Tag: theft

Now what???

Important decisions take a lot of thought. Too bad I didn’t invest more time before embarking on this adventure. It probably wouldn’t have made any difference, though. I never would have foreseen the level of deceit and theft I encountered during my time as a restaurateur. Now, it’s time to consider next steps.

I can close the restaurant and try to sell the equipment. Recoup what I can and move on. If Pierre really is interested in the restaurant, I can sell my share to him and move on. I can file a lawsuit against a giant hockey franchise for breach of contract, slander, theft, fraud, and conspiracy and hope for a David versus Goliath ending. I can get a loan and continue running the restaurant.

I definitely won’t be getting a loan. I have no support from my business partners, namely Pierre and Todd, and the environment it totally toxic. I already have a hoity toity downtown Dallas attorney, so I’m ready for a fight if I don’t get a better offer. That’s the thing about horse people, we’re used to dealing with entities that are bigger and stronger than we are and we accept the circumstances as normal everyday life.

I already suggested to Pierre that he buy me out, so for now I’ll wait to see his reply. I hate that it has come to this. That’s probably why this decision is so difficult. I love pouring beers and making pizzas for people. I enjoy meeting families and sharing in their stories. Part of me is not ready to walk away.

Who Audits a Hockey Franchise?

Am I the crazy one here? My landlord, the local hockey franchise, bullies me, steals from me, and sabotages my business. My so-called partner, Pierre, lies to me, bullies me, and sides with my landlord against me. Yet when I object to these things, everyone acts like I’m the one who’s lost my mind. Like all these things are ok and I’m just overreacting. How can that be? Doesn’t anyone else see that this is wrong? Very Wrong!

These were all things going through my mind after that email from Pierre; the intervention last summer and then the email at Thanksgiving. The idea that Pierre was in collusion with Todd to sabotage the cafe was becoming more real. After all, Pierre used to work at corporate before we started the restaurant. Was this standard operating procedure for franchise employees and that’s why no one saw anything wrong?

Surely, a hockey franchise would have internal and external auditors. There must be billions of dollars funneling through that company, so wouldn’t they have a Big Five auditor like Deloitte or KPMG? Wouldn’t there be somebody concerned about guarding the keys to the kingdom? Or does everyone steal until they retire, so they have an auditor like Enron had with Arthur Andersen? You know if the employees were stealing from me, they were robbing the hockey franchise blind. And considering Operations and Corporate employees had master keys that opened every door in every building, there was a lot of opportunity for ill-gotten gain. Maybe to them, bringing home a little extra was just a perk of employment. Obviously, no one was telling them it was wrong. Just me, the crazy one, telling them it’s wrong. Now, what do I do???

Good Offense is the Best Defense

Many people go on the attack when they know they are wrong. Every problem in the relationship is your fault. They are completely exonerated, because none of this ever would have happened if it weren’t for your bad behavior. More specifically, Pierre never put in his seed money, wasn’t marketing the cafe, wasn’t helping mend our relationship with our landlord and stop the blatant theft, and wasn’t up on the current facts, so he attacked me to distract from the real issues. This wasn’t the first time he had lashed out at me, but it would be one of the last. At some point, you have to be realistic and see that it doesn’t matter that you are right. It’s not worth losing everything to take a stand when you are surrounded by crazy people who have the financial backing to crush you like a bug and laugh over your remains.

In November, I was shocked to find out that once again Pierre had hired Max, after all the times Kyle and I had reminded Pierre that you don’t reward someone for sabotaging you and your business. I sent Pierre a text and here is his response.

