Good Advice

Writing this blog has been difficult for me. It stirs up memories best forgotten. I feel so stupid believing and trusting people. Sometimes, it makes me cry. Some nights, I have bad dreams after blogging. What was supposed to be a $12,500 investment almost took everything I owned. But if I save even 1 person from losing money in a business venture or prevent a good human being from being exploited by Pierre, Todd, or Damon, it’s worth every tear.

Pierre kept telling me I needed to be nicer to Todd and the rink employees so we wouldn’t have any issues with them. I had already smiled and joked with those guys. I had given them free food almost every night for months. I had given them a discount on their purchases. I hadn’t done anything except ask them to stop when I found they were stealing from me. I hadn’t reacted when they called me names. In fact, I literally let them treat me like dirt as I smiled and gave them freebees. How do you be nicer than that? After months of this behavior, it became clear to me it wasn’t going to stop unless I stopped it. Pierre hadn’t been any help at all. I was watching my retirement fund disintegrate before my very eyes and I’m supposed to be nicer? So yes, I finally drew the line and put up security cameras and stopped rewarding their bad behavior with free pizza and cookies. These actions in no way make me the bad guy and yet everyone was treating me like I was.

One of the owners of The Great Outdoors Sub Shops remained my mentor the entire time I owned the restaurant. For that, I am eternally grateful. When I discussed these issues with her, she told me to get out as fast as I could. I wanted to, but I was in too deep to just walk away. I truly believed we could make this cafe lucrative with Pierre’s help. And I wanted to recoup some of my money. I had lost so much since Robbie dropped out and Pierre had never put in the cash he had promised from the beginning.

Besides The Great Outdoors, I also asked some questions on one of those free lawyer advice websites. The lawyer who responded didn’t really answer my questions, he just encouraged me to get out as fast as I could. While this advice wasn’t comforting, it told me I wasn’t the crazy person Pierre, Todd, and Damon made me out to be. But what do you do when you’re caught in a riptide of people bent on sucking you dry? Sink or swim?

Too Little Too Late

Todd came into the kitchen to talk to me after we called the police on Will for stealing. During our conversation, he told me he had fired Will and he indicated he had decided not to help himself to our food anymore. He didn’t say it in so many words, but we both knew what he was talking about. He followed his indication by saying he wanted to set an example for his people. I was appalled. We had to call in the police to get the general manager of the building to stop stealing from us. My feeling was he realized his job was on the line if we caught him on camera.

Todd never admitted he was stealing. He never apologized for stealing or helping himself, however you want to soft sell your bad behavior. Todd never offered to pay for what he had taken. He never apologized for setting a poor example for his people. Even after this, he never helped us put a stop to the stealing by fixing the security cameras or coming in late at night to check up on his people or hiring an adult to work late every night. He also never stopped his people from trash talking us to the customers as they vented their anger that we called the police on their friend.

The sad part is an apology wouldn’t fix it anyway. He was already leading by example. All his people saw him help himself and assumed it was ok to take whatever they wanted. The damage was done. People notice what you do. They rarely notice when you stop doing it.

World’s Greatest Dad

As we discussed earlier in this blog, with the exception of Brian (I love Brian for being such a good and honest man in such a dishonest environment), most of the men working for the rink stole from us. Some of them stole everyday. These people were our landlords and had access to a key to our restaurant. Theft escalated when we got our liquor license and had alcohol onsite. We locked as many cabinets as we could, but in my heart I just couldn’t believe we had to protect ourselves against so many people. Doesn’t anyone have morals anymore? We put in one camera and caught someone right away, but the picture was below the neck. So Todd, the perpetrator’s boss, said there was no way to identify the person and consequently did nothing. That’s when we found out the security cameras in the rink were not working and there were no plans to fix them. However, I feel they could have identified the guy if they wanted. I was there until 11:45pm. When I left, the rink was empty except for employees and all the doors entering the rink were locked. The timestamp on the picture was around 12:15am. There were few rink employees on the clock, 1 or 2 that I saw, and only one was wearing coveralls. The picture obviously showed someone in coveralls. Even if that’s not enough to write him up, it’s surely enough to let him know this is a zero tolerance offense and must stop immediately – scare him straight. Todd did nothing. Pierre did nothing.

We put in another camera. Again, we caught someone immediately. I recognized him but didn’t know his name. He had his hand on the beer tap so Todd couldn’t say he was just in the restaurant to get ice. Todd said he wasn’t sure who it was. Really? Todd doesn’t recognize his own employees??? We called the police and filed a report. Todd tried to talk us out of it, saying he would like to take care of it himself. I guess he thought I was stupid enough to believe he would take action after doing nothing in the past. One thing I do know, Todd identified the picture for the police. The kid, Will, was 18 or 19 and steeling beer. He worked in ops, which means he most likely had a master key to all the rinks in the DFW area. Since we filed a police report, Todd had to fire Will. I don’t know if Will got to keep his key. Pierre still had his master key after quitting his job with the local hockey team that owned all the rinks.

