BELIEF SYSTEMS

Thanks EC…I greatly appreciate that!

Here is a two part Business Detective story about to be published for the second time, it’s true and the owner in the story recently sold his company for a lot of money (years after the incident) and he sent me an e-mail thanking me. He is one of three owners who I know I saved from bankruptcy, because they told me so.

If it is up voted I’ll send the second part.

THE BETRAYAL

THE WOLF PACK
One by one they wandered into The Corner Pocket for the unspoken but understood monthly mid-week gathering. The seedy neighborhood bar owned two pool tables, occasional drug deals in both the women’s and the men’s bathrooms, a well-deserved ugly reputation, but most of all it was a safe place with deep shadows for the Wolf Pack to quietly slink into. All nine of them were spread out around two tables pulled together in the short end of the L shaped recess of the murky watering hole. Three pitchers of beer at a time were ordered and emptied almost as fast as the waitress could shuttle them back and forth. The warehouse manager, a Customer Service Manager (CSM), and seven route drivers guzzled, smoked, laughed, and took turns buying round after round with freshly stolen dollar bills, dollar coins or when the alpha dog warehouse manager wanted to bark the loudest…twenties from the pizza parlor and C-store they all knew he sold stolen product to…stolen product he put on their trucks and they dropped off at his house. They were a loose nit gang of parasites and would betray one another in a New Jersey Nano Second, that was a given, but they circled together for the same reasons sharks do.

The Gang of Nine, as one route driver liked to call them, were raucous and buzzing feeding off the howling pack dynamic and a late afternoon mixture of each ones drug of choice: crack cocaine, pot, various pharmaceuticals (one a cancer pain killer). The two apprentice alcoholic juicers knocked back rapid fire shots. A pack of thieves and addicts…addicts and thieves…hell bent on getting loaded by 6 pm on the tax free rewards of stolen company product and cash. When you had to be on the job by O’dark thirty you got a midafternoon start and ended your mid-week rip before the rest of the 9 to 5 world even thought about shifting into second gear.

THE ENTREPRENEUR
Larry Fresno built the Neighborhood Vending Company from one machine to 17 routes in 25 years through blood, sweat, toil, and laughter. He owned a warm engaging personality that was as popular and well known throughout the Neighborhood Vending customer base as he was throughout the national Vending industry. Fresno was a pioneer in the multi-faceted efficiencies of Dex (the new computer accountability technology) and it’s synergy with cutting edge software. He was the classic entrepreneur visionary in every sense of the word but made the classic Owner/Operator’s mistake of relying on Dex and software for 100% of his cash and product accountability.

Besides his relentless business drive Fresno was as compassionate with his employees…as he was driven to build the company he created from nothing into his home grown version of the American dream. Fresno wasn’t a…The glass is half full optimist …he was a…The glass is over flowing can do entrepreneur.
He intentionally nurtured and was doing everything he could on the one on one level to build a ‘culture of trust’ with all his employees. He intended to create a unique working environment that would build morale and hopefully lower the constant turnover that plagued him and every other operator in his region’s bustling economy. He even reached out a helping hand to a number of employees who were in financial trouble with a generosity that few operators felt or displayed with either their time or money.

Company cookouts, employee car washings done by management, company picnics, birthday parties, paid time off for family emergencies, Fresno did everything he could to pump benevolence into the blood stream of the Neighborhood Vending Company and ruled with a gentle touch. He was an unorthodox leader who managed by his velvet personality, was convinced that technology was the best path to take his company to the next level…and in most ways he was right…until the reality of the betrayal of the ‘Wolf Pack’ left him feeling like the unsuspecting guy who was about to be transported to another dimension, the guy Rod Sterling was talking about in the opening scene of a Twilight Zone episode.

Five months earlier Fresno had attended a National Automatic Machine Association (NAMA) seminar and sat through my PowerPoint on creating a ‘Culture of Controls’. He was stunned on the theft statistics I presented from a national study, 13% of American workers steal at every opportunity, in a company with weak controls another 66% will join in to plunder to some degree if they see the 13% getting away with it, and the most worrisome statistic left, only 21% were 100% honest 100% of the time!

