The definition of wrong. Right?
Tuesday 26 June 2007
Bit of an odd situation at work yesterday.
Remember the new owner I told you about, who previously introduced us to Numbnuts? Well, as I've said before, the guy is a grade-A pisshead and there hasn't been even a single occasion when any of us have seen him sober. He's always off his face. As a result, he's unpredictable, random, prone to misunderstanding you, talks loads of crap and is generally somebody you want to avoid. He never takes it too far, but the potential for that is always there, twitching and buzzing, like a wasp on the floor that may or may not be dead. To wit, he's always on thin ice.
And he knows this.
Even in the week or two since he's been an owner, he's bought along some more problem mates that have received immediate bans from the complex and lower bar. The owner himself never goes too far - at least, not yet - but his mates are always total bell-ends.
He knows this, too.
Hence, what happened last night. The guy has a lot of money. This is obvious. Where it comes from, and how the fuck he maintains it, is anybody's guess. But he has it, currently, in spades. And whenever somebody does something for him, or treats him with the right 'respect', he's started handing out twenty-pound notes as a 'thank you'.
Great, you might be thinking. Nice work if you can get it. But it's anything but. Taking money or other incentives from owners at work is an absolute and total no-no. And the reason why is fairly obvious - these people are here all the time. If you accept gifts from them, you're basically in their pocket, whether you like it or not. One of two situations will ultimately arise. (1) They will be involved in trouble, and when it kicks off, look to you - and whomever else they've paid off - to stand by or help them, even if it's the wrong thing to do. Naturally, any good DS will ignore this, even if they have accepted the gift in the past, which leads to (2) The owner not being happy with the DS, and then marching up to the GM and complaining that they didn't get any assistance despite the DS accepting stuff from them in the past. End result: the DS will be fired, without exception.
Now, a lot of this is common sense. Basically, we all know it. The owner drove to the complex last night (pissed, of course), but told us he wasn't going to drive the car again tonight, so we left it. However, when he went inside, we noticed his lights were still on, so I went into the bar to tell him. He gave me his keys, we sorted the car out, and then Edmonson took them back inside. Later, as a thank-you, he offered Edmonson a score. Edmonson politely thanked him, but turned it down. As I would have done. While nobody wants to work with people who are whiter-than-white, taking these gifts from owners is never going to be something that any sensible member of our team would do. If it had been from a guest, maybe there's a bit of a grey area - they're not in a position to buy favours. But owners (and, to some extent, staff) absolutely are.
Edmonson tells me what happened and I don't think much more about it, until we later found out that the owner had been offering these handouts to other members of our team, and one of the new blokes had accepted it.
Oh dear.
Now, suddenly this is all a potential mess. Half the problem is because the new guys have been hired externally, nobody on the inside has really told them anything. All the workings of the job, the company, the 'rules' etc have come from the rest of the DS team. However, as I said, some things are common sense (or, at least, you'd assume) so there was never a need to discuss every possible scenario. As a result, the older DS - who, to be fair, hasn't been paid yet and is Welsh (we'll refer to him as Jones) - saw a chance to grab some easy money and went for it. Edmonson had a word with him about it all and explained why this was something that we just couldn't do - I mean, if the owner had been just a nice guy it would be one thing, but this chap has 'future massive problem' written all over him - so to his credit, Jones tried to return the score, but the owner was like, "I don't know what you're talking about."
So it's all a bit icky. I figured the best solution for all of us was for myself to have a quick chat with Jones about the pickle we now found ourself in, but him particularly, as if the owner leaked this back to the powers-that-be he was fucked. The best solution, I suggested, was for him to put that money behind the buy and buy some drinks for the team, and if the matter ever cropped up as an 'issue', I'd say I was with Jones all night and the incident in question never occured. Two DS against one owner has a reasonable chance of being a winner. One against one, less so. It was the simplest way out, and Jones, again, snapped it up.
Ever since, all that's been on the back of my mind is: do two wrongs make a right... sometimes? Or is this now the beginning of a short, sharp and slippery slide down to the dark side. Maybe that's what 'DS' stood for all along.
posted by Sheamus @ 2:30 pm
