U is for Unethical

Exactly a year ago today, Dave's main employee, W.S. Binion, rear-ended a city plow truck with one of our business trucks.

(For clarity in this post, WS also goes by W.)

January of this year, WS got married.  He and his wife invited us to the wedding, so we went.  It was in a church and it was SUPER-churchy.  Very "the wife is obedient to the husband"-type of thing.  And this church is so far in that they don't even sing hymns out of the classic hymnal.  They have their own hymns that they all know.  

Dave and I sat through the whole ceremony with barely concealed.... lack of zeal.

I realized that I kept shaking my head here and there.  I also realized there were people sitting behind me, and I should probably stop, so I did. 

They had the reception in the church hall.  Dave only knew one other person there (another of his employees), so, of course, the couple didn't seat us with them.  Nice.

We were seated at a table with two other couples, one couple had kids.  The younger kid was seated next to me.  He has Down's and he and I had a very wonderful conversation about Sasquatch!  He was so cool!  The couple on the other side of Dave asked how we knew WS.  When they found out Dave is WS's boss, they asked, "How did he not see that city plow truck?"

I said, "Have you met him?"

JK.  I didn't say that.  Not out loud, anyway.

We stayed just long enough to congratulate the happy couple and then we split.

Shortly after the wedding, WS quit.  We knew he was going to, it was no surprise.  He decided he needed to find an opportunity where he had more room for advancement.  Completely understandable now that he has a wife and they, presumably, want to start a family.  He told Dave something about going into construction.

He has been making noises for nearly this entire 12 months about buying Dave's business.  There was talk about a church member who was going to finance him.  That fell through.  Then there were trips to the bank together. 

About 2 months ago, I came home from school, and Dave's truck was in the middle of the driveway.  This happens now and again while he loads/unloads stuff into his trailer.  I was listening to a good part of my audiobook, so I pulled up to the curb in front of our house to wait for him to move the truck. 

I saw him make a call and realized he was talking to WS.  I immediately muted my book and eavesdropped.

I only heard Dave's side of the conversation, but I got a really good idea of what was going on. 

I heard Dave say, "W, I READ the letter!!"

So basically what happened is that one of Dave's clients showed Dave a letter that WS sent to her trying to steal her business from us.

What a fuck!

OK, so many things wrong with this scenario....

The first thing that stupid punk does is deny he sent a letter to anyone.  Dave repeated, "I read the letter" like five or six times. 

Next thing that pussy does is hide behind his wife's skirts.  He tried to say that she wrote the letter, and he didn't read it before she sent it out.

One of the things the letter said was that WS always did all the work and Dave just took all the credit (and the money). 

That's like saying the register worker at Walmart does all the work and the Manager (or CEO, for that matter) takes all the credit.

Um.... no.

WS, you are an employee.  You did the job we hired you for.  You did the job we PAID you to do.  Barely. 

Dave would catch him so many times NOT working and WS spent so much time on the phone wasting Dave's time with inane questions and general bullshit, that we finally put WS on salary.  That way, he got a set pay and we didn't end up paying him for time he was dicking around.

 During the phone conversation, Dave asked if W was going to go after our snow business, too. (In the winter, Dave's company does snow removal.)  Then I heard Dave say, "Oh I think you know exactly what I'm saying, W!"

Hey, WS, backpedal much?  Such a LOSER!!

Dave also asked if W has just been stringing Dave along this whole time about buying the business.  He said, "Were you just lying to me long enough to get the balls to send out this letter?" 

Dave ended the call saying he wanted to a list of ALL the clients that W contacted.  He reiterated that it was unethical and generally jacked up to have contacted them.

When he ended the call, he told me all about it.  I was flabbergasted and SO angry.

The person I was most angry at, however, was Dave.  I told him when W left to have W sign a 5-year non-compete!  Dave said that W would never have the ambition to do anything.

Dave wasn't wrong.  According to that tiny-brained shit (WS), he didn't send out the letters, his wife did.

So what's happened is that his wife has finally come to the realization that she married a man with no ambition, no education, no prospects, and decided to do something about it.

 I was mad at Dave for several days until a friend told me that non-competes aren't enforceable in CO anyway because it's a right-to-work state. 

Fine.  I guess.  I'm smart enough (or at least married long enough?) to not have brought the non-compete up with Dave.  It would have only resulted in a fight about something that was so far past fixing as to make it a stupid fight.

I wrote out a notice for Dave to send to his clients...
It's recently come to our attention that our trusted, former employee, W.S. Binion has sent out letters trying to pilfer our clients.  We are saddened by his inappropriate and unethical behavior, and we hope this hasn't inconvenienced you in any way. 

Rest assured we continue to give the excellent and timely service you have come to expect from the Lawn Guy.

Thank you for your time.

It's "Christians" like those two that reaffirm my Atheism, Ruth!