trying to get my money, not succeeding
June 09, 2006 / 11:42 p.m.
kristin,
i'm home now, and i still can't believe this shit. such a fun friday night!
i wish i was better at confronting people, i really do. because in all reality the only way to handle shit with junior is just to put it flat out that he needs to pay right away, and that anything else is completely beside the point. the way he went into things like the bank and the time card is missing and this and that. it doesn't matter. we don't care. we need our money, and we worked for YOUR restaurant for a given time, gave up part of OUR days for your profit, and you haven't given us anything. that's what i should have said.
i hate to break it to you, but you're not gonna probably see that timecard again.
i think the only reason he pulled it out was that he knew it was gonna be way too suspicious to have "lost" both of our timecards out of all those time cards he had there. what did he have in that stack? like 60? 80? and it's only been open since december. total bullshit. he's completely lying. i guarantee my card was in there.
and now, on top of that, he has a convenient excuse for losing your time card over the course of the next day, because he's supposed to be doing something with it now and it's not just been collecting dust for the last three months.
"Oh, i left it at Kinko's!/ oh, it must have dropped out of my pocket on the way to kinko's/ oh, etc etc etc."
so basically, yeah.
wasn't your check for more than $200, too? maybe i'm wrong.
another probable lie that he told us, out of all the other ones: the fact that he said to come in tomorrow, but they weren't open last saturday night (remember?), and they probably won't be open tomorrow if the past is any indication.
oh and also, the lie about alex. he doesn't know that i know jess outside of work (or at least did), and that she told me that alex had quit her 'other job' to work full time at rafael's organizing shit and basically managing everything. this was like a month after i stopped working there, that jess told me this.
so about a month and a half ago?
in that time she got that job back again and broke her hand (or whatever) and then is now unable to call him or to show up to any of her jobs?
very unlikely.
nope, that time card is gone now, too. just like yours is probably gonna be. and we're gonna be back to step one.
he also doesn't know that i have alex's home number, like i said. so i could ask her if she hurt herself in her 'other job' when i call her, and than catch junior's lie. unless, he's called her and told her everything. which is probable. but, he doesn't know i have her number.
the only thing i can think of now is that we could take copies of our bounced checks to the better business bureau and say that he doesn't have copies of our timecards, and maybe they'll force him to turn them over. i don't know if that would work, or he could just avoid it by saying he lost them/alex lost them/kinkos lost them, etc. but it's worth a shot.
we could also just be really frank with him and say we understand that he's having difficulty, but that we really need the money and blah blah blah. basically the sympathy approach. although i don't see that working much. he'd see it as us conceding that we can't force him to pay us.
in all reality, i could survive with less than the full amount that he owes me. i mean, it wouldn't be as nice. but maybe just telling him that i would settle for less than the full amount would get him to give me cash. i don't know. it's better than nothing, which at this point is the probably outcome of this shit if things don't change.
basically every breath out of his mouth tonight was a lie, and he has no intention of paying us. as if that wasn't obvious enough.
i mean, sometimes people are good at lying and dishonestly, and sometimes people are REALLY bad. and tonight junior was really bad. which, even though pathetic in its own right, if you had to choose, i guess is better than being the type of person that has lying down to an art form. which he obviously doesn't.
should we still go back in there tomorrow? we probably should. just to let him know we're serious. even if it's just another opportunity for bullshit.
i'm glad we went together tonight, though. because now it's pretty obvious he needs to pay us and that we're organized, and it isn't some random person strolling in, needing a few bucks that he owes. if we could somehow get raul to come too, that would be even better. do you have his number now? did he ever show up again at your coffee shop?
i wish i would have been better about confronting him tonight, though. sorry. i was just kind of overwhelmed by the bullshit, and the pathetic groveling show he was putting on. (did you hear the tone of his voice when he said he couldn't print your time card out and give it to you then because the printer was out of toner, and you then said it had been out since you worked there?? it was like a 10 year old getting caught peeing in the back yard. "I know")
it's almost as if he's been lying his way through things for so long, that's he's just completely sick of himself. and yet he knows he can't be honest, because then the whole house of cards is gonna fall down. so he just continues to run off the bullshit.
i guess that's a good thing, that's he's conscious of it and it's taking a toll on him, because it means he's not a sociopath.
tomorrow, if he's there, if we go in, and if things are the same, i don't think i'll be able to take it anymore, though.
at this point, even if i found a suitcase with $200,000 in it on the sidewalk tomorrow, i'd still pursue this, because it's the right thing to do.
such bullshit.
let me know what you think.
we'll get our money.
lyle