I’d love to get into the highly serious and intelectual conversation you’ve re-sparked here… but 90% of this seems pulled out of thin air, and I’m at work… stealing everything in sight apparently.

There are successful business that had to leave South East Michigan since at least 1980 due to employee problems, despite the fall of the auto industry based economy. I lived in other countries and other states before coming to Michigan in 1981. I worked in Texas and Ohio factories in my youth and as a young man. I was shocked by what I found in Washtenaw County. With my first job in Ann Arbor I was in disbelief at the incredibly bad employee population. The first company I worked for, the world’s first and largest Natural Foods distributor, eventually had to move to rural Indiana in order to survive. The problem was the work force.

The theft was amazing, absolutely amazing and all of the 100 warehouse workers were either involved or looked the other way. I saw workers form a fire bucket line from a pallet of $800 each juicers to a rear door and hand off the juicers to the door and out into their cars. The next week “like new” metal juicers appeared in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti News classifieds until all were sold for $200 each. They went in one day. The company was very sucessful but made very little profit. In the Airport Highway area, there were Natural Food product companies that were successful but made the owners little profit, again due to theft. One of them was Yogo Nut. When I was contracted to work there a few days, I heard the owners discuss how their semi-truck drivers made about as much as they did. I also witnessed workers filling up their lunch boxes with high grade cashew nutts.
I thought it odd that so many workers brought large lunch boxes to work when they bought from the lunch truck that stopped by everyday.

I found the area had the most overpriced and most dishonest auto mechanic problem I had ever seen in my life time and I gave up auto mechanics as a very young man due to the dishonesty one garage after another demanded of me as a mechanic to go with the tow truck driver.

The Washtenaw County area was also the most unionized area I had ever lived in and I learned quickly that the pay, benefits, and political clout of UAW workers seemed to be on the minds of a lot of workers. It ate at the hearts of skilled workers auto mechanics, licensed heating and cooling repairment, young pharmacists and many others that they earned significantly less than even barely literate auto workers. The power of the UAW seemed to inflect everyone, even Ypsilanti school kids, many of whom seemed to think they didn’t need high school to make very good money like they 7th grade educated UAW member father.

I grew up in an extended family of small business people. I worked for some of them and I had my own lawn mowing & odd job business when I was only 12. At 13 I had a few kid employees. I got to know many area small business people. I know how many businesses moved into and out of Ypsilanti over the years do to work force problems. Churches Chicken of Michigan Avenue, Ypsilanti is an excellent example.

When Churches opened up a new unit several years ago, business was VERY good and it remained good, despite the horrid workers and managers. A lot of customers stopped coming due to how badly Southern Origin Ypsilanti people were treated there but it was still a busy place. About a year after it opened, Churches closed down. It was losing money, not due just to theft but due to workers giving away excessive food in orders and excess change to certain ethnic customers. Ponderosa closed down due to employee theft and customers abusing the breakfast bar (too many people came to eat ONLY sausage and bacon) and the all you can eat salad bar which included chicken wings (too many people came to just eat chicken wings & meat balls from the spaghetti sauce). Big Boy closed down over employee attendance and theft problems.

More recently, Ypsilanti’s last Video rental store closed because Sid, the owner, could not get enough reliable employees that did not steal from him. Sid owns a Downriver Area flyer delivery service that is very profitable for him and his flyer delivery people are all former convicts. His Wyandot video store is still profitable.

The Dollar Store at Sunrise Shopping Center (Holmes Road) shut down a few years back due to theft. Family owned, the store had lowered profits but could have made it were it not for customer theft. Even with the high unemployment in Ypsilanti, McDonald’s on Ecorse is an even bigger clown show that it ever was and how many Michigan Ave Burger King workers are party animals. Ypsilanti is full of high school drop out young workers from middle class families (so forget about the “poor & ignorant” nonsense) who party full time and work only part time to satisfy Michigan Welfare policy so they can get hundreds a month in food stamps, medicare or Washtenaw County medicare cards.

Most of the young female workers you encounter in Ypsilanti are unwed mothers from middle class families. They work part time, receive about $800 a month in Food Stamps and WIC food for their preschool children, The Ann Arbor left claims welfare is supporting underpaid workers. I say in many cases it is welfare supporting part time working, full time party animals on drugs, alcohol or both.

The S.E. Michigan work force will continue to be so bad that illegal immigrants continue to be attracted to the area and certain employers to hiring them, until Michigan is so broke it has no choice but to seriously tighten up welfare and start policing its over lavish food programs, that award so much food allowance that part time working parents can sell food stamps on the open market for the going rate of 50% of face value. Most, not all, use the cash for drugs or alcohol. Meanwhile, let the party continue until the habit gets so big they move to home invasion, porch package theft, strong arm robbery of the elderly, & so forth.

