On Tuesday, a GoFundMe popped up on Facebook. It was for Lisa, a coach at the McKinney rink. I like to help friends in need, but Lisa was not my friend – not on Facebook and not IRL. In fact, when I had the restaurant she often treated me as though I were inferior and a pain in her side. She didn’t even know me and treated me that way, so I have to think she was influenced by Todd, the General Manager of the building.

The GoFundMe said Lisa was in the hospital for a throat infection and needed money to pay bills. Part of me wanted to help her, but I had questions. First of all, the GoFundMe was started by “Dallas Stars”. It didn’t say who was in charge of the fund and I need to know that before I donate. Many of her fellow employees stole from me so how do I know Lisa will actually get the money. Second, doesn’t her employer (Dallas Stars) provide health insurance, especially in a dangerous job like skating? I know there are always personal expenses even with health insurance, but it all seems a little fishy to me. Why isn’t the GoFundMe from a friend or family member? That would give it more credibility for me. Third, the goal is $10,000. That seems like a lot for someone who should have health insurance and short term disability, maybe even paid vacation and sick time??? I’m probably being too critical since she was never kind to me yet I feel guilty for not donating. I won’t be sending any money to Lisa.

Do you ever wonder where your donations go? I do. Everyone wants your time and your money these days. We work hard for our money and are constantly barraged with donation requests. And there are so many scammers, sometimes it’s hard to know exactly whom you’re dealing with. Fortunately, there are groups out there publishing their research on charities. Look for charities that have a very high percentage of donation distribution to their actual mission. Anyone using 10% or less on administration costs is a good cause for donations. Charitywatch.org is a good resource when investigating a new charity.

I bring this up because something happened that surprised me after I left the bar. The skating rinks were sponsored by Dr Pepper while I was there. I talked about our issues with them in earlier posts. All I want to say here is that I’m sure Dr Pepper paid to have their name in big letters on the sides of all the buildings. I had heard that their contract was ending in a year or so but didn’t think anything of it since I was leaving. Much to my surprise, the new sponsor was Children’s Health. Really? I don’t know how things work, but I’m sure that wasn’t free to Children’s Health. Do donors want their money to go to a billion dollar sports franchise in order to have Children’s Health plastered on the walls of skating rinks? And are they hoping for a lot of injuries to generate income? After all, you need a reason to go to the hospital. You don’t just wake up in the morning and decide to spend money at a hospital. Maybe this is a common thing and I’m out of touch with how things work. I don’t know.

I also do a lot of research on the Unclaimed Property websites of various states and Children’s Health and other hospital systems have thousands and thousands of dollars sitting out there. I guess they never check even though most accountants know about the Unclaimed Property website. I’m sure hospitals use the website regularly because they have to send money to the state if an employee never picks up their last check or a customer doesn’t cash a refund check. Maybe they wouldn’t have to rely on so many donations if they managed their money better. They should check that website regularly. If you’ve never checked it, you should. Even if you’re good with your money, you may have family members who aren’t and you may find lots of money for your family. Check it.

Yes, I watch too much TV. But you know what? You can learn a lot from TV. On Bar Rescue, Jon Taffer mentions fiduciary responsibility from time to time, especially when counseling partner/owners. Curiosity got the best of me and I started googling and reading about fiduciary responsibility. Two big scary words that can be broken down to – a person owes it to their partners, investors, clients, employers, and employees to treat their assets with care, confidentiality, loyalty, obedience, and accounting. Assets can be money, inventory, reputation, people, or just about anything.

If you have read my post “Hire Your Own Accountant”, you’ll know my first question during my fiduciary investigation was whether accountants have a fiduciary responsibility. I found this on the AIPCA website: While an accountant normally is not considered to be a fiduciary to his or her clients, the AICPA Professional Code of Conduct embodies standards of conduct which are closely analogous to a fiduciary relationship—objectivity, integrity, free of conflicts of interest and truthfulness. So my next question was – Is Boamah just a bad CPA or did he betray me in Pierre’s best interest? I will probably never have the answer to that question.

