I spoke with Wilma on the morning of February 14^th, 2011 and discussed a couple of things that were very wrong with the store (the fact that a homeless man was allowed to hang out in Jimmy John's long after close, that Terri allowed this and made me ask him to leave, and the fact that meats and cheese where left out unrefrigerated and where the meats and cheese could literally be breathed on by customers for up to an hour and a half). Wilma was aware of the problem with the homeless man and apparently nothing had been done about it, and Wilma was aware that the meats and cheese were being left out unmonitored and unrefrigerated and had corrected an employee on previous occasion in my presence, yet it was still going on. I had also stated to Wilma that there were several personnel problems Jimmy John's. But I didn't have time to tell her at that point. On the evening of February 14^th, a bullying employee attempted to walk all over me. On the morning of February 15^th, I called and told her the following:

CUSTOMER CONTEMPT

At the Clifton Jimmy John's, there is no positive regard, or for that matter, a neutral regard for customers whatsoever. Jimmy John's had a natural air for direct contempt directed towards customers. It is sad that the efforts of good employees are far outweighed by the bad ones.

I am seriously surprised that I haven't seen outright food tampering (spitting in food, soiling it, making it dirty or otherwise unsafe) going on at the Clifton Jimmy John's, but I suspect it goes on. I believe it goes on simply when I'm not there or not looking.

A great occasion that demonstrated this was when employee Tracey was punched in the nose by a customer while on the delivery. The reason? Tracey refused to give him a bag of potato chips. A bag of potato chips? I guarantee you it was the usual attitude he displayed in at Jimmy John's. More on this guy later.

Do any of these people realize that their income comes from these customers?

HOMELESS MAN

Terri is allowing a homeless man to hang in the restaurant for hours at a time. He always begs free sandwiches and drinks, which Terri provides. He is allowed by Terri to stay and remain in the restaurant after close—until all the closing work is finished. When we are done, she expects me to ask him to leave. Last night, the man became verbally combative with me. I told Terri that I was no longer comfortable with her allowing the man to stay in Jimmy John's. “I'm not going to tell him that until he bothers me,” is what Terri said. Before, when she asked me to ask him to leave, she said, “He sometimes doesn't listen to me.” Clearly, she was allowing someone access to the restaurant that wouldn't be allowed for the the best customer, a person who wasn't a paying a customer, and a person who was not controllable by her. Terri lack of personal assertiveness was also a problem with employees, as has been evidenced in this document.

I have no problem with someone who is down on his luck, or who has problems with the tragedies that life befalls upon everyone. However, allowing a person unprecedented access to a business, especially after he behaves in such a fashion, who she is uncomfortable asking to leave, makes her a complete incompetent. Even worse, she expects an employee to do here job for her.

The night after this (Feb 14^th) the homeless man returned at 9:30 pm. I told Agnes that I was uncomfortable with him being in the restaurant, explained what was going on, and she didn't ask him to leave. We have a theme here of incompetent management. I had to ask the man to leave, he again became combative, and I called the police. Wilma had previously told staff “never to call the police.” Bullshit. That will eventually make Jimmy John's liable in legal terms if a future tragedy befalls the place.

Once again, I was required to assume a manager’s job by an ineffective, incompetent manager.

Harsh? With great sadness, I don't think so.

HEALTH AND SANITATION ISSUES

The cold table has been routinely broken down as early as 1:30 am, a full hour and a half before close. Meats, cheese, vegetables and mayonnaise have been exposed to room temperature EVERY NIGHT, FOR UP TO AN HOUR AND A HALF. This allows for bacterial growth and decay of the food products that people are expected to eat.

These items a placed on the tray, on the very top of the cold table, where a customer could breathe, cough or sneeze on the food items.

Hand washing is almost nonexistent. While gloves have been provided, hand washing is still important.

The hand washing sink does not have proper water flow through it. It needs to be fixed, yet has remained that way for at least two months. The hand-washing basin is used to store a measuring cup that is filled with water to fill the proofer, which could lead to contamination of every piece of bread baked.

Restrooms on high volume bar business nights are closed as early as 10 PM, a full five hours before close. This is not only an affront to customers, it is also probably in violation of health codes.

Employees are expected to work sick. Who knows how many customers have been infected with the endless colds that workers seem to get at Jimmy John's in Clifton.

(NOTE:  I could never figure out if these were colds or the dirty working environment infecting workers.)

GUNS

Horace claims to keep a gun in his car. As far as I know he has never brought it into the store. If Horace has no carry/conceal license, he is carrying his weapon illegally, and it could make Jimmy John's liable in any gun related event. It is being carried illegally if he carries it anywhere in his car except concealed on his person in a holster or in his trunk.