Fresno didn’t think (and hoped in his heart of hearts) that the number of dishonest employees in the Neighborhood Vending Company weren’t anywhere near those levels. He knew he had theft, he always had theft, he considered it part of the cost of doing business, but he left my seminar with a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Fresno made a mental note that if he ever found himself with a serious theft problem he would hire me (he told me this later).

When the shock wore off after what he would forever more refer to as The Call, and it became clear to him that he was being stolen from on a scale that seemed unimaginable, that he had at least 25% of his employees ripping him off daily,

Larry Fresno had an impassioned series of phone calls with me (I was on vacation when he called in a panic) and flew me in to euthanize the leaders of the Wolf Pack. When it all became clear Fresno was past anger, resentment, shock, and he was worried sick and sleepless over the width and the depth of the betrayal. Fresno wasn’t interested in chemotherapy…he wanted the Wolf Pack cut out like the cancer cells they were. To be honest…that type of radical surgery was my specialty.

DRUGS – SEX -ROCK & ROLLAND THE FRUIT OF THE VENDING MONEY TREE
It is true that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. If she was rounding the crack cocaine addiction curve while unexpectedly finding herself not only romantically dumped, but also cheated in a drug deal gone sour by her now ex (route driver) boyfriend…her fury can be mathematically extrapolated from 1 to the 10th power. Heather had met Joe at a rock concert. It wasn’t so much a whirlwind courtship as it was a series of midafternoon to early evening drug induced parties, often with some of the younger single Wolf Pack members and their revolving door female wolverines. They both were still in the emotional honeymoon stage of their ‘affair’ with crack cocaine before either one realized they had slipped over the edge of recreational use into the abyss of gnawing daily addiction. Joe seemed to have a never ending supply of dollar bills and even dollar coins (coins that Heather had never seen before) that he was willing to share with her from what he called, ‘The fruit of the Vending Money Tree’. Joe had provided her a seemingly endless supply of the tiny white rocks that once lit and deeply inhaled from the tiny brass pipe sent them both into the gauzy euphoric haze that had become a craving that now their bodies and minds didn’t just want…but demanded.

Many times Joe had gleefully confided in Heather exactly how he and the Wolf Pack had successfully conspired to steal cash, coin, and cases and cases of soda, chips, candy and especially the caffeine saturated energy drink he would pound down one after another when he had to get up before dawn to go to work. Heather didn’t understand some of it…especially the coin tube scam, matter of fact she didn’t even know what a coin tube was, but she filed it all away.
Months later when Heather realized she had been suddenly and unceremoniously dumped by Joe, the now gaunt, hopelessly crack addicted and completely alone Heather was filled with an eerie sense of Vu JaDe…she had definitely never been here before.

When Larry Fresno got the call from the revenge spewing Heather at first he thought he was listening to Linda Blair from a scene from the Exorcist. Heather’s salty language and ranting guttural tone left no doubt she was past rage and deep into the blood red tunnel of vicious hatred. Joe had bragged often to Heather explaining countless details of the different scams the Wolf Pack was carefully mining to plunder the Neighborhood Vending Company, and she outlined them all to Fresno. It was obvious to Fresno the raving woman that called him out of the blue knew nothing about the vending industry, but everything about the mounting losses that had made no sense to him throughout most of the year. He had been so frustrated and worried by the financial losses, no matter how many price increases he managed to cajole from his customers, he had even entertained selling the company he had created, nurtured, and loved.

When the desperate owner realized how much the jilted girlfriend of one of his route drivers knew about the gushing red ink from his company he offered to meet her in a local restaurant, and if she was telling the truth make it worth her time. Heather’s husky voice suddenly grew cold and unemotional flatly asking for $500.00 in cash. She realized she was just a bold snitch away from her next supply of rocks. When Fresno hung up with her his heart was pounding. After his first meeting with Heather he knew she was telling the truth, he tracked me down (I was just starting a pre-Christmas vacation) and persuaded me to book a flight. I couldn’t resist…it sounded like a real donnybrook!

