Latest / Cleaning Business Life / The $1.95 Cookie – A Lesson in Leadership, Verification & Trust | EP 217

Transcript

The $1.95 Cookie – A Lesson in Leadership, Verification & Trust | EP 217 · Cleaning Business Life

• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back everyone.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is Shannon Miller with Cleaning Business Life, and today I want to talk about the$1.95 cookie.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: It actually, I don't know if you caught the headlines.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: There was an employee for a large corporation who was fired over a$1.95 cookie.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, there has to be more to this story.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a blanket statement.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're just gonna drop this right here, and you're gonna respond, right?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I dug around, watched a bunch of videos, read a bunch of blogs, and according to multiple news reports, the employee at Ford's Kentucky truck plant was reportedly fired over a$1.95 cookie.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And after listening to multiple reports, reading multiple reports, I wanted to not, I wanted to understand not just what happened, but why.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a big person on wanting to know why.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I probably drove my mother crazy.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Why is the sky blue?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Why are there multiple colors in the rainbow?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Why does the weather always run from west to east?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Why does the moon look so far away?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all of those why questions.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure I drove my mother nuts.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: But before we get started, I do want to make one thing clear.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is the legal, legal thing.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, everything I'm discussing today comes from multiple publicly available news reports and interviews that were available at the time I recorded the episode.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: As with any developing story, additional facts could always emerge.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And my goal today isn't to determine legal fault or assign any form of blame.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: My goal is to ask, what can we learn as business owners?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because I guarantee this type of situation has come up and we just haven't heard about it.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because if the reports, if the reported facts are accurate, there's some incredible leadership lessons hidden inside this$1.95 cookie.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, according to multiple reports, this was an electrician.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And electricians make great money.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're putting cars together.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of things are automated with the car making industry.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I would imagine he handled the harnesses.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm making an assumption here.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the reports indicated that he earned over$200,000 annually with overtime.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a nice chunk of change.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then one evening while working a night shift around 3 a.m., I kept hearing that time specifically 3 a.m., 3 a.m.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: 3 a.m., way past my bedtime, his blood sugar dropped.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: So he ran over to the kiosk or whatever they're calling it, miniature cafeteria style, whatever.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he wanted to make a purchase because he's diabetic.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: So according to his account, he walked to an Aramac operated self-checkout kiosk.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, they are calling it a kiosk, inside the plant to buy a cookie.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: The first kiosk reportedly displayed an error, so he didn't think anything of it and walked over to the second kiosk.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: No big deal.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: If one doesn't work, there's a backup, right?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: He completed the purchase, grabbed the cookie, went back to work, problem solved.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Then, about a week later, a supervisor came over and said, We need to talk.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: You have to go to the office.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're wanting to talk to you.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, What's going on?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, I don't know.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: So they sat around and waited a half hour for a supervisor.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: After he was called into the office, according to multiple reports, he was accused of stealing the cookie.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: He was escorted from the building.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: He was not allowed to grab any of his personal effects.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: His employment was terminated, and he wasn't allowed to gather any of the tools that he had to leave behind.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, according to reports, that also included thousands of dollars worth of personal tools that remained at the facility until they could later be retrieved.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: The story doesn't cover whether the tools were actually retrieved, if they mailed him the tools, if they had someone, a courier, gather the tools and deliver them.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Typically with cars, my son is really into cars and he has these huge tool chests.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if a courier could transport from A to B without causing any damage.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the bankrupt.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: So he was fired and he was like, well, what do I do now?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm fired over$1.95 cookie.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, I guess I'll go back home.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: So he moved back to Wisconsin from Kentucky.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess he had had enough.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess it goes back and forth, back and forth.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's a union involved.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's other entities involved when this kind of termination happens.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then they had bankrupt cursors to prove that he did not steal the$1.95 cookie.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: That in fact there was an error with a kiosk.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: So Ford said, oops, and offered him his job back because they didn't want to be sued, along with back pay, obviously, for the five or six weeks I'm guessing that it took.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: So according to interviews, he declined to come back to his job because he had already moved back home.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And primarily, and I'm kind of with him on this perspective.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: If someone pulled me to the side, accused me of stealing, didn't give me a chance to defend myself, escorted me off the property, wouldn't let me grab my personal facts, I'd probably give him the middle finger and say, no, I'm not coming back.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll be honest, this is a really wild story.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it really is concerning that it went this far and there wasn't any point of reference for dealing with this type of situation, right?