DOLLAR BILL (furious): “He’s coming in right now, let me call you back. in a few minutes.”
That’s roughly how I told Dollar Bill that the cash we had pulled in from Dragon Con was somehow missing at the hands of The Barrister. And apparently, Dollar Bill wasn’t supposed to know. Now, let’s not jump to accusations. We’ll likely never know if The Barrister really intended to “misplace” all that money and pocket it for himself or if he just made a stupid mistake, misplacing or otherwise failing to account for all that cash. When it happened, I didn’t actually consider that he might be trying to steal it- although my friendship with him had deteriorated, I still thought he was a fairly honest businessman. Or at least one smart enough to not do anything illegal. Who knows what was really going on?
But this part of the story and its outcome has another dimension. As the reader will recall, The Barrister had been made manager-in-chief of operations at Dollar Bill’s other business- a multimillion dollar retail enterprise with something like 15 employees.
Dollar Bill had a very close relationship with his employees there (which included his father) and reports were steady that The Barrister was mismanaging the business. Orders were screwed up, relationships with vendors and customers were being damaged, and the company was losing money. And virtually no one liked The Barrister as a person or a manager so employee morale was extremely low and turnover was high. I’m sure my reports to Dollar Bill of The Barrister’s managerial malfeasance at AGF likely figured into the sum of the equation, which was that Dollar Bill had been considering firing The Barrister for several weeks leading up to the revelation of our missing money.
Thirty minutes later, the phone at AGF rang again.
DOLLAR BILL: “It’s all down in flames!”
ME: “What happened?”
DOLLAR BILL: “I just fired The Barrister”
ME: “WHAT!?”
DOLLAR BILL: “The whole thing’s down in flames! You better be ready, I think he’s going to come up there and he’s ready to kill you.”