THE FEEDING FRENZY
The Wolf Pack’s mass feeding frenzy of out of control theft confirmed the all too common reality that drugs will fuel larceny like gasoline feeding a fire. Once one of them figured out that if he popped into the high schools that were the core of the Neighborhood Vending Company’s business, when the kids were changing classes with trays full of candy bars, he could simply sell around the machines. The technique was refined and polished and spread from driver to driver like juicy whispered gossip. Some of them even turned the machines off during the class changing rush to draw even more kids thrusting dollar bills at them. Exchanging candy for dollar bills in the teeming sea of eager teenagers filled their pockets with 50 to 75 to 100 dollar bills in a few visits on a good day. Soon the Greed Growth Factor took over and the candy tray thefts were raging like a California wild fire at the end of a long drought…what are you going to DEW? With the warehouse manager feeding them cases and cases of product as long as they dropped off what he selected at his house, later to be sold at a local C-store and a pizza parlor for .50 cents on the wholesale dollar, one dirty hand spread the grime to the other. The CSM even had a Neighborhood machine on his back porch that he kept stocked with stolen product.

Fresno had been distracted all year while he was primed to grow the business by leaps and bounds. He was getting ready to add two new large accounts, was arranging price increases to balance off the suppliers who were gouging deep into his now none existent profit, and running it all with a razor thin managerial staff. His GM, who was one of the most knowledgeable and connected purchasing agents in the business was focusing more and more of his time and attention on landing bargain front end buys that were his proven specialty. To compound the control fracture the launch of the new software Fresno had brought in at the beginning of the year reminded him of the Columbia disaster, leaving the Neighborhood Vending Company’s newest technology filled with more bugs then the Orkin man sees in a month of visits to a greasy spoon restaurant.

The distractions in Fresno’s life were legion and the Wolf Pack had managed to stay under the radar hidden by constant internal sabotage leaving Fresno baffled and bewildered…until The Call.

THE PRACTICAL AND TACTICAL APPROACH
I preferred investigating conspiracies then lone wolf thieves. They were always easier to divide and conquer then cracking any secretive dishonest loner. The practical tactical approach was tried and true, single out the weak link, jam’em up and flip’em over. After spending two hours audio taping Heather with Larry Fresno as the witness, she was given a c-note with a promise of four more after her information was checked out. Fresno knew from his massive losses she was telling the truth, in spite of so many business positives in the last few years the jig saw pieces of his worst bottom-line in a decade fit together. He would give Heather the rest of the bounty, the detail of her information amazing for a twenty something air head who knew nothing about the industry. The real intent was to keep her quiet until I was finished dealing with the Wolf Pack.

Fresno was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. He knew the nightmare he found himself in with nine dishonest employees working together was as serious as a terrorist attack. He also knew there was no way he could lose all nine at once without losing business…a lot of business. He wanted the three ring leaders made an example out of, the cash and product bleeding stopped, and time to find, train, and replace one fourth of his route drivers.

Fresno and I stayed sequestered in my hotel room pounding out a Case Jacket to document all we knew, which was 99% Heather hearsay, but also with a few Pre & Post machine Audits done on ‘Joe’ at my direction just before I arrived. The Pre & Post audits proved only misdemeanor cash theft on one out of the nine…but it was evidence, the only real evidence we had besides the bulging eyed ranting bitterness of a tattooed, pierced, jilted crack head. Then Fresno and I visited with the Police to take the local jurisdiction’s pulse…finding it barely beating. The Detective Division supervisor was not interested in hearsay from anyone and wouldn’t even assign one of his men to work with me and Fresno. Everyone at the Police Station was getting ready for the Christmas break, shrugged shoulders and bored gazes were all we found. The Neighborhood Vending Company owner and I, the Loss Prevention Subject Matter Expert, were on our own.