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because as we become more and more dependent on technology, things like this are gonna come up.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the less interested I became the about the cookie, and it was more it really wasn't the story about the cookie, it was a story about leadership, assumptions, technology.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And most of all, and most importantly, was the fact that there was no human discernment.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: None.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like it he was just a number on the line.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't give two butt shakes, whether he was fired or not.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this is my words, not theirs.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And one interview I listened to featured an attorney talking through the facts of the case.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't trying to defend the employee, he wasn't trying to attack Ford, he just kept asking one simple question.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we arguing when there's one simple way to verify the truth?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So they didn't go from A to B to C to D.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: They just said, Well, camera A shows you not ringing it in, you're fired.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: What they should have done is said, Hey, camera A says that you're fired.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see what camera B says.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And they could have pulled the tape and said, Oh, he did pay for it, right?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So discernment.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a way to verify that.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And how they ended up verifying is he was able to pull his bank statement and say, look, uh, it deducted$1.95 from my bank account.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So not arguing, not assuming, no rushing to judgment.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: What's the simple way, simplest way to verify truth?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have a situation where a theft is involved or something major has happened, you're gonna have to use a lot of discernment to try to figure out which way they should go.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And at Ford, I get why they were trying to protect their company and their reputation, but no one used any form of discernment to go, okay, if this have what if this happens, do this.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: What if that happens, do this?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: What happens if I do that?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Those types of things.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: So think about your own business, and I would start to think of a list on what to do if you run out of gas on the way to a client's house, what to do if you're running late because there's a car accident, what to do if you break an item in someone's home, right?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Or, and I've had this happen, I believe I mentioned it in another podcast.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: I had a long-term client, and she basically accused my because I was still working in partners, I wasn't working solos yet, and she accused him of stealing.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just like, it's not in him.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's just no way.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And after we did the question and everything else, very delicately, very caringly, because this was a long-term employee, I determined that he didn't do it.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: What I did determine though, and what I thought, and what I ended up being was was right.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: She had put it away for safekeeping and couldn't remember where she put it, and then called us back like six months later, wanting to resolve the issue.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, it's not happening.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that and that's a very short version of what went down.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: There was lots of back and forth.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's a protocol you have to follow, the discernment, the checklist.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you have someone who has stolen or is accused of stealing in a house, typically you would want to cooperate with the police, not the homeowner, because sometimes the homeowners are not honest.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: But there has to be a simple way to verify the truth and not accuse.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: They need to verify, sure.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I've had to say that to clients over the years.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Are you sure that this happened?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I fire them, I'm gonna lose a really good employee.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And not because I don't want to fire them, but if there is a mistake here and I have to fire them, I'm not gonna be happy with you, is basically what I said.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: So they could you could talk to your technician, you could review your notes, you could find out who entered the home.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: A customer says you never clean my upstairs room.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's verify.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why it for a long time taking photos inside a client's home was like total taboo.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's pretty standard.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to be careful not to take photos of anything identifiable, like pictures of the kids, that type of thing.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and look at the photos, review the checklist, talk to the technician, an employee says I clocked in, verify.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: A customer says, I already pay, verify.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Don't just assume because they say it happened that it did happen, because mistakes can happen.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Technology can fail.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is believing they have to choose sides immediately.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: You do have to protect your company, but you have to be able to do so inside the bubble.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why he got escorted off the property.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: They were trying to contain everything inside the bubble.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And there's also a third option is verify, find the facts first.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody bothered to look at the tape from the second register.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: They just said, Arimax said, your employee, 98576 or whatever his employee number was, stole a$1.95 cookie.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: You might want to look into that.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, Oh my God.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So then they went to the next person and said, Hey, this guy stole a$1.95 cookie.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of going up to him and saying, Hey, we had this coming up missing.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know anything happened?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: He could have said, Yeah, I had a problem with this register.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was having a diabetic episode.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: I went to the second register and rung it in, and they would have been like, Oh, pull the tape from register too, right?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: So there seemed to be many opportunities for them to do those things, and they chose not to, and they didn't treat him very nice after the fact.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, going forward, could payment records have been checked before a termination decision was made?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Had this had this employee ever been late, had this employee ever caused a problem, had this employee stolen in the past, had this employee done any embezzlement, had this employee done this or that or that or that?