This week's Weblog is about a couple of experiences I've had being separated from organizations that were a little bit unusual.

It's also the story of a friend who rescued me and my family from a difficult situation.

I don't think I ever really thanked him the way I should, but this story, hopefully, goes partway towards appreciating him. Thanks, Ron.

Although Kelly Clarkson’s song "Stronger" refers to making you stronger as a result of a break-up, but a few of the lyrics apply to other kinds of partings.

Most of us think that there are a finite number of ways to separate from an organization: you can quit or you can be fired, which everyone knows. 

In my career, I have also experienced two other uncommon separations within a span of four years, that I’ve never experienced before or after. 

This story is about what led up to a departure from one organization, being saved by a friend, and getting whacked in an unusual way by another company. After each one happened, I believe I got stronger, but you be the judge.

Although Papa Gino’s is my all-time favorite pizza, for a brief period in the 80’s I was the Vice-President of a small pizza company located in Santa Monica, California. As a big company, chain restaurant guy, it was a very different experience, but I had the chance to do many of the things I liked to do and help to ‘launch’ a company, that crashed just after take-off, through no fault of my own. The lesson I Iearned, however, stays with me to this day. It falls into the ‘see something, say something’ category. Here’s the story.

Shortly after my son was born, the company I worked for went through some drastic changes and it was time to leave. The entire executive team was arbitrarily dismissed, and I could be next, so I was in a little bit of a hurry to make something happen. At the time, I was running a division that was franchising pizza restaurants from Godfather’s Pizza, based in Nebraska. I also had responsibility for a California coffee shop concept called Coco’s, franchised from a national company called W.R. Grace.

The former President of the company I was with referred me to a small entrepreneur in Los Angeles because he thought my skill set and the small company’s needs were a match. The company was Wildflour Boston Pizza with two locations in Santa Monica, and the brand had recently won the Best Pizza in Los Angeles award from the LA Times.

The company had investors and restauranteurs who were looking to expand or franchise the concept, but it was un-franchise-able, which was where I came in. There was no operating manual or system, no standards, no anything that was replicate-able. For example, the portion of cheese on a small pizza was one handful of grated cheese. A large pizza had two handfuls of grated cheese. The size of the kitchen person’s hand determined how much cheese was on a pizza.

If that wasn’t enough, like most restaurants in LA at the time, the entire kitchen staff was from Mexico, so the only language spoken in the kitchen was Spanish.

If that wasn’t enough, the two restaurants were in converted buildings and bore little resemblance to each other. One was tucked in next two a famous chef’s restaurant on Ocean Boulevard, the other was on Santa Monica Boulevard, the same street in Sheryl Crow's song.

If that wasn’t enough, I lived about 90 minutes from Santa Monica and had to commute while we found an apartment in the LA area. Of course, I commuted along the Pacific Coast Highway through Malibu, so it wasn’t a bad drive. (Note in Southern California, distance is measured in drive time more often than miles).

If that wasn’t enough, our apartment search continued to turn up neighborhoods where ‘grafitti’ was as common as manicured lawns. We eventually ended up in Marina del Rey, probably over our ideal price range, but a location that felt safer for our young family.

My tenure began in the kitchen to learn and standardize food preparation. One of the first things I did was develop an innovative portion method for pizzas: I used stainless steel cups for the cheese portion, with two different sizes. Brilliant, I know. The next step was learning to make pizza in Spanish. Eduardo, the kitchen manager, was very patient with me and taught me the vocabulary I needed to write the recipes out for duplication and worked with me on procedures.

Because there was a newly signed franchisee on the other side of the harbor in Marina del Rey itching to get started, my next task was to design the kitchen for his restaurant. I was not a professional kitchen designer but knew enough to have a common sense layout that worked.

All that remained was to train the managers for the new location. Oops, we didn’t have a management training program, so that became my next priority. In addition, as a small company with just the owner, a bookkeeper, and two store managers, we didn’t have any trainers, so I was also the trainer.

The job title was VP of Operations, but within a short time of coming aboard, I also got to design kitchens, create operating systems and train managers. Perfect for my strengths and skill set.

We were off and running once there was a 'system' in place. The franchisee successfully opened and shortly thereafter, I designed the first new company restaurant which opened a couple of months later.

Everything was going great, until it wasn’t.

The owner came to me one day and indicated that he was having some cash flow issues, and I had to reign in the restaurant purchases. That didn’t make sense to me. I had been involved in the budgeting and forecasting for the restaurants, which were all very successful. Plus we had franchisee royalties coming in.

I asked if I could take an in depth look at the books and he provided them to me. While looking through the accounts payable, I found the name of a company that I wasn’t familiar with, that was regularly getting about $10,000 a month (in 1984 dollars). Hmmm.

I asked the bookkeeper, Chris, about it and he gave me an explanation. It wasn’t my first rodeo and his story didn’t quite shoo me away the way I think he hoped it would. In fact, it led me back to the owner in a ‘see something, say something’ mood, and I shared my suspicions that Chris was embezzling from the company, and I showed him what, how, and how much.

When the Santa Monica police showed up, Chris folded like a cheap tent and confessed to stealing more than $175,000 in less than a year.

However, instead of becoming a hero, I had to do something I had never done before. 

I fired myself. Talk about being strong.

There simply wasn’t enough in the bank to recover from that kind of loss, and the company couldn’t afford me anymore, so I fired myself, with regrets all around. Time to be ‘stronger.’

Fortunately for me, Ron, one of the executives I worked with at my previous company, was in Memphis as President of the Toddle House brand of restaurants (see the story here for more details) and brought me aboard (and rescued me) to operate the company stores for the new division of Carson Pirie Scott that he was leading.  

The fact that the stores were in Washington, DC, Tampa, Houston and New Orleans, in addition to Memphis was great for earning frequent flyer tickets.

Retrospectively, I owe the rest of my career to Ron. With a two year old baby with significant medical needs, and a ‘hopeless’ situation in Santa Monica, having him bring me to Tennessee not only jumpstarted my career, but probably saved our family from an outcome much worse.

Bringing me in started our ten-year experience of living in Tennessee, y’all.

But, four years later, when Toddle House was being sold by their parent company, and Ron was one of the bidders, the winning group didn’t want anything to do with him, or me. So when he lost out on the chance to own the company, he was literally kicked out of the building the day the agreement with the new owners was signed and so was I. In fact the executive from the parent company who escorted me out of the building was told to remove me and whoever was my admin. 

Not hostile enough for you? When they let us back into the building to retrieve personal items a few days later, a Catholic priest accompanied Ron so there would be no dispute about what was personal property and what was company property. That hostile.

So in the space of four years, I fired myself and was then removed during a takeover, not the common ways to depart, but Kelly Clarkson was right: I think the experiences made me stronger and helped me during the rest of my career.

Thanks again, Ron.