Fresno and I worked up a plan to euthanize three of the alpha dogs of the Wolf Pack, while subduing the rest and buying some time to completely revamp, rejuvenate, and reclaim the bottom-line, the future, and the legacy of the Neighborhood Vending Company Larry Fresno had planned on leaving to his young son.

I had a hard time sleeping the night before the first confrontation and ambush of the CSM. As usual I was filled with an edgy anticipation and a seething indignation against these parasites and leeches whose greed and wonton betrayal was threatening to destroy a good man’s life’s work. This was not my first rodeo with Wolf Packs.

This was the type of job that made the cramped endless plane flights and the lonely hotel existence all worth it. I knew two of the Wolf Pack were gang members, and at least one packed a hidden .38 sub nose (according to Heather) and they all swaggered or ditty bopped with a cocky insolence born of the streets.

Yeah they all looked and acted tough, yada, yada, yada, in the next two days I intended to find out just how tough the leaders of the Wolf Pack really were.

To Be Continued………….if upvoted.

Conclusion: Jam’em Up and Flip’em Over

Roger that Tampa…here is the conclusion.

JAM’EM UP…AND FLIP’EM OVER
Continued from The Betrayal

Larry Fresno, owner of the 17 route Neighborhood Vending Company was drained and exhausted physically, but even more so emotionally. He knew the nightmare he found himself in with a Wolf Pack of nine dishonest employees stealing together for over a year was the greatest threat to his business, and his legacy to his family he had ever faced. He also knew there was no way he could lose all nine employees of the Wolf Pack at once without losing enough business…to maybe lose his entire business.

The shocking pieces of the yearlong rising cost of goods puzzle had unexpectedly fit together like a blinding flash of the now repulsively ugly obvious. The chronic company losses fueled by a conspiracy that he had never imagined in his most paranoid operator moments could potentially drive him into bankruptcy. Fresno had dealt with theft before, but never on a scale remotely approaching this. Between all the price increases his suppliers were bombarding him with, the new (and incredibly expensive) software system that had been installed at the beginning of the year (crashing wide and deep) had left him groping in the cutting edge technology dark while being systematically plundered by his own employees.

The trapped operator was caught in-between the devil banker and the deep blue technology loan sea. Fresno was dammed if he cut me loose and he ended up with a third of his work force dragged under by their own crimes terminated and or arrested, and dammed if he didn’t and the pack of thieves continued to suck the financial life out of him like the ungrateful Benedict Arnold leeches they were. If all nine were arrested or some arrested and the rest quit out of fear of being busted, his cash flow could be reduced to a trickle pushing the business dominoes over…one onto the other.

Then there was the wild card he had never imagined in his worst business nightmare, hard drugs. Evidently most of the Wolf Pack were not only thieves but drug addicts to boot, and two (to Fresno’s horror) were drug dealers selling off of his trucks! Evidentially the use and sale of drugs (especially by Joe) was a currency they traded like the stolen energy drinks they ripped off by the case and drank by the quart to get started at O’dark thirty. To make matters even worse (if that was conceivable) he had two new significant accounts on the cusp of signing needing to immediately hire two more route drivers, not lose seven, plus a warehouse manager, and one of two of his mid management CSMs!

Fresno had a hard earned inner toughness that he reached deep down into. The owner bucked up. Sensing his best defense was an offense and I was the man to lead the charge, Larry Fresno did what he had to do to save the company he had built from nothing, he fought.

Wild EMPLOYEES GONE WILD
Christmas was a week away, all of the schools that made up the bulk of Fresno’s business would be closed for the long holiday break. Fresno was convinced now was the time to take out the leaders of the Wolf Pack and wrap a tight tourniquet on the slashed financial artery, he had no choice, he had to end the out of control conspiracy both financially and emotionally.