Tracey has come into Jimmy John's with a concealed gun every night he works. He is not good at concealing it, as it is easily observable. This is why he refuses to remove his Jimmy John's sweatshirt when in the restaurant.

(NOTE:  Tracey is the kind of idiot who the carry and conceal people hate, an idiot who breaks existing laws regarding carry and conceal AND allows his personality to change because he carries a handgun -nothing says "wimp" better than this.)

It is against company policy for employees to bring a handgun or other weapon into the store.

(NOTE:  It is illegal to do so because it is posted for employees not to carry a weapon into the workplace.)

Tracey claimed that he has a handgun, but leaves it in his glove compartment. While he claims to have a carry-conceal license, no one who has this license would EVER place a loaded weapon or otherwise in their glove compartment. It's illegal.

If you catch Tracey with a weapon on his hip, and don't terminate him, he will probably switch to his ankle.

Best part: Terri and Agnes are both aware of this.

FREE FOOD

A great benefit about working at Calhoun Street Jimmy John's is that you can get free food for you and all of your friends. Of course, it is against company policy to provide free food.

Way, way too much food leaves Jimmy John's without being paid for.

One night, Igor came in with a friend and took a large amount of free sandwiches, pickles, chips, and cookies. I stopped counting at 18 sandwiches.

On another occasion, Horace brought in five friends and provided free sandwiches, drinks and chips. They ate it in the store, taking up the table space.

Managers were aware of this. How could they not be?

Unfortunately, paying customers had to wait to be served almost every time.

THESE ARE NOT RANDOM EVENTS. This goes on all the time.

Seriously, one employee coming in and getting a freebie would not hurt Jimmy John's at all. But this is ridiculous. And will hurt the long term profitability, as it only gets worse, not better.

Of course, that is nothing in comparison to the free food that goes to customers, gets paid for, but no record of it shows of it in the paper work.

TICKET HOLDING

It became flagrantly obvious to me that delivery tickets with large orders where being held back so that, not only would I not get to take the delivery, but so that these deliveries could be made, taken and the proceeds of which could be stolen from the company and divided amongst the participants.

LACK OF PROFESSIONALISM

Besides everything else in this letter, lets talk about professionalism in restaurant delivery drivers. There were only two other delivery drivers who behaved in any professional way, who showed up with a positive mental attitude, and performed the job very well. All the others were poorly versed in the art of screwing the other drivers the worked with. The only drivers that I ever received complaints (and there were many) were about Daryl and Tracey. They both were lazy drivers with bad attitudes. Basically unproductive, they spent there time stealing runs from other drivers, and thus stealing money from them. A professional driver should be outgoing, have customer service in mind as well as having the best interest of the customer at heart above all else. Nothing shows a bad driver than hogging as many orders as they can, and delivering them without regard for the customer.

It was unfortunate that inside workers were forced to go along with the machinations of bad drivers an managers, but they went along,  probably in the desire to survive in an incompetent environment. I could always tell when something was up as there were obvious giveaways.

What will eventually follow is what bad drivers do. In the meantime, I will talk about the two drivers who were and still probably are, examples of the worst: Daryl and Tracey.

Daryl had been menacing me since he came into Jimmy John's. His behaviors include motioning at me as if he was going to hit me, as he did the night of the 14^th with a knife, and throwing staplers at me when my back was turned. Daryl has also made aggressive faces at me, and has on many occassions blocked my view of deliveries.

Daryl uses the bullshit excuse of not taking a delivery claiming. “I don't know where it is.” It is a driver's responsibility to either know where a delivery is of to find it, by either using maps or calling the customer, not to feign helplessness and passing it on to another driver. However, both Agnes and Terri both accepted it as a legitimate excuse. Except that was bullshit too, because they were both assisting Daryl in bad driver behavior.

The reason Daryl takes as many deliveries as he can is because he has been operating his truck without the benefit of working taillights or brake lights of any kind, and has been sneaking through the neighborhood in this unsafe condition to avoid the police. However, he believed that by having a lighted Jimmy John's sign on his car would convince the police not to write him a ticket because he was working.

(NOTE:  Forgot to mention this in my original letter, but that truck has barely any brakes on it.  He could not stop his truck in an emergency situation.  This is enough to keep him and that truck off the road.  If you are involved in an accident with a vehicle while the driver is working at Jimmy Johns, go to the contact page ASAP, as I am sure your insurance company and lawyer will want to speak with me.  Also see the Accident Page  for other information.)

Daryl feigns helplessness and both Terri and Agnes eat it up. They cater and coddle to him, leaving other drivers to take the runs he doesn't want. Daryl thinks of himself as a “Big Pimp” (it is what he writes on his cups as well). Obviously he is not. Just like any other bully, he folds when you stand up to his manipulative and nasty ways.