As a partner, Pierre ignored just about every aspect of fiduciary responsibility. If you’ve been reading all my posts, you can see he was not loyal to me (his partner!), he did not protect the bar’s reputation when it came to Todd and Max, he wasn’t accountable as he didn’t even put in his seed money, and he didn’t care to do his marketing job to get butts in the seats. So was Pierre just a bad partner or did he betray his fiduciary responsibility to me intentionally? Well, he still has the bar open so I guess that answers that question.

If you’ve been reading all my posts, you also know I’ve had my share of employees who felt no fiduciary responsibility of their own, stealing from me, refusing to perform the job as trained, etc. However, Kyle the Bartender was exceptional in his fiduciary responsibility. He definitely helped me keep the faith in humanity. If you ever have a business associate like Kyle, do everything possible to keep that relationship in good standing. I miss Kyle.

I had no idea so many drunks own bars. Watching Bar Rescue I see a lot of owners, tenders, and servers drinking, but I’m sure this is really a low percentage compared to the number of owners and employees who don’t drink on the job. In many states, drinking on a bar job is a violation of your liquor license not to mention the liability involved. It’s great to see that these people realize they have a problem and get help. Jon Taffer stages an intervention and does not back down from confrontation. It’s delightful to see the changes Jon instills both physically and emotionally, giving many people a second chance at success.

Sometimes, it bothers me to watch this show because it makes me wish someone had helped me. I picture Jon Taffer standing in Pierre’s face and putting him in his place, explaining his ‘marketing roll’. I picture Jon standing in Todd’s face – who are you going to threaten now Todd??? I picture Jon in Damon’s face with Damon asking what we want from him. Because of course, Damon was totally innocent in all of this. I loved running the bar and making pizzas, but I was no match for Pierre and the Dallas Stars. As you’ve read so far, it was not in the stars for me to have this bar. In fact, I now believe it was predetermined I would be out of the bar business but no one told me until they had all my money.

So why do I watch Bar Rescue? Well even though I see there were some things we could have done better, I see a lot of things that we did right. For a first-time restaurant and bar owner, I did a lot of things right. I owe a lot of that to Kyle the Bartender, mentoring from The Great Outdoors Sub Shop, and Mike, my Sysco representative. They had my back and that makes me feel good. I’d still like to see Jon kick some ass in person, though. That would really make me smile.

I know I’ve touched on this before, but I just can’t stop thinking about it. Every employee who worked in Operations, had a master key that would open every door in every facility. And it was my impression that everyone at corporate had a master key as well. The Front Desk in each facility had a key that would open every door within that facility. I don’t know if it was a master key to all facilities. The reason I know these things? I have used the key at the front desk to open my restaurant. An ops manager at another facility shared with me that all of ops had master keys. Even though Pierre quit his job with corporate, they didn’t take his master key upon termination, as he gave Kyle and me copies of the master key.

For a long time, I was just thinking about all the opportunities these keys gave employees to steal from me, other tenants, and from corporate/all facilities. I was just thinking about them stealing physical items. The reason I can’t stop thinking about it now is because my scope has changed. If corporate is that nonchalant about their keys, how many executives have their passwords on their desks? Employees could have access to financials, payroll, schedules, everything. Such a huge risk with such a small object. And you’d think they would have been concerned to hear their people were stealing from me, because that’s a big red flag of deeper problems. Now, I’m really wondering who audits a hockey league and why this hasn’t come up before? And maybe it has by now. It’s been a few years since I was involved and all of this could have changed by now. Let this be a big lesson to you as you build your business. Every little thing can be fiscally significant.

They always say to get your own attorney, but I’ve never heard anyone suggest you get your own CPA. Boamah did Pierre’s personal taxes and was the CPA for various restaurants. He sounded like he was quite experienced in restaurant taxes so I was happy to have him as our CPA. So you know I was disappointed when he paid our taxes and fees late. I always made sure he knew it was up to him to pay any and all late fees as I always made sure we had the money in our account at the time taxes were due. There was no reason for him to ever pay our sales tax or liquor tax late. And now that I know more, I can’t help but wonder if that was another intentional hurdle to success orchestrated by Pierre.