I knew when I got on sight it would be a decisive Search and Destroy mission…knowing Fresno’s business realities he and I didn’t want to get it reversed. After a conference call with Fresno and his General Manager (GM) I laid out a hasty investigative plan that was launched and focused for the week before I could get on site. A tactical machine level investigation on the route driver who they had the most intell on, the route driver who had bragged to his girlfriend he had figured out the High School Candy Box Scam, and the Dex Coin Tube Scam. The route driver who had taught all the other drivers how both scams worked, Joe. I knew some, any evidence was needed, even if it was just an investigative mole hill I could make an interrogation mountain out of it. That was the plan I laid out. I intended to jam Joe up and flip him over to give up the rest of the employees gone wild, and throw down a short term psych to buy Fresno precious time to restructure the bleeding Neighborhood Vending Company.

All we had so far was Heather hearsay and 95% of the details she gave were on her ex Joe, but there was other useful information pulled from the bitter young woman. I had a favorite saying I always told impatient owners, the Interrogation is made in the Investigation, not the other way around, but this was an unusual case and there simply was no time for a program or even a real in depth investigation…so plan B was looming. With the bleeding that was going on Fresno couldn’t afford the normal process, but he also couldn’t afford all of the Wolf Pack to be eliminated or even scared off all at once, otherwise the cure might kill the patent. The Rubik Cube Fresno and I had to figure out was how take out the leaders, but not terminate or arrest or even scare off most of the pack, buy some time, hire and train, reverse the cash drain back to cash flow, then eliminate the remaining blood suckers one after another.

I flew in and with Fresno immediately met Heather, the pretty, rail thin, tattooed, pierced, twitchy, 20 something who had been promised more C-notes for this meeting. I grilled and tape recorded her for two hours. She was obviously telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the repulsive truth. As a Subject Matter Expert trained and experienced in behavioral analysis interviewing and body language reactions to stress I crosscut through human facades (almost instinctively…kinda like an idiot savant interrogator, more of a reflexive gift than a conscience talent) deftly probing, slicing and dicing as the jilted girlfriend poured out details of four major scams Joe had bragged to her about. She was asked the same questions six ways from Sunday, her answers always matching. Her dead eyes were unblinking as the unemotional rote numbness of her snitch explained the worst year the Neighborhood Vending Company had experienced in the last twenty five:

• The High School Candy Box Scam
• The Dex Coin Tube Scam
• Massive Warehouse Product Theft
• Non-Dexed Machine Thefts

Joe had crowed to Heather time and time again that he had invented, perfected, and then trained most of the other route drivers on the High School Candy Box Scam and the Coin Tube Scam, and that all the players were intentionally sabotaging Dex (the new computer program), stealing product, creating meter noise in non Dexed machines, exchanging keys, stealing an occasional key, stealing fuel, goofing off for hours, and howling with glee every time the new Star Wars software exploded like the death star at the end of the first movie. They knew their thefts were not being tracked.

THEGOOD GUYS VERSES THE BAD
Fresno and I had a dozen phone conversations during the week before I flew in to help the desperate owner confront and end the massive betrayal in one fell swoop, without imploding the company. I was a little frayed around the edges from constant travel and had a two week holiday break planned, but this wasn’t a consulting engagement, it was a potentially explosive fight for the business survival of an owner I knew and liked. A dynamic entrepreneur who found himself trapped in a nightmare betrayal on a scale that infuriated my sense of justice. In the simplistic confines of my own mind I often find some things in life black and white. This was one. Fresno was an entrepreneur, a builder, a creator of jobs, prosperity, and livelihoods. A bootstrap American success story…a Good Guy.

The Wolf Pack were self-absorbed parasites who were thieves and drug addicted destroyers disguised as employees, and if left unchecked or handled wrong would suck the life out of the goose that laid everyone’s golden eggs, and bring ruin to the Good Guy. I knew the American employment system was now rigged to protect the Bad Guys. The cops were often useless in an Alice in Wonderland entitlement society that had gone over the progressive – liberal common sense cliff when it came to protecting workers who were viciously gnawing off the hand that fed them. The government inmates had taken over the EEOC and labor board asylum; everybody was a potential victim except the small business operators who drove the economic engine of the country. I knew I had to be careful, razor sharp, and double tough.