By the way, Ypsilanti party culture is a growing problem for well off Ann Arbor. Just look at the rise in Home Invasions, Campus theft of text books, laptops, cell phones, etc and at home many of the perps come in from Party USA, Ypsilanti.

The Mich Supreme Court case the author was referring to was from Davis v Seeley 71 Mich 213, where Justice Thomas M. Cooley (yes, the law school is named after him), stated as follows:

“The law takes note of the ignorant, the credulous, and the unwary, and will make their ignorance and want of cunning their innocence, and protect them. Do do otherwise would put a premium on villainy, if such villainy but reach its end by an appeal to the hope of gain, which animates ius all, so plausibly and cunningly worded as to make the worse appear the better to one not skilled in the ways of the world.”

That is a great quote, but good cases make bad law. This was the dawn of the consumerism revolution.

Thanks for the great article.
Further reading on this topic is fascinating. All by Earl Hayter

The troubled farmer, 1850-1900: Rural adjustment to industrialism by Earl W Hayter (Paperback - 1973)
Currently unavailable

2.
The patent system and agrarian discontent: 1875-1888 by Earl W Hayter (Unknown Binding - 1947)
Currently unavailable

3.
Livestock-fencing conflicts in rural America by Earl W Hayter (Unknown Binding - 1963)
Currently unavailable

4.
Seed humbuggery among the western farmers, 1850-1888 by Earl W Hayter (Unknown Binding - 1949)
Currently unavailable

5.
The fencing of western railways by Earl W Hayter (Unknown Binding - 1945)
Currently unavailable

6.
The western farmers and the drivewell patent controversy by Earl W Hayter (Unknown Binding - 1942)
Currently unavailable

7.
[Research studies in Western American frontier and agricultural history (1800-1900)] by Earl W Hayter (Unknown Binding - 1932)
Currently unavailable

8.
Sources of early Illinois culture by Earl W Hayter (Unknown Binding - 1936)
Currently unavailable

9.
Barbed wire fencing - a prairie invention: Its rise and influence in the western states by Earl W Hayter (Unknown Binding - 1939)
Currently unavailable

I mean, it’s Michigan, the number of people, responsible people, looking for work is staggering, I can’t imagine it was an issue of no one looking for work, it must have been no one willing to work for the money you were offering. So, if it’s a matter of loosing $5,000 a month, or offering responsible people more money to keep your business from going under *forever*, then… it’s just frustrating as, again, someone who really enjoyed your cafe’, that instead of closing down for a month while you did some restructuring… you’re cafe’ is now gone permanently.

I can’t speak for Jim, but I have seen this happen before to other business owners. Heck it even happens in large corporations In trying to keep a business going the owner trusts the people around them. Sometimes people take advantage of the situation.

Look at what is going on at the VFW that has put them into receivership. There it was employees stealing from Vets. How low is that?

Mean people suck.

- Steve

If you gross $300k a year or $25k a month, then we’re talking almost a quarter of your income gone a month. If none of your employees want to explain why such a substantial chunk of money is missing, then the entire staff should have been let go of. $20,000 in four months is a shit-ton of money to go missing and for no one’s name to end up in a police report.

I honestly just can’t wrap my head around how a business owner can know fully that they are being robbed-blind from the inside and not do anything about it for several months. It’s confusing.

- Steve

How does $20,000 go missing in 4 months? That’s $5,000 a month… was no one fired after the first five-grand went missing? No one was fired after the second batch of five-grand went missing?

I’m just frustrated. I liked this cafe’ a lot. And this sucks and seems strange.

Based on the scenarios (concerns about incendiary bombs, gas, etc. rather than atomic bombs), it sounds like World War II.

The gun that ANYONE carries legally is for “defense” purposes.

“To take away a gun from a police officer who is charged with protecting the public is like taking away a hose from a firefighter. There is no way that firefighter can do his job and the same goes for a police officer.”

This analogy is silly. Firefighters don’t carry their hoses around with them 24/7, arguing that a fire might break out anywhere and any time. Besides which, if we’re talking specifically about off-duty police, it’s not a question of doing their job — that’s what “off-duty” means.

“An off duty police officer carrying a gun in a classroom provides the same protection as a uniformed, on duty officer would but without the clothing. There really is no difference.”

A well-trained civilian carrying a gun in a classroom provides the same protection an off-duty police officer would. There really is no difference.

“So if the worst case scenario should come true and an active shooter situation erupts, that off duty, gun carrying police officer is going to be your first defense, just like he would be if he were in uniform and on duty.”

Or the well-trained civilian is going to be the first defence.

“The only real difference is the response time which is the best that it can get, there is no delay. Do you really want to take away that defense in such a situation??”

My point exactly!