A couple weeks ago, I asked a CPA to look at the financial reports Pierre had sent me. If the restaurant made money 3 years after I left, we agreed he would send me a percentage. I wanted to find out if the CPA saw anything unusual that might suggest Pierre was not completely honest and owed me more money. I tend to question everything now that I see Pierre for who he really is. The CPA was kind enough to look at everything, including my reports when I was running the restaurant and my taxes. Boamah did the restaurant taxes and sent us the forms. Then I did my own taxes. It really bothered me that Pierre got to take 1/3 of my losses in the restaurant when he hadn’t even put in his seed money. But I trusted that Boamah knew what he was doing.

My new CPA taught me something. Pierre was not entitled to take those losses. Boamah should have set up a basis using the money each of us invested in the business and adjusted it each year. My basis would have grown each year with the money I was putting into the business and Pierre’s would not. His basis would have stayed the same as he was not putting in money to get the business going. Well, too late now but at least I know for the future to get my own CPA. And now you know, too. It’s a good lesson in accounting. Unfortunately the later reports Pierre sent were so generic and summarized, we couldn’t tell if Pierre was being honest with me. The moral of this story is to always hire your own CPA to do your taxes. They probably would have caught this issue the first year and we would have hired a new CPA for the restaurant.

Well maybe not just covid, but I’m definitely a better tipper now. After the restaurant, I intended to go back to IT and a regular office job. No one would hire me. I couldn’t believe it. I had been in IT over 30 years and couldn’t get a job. I started applying for everything I could find – not just IT. I couldn’t even get Walmart to hire me as a cashier. Was it an age thing? I have no idea.

So, I started driving for Uber. I had to have some kind of income until I got a real job. I found out very quickly, people in this area are not good tippers. Most don’t tip at all, even though they all give you a 5-star rating. And once Uber added tipping to the app, it just gave people an excuse not to tip. They could look you right in the eyes and tell you they’d take care of you in the app and then never add a tip. The problem with Uber was you would end up driving all over town, sometimes 60 miles, to drop someone off and then have to deadhead back home. You don’t make much money for that and with no tip, it’s not cost effective.

One day, a rider told me about Amazon Flex. I looked into that and started delivering for Amazon. This was a little more cost effective. Your neighborhood of deliveries for the day might be a little far from home, but all the packages were in the same area and then you drive home. I delivered packages and groceries for Amazon. One Fall, I was expecting to pick up a lot of deliveries for the Christmas season and there was nothing. At first, I thought I just wasn’t fast enough and other people were getting all the shifts. Then I found an article in a small newspaper online, that said Amazon had decided to hire a delivery company to take the excess deliveries instead of Flex. I guess Amazon didn’t feel any obligation to tell their dedicated delivery people. I found other things to do, but I felt bad for all those people who relied on Amazon deliveries to pay bills. How unfair of Amazon not to warn people so they could find something else. The next Fall, Amazon was begging drivers to come back. I didn’t go back. That’s also when I found out Amazon had been keeping all the tips from the grocery deliveries. How greedy does a company have to be to steal tips from people trying to keep their electricity on??? The FTC came in and I finally got my tips about 2 months ago – from deliveries I made before 2019. At the time I earned those tips, I really needed the money – AND AMAZON DIDN’T NEED THE MONEY BUT KEPT IT ANYWAY.

I decided to try delivering for Favor. They deliver anything but people. So you may go to the store or a restaurant for people, buy what they entered into the app, and then take it to their house or office. Favor pays you $2 per delivery and the minimum tip is $2. I did a lot of $4 deliveries. Like I said, people in this area don’t tip well. $4 isn’t even 2 gallons of gas, let alone wear and tear on your car and your time driving, standing in line, and delivering. Several times, I would drive to a restaurant and it was closed. So the customer would cancel the delivery and not tip me. I got $0 for driving to the restaurant. There were even times when the restaurant would give me something extra for the customer because they were a regular. I never kept the extra; I always passed it along to the customer as requested. Still, only a $2 tip. Really??? Needless to say, I didn’t last long with Favor. It was ridiculous to do that much work for so little money.

Once I got a real job, I became a much better tipper. I really understood what drivers were going through. Plus, delivery is different now. It used to be that restaurants would only deliver within a 2-4 mile radius so the driver wasn’t spending much on gas and tires. Now, the driver could be coming from 10+ miles to pick up what you need and then driving all the way to your house. I tell all my friends, you pay your waitstaff 15-20% and they don’t even deliver to your house. Tip at least 15-20%. Now with Covid, I often tip more than that. I really appreciate that restaurants are trying to stay open and pay their people when it would be so much easier and cheaper to close.