This wasn’t a traditional opening client visit, an assessment to analyze and customize the interconnected Training, Technologies, Tools, and Tactics while month after month slowly increasing the bottom line and slowly changing the culture. This was intense, no quarter, stress filled mind to mind combat with a pack of street smart thugs with nothing to go on but a jilted girlfriend’s drug craving rantings, and one week’s worth of successful machine level investigations on only one of the nine Bad Guys. Thin investigation gruel to sip from.

Proverbs 10:9 crossed my mind…it was fitting. “Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out”.

As I thought about the situation my eyes narrowed, my breathing quickened, and I found myself tightly smiling. I always smiled when I heard the bell of the opening Loss Prevention round. No way to deny it…I loved a good fight against punks, thieves, and parasites.

PLANTING THE SEED
CSM Roger Woody walked into the conference room with the GM and was immediately greeted by me as I introduced myself with a firm handshake and a friendly smile. I told ‘Woody’ (as he was called) I was an outside consultant brought in to help senior management solve some operational problems. I motioned the perplexed middle manager to sit down and soon had the CSM relaxed and talking.

The setting was not in the usual interrogation ‘room setting’ I would use when I owned hard evidence and sat directly across from the subject with very little space in-between us, our knees almost touching. Woody sat at the tip of a long oval table bracketed by me and the GM as this conversation was being initially sold as an overture to a key member of middle management for insight, but was really a carefully choreographed verbal dance…a misdirection wrapped in a sharp psych…followed by a sucker punch!

Disinformation was a powerful physiological seed that once planted can bloom overnight into the tree of consuming guilt. In conspiracies the interrogations are interconnected and flow like poison in the blood stream. I knew from decades of trench interrogation warfare a verbal bayonet charge can break the enemy’s will, and there was no truism truer then the fact that there is absolutely subzero honor among thieves.

I had a bayonet up my sleeve from the Heather hearsay on Woody…the 30 something corrupt CSM who was on the fringe of the Wolf Pack. The well known self-absorbed CSM was not popular, matter of fact everyone seem to dislik him. He was not the most active thief, and according to Heather not trusted by Joe, but he was the highest ranking crook. I intended to eliminate the management cog in the theft machine, he was not leaving the room with his job, and at the same time use the CSM’s termination to plant the seed of consuming fear and guilt overnight within the pack with what he told us…no matter what he said.

Fifteen minutes into the discussion I suddenly shifted the tone and the intent of the conversation as it suddenly became a verbal attack. Announcing to the CSM with a hard glare and a confidant air the realities of the Wolf Pack’s specific activities and how it all had been carefully investigated and meticulously documented. My fin cut through the water, the theme music from Jaws began playing in my head. Woody’s eyelids fluttered, his eyes flared as he looked inward swallowing twice, an inner conversation with himself fought back panic, then he hardened, grit his teeth, clenched his hands tightly in his lap, and for the next ten minutes manufactured one phony denial after another. I realized Woody was not a bright man, but when denials are linked together and you have no real evidence on an individual there is a point to say…hey diddle diddle right up the middle…bite him hard and drag him under. The stubborn but scared CSM was repeatedly verbally attacked by me, my tone vicious and eyes glaring into his…the shocked manager stuttered, stumbled, then hung himself with his own tongue.

Heather had told me and Fresno the CSM had a stolen vending machine he kept on his back porch filled with Coke, his drink of choice, and that he stole a case a week from the warehouse. It was a hearsay accusation that the ambushed CSM turned into hard evidence with his own admission…of having done both…from Woody’s lips to my recorder.

At the abrupt end of the interrogation the CSM was past astonished when I left the room and a police officer entered curtly demanding to see his driver’s license, took down his information and issued him a written criminal trespass warning, than escorted him to his car.

Woody was driving home aimlessly trying to grapple with the fact that he had just been terminated…but not arrested, the fact that I had told him that the disposition of ‘The Case’ and his role in it would be decided soon, as there were others in the company that would be answering soon for their well-documented felony crimes.

