So a while back I had been hired to be the marketing person for a family business. It was a fitness equipment liquidator that had been founded by a gold medalist Olympian. He had fallen into some mental health issues and had delegated his wife to take over the business. She didn’t have the experience but took the reins anyways and she and her children ran the place, albeit with some success.

So this is where I come in. The first red flag I should’ve seen was that she was trying to screw over the recruiter by wanting us to do a side deal to pay me technically less but still more than I would’ve gotten without the recruiter as the middle person. But I was in bed and I didn’t think too much about it.

The next thing was how embedded the family aspect was in this business, that there was basically no distinction between the employees and family and family affairs being wrapped up in their work environment too. But I was just happy to finally be in a space where I felt welcome and almost love bombed by the ceo who treated me like one of her own children, always lots of hugs and even kisses during good morning meetings as if we were coming downstairs for breakfast.

Meetings ended up turning into brainstorming sessions because the CEO’s children and the workers were so scatterbrained and didn’t want to commit to any specific plans of action and I was basically on my own when it came to any marketing of anything because nobody would actually participate if it came down to it.

About a month or so into it, I get ambushed by the ceo and her daughter who was like the operations person technically or something. Both were wondering why we hadn’t achieved as much as I had wanted to and when I explained that I didn’t really receive much help or participation from anyone, suddenly it became all about blaming me for everything wrong and why sales were down and why nothing was exponentially growing as she had hoped they would. I explained what actions I had taken and that I was doing exactly what I said I was going to do, it wasn’t my fault nobody wanted to help when they said they would. It didn’t matter. They wanted me gone because they expected the moon in three weeks time with zero budget and zero help from anyone else. So I just left.

I want to add I did a lot while there. I automated a lot of their processes that they were doing by hand, set up salesforce and slack, as well as setting up and handling zendesk and a ticketing system, and even automating a lot of POS processes so that from card tap to accounting, it was all smooth and seamless and I made tons of things very efficient for them and improved productivity while there. But none of that mattered of course. They wanted double the sales from basically social media posting and nothing else.

While I was there I had documented tons of OSHA violations. Exposed wires where customers would walk. ADA violations. Customer safety violations. Forklifts operated with zero certification and no PPE and having employees standing on top of the forks just to reach the warehouse ceiling. With no safety anything. Structural violations. You name it they did landlord special type fixes and left things in often worse states than before.

I made the call, and sent OSHA photos of what I had documented, which I had only documented in the event of needing to use it. Never actually expected it to come to that. But I did.

After talking with them it was explained to me that there was months’ long processes to get actions to be taken, even with evidence. The penalties for the violations I had evidence for were financially crippling fines I knew they wouldn’t be able to handle. And after a months of checking every now and then, I got confirmation action was taken. Then a couple months later I drove past the warehouse/showroom and saw that it was abandoned. Broken letters, overgrown grass in the parking lot, boarded up windows and doors, for lease, all gone and dilapidated.

While I was placing those calls I was also reaching out to my realtor friend who is super good at what she does, saying that we should time it right so after these fines and penalties that she can drop literature off at their door until they’re convinced to sell. She didn’t do it in time but she did catch wind that the house had been sold and sold fast.

Their website was 404’d, and they basically packed their bags and left. I still can’t believe it worked, but sometimes in life we have to accept that we are the karma that someone has coming to them.

Goodbye Amy, wherever you and your family left to. we’re even.