On his last delivery on the 13^th of February, Daryl grabbed and ran out with a delivery going to the VA Hospital and two going to Christ. They obviously don't go together. Daryl had on four occasions that night had taken deliveries out of order, that didn't go together, and left single sandwich orders behind. On one occasion, Daryl took out a two sandwich order to the 3200 block of Vine and a one sandwich order to the VA Hospital. The manager, Terri, was aware of this and expected me to take it. I refused.

When Daryl returned from his last deliveries, he came back Jimmy John's obviously under the influence of drugs.

An obvious trait of bad drivers is that they try to pick and choose their deliveries and leave ones that they don’t believe that they can make a good tip on, in the hopes that a manager won't do anything about it. In this case, Daryl was pretty sure that he would, because he supplies drugs to the managers.

Some orders took over an hour, partly due to Daryl's sneaking about the neighborhood, but mostly to his hanging in Jimmy John's. He would wait until I returned from deliveries, sometimes as long as 30 minutes, and then leave with the deliveries that he had accumulated. Why was I taking 30 minutes out of Jimmy John's? You try to cover all the deliveries he wasn't taking, and see how you do. My guess is you would be a lot slower.

Tracey, on the same hand, while not as menacing, attempted to ride over me from the second he arrived.

Tracey believes everyone around him to be stupid. I never thought I would ever meet anyone who actually believed he was smarter than everyone else. His negative views of everyone around him only lead to his manipulative and shitty behavior, and he continues to bully people until some of some of it sticks to shore up his very low self-esteem. Here is the catch: he actually had the audacity to say that people are stupid, in the presence of managers.

Tracey's type are usually pretty obvious to anyone who has any life experience. His cons are more obvious than the sky being blue.

Of course, that didn't stop Tracey from conning other drivers out of their deliveries. He tried to to be a fast talker, and bullshit drivers out of their legitimate deliveries. When he tried to tell me what to do, I told him to shove it. Sad to say, no manager stepped in.

That didn't stop Tracey from going to other drivers and telling them “what works with Thomas.” You can always tell one one of these unproductive a**h***s is on the scene, because every driver without adequate self-esteem always wants to pull over something on someone. “Tracey said this works, so I'll try it.” You can quickly tell who the losers are when this kind of person is around. It's the old envy thing rearing it's ugly head.

Tracey proved there is nothing new under the sun, as he uses the same weak and predictable strategies that all bad drivers use.

One night, he for some reason, instead of driving Tracey worked inside because he wasn't feeling good. He should have been sent home, but apparently Terri believed it was OK to have him handle food for customer consumption. (NOTE: Jimmy Johns employees are required to work if they are sick) Tracey held back two deliveries for 18 minutes while Igor (Tracey's most ardent lackey) waited in his car so I would come in a take the deliveries Igor didn't want to take. I gladly took them, as one was a $5.00 tip that I knew about, the other one turned out to be a $4.00 tip that I had no idea would be that lucrative. It is true that dishonest drivers, while trying to steal from another driver, most frequently screw themselves. Sad problem is that all the time they end up screwing the customers every single time.

One of Tracey's gambits is to “reframe” when you tell him about a problem about his behavior (reframing is repeating a problem back at another person in a way that makes him look innocent when he clearly was not, by repeating back as something entirely different from what you said). Once again his transparent art of bullshit hits the fan. But for weak managers, afraid of any kind of confrontation, I bet this works like a charm.

The problem with people who believe they are smarter than everyone else is that, deep down inside, they don't. They have to engage in constant behaviors that hurt the business so they can enjoy a transitory feeling of self esteem. They always throw it until it sticks.

Tracey's eventual goal? Probably he believes that the other drivers will put up with his nonsense, and he will emerge as the faux dominant.

His strategy is simple – to take advantage of the other drivers over the long term.

(NOTE:  I wanted to point this out about this guy as well, and failed to mention it originally.  He made constant negative comments about just about everyone who worked at Jimmy Johns.  I have always wondered why it is people who listen when someone like this is talking that he's not saying it about them when they are not around?  The truly saddest thing that this guy ever did was went on at length how he pulled on over on a female employee, who was modestly attracted to him, how much he pulled one over on her, and how stupid she was.  She may have been guilty of bad taste, but she certainly wasn't stupid.  In fact, she is quite intelligent, but simply not wise about douchebags.)