Woody was so scared his hands were shaking on the wheel as he drove home to get the Coke machine off his porch and hide it someplace!

THE HOTEL HUDDLE
Fresno and I sat in the hotel that night talking over the first interrogation with Woody and the plan to bring it all to a head the next day. Letting the pack absorb one of them being interrogated and escorted out by a cop. I made sure everyone in the Vending Operation saw me after Woody left as I stalked around the building giving everyone hard glares.

The stress was mirrored on Fresno’s face as the first day with the direct attack on the CSM had been a mixed success. Fresno thought the CSM was the most likely dog out of the pack to howl with fear, and he had when it came to his own chronic theft of having stole weekly cases of Coke, whimpering about how old the machine was, but he refused to give anything up about the rest of the Pack…the High School Candy Box Scam, the Coin Tube Scam, the massive warehouse theft, the Non Dex Machine Scam, and we knew from Heather he was in on the fringes of it all. What he did give up on himself was more than enough to terminate the manager who had stolen product for years and looked the other way while the Neighborhood Vending Company had been plundered. Most important of all he was led out by a Police Officer and cancerous disinformation had been planted with him to throw the rest of the pack into a terminal panic.

It was a gamble, but the whole plan was a gamble, but the next day I was going to go after Joe the only one I had real evidence against from hasty Pre and Post audits I had – had Fresno and the GM do just before I got there.

The GM had been stunned by the relentless intensity of my interrogation of Woody. I discovered he had known Woody many years and had even brought him into the company from a past life where they worked together. The GM didn’t want to sit through what he suspected was about to happen with Joe as it was obvious to him I was gearing up for an attack on Joe past cut throat. He wasn’t opposed to it as the realization of the scope of the betrayal from a fourth of the company’s employees had left his stomach in knots, and he was lighting his cigarettes from the stub of the last one. It wasn’t that he didn’t want this to end, that he wasn’t horrified by the scope of the thefts and the threat to his own livelihood, but he had never sat through anything this ugly, gut wrenching, and stressful. He told Fresno and me he didn’t want to be the witness at Joe’s interrogation, and Fresno, who knew his GM well understood saying he was a non confrontational guy, deciding to sit in as the management witness himself. Hindsight being 20-20 it was an unplanned but rock solid pivotal move.

JAM’EM UP AND FLIP’EM OVER
When Joe walked into the conference room he could feel his heart beating in his chest as a sudden acid reflux threatened to erupt. He had hit the crack pipe at lunch, he had to, and that was the only reason he was able to bop into the room with a cocky bravado knowing he could be walking into an arrest for more felonies then he could remember or count. He knew that Woody was fired yesterday by the same investigator he now faced and was escorted out by a cop…but not arrested…yet? There was some kind of investigation going on for months! He didn’t trust and wasn’t sure what Woody had really told the investigator who everyone was buzzing about?

What deal had Woody cut with him? The entire pack had bombarded Woody all night with phone calls (as I hoped) including Joe, but the whiny manager nobody really trusted or liked had sworn he hadn’t given anyone up? Joe didn’t know what to believe, his lunch time tokes smoothing out the giant speed bumps looming out of nowhere in his racing mind.

There was electricity in the air when Joe bopped into the conference room with a forced nonchalant coolness…but I could sense a collective Wolf Pack whimper in the invisable Loss Prevention time warp continuum, and the theme music from Jaws started building its familar menacing beat in my mind.

The disinformation seeding I had planted with Woody the Weasel (his behind the back nickname) was raging out of control in Joe’s fear filled guilty conscience. I had never met Joe before, but once I locked eyes and took the measure of the man I knew I was sitting across from a tough guy with a cracking façade (every drug pun intended). A puffed up but secretly scared street punk. Yea, his pupils were dilated so he was probably gliding on the pipe…but I could still sense and smell the spastic fear no drug could mask…and I had the critical, foundational, and formidable ingredient of every interrogation, evidence. It wasn’t much, only a misdemeanor and only gathered the last week, but Joe the papier-mâché tough guy didn’t know that, and on top of that I had something Joe wanted, fantasized about, but really couldn’t conceptualize…Land Shark killer instinct.