Val,
I chose not to respond to your text yesterday, because I realized it would escalate into an argument, after working almost 30 hours straight through Thanksgiving Day, I was disappointed when I received your text, I thought it was petty and another example of your inability to allow some things to settle, in this case with Max, and move on.However upon sleeping on it, I have decided to respond in a more appropriate format of e-mail. 
Your Text: 11/25/2016
“So even after Max totally betrayed you and went out of his way to hurt our business, you hired him again???”
Here are the facts, Max is working as a contract laborer for Ice Stars, to work nights building the Outdoor ice rink and making ice until 3am and 4am, HARD to find experienced people to work at 2am he is NOT an employee, even if he was, its NONE of your business.I would suggest you work on building relationships at Champions as opposed to destroying them, I guess now you want to start doing that to me.Whilst, I insist that the Ice Stars business should not be your concern, as you have no vested interest. That brings me to Champions Cafe which I do have an interest and financial stake in, while respecting your role as managing partner over the last 2 years.I have concerns about you continuing in this position, and can’t help feeling that the business may be better served with new day to day management, with someone who is energized and motivated to build the client base, and also may be more open to change, and have a more conciliatory attitude to the StarCenter staff and management, that are at the end of the day quite vital to our success. A possible candidate may be Kyle or someone with a similar temperament and personality.Unfortunately over the last 2 years, you have managed to alienate, pick battles, chastise customers and staff that are important to the success of Champions Cafe, while always playing the role of the victim in nearly every conflict.In my opinion you have a passive, aggressive personality which has led to a history of conflict at the Champions, it’s time to stop playing the victim and stop blaming everyone else including myself, and take some responsibility for the problems at Champions.I have to ask, why do we have none of our original staff working for us ? or even staff from 6 months ago ? why do we have such a high turnover of staff ? it’s a fact that the restaurant business does have high turnover, but nobody seems to want to work for you.Last week with schools on vacation all week, why did we not open the cafe for the morning public sessions ? when we were busy and had customers in the building, yet we open at 10:30am or 11am during the week when we have nobody in the building ? On that note it’s high time to sit down and give me full disclosure of our financial records, monthly sales, liabilities, true expenses, it’s my understanding that you don’t think that I deserve that courtesy as a partner in Champions Cafe because, “I haven’t worked hard enough for the business and don’t ever do anything” I guess you have different expectations of my role.As the managing partner you have a fiduciary responsibility and duty, to disclose the financials of the business, disclose our liabilities, and most importantly take inventory of assets, so we can regularly monitor our financial viability as a business.I would like to ask, when was the last time we did a full stock inventory at Champions ?If we do sit down to talk, let’s also discuss what has deteriorated into a pathetic relationship we have with the staff and management at the rink who are critical to our success, and I fear in recent weeks this situation could result in the termination of the Champions Cafe lease.Also, let discuss why we had to upset Lucas the McKinney rink Hockey Director, because you felt is was necessary to charge him 25 cents for a cup of water or ice, this escalated into you offending him to the point he never bought from us again.On a side note, I was told last week that Lucas has moved to Frisco because he has been promoted to Director of Youth Hockey for all the StarCenter rinks, and will be in charge of Youth Hockey and all youth Tournaments, so I ask was it worth 25 cents to alienate someone who could, and now can clearly help your business in the future.It’s time to have more people advocating our business, and not boycotting it because of personality conflicts.
Val, I want to reiterate, I do not want conflict, and I do not want to argue with you, it’s not productive and not in the best interests of either of us. However this exchange is long overdue and it’s important for me to relay my perspective and opinions, and I ask you to respect that, and understand that it is just that, my perspective and opinions.
I propose we meet and discuss the contents of this e-mail so we can move forward, for the best of everyone involved in Champions Cafe.
Pierre.

I’m not sure why an email is more appropriate than a text. Anybody know the finer points of these communication devices??? I don’t know why Pierre thought he had a vested interest in the cafe. His name was on some of the paperwork and he bought the coffee machine, but he never put in his seed money or worked any kind of regular hours – not even at home, setting up marketing campaigns or calling people to drum up business. Regardless, he had every right to all financial information and he is the one who told the accountant not to send monthly statements. I guess it was my fault Pierre turned off the financial reporting and never turned it back on. And if Pierre would have taken the time to stop by and talk more often, and maybe even help out, he would have known that Lucas came back in and apologized for his behavior with the promise of continued patronage. I’ve also never heard of theft referred to as ‘a personality conflict.’ But I’m sure they all get along now – the rink employees steal Pierre blind and he uses it as a tax write-off. Everyone loves you when you give them free access to your bar and restaurant. Who knows how many underage adolescents Pierre is supplying with free alcohol.