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying what should or shouldn't have happened.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying, simply saying that according to the reports, there seem to be several opportunities to slow down and to verify what happened before making a life-changing decision.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: This left a bad taste in this guy's mouth.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing that there's going to be some sort of off-the-table settlement.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm making an assumption just because of the mistakes that happened.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Arimac didn't come out and make a statement, maybe they couldn't.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: But there needs to be some sort of ownership on when we say that for the technology to do this, that it should do that, right?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: It shouldn't leave an end-all be-all.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: It should be, hey, this might have been this way, right?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because here's the reality: as business owners, our decisions affect people's lives.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: This guy left a$200,000 a year job that I heard through the grave fund that he actually got a job that paid even more money.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that worked out great for him.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it really does affect their lives and their careers, it affects their families and their financial future.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's a heavy responsibility to think about.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe we owe it to the people who work for us to verify before we conclude.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's not off with your head, right?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like what you said, off with your head.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't say the right thing, off with your head, right?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: We all know what happened there.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And here's another lesson in the story that made me really think.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: We use Jobber, QuickBooks, GPS tracking, time clocks, credit card processors, security cameras, artificial intelligence, self-checkout kiosk.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Technology has made our businesses faster, more efficient, and in many ways better.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: But here's what I kept coming back to.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Software follows rules.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: People should exercise judgment.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that for a minute.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Software only knows what it's been programmed to know.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: A camera only captures the angle that it's pointed at, right?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: It can't capture the whole room unless it has a wider angled lens.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: A payment processor only reports the transaction it receives.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: AI analyzes information based on the data it's given.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: None of these things have discernment.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's still our job as humans.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Technology should help us make better decisions.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: It should never replace our ability to think, to ask another question, to slow down, to consider the entire picture.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I noticed while researching this story is I that one time.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: We will have to put that out.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I noticed while researching this story was that I never found a public statement.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna skip that part two.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: One more thought about this story.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: The more I realize something, and we're still very much a human-based industry.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the trade, what are they?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: I heard someone call it tradies the other day.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, it's East Coast thing.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: I consider us the 23rd trade.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're still very much a human industry, and when you take that element out, you just become a number.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: And when you become a number, you really don't matter to the bigger picture when in actuality your cleaning techs matter a lot to the bigger picture.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we all know about cleaning tech retention, right?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: So leadership is a people responsibility.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Technology is there to help us.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: According to multiple reports, this employee was diabetic and his blood sugar had dropped that evening.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Whether that ultimately changed the facts of the investigation isn't really my point.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: My point is context matters.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: When I hired employees, I always fast, I always asked for an emergency contact.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually the ver when you're doing a working interview.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: The very I get a copy of a driver's license, an emergency contact, because I've had cleaning text go down for whatever reason.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't used to the altitude, they didn't drink enough water because it's really hot here in Arizona.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: They had a medical episode.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so many things, so I need to have that information, and that kind of opens the door.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that this is really sticky, so be very careful depending on what state you're located in.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything medically that I need to be made aware of?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And they'll usually, if they're diabetic, they'll say, I'm diabetic, I need to eat at regular intervals.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Cut and try.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need to know all the juicy bits.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: I just need to know that this person needs a little extra time to be able to consume food on a regular basis so they don't have an episode, right?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I got around to knowing a little bit more about the cleaning text and what was going on behind why they made the decisions they made.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, I would say this is there anything that I should know that would help us respond appropriately if you had a medical emergency at work or anything that could affect your ability to safely perform this job?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: That kind of segues around, so you can write that down and re-listen to this part a couple times, on what to say so that you don't overstep and not say the right thing because every there's all the HIPAA laws and everything else.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't need to know all the juicy bits.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: I just need to know is there potential for a medical situation?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Diabetes, unfortunately, comes with that, right?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, and there's nothing wrong with them.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: They're great cleaners, it's just they potentially could have an issue or an episode.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes the answer was no.