Will contacted me several times. He was crying and asking me not to press charges. Then he proceeded to lie to me and say he only took 1 beer. In one weekend, we had multiple pictures of him taking beer and Snapple. So I pressed charges. I was tired of all the lying and stealing. Of course it just made the other employees hate me more and work harder to see us fail – but that’s another story.

A week or so later, a man came to the counter and said he was Will’s dad. I braced myself. I thought he was there to chew me out for pressing charges against his son. I was so wrong. He had to pay Will’s fine so he didn’t feel Will was punished and wanted to know if I would let Will come work for me for 20 hours to make up for stealing. And I should give Will the worst jobs possible. I was shocked. I didn’t really want Will around, but I loved his dad for caring and agreed. What a wonderful dad! And I gave Will the grossest, ickiest jobs possible. After 10 hours he lied and said he couldn’t come back because of school so I called his dad. Will finished out his 20 hours.

Todd chewed me out for making him fire Will for stealing and then hiring Will to work in the restaurant. You can see our landlords lived in rumorville. They were always reacting without checking the facts. Just like we did not sell liquor without a license, we did not hire Will to work for us. Since Todd stole from us too, it probably never occurred to him the kid’s dad would want Will punished for stealing. I was so glad when Will’s 20 hours were up and he was gone. Sadly, this didn’t stop the stealing.

Does Everybody Steal?

When you’re in a position to hire people, you know once in a while you’re going to get someone who steals from you. You set up procedures to make it difficult for them to steal and cameras are a good idea. In this case, I had no idea I was truly entering a den of thieves.

I went to work at different times each day depending on errands and what time I got home the night before. Regularly, I would open the door to find Todd, the building manager, helping himself to whatever he wanted. He never offered to pay. I didn’t say anything because I wanted to keep a good relationship with him and I didn’t think he was taking much. He was our landlord and he was supposed to be recommending us to everyone in the building and to those who called to rent the party rooms, so a good relationship was important. I told Pierre that Todd was stealing from us, but I don’t think Pierre said anything to Todd either. Eventually, we figured out that almost all of the guys that worked for Todd stole from us. The head of Operations was a great guy and we never saw anything that made us think he stole and we never saw anything that indicated any of the women stole from us.

When we rented the space, no one told us every employee working for Todd would have access to a key to our space. Apparently, all Operations employees in all the rinks have a master key that opens every door in every rink. Many of the Ops people are teenagers or young 20’s. That’s a lot of responsibility for a young person – keys to locker rooms, tenants’ spaces, the local hockey team’s autographed memorabilia, executive offices, etc. And the ones who don’t have a master key, have access to tenant keys that are kept behind the front desk. So everyone who worked for our landlord could enter our space when we weren’t there and take whatever they wanted.

Our contract stated that our landlord could only enter our space by appointment or in an emergency. The catch? We had the only ice machine in the building and they needed ice when someone was injured. That’s an emergency, right? Not necessarily. The rink’s procedure was to get a big bowl of ice and divide the ice into small ziplock bags to be kept in their refrigerator/freezer in their office. That way the ice was easy to grab when they needed to treat an injury. It’s very easy to schedule this procedure when we are in the cafe, but some of their employees needed emergency ice almost daily.

As the stealing escalated and we asked our landlord to help us stop it, we found there was no help. And why would there be? You know the employees have seen Todd help himself, so how could he punish them for doing the same thing? We were told the camera security system didn’t work and they had no intention of fixing it. No surprise there. So we had to invest in our own cameras. We finally caught someone on camera and filed charges. That made all his ‘friends’/coworkers hate us. These were people we gave free leftovers almost everyday and discounted everything they bought from us. It was a horrible situation.

I’m a senior citizen and almost everything in the cafe was paid for out of my retirement savings. So basically, these people are stealing from an old woman. Not that they care. And really it doesn’t matter – stealing is WRONG no matter what the circumstances. When the stealing didn’t stop, I finally went to my corporate contact, Damon, to get some help. His response was he couldn’t do anything without hard proof. I wasn’t asking him to fire everyone, just to have one-on-ones to let their people know this was not acceptable and there would be serious consequences when caught. Instead, everyone working for the local hockey team treated me like I had lost my mind and was totally overreacting. And still, Pierre did nothing. Oh yeah, he’s just marketing and he doesn’t have much money invested. I felt so alone.