I never said any of this to Pierre, because I don’t like to argue and people who take this stand won’t be listening to anything you say so what’s the point of talking? When people say they don’t want to argue, all they’re really saying is they are going to express their opinion but have no interest in hearing yours. I didn’t respond right away because so many things were going through my mind and I wanted to let it soak in first. I waited a few days and replied with my express desire for him to buy me out. Clearly, theft and intimidation were ok with him and I needed to get out before I lost one more penny in this business.

Continuing Threats and Coverups

Some of the corporate employees had kids who played hockey at our rink. While I really wanted to discuss our issues with corporate and the rink employees, I tried to be respectful of their family time at the rink. I don’t know why I wanted to be respectful of them when they were so clearly disrespectful of us. I guess I still had hope that if we did the right thing and treated people well, eventually they would do the same for us. Now I just feel stupid for respecting our landlord and all the rink employees.

One night, Damon was at the rink with his kid(s). I didn’t want to discuss work problems during his family time, so I asked him to call me when he had time. He asked what I wanted so I pulled out a picture of one of the rink employees in our cafe early in the morning before we opened for the day. He excused the employee’s actions using the same words Todd had used so I knew they had talked and were prepared to defend the rink employee. So I invited Damon into the kitchen and showed him the employee was nowhere near the ice machine in the picture. Damon works at the corporate level, so now the theft cover up goes all the way to corporate. Then the threats began. Damon explained that they had installed new TVs in the bar and they could take them out if we weren’t feeling grateful. What? Is he saying we should be grateful they were updating all the rinks and just let their employees steal from us with no complaints? Now, I’ve been threatened by Todd AND Damon. Is that how hockey franchises work? They just take what they want and lay waste the rest of the world?

At one point in this conversation Damon said, “What do you want from me?” I bet every one of you reading this blog can answer that question. So, why can’t Damon??? Was he not listening all those times I talked to and emailed him and Todd??? I want the employees of a multi-million dollar hockey franchise to stop stealing from me, a senior citizen investing her retirement money. I want the employees of a multi-million dollar hockey franchise to abide by our contract, including staying out of our space when we are not there. I want a multi-million dollar hockey franchise to fix their security cameras and protect our assets. I want the employees of a multi-million dollar hockey franchise to stop harassing us and treat us with the respect we give them. I want my organization and my landlord’s organization to be mutually supportive of eachother’s success. Apparently, I want too much.

The Women of the Arena were Terrific

I’ve touched on this before, but I wanted to talk about it in more detail. The arena was our landlord. They employed quite a few men, but there were a few women at the front desk and in charge of the figure skating programs. A couple of the women were a little grumpy, but for the most part all of them were nice and treated us with respect.

I feel confident in saying the women didn’t steal from us. When we asked for the arena employees to stop getting ice when we were closed, the women started bringing their bowl to us so we could fill it with ice. The men were the ones who still came when we were closed so they could continue to contaminate the ice and steal from us.

When our trays had disappeared, the women were the ones who returned them to us. Most of our customers would return our trays when they finished eating, but some would leave them at various places around the arena. Before we started making rules to stop the theft, arena employees would bring us trays they found as they were working. After the young men got angry that we reported theft to the police, the trays started to disappear. A box of 25 trays costs over $100 and we were struggling as it was, so it was frustrating to have to buy more boxes of trays. Every day, we would go over to the front desk to see if they had found any trays or to let them know we were looking for missing ones. We would walk around the arena searching and sometimes we would find one. But eventually we would get down to less than 10 and have to buy another box. One day, one of the ladies came over with a big stack of trays she had found on top of the Lost and Found cabinet. It’s my belief the guys were mad and so they put our trays up there to hide them from us but no one could say they stole them. Still the trays continued to disappear and we would have to buy more. I wouldn’t be surprised if the guys were using them as hockey pucks until they broke and were thrown away.

If it weren’t for the women, there would be no redeeming value to the McKinney arena employees at all. I am so grateful they were there. Now you know why I think the women were honest and supportive. Girls rule! And in this case, boys are stool.