The complaints that have been given about Tracey are exactly the same thing as I've described here. One evening, I was working at the cold table when a driver walked in. “This is your lucky day, there is a $60 order here for you.” The driver walked behind the counter, looked at the order and said, “Wow thanks. I never get a big order.” “Why?” I asked. He went on to tell me that Tracey always shoves lesser deliveries on him and he always has to take small deliveries when Tracey works, because Tracey always takes the big orders. Someone commented that because Tracey worked as a manager at King's Island, and he thought he was “the shit.” Terri jumped in and said not to let him do that. I pointed out to Terri that it was her responsibility to stop that nonsense when she sees it, but she never does.

If Wildcat insists on employing such individuals, then they must be managed, preferably off the schedule.

And one more thing: if you have been told that these employees are “A List” employees, nothing could be further from the truth. They do nothing in the restaurant until after close except make sandwiches. Why? It makes it a lot easier to accumulate deliveries when you pretend to be helping out inside the store. This was Tracey's main tactic.

OTHER PROBLEMS WITH MANAGERS

Agnes had made it quite clear from the start of her employment that she had a thing for me. Whenever I would talk to another girl, no matter how innocent, she would become visibly jealous. On several occasions, Agnes would walk up to me and grab my hand after I had finished talking to another girl. Agnes lacks the maturity to be with an older man, and I certainly wasn't interested. This was undoubtedly part of her motivation.

Terri always requires that she be the center of attention. She became very angry whenever I showed any girl the least bit of positive attention.

Terri claimed to have been pregnant while she was working at Jimmy John's. She claimed to be due in October, but then claimed to have had a miscarriage in late September. However, she was released from the hospital the very same day that she had the miscarriage. This was practically a full term carry, and a miscarriage would have been almost as traumatic as a full term labor. Only the most incompetent of hospitals would ever let her go after that. She showed no signs of weight loss after the event or in the months that followed. Did Terri fake her pregnancy for attention? I'll leave that for the reader to decide.

This once again points to the fact that neither one of them is ready to manage, let alone be ready to manage a small group of people who would be more than happy to take advantage of them.

COUNTERFEIT BILLS

Counterfeit bills have been passed at the Jimmy John's in Clifton at a high rate. Are these bills being passed by customers as walk-ins or on deliveries? Nope. It's definitely an inside job. My guess is a manager or inside person is slipping them into the drawer and cashing them out, or for that matter when ending paperwork is done. And now you're asking: who is the one passing them? I know, but will not disclose here. You'll have to contact me.

OTHER PROBLEMS WITH REGARD TO MANAGEMENT

Both Agnes and Terri socialize with employees outside of Jimmy John's.

Terri has definitely been rewarding the employees she socializes with. She has allowed Carter to hang and collect deliveries, again slowing down ticket times. However, Terri rushes me out of the store the second one delivery comes up. The reasons for this have been already discussed.

And my favorite, as it is amusing, but wrong for a business environment that customers come in and out of. One night, I returned from a delivery and Terri had two large penises, made out of dough, on a bread tray within complete view of walk in customers. Not to be outdone, Phillip produced a beautiful vagina that took up the entire bread tray. Impressively, he knew where everything was. He to was working on his somewhat erotic masterpiece in full view of customers.

The point that was strikingly obvious to me was that neither Agnes nor Terri are emotionally ready for management.

GOOD VERSUS BAD DRIVERS

Let's get down to it. What makes a bad driver?

A bad driver doesn't car about what your business does in sales six months from now, three months from now or for that matter, tomorrow. A bad driver only thinks in the short term, and doesn't give a damn about a business owner's long term profitability, or if he permanently damages the profitability of your business. He doesn't care if he poisons your customers by poor food handling or sanitation, by blowing them off by bad behavior or customer service.

A good driver thinks long term, not for the owner's benefit, but for his own. He knows that relationships that he generates with customers mean money in his pocket, long term. He's no altruist. But he does understand the the trader relationship between employees and the business owner. His long term earnings are impacted by how well he performs the duties of his job.

Jimmy John's chose the bad drivers.

Would someone with a natural customer service flair, a desire to do a good job, and an ability to build business on his own want to do that for a bunch of lazy, incompetent drivers, managers or employees? I don't think so.

Would such a person want to serve food or deliver it if it may be tainted or otherwise contaminated?

Would a good employee work for a company amongst people who damage the company by stealing from it, use or be under the influence of drugs while on duty, or treating customers badly?

Would a good employee want to work for a company that would allow this to go on for even one second?

Would a good employee want to use his customer service skills, not to apologize for another employee's incompetence or bad behavior, not just once but every night, several times a night?

Everyone can have a moment, but repeated nonsense?

The problems at the Clifton Jimmy John's will not cure by retraining, for reasons previously stated. This will unfortunately be the standard for a long time to come, because once these patterns are started in a business, they then become part of the subculture, and then all is lost.

This is about all I have time to write at this point. I think its sufficient than to have to relive another long string of utter incompetence.