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Here’s how it is: I took a job at Planet Sub in Denver back in November of 2013. Just over a week ago I was fired for reporting that the owners were stealing from employees by taking tips in order to cover shortages at the register. I didn’t want to be fired any more than I wanted Rocky and Ryan Joy, the thieving father & son franchisee owners to steal money from me, my friends or my colleagues but you know what, it happened. A lot of times, when you draw attention to or call out a thief, they stop what they’re doing because… Thieves are cowards, just like bullies. The owners of Planet Sub in Denver are bullies, just like cowards. Allow me to disassemble their conniving plan right in front of you. This post will be a record of the fucked up things going on at Planet Sub in Denver since its inception in November of last year. As an added bonus, I’ll let everyone know how they can personally verify what I say. Trust me, mouse shit and dipshit drunken employees are not hard to find in this place.
I’ll start with the marketing plan of this nefarious enterprise. Ryan & Rocky hired their friend, a dipshit named Spencer Sargent to market their new place. He is a $25k a year, salaried manager that would bake cookies and then give them to every pretty girl on the 16th St. Mall. The owners pay half his rent so he bought a new car. This completes the marketing plan of Planet Sub in Denver. His nickname at the shop is; “Captain Dipshit.” That’s a reference to Eric from the movie, Billy Madison. Eric was the dipshit that was given a job by the owner of the company just because he was a friend.
The general manager of Planet Sub in Denver, Mike Payne is not as close to the owners as the marketing director so every time Spencer was caught sleeping in the office, ditching a shift or bringing his Tinder dates to the shop, Mike would not do a God damn thing. Literally, the GM of Planet Sub in Denver never did anything to curb the bad behavior of Spencer because he was too much of a pussy to do the right thing… He is only concerned with collecting a paycheck to support his wife and family. I can’t say that I blame him but I can say he is a pussy.
His brother Pat is a drunk that allegedly went to clown college. He is the assistant GM. He’s also a pussy that grumbles about wanting to quit and move back to Kansas City because he doesn’t like Spencer. The only way he’ll be able to do that is if his parents finance the move. He drinks & smokes his entire paycheck away. I’m not lying; I’ve helped him do it. This is a guy that has called his people in Kansas City to order him a pizza here in Denver because he had no money to buy his own food. Can you believe that? A manger AT A RESTAURANT can’t manage to feed himself because he’s such a fuck up. By the time I was his age I’d already been around the world and fought in a war. He is the epitome of pathetic.
After these three fools and the two owners there is everybody else, including me. Everybody else, including me is cool.
For context, here is a paragraph from my last post about the stealing of money from Planet Sub employees:
This is all in the context of the owners taking tips from employees in order to balance out the cash drawer. Oh! I haven’t mentioned that yet have I? Allow me to elaborate. The cash drawers get counted down twice a day, giving the company two opportunities a day to take back some of the salary they pay employees. Here’s how it works:
After lunch, the drawer is counted. If it’s short, every employee that worked must then equally give back their tips to cover the loss. After dinner, the drawer is counted again and if it is short again, the employees are forced to give up their tips to cover the difference. I think this is bad enough but this is where it gets REALLY shady. If the drawer is OVER, the company keeps the overage. For example, if the drawer is $15 short at lunch but $15 OVER at dinner, the employees will have given up 15 bucks at lunch, and the company will then keep the $15 overage at dinner, rather than return it to the employees. It’s bullshit.
Spencer and Pat, the two salaried managers that are the lapdog and the lapdog’s lapdog of the business get to dip into the tip jar twice every day. That’s right. The marketing director and the assistant GM of a restaurant take a share of server tips. Has anyone ever heard of that before? Me neither. It doesn’t stop there… These are the two guys that count the drawers each day. So, the two people in charge of controlling labor and the tip jar are the ones that can send people home to save labor, cut them out of tips and then after secretly counting the drawer, tell us that “X” amount of dollars have been taken in order to balance the drawer. You know who the ONLY two people are that were OK with using tips to cover the drawer; the two people counting the drawer. Hmm… Two people that collect a salary and that are both at financial redline are the ones that take tips from employees at the behest of the owner if the drawer is short. The drawer was always short when either one of these two counted it. It was always fine if anybody else counted it.
Now let’s talk about the freshness of the food. I can’t talk about it because the food isn’t fresh. Nothing is grown, raised or produced in Colorado. The chicken arrives precooked, chopped and cubed in a cardboard box. The banana peppers are from Turkey and the tuna is grocery store Starkist. The lemons limes and avocados are from South America and Mexico, the soup arrives in plastic bags and the rest of the meat comes from a slaughterhouse in California. These are the cheapest options for getting food into that store, not the best.