There was no verbal foreplay in my introduction like with Woody, no opening monologue, just a drilled down hard accusation. I quickly escorted Joe into the shadowed realm of his darkest fears, yet dangled hope that would guarantee the dishonest route driver walked out of the room without being arrested by the two Police officers waiting in the next office…if he told the truth. Joe knew the cops were really there as he had seen their black and white parked outside when he drove into the yard. In reality they were two uniformed props I had arranged to be waiting, both thinking they were there because a potentially violent employee was being terminated. I plumed the depths of the drug dealer/addict’s deepest criminal fears when I whispered the location of where he bought most of his drugs (from his former girfriend) dismissing it with a wave of my hand and a side glace at the door that led to the office where the two cops lurked. I whispered my only real desire was to settle vending issues, and hopefully only between the three of us as long as Joe didn’t insult our intelligence and force our hand with turning over what we knew to the cops.

Joe’s voice cracked with his first admission of theft…he knew he was drowning unconsciously deciding to admit to minor theft, stuttering out low dollar admissions…while qualifying how many others were doing it…then out of the blue and in spite of my instructions on just listening Fresno erupted like a volcano!

The owner slammed his fist down on the conference table again and again, cursed repeatedly, pointed a cocked finger of accusation at the stunned route driver and screamed curses over and over. Joe and I were both caught completely by surprise! The usual mild mannered (betrayed) owner couldn’t take it anymore as his eyes bulged out of his head like in a cartoon, and the anger poured out of him like flooding lava! The enraged owner threatened the route driver as slivers of spittle added air borne explanation marks to his righteous rage. This vicious outburst was so uncharacteristic and unexpected from Fresno’s normal easy going, jovial, velvet personality Joe was past rattled…he was scared into an escalating blurting and detailed confession.

I quickly regained control of the interrogation as the now terrified Joe stared at the bulging eyed snorting owner and folded like a cardboard box in a hurricane rain. Joe gave up every scam in vivid detail and every dirty trick of every dirty dog in the Wolf Pack. Joe was jammed up by guilt, fears, rumors, a no nonsense interrogation, and then hit by a sudden explosive emotional sucker punch thrown by a fed up rage filled owner. Joe, the mastermind Wolf Pack alpha thief flipped over on everyone…including himself.

THE TRANSFORMATION
Exactly as Fresno and I had planned and hoped the leaders of the Wolf Pack were escorted out by the Police. After a masterly performance at a group meeting at the end of the longest day in his operators’ life Fresno convinced the rest of the dogs they were safe and the investigation was over. Five of the nine mongrels who were left filed out of the meeting with their tails between their legs, nervous darting eyes obviously greatly relieved. The daily, massive, yearlong theft came to an immediate screeching halt, yet there were enough employees left to keep the company running.

An amazing coincidence happened the day after Joe’s interrogation. It was discovered an experienced vending warehouse manager, who had been downsized because of two local competitors merging, was working as a route driver in training to fill that critical slot, and two former route drivers who had left a year earlier for greener pastures, and were considered honest hard workers suddenly materialized looking for their old jobs back! I grinned when these three desperately needed honest employees popped up out of nowhere. One by one as replacements were hired and trained the rest of the Wolf Pack were quickly managed out…the next accounting month the bleeding red ink had turned black.

EPILOG
Three months later after multiple visits the Neighborhood Vending Company had completed more positive change then most of my clients experienced in a year. Productivity skyrocketed as control after control was built into the day to day operating culture of the Neighborhood Vending Company, and Larry Fresno’s amazing entrepreneurial success story turned the page into a new chapter.

I love happy endings…and big fat consulting fees.

Hmmm…Only used two in seven years and that whole life of death thing has me leaning towards top shelf Epi Pens…plus I don’t want to take a chance on missing all the 4th Turning fireworks that seem to have their fuses lit. Should be quite a show…eventually.