Where Your Hockey Ticket Money Doesn’t Go

As you’ve read in previous posts, Todd stole from us a lot. And not just inventory. Sometimes I would come to work and the bar would be full of uniforms and children. Todd never asked if they could use our area for their team kickoff. This was a violation of our contract, which stated we had exclusive rights to the cafe and bar area and our landlords could only enter to service it, inspect it, or in an emergency. And they were supposed to give us fair notice. Obviously, they didn’t care about our business, our contract, or the fact that we might have a party booked, etc.

One day, they actually asked to use the bar area as they had overbooked their party rooms. I’m guessing they asked because the parties were at a time when we would already be there so they couldn’t sneak in and just use the room. I think they charge $50 to rent their party rooms for a couple hours. So I agreed to host their parties, but I told them I wanted the $50 fees they were charging. They agreed but never paid. Here’s a local hockey team that makes millions in ticket sales and they never paid the $100 invoice I sent. I don’t know if that bothers you, spending your hard earned money to support your local hockey team and then they screw whomever they can. I just wanted you to know how they handle their business and your money. You’d think they would want us to be successful and continue to pay them rent but they just steal and steal and steal. I often wonder what 561 thinks about this team he’s so proud of hiring a bunch narcissistic thieves.

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.

Worst Managed Rink in the World

Pierre taught lessons in this building at least once a week, so I trusted him when he said opening the cafe was a good opportunity and this was the best facility in the chain. He also reminded me regularly that Todd was never around and certainly not trustworthy. Like I have said before, I had no idea how bad it could really be.

It’s true Todd wasn’t around much. I was there all day everyday and I hardly ever saw him. On one side, that’s a good thing because he was very disrespectful of me, his tenant. However, there was also a downside to his absence. During the day, he had some women running the show. They may not have smiled a lot, but they were very professional and knew their jobs. Evenings and weekends, the kids took over. They may have looked like adults, late teens and early 20s, but calamity reigned. These guys sat with their backs to the front desk and chatted most of their shift. This band of miscreants wasn’t welcoming or helpful. They didn’t enforce the rules or take care of business – and many of them stole from our cafe.

Max, the ringleader, would call me names and tell parents not to buy from us because I was such a bitch. I don’t think he ever stole from us, but not sure about that. (Your landlord should never campaign against your business.) I brought this to corporate’s attention, but Max was not punished and later he was promoted, and the harassment continued. One night someone vomited in the lobby and there was a trail leading into the bathroom. People had to step over it all evening because the employees didn’t feel like cleaning it up and there was no adult working to teach them to do the right thing. I brought this up with corporate, but it continued to happen. Who wants to buy food when there’s vomit on the floor? And some of the boys stole from us after we closed for the evening.

It’s truly heartbreaking when you give people free leftovers almost everyday and a discount on everything they buy, just to be treated like dirt. My mistake here was not hanging out in the lobby at various times of day and talking to people who were there regularly. At this point I felt trapped in hell. How can your landlord be so dedicated to your failure?

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.

Kyle Joins the Team

The best thing that Pierre did was introduce us to Kyle. Kyle was the bartender at the Farmers Branch rink. He had a lot of restaurant experience and was a hard worker. We offered him a job, but he turned us down. It would have been a much longer commute to our restaurant and he was still going to college.

Fortunately, Kyle was willing to give us some much needed advice. We opened the restaurant in such a hurry, we didn’t have adequate procedures in place to protect our inventory and our money. Kyle was instrumental in designing our bar setup, recommending food prep procedures, and creating more money handling procedures.

During all this, we lost our first employee. She quit the day we told her about the new money handling procedures. Turns out she was robbing us blind and padding her time card. I was already suspicious and this confirmed my fears. I was really bummed because she was a great worker when she was there. Dawnell was a good friend of Robbie’s and even lived with him and his family for a while. I couldn’t believe he didn’t warn us when he recommended her for the job.

As luck would have it, the Farmers Branch restaurant and bar gave Kyle 2 days notice that they were closing and he didn’t need to come back to work. We scooped him up in a heartbeat and paid him whatever he asked. He was worth every penny, and still is. Even though Kyle no longer speaks to me, I will always think of him fondly. He was my only saving grace for 2 years.

Some Employees Need to Go

Even though I’ve been fat most of my life, I’ve always been very active. I used to work full-time, and then go home and participate in all sorts of activities – tennis, softball, bowling, camping, horseback riding, etc. I was only home long enough to eat and sleep. It was great!

So, it’s no surprise I thought I could open a restaurant. I’m no stranger to hard work and was ready to give it my all. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize my all was somewhat less than it used to be. Getting old is hell. Your brain feels the same as when you were younger, but your body takes hard work a little more personally and punishes you if you do too much. I worked all day, 7 days a week. Some nights, I could hardly walk when I got home and still hurt when I got up in the morning.

We hired people of all ages and in the beginning we paid them way too much. The pay rates were set by Pierre and Robbie and I trusted them to know. With more experience, I learned our pay was way out of line. And the people we overpaid didn’t even appreciate it. Some that we overpaid even stole from us. I could tell you a million stories about employees. Once I figured it out, the starting pay was a lot lower. It was still good money compared to other restaurants because we paid regular minimum wage. Customers don’t tend to tip in a snack bar type environment and we compensated for that.

I lost 35 pounds while eating pizza everyday. So you know I was literally working my a** off. I needed employees I could trust to give me time off, as a snack bar can often be run easily by 1 person. It was very hard to find people like that and sadly I trusted the wrong person more than once. And I kept employees longer than I should have just so I could go home. My recommendation is to let people go as soon as you see they are not going to respond to your personal improvement talks. Keep everything in writing and count the money and inventory often.