Still to this day, I feel responsible for what was about to happen to the nice, comfy, successful salon that I had left just a little over a year earlier because I was bored of the esthetic and thought I needed to work at a more glamorous salon. While my bosses were beating each other up through court cases and trying to separate their lives, my friend and I suggested that Mr. X contact our previous boss and see if she was interested in selling her business. I guess that's all I really did, the rest is on him. My previous boss was looking to get out, the two of them struck up a deal and the next thing you know Mr. X and 5 of us from the fancy salon waltzed in and set up shop where we could.
When one person starts at a salon, there's an adjustment period. It shakes things up, salons run on a seniority system and the people that have worked there the longest get the best bookings. So when 5 people start at once, 2 of whom have worked there before... well, it doesn't go over so smooth for everyone. Who has the best schedules, what days they have off or what times they can come and go, do they have their own clientele or are they building? A lot of my clients didn't follow me when I left originally because they loved the salon, so now that I showed back up and they had started a new relationship with another stylist... there was some feelings all around. But over time we all got cozy with each other. Now all the people that we barged in on were looking at us and wondering who this man was that was now their new boss.
"Oh he's cool." we would say "You're going to love him!" It wasn't long before he took everyone out to happy hour and we were all having a ball. He also brought in a very cool product line and paid for one of the girls that was at the salon to go to New York for a week of professional training. He was painting walls and doing some heavy construction, he took out a wall to make his office bigger. His philosophy was "It's better to ask forgiveness then permission." His office was on the second floor of the building, there were windows from his office that looked onto the salon floor's vaulted ceilings. He chose to take the windows out of the wall, leaving the area open... to eavesdrop easier perhaps? We never knew. He would just laugh it off if you asked him about it. He took over the salon in the spring and things went smooth for awhile.
That summer we were all deposed by Mrs. X and had to go and give a deposition for her and her lawyer to see if she had a case against Mr. X for getting us to go work for him. She didn't have a case, we all left on our own free will. That was extremely stressful, Mrs. X scared me with her anger. We were all so glad to be over that situation, we decided to go out and have a few drinks to celebrate it being over. Mr. X's girlfriend had to go out of town that evening and he was on his own. We were having a great time until me and another coworker realized that the new nail tech had eyes for Mr. X and did not care that he had a girlfriend. By the end of the night it was obvious that they were going home together and that's none of anyone else's business. That was on a Friday night and I didn't see Mr. X again until the next Wednesday. He asked me if I was all right , I told him that I was bummed because I thought of myself as friends with his girlfriend. He laughed it off and told me that he just drove the nail tech home and that I was ridiculous for thinking otherwise. But I'm no dummy, I know they had an affair and I also didn't want to find a different job so I dropped it. But it let me see the snake he was.
We all started noticing strange reporting's in our check stub's. He wasn't utilizing the paycheck system that the previous owner had used for years and years. He would say he was doing us a favor, getting us more cash and reporting less for taxes. He would tell you that you had insurance benefits and I think he started everyone's insurance but then I think he stopped paying it on the back end. I remember doing a client's hair and hearing our current esthetician screaming at him about her insurance not being covered, and then he screamed back at her that she wasn't right. Thanks to him taking the windows out of the office, my client and I heard everything. The esthetician called him a thief and demanded to know where her money or benefit was. He scared her by being big & loud and she collected her things while crying uncontrollably and quit. She wasn't the only one to come to her senses and find a new place to practice her craft. Over the next few months a handful other employee's left due to Mr. X's unorthodox business practices.
By the holiday season, he had the brilliant idea to have a buy one/get one deal on gift cards. Meaning buy one gift card for a service and get a second gift card for the same amount up to $100. I asked him how we could afford this sort of a promotion and he told me with complete confidence that this was his "advertising budget" like he had some sort of account or budget set aside for advertising. He did show up with a brand new Ford Explorer that he paid cash for. So, I guess that was a really great promotion,,, for him.
Mr. X was losing steam on being a salon owner, we found out that he and the previous owner had a clause in their agreement that if at anytime he didn't want to run the salon anymore he could hand it back to the original owner. That is exactly what he did, and just like that, he was gone. No one involved ever saw or heard from him again. That's probably by his design because the previous owner walked in to a pile of bills and bullshit that no business owner would ever let build up. Mr. X hadn't paid the building rent in months, there was product bills that had been around since he opened the account a year earlier. And of course all the payroll taxes had to be sorted out. The previous owner came back and kept the business going for as long as she could and she made it for a couple of years, but when the '08 recession hit she just couldn't keep the doors open anymore. She might have had a chance if she hadn't had to dig out from such a deep financial hole Mr. X left for her.
Rumors surfaced about Mr. X and drugs over the next few months after he had left. We all understood why Mrs. X was so angry and now looking back, she really handled the situation as graceful as she could. We all believed his lies and that probably drove her absolutely crazy. There's a ton of people out there like Mr. X, a narcissist that's faking it until they make it. Unfortunately, this thief got away but maybe sharing this story will help other's to notice if they find themselves in a similar situation. If your boss is a party monster, run!
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