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that they would tell me, hey, I'm diabetic, or I had need surgery, or my back isn't what it used to be, or I broke my shoulder, and sometimes it aches.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or what was someone had a heart condition, probably not the best pick for a cleaning tech, but I did not hire that person.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And they actually ended up being a really good cleaning tech.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the pieces of information helping become a better employer because if someone does have low blood sugar or another medical emergency, I'd rather understand the situation than being caught with my pants down, basically.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a real cost, and I would imagine I'm hoping that Ford has learned from this experience and that they would use a little bit of discernment.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you kept losing 11-year employees over and over and over again, that could be expensive, right?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to lose an 11-year employee.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: You want employees to stick around because you're providing them what they need to have the life that they desire.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: So the there was a career that was interrupted and there was stress involved.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: There was embarrassment, there was backpedaling, being escorted from the workplace.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: That was shame, shame, shame.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: We all know.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Winter is coming.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thousands of dollars worth of personal tools temporarily left behind, coworkers watching everything unfold because they're like, Am I next?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Then weeks later, according to reports, the payment appears to have been verified.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: It took a long time to verify the payment, which I don't understand.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's because it's such a big company, but it did take it took like five weeks of them going back and forth to figure out the validity of the whole story.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Ford off reportedly offered the reinstatement, but by then the relationship had changed.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: It had been ruined.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, I totally understand that.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Trust is incredibly difficult to rebuild once it's been broken.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: This story actually reminded me of something that happened years ago in my own cleaning business.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I had another client call who was convinced that we had taken her wedding ring.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Never, she it was a hoarding situation, which was a whole can of worms in itself.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: She had a slight drinking problem.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: When I say slight, she drank from eight o'clock in the morning until I think three in the afternoon.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: No food.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then it came up that her wedding band was missing.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: No one ever saw a wedding band.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we emptied out, we took extra time and we ripped open the auric bags and the canister vacuums and the port of acts and everything else that was used on her job to look to see if maybe her ring had been sucked up on accident, right?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because the jewelry ends up on the ground.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you how many times, even when I was cleaning, I would find like two carat diamond solitaire earrings.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, these were on the floor.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Just thought, just thought you might want to know, right?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And in reality, there was no stolen ring or missing ring.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: She just didn't want to pay her bill, is what it came down to.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you you just never know what the mindset is behind people doing what they do.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I take theft very seriously.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone says, so I think so-and-so stole something, there's gonna be an investigation.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have the police involved, we're gonna make a statement.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's all of that stuff.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you are really concerned or you're doing a lot of high-end stuff, I recommend that you get a bond.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can look into what that costs.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: I used to have a$5 million bond all of the time.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I had a little bit more, sometimes I had less, depending on what I was doing that year.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I think with the Ford incident, that they could have looked at all the camera footages instead of just assuming that Aramek was like right and that this person was wrong.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it makes me wonder if there have been other people who had had the same thing happen to them.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: If in actuality they did steal the$1.95 cookie, or if it was another mistake.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: So if you do have someone who is accused of theft, make sure you're exhausting all of the elements that go along with it.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: This episode really isn't about Ford.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it really isn't about Arimac.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Eramark, Erimac.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it certainly really isn't about a cookie.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's about every one of us who has the responsibility of leading others.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Someday, someone is gonna make a complaint, someone is going to get accused, technology is gonna tell you one thing, a person is gonna tell you another.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: When that day comes, don't ask who do I believe?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Ask what's the simplest way to verify the truth?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Cut and dry.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Slow down, ask another question, use discernment, gather another fact, use technology as a tool, then apply something technology never will have judgment.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because software follows rules, systems create consistency, technology processes information, but leaders ask one more question.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Leaders also verify and they apply discernment.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: If today's episode really resonated with you, I encourage you to explore Clean Business Life Podcast Library.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Episode 210, Culture Starts at the Top with Paul Guillermo.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's episode 214, Training Day One, What Should It Look Like?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the episode with the theft of the cleaning technician.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have to just leave that in the show notes because I actually don't remember what number that is.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Leadership isn't built in one big decision, it's built in the hundreds of small decisions we make every single day.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you found value in today's episode, please follow the podcast, leave a review, like, share to another cleaning business owner.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: It tells the algorithm that we are worthy and we really appreciate that.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, my friends, thanks for tuning in.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.