Honestly if you don’t want to take care of your delivery person, get in your car and get it yourself. Delivery is not charity work.

Abusers, Con Men, and Criminals work very hard to quiet the people around them. They threaten and bully people to keep their mouths shut. Hiding abuse, fraud, and felony allows the perpetrator to continue their lifestyle. If you are in a relationship like this, find a safe way out or a safe way to tell someone what’s going on. Never threaten the person or announce your exit. I guess I watch too much of the ID channel, but too many women are getting hurt or killed from bad relationships. I want everyone out there to find a family shelter and get there safely. It will be difficult for a while, but everyone deserves a better life free of abuse and fear.

I think about this when men like Todd and Pierre threaten me. It makes me think their actions were intentionally planned to defraud me. I don’t want to believe they could be that mean to take advantage of me (a disabled senior citizen) but why else would they try to silence me? If they didn’t do anything wrong, there would be no reason to stop me from telling my story. There would be no reason for them to stop me from contacting their other business associates to see if they were satisfied with Todd’s or Pierre’s services. Silence usually means someone has something to hide.

In one of my earlier posts, I talked about Sean. I really liked him and I thought he was getting better about his work. Then one day the facade came crashing down. Sean had been stealing from our customers. Some of them were close friends of his family and yet he stole from them. I had to fire Sean. His parents promised Sean would get another job and pay me back. I spent hours tracking down the various thefts and getting credit card numbers so I could repay the stolen money. Sean never sent me a penny. I texted him and his parents a few times, but no one felt the need to pay me back. I was very disappointed. Sean seemed like such a good kid before we discovered the theft. His parents were both former military and now worked in the health care industry. They all seemed like such a stand-up family.

Well, it’s been a few years since I’ve seen Sean. I’ve often thought his conscience would kick in as he matured and he would pay me back. When I was unemployed and really needed the money, I hoped he would send money almost everyday. But there was nothing. No help to get me through the hard times. Sean came to mind yesterday. So, I decided to google him; just to see what kinds of things he was posting on social media. Much to my surprise, one of the search results was ‘State of Texas vs Sean’. I couldn’t believe my eyes. When I opened the entry, it said details were not available, but it did say 3rd degree felony. WTH! Then I looked at some of his twitter posts. His background photo was stacks of $100 bills. It made me feel like he was worshiping money and didn’t mind breaking the law to get it. All this time, I had imagined Sean turning his life around for the better. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Stars on Ice was here recently. I wanted to go and see Kurt Browning. He’s such an amazing skater and no-one does footwork like Kurt and Scott Hamilton. I’m thinking Kurt may not be touring much longer and I love to watch him in person.

I actually got to meet Kurt once. He was here for a Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Dan Hollander always plays Santa Claus for the tree lighting and I used to take Dan cookies for after the show. Well, one year I missed Dan after the show but Kurt was still by the ice. I chatted with Kurt for a few minutes and told him about the cookies. Kurt said he would be meeting Dan for dinner so I gave the cookies to Kurt. Did Kurt give the cookies to Dan? I don’t know and never will. I’m just glad someone enjoyed the homemade cookies. While I was talking to Kurt, this pretty girl came up and started tapping Kurt on the shoulder. She wanted a picture with him. He turned to her and so politely said he would be with her in a minute, as soon as he finished his conversation with me. She was not exactly patient. I was so embarrassed and to this day I hope Kurt doesn’t think of Texans as being as rude as that woman was.

But I digress; back on point. I wanted to see Kurt skate last week. So I called a number of people to see if they were going to Stars on Ice and could we go together. I even called some people I hadn’t seen in a while. No one was going. So I didn’t go. It’s not that I didn’t want to go alone. It’s that I can’t walk into a StarCenter alone. The performance was not in the same building where I had my restaurant, but close enough to bring back all the terrible memories of the StarCenter employees bullying me and stealing from me. And I don’t really want to spend my money with the Dallas Stars. They’ve already taken enough from me – physically, mentally, and financially.