck Driver's CDL

You need a Commercial Driver's License to drive commercially. Some trucking companies pay for training, some don't. When they do pay, it comes with strings—two-year employment commitments, repayment clauses if you leave early. Generous, right?

And now... the rest of the story.

There's a massive driver shortage. The companies that don't pay for CDL training can't fill seats. The ones that do pay aren't being generous—they're making a calculated retention investment. The “free training” is a loan against your future labor. Leave before two years and you owe $5,000-8,000.

The generosity is a retention mechanism, not altruism. The company is buying your labor commitment, not your education.

The Sales Rep's Phone

Sales reps use their personal phones for work calls, client texts, CRM apps. BYOD policies have made this standard. The company saves $800-1,200 per employee per year in device costs. Obviously a personal device.

And now... the rest of the story.

The company now has customer communications flowing through a device they don't control. Client phone numbers, deal notes, text message histories, voicemails with pricing discussions—all living on the rep's personal property. When the rep leaves, that data walks out the door.

The “savings” from not providing a work phone is a data governance nightmare. The company saved $1,000 and accepted unlimited liability. But because “everyone uses their own phone,” nobody questions it.

The Pattern

Every one of these stories follows the same arc:

And that's the exact same pattern playing out with AI subscriptions right now. On the surface, it looks like a personal productivity tool. With full context, the business is capturing most of the value while the employee absorbs the cost and the career risk of not having it.

This Is the AI Lesson, Too

Here's where the meta gets thick.

Paul Harvey's entire format was built on a single insight: incomplete context produces wrong conclusions. You hear the facts, form an opinion, and then new information completely inverts your understanding.

That's not just a radio format. That's the foundational principle of working with AI.

“Should the business pay for AI?” is the “fix the bug” version of the question. It's unanswerable without context. What business? Which employee? What's the work? Who captures the value? What are the security implications? Who's at risk if the tool doesn't exist?

The surface-level answer—whichever side you pick—is always wrong. Because you don't have the rest of the story.

So Who Should Pay?

Both. Neither. It depends.

That's a frustrating answer. Here's a less frustrating framework:

The Self-Preservation Argument Nobody Makes

Let's go back to the accountant.

The policy debate about who should pay for the calculator is intellectually interesting. It makes for good LinkedIn discourse. It fills conference panels.

But the accountant doesn't have time for LinkedIn discourse. The accountant has a client report due Thursday, a custody hearing Friday, and a manager who's starting to document the pattern of errors.

The accountant needs the calculator today.

The employee who buys their own AI subscription isn't making a statement about corporate policy. They're making a statement about self-awareness. They know what they need. They know the stakes. And they know that waiting for someone else to figure it out is a luxury they can't afford.

It's the same reason some people buy their own monitors, ergonomic keyboards, or standing desks even when the company has a procurement process. The process takes eight weeks. Your back hurts now. Your performance review is in six weeks. The math isn't complicated.

Good Day

Paul Harvey would end every broadcast the same way. A simple sign-off that carried the weight of everything that came before it.

He didn't tell you what to think. He gave you the context to think differently. He trusted that once you had the full picture, you'd arrive at the right conclusion on your own.

So here's the full picture:

The mechanic needs new tools because the industry changed, not because they failed. The teacher buys supplies because the system won't and the kids can't wait. The nurse funds certifications that generate revenue for someone else. The truck driver's “free training” is a loan. The sales rep's phone is a data liability nobody's accounting for.

And the accountant going through a divorce, making errors, falling behind?

There's a $20/month tool that fixes all of it. The debate about who should pay is valid. The debate about who can't afford to wait is settled.

And now you know the rest of the story.

Good day.