Planet Sub does not recycle a God damn thing, nor do they donate any leftover food stuffs to people in need. “When in doubt throw it out.” The location is in downtown Denver so there are many homeless people within a stone’s through of the shop at any given time. Do they give them day old bread, old soup or even the time of day? Nope. As employees we have been made to chase away and call the police to get them away from the general area of the store. In the center of a city with 2 million people, Planet Sub in Denver chases homeless people away with extreme prejudice and they make their minimum wage employees do it. That’s right, part of my money was earned by chasing away starving, homeless people from a dumpster that contained food that Planet Sub owners would rather end up as trash than food for the needy. That dipshit marketing director named Spencer was the main enforcer of this rule.
Ryan Joy also arranged to have a company called Turn The Page record and listen to incoming phone calls placed by customers to the shop. I found out about it and called him out. He told me he didn’t know about. That’s a lie. I found out about it because he told Mike, the GM about a phone call he listened to where an employee was rude to a customer. Here’s the email I sent to Ryan Joy asking if recording was happening and his reply:
On Sun, Jun 8, 2014 at 3:08 AM, The World Is Raw
wrote:
Ryan,
Rob Hurlbut here, from Planet Sub in Denver. I’ll get right to the point:
The word on the street is that you are recording and subsequently listening to telephone calls made to and from the shop.
My direct question to you is, are you recording and subsequently listening to telephone calls to and from the shop?
Rob Hurlbut
Hey Rob,
In short, not really?
In long.
We have partnered with a company called Turn the Page. They are an SEO company that is working to incase our online presence, and hopefully increase sales at the store. I had a meeting with them on friday afternoon where they presented their first month of work and went over some items. Until Friday we were all unaware that phone calls were being recorded.
To clarify. Not all calls are being recorded (nor are they being recorded by us), in fact most are not. As I understand it how it works is Turn the Page creates a tracking phone number (303) 569-8913 (This is a VOIP number that they own) that forwards to our phone number (303) 825-7732.
Only INCOMING calls to the 8913 numbers are tracked. That means anything going out or coming into the number that we own (7732) is not.
The reason for tracking their line is to better understand the efficacy of the campaigns they run and to see if what they are doing for us online is producing results. They listen to calls to see if people are placing orders, getting directions, or whatever. As soon as our new website is live we are going to run some google paid search to try and bring in catering orders. We will be able to directly attribute orders from that number to their work, thus justifying the expense. Their hope is that a call goes something like this “I saw your add on google, and I would like to place an order”
On my end, I dont’ have time to listen to the calls or really worry about them. However, if TTP gives me feedback on a certain call it can be passed down to coach, train, etc.
Let me know if you have any more questions on this, id be glad to take a call sometime next week if needed.
RTJ
Since this email did not answer the simple yes or no question I asked, I ended up sending another email and I received another reply:
Ryan,
Thank you for the reply to my email earlier this month.
Unfortunately, it raised more questions for me than it answered. The first and biggest question it raised is this:
***After the director of franchising for Planet Sub hired a company to increase online presence found out that said company had the ability to AND HAD BEEN listening to phone calls made to the company for at least a month without the consent of either the person making or receiving the calls not immediately notify the employees or customers being listened to?***
Sub question… Did you notify the corporate offices at Planet Sub that you hired a company that was illegally wiretapping one of their franchises?
Colorado is a one party consent state. That means that at least one party of a two party phone call must consent to being recorded. Not the OWNER of the phone, one of the two people TALKING on the phone. If you really didn’t know Turn The Page was doing it from the beginning I would understand, but after you found out what they were doing you did not ask any employee for consent and you certainly have not asked customers for their consent either. That brings me to my next point.
I reached out to Turn The Page and asked them if they listened to their client’s phone calls without consent. They said they DO NOT DO THAT. They elaborated by saying that they provide a dashboard for their clients to listen in on their businesses phone calls. They said they don’t listen to calls, nor do they give “feedback on a certain call” (to quote you from your email to me) because they don’t listen to their client’s phone calls. What that says to me is that you knew about the ability to listen to calls to the shop, have been listening to them, did not tell anyone you were listening and then lied about it (at least) to me.
So, did TTP not inform you about their listening to Planet Sub’s phone calls for a month or did you lie about who was doing the listening?
Are they lying about not listening to our phone calls or are you lying about not knowing? From where I sit, it has to be one or the other.
If they are lying, then why did you not immediately let the employees and customers of Planet Sub Denver know they had been illegally wiretapped for the last month? Why have you not attempted to get consent from employees or customers of your business when they are talking on a phone that rings in YOUR business?
There are at least two laws that say what TTP is doing and your complicity in what they are doing is illegal:
The Colorado Crime of Wiretapping prohibited 18-9-303 (2)
The Colorado Crime of Eavesdropping prohibited 18-9-304 (2)
If what you told me in your last email is 100 percent true, then how do you feel about this?
If what you told me in your last email is 100 percent false, then how do you feel about this?
I think you lied. I think you were told about and utilized eavesdropping capabilities set in place by TTP from the beginning and are now saying that you didn’t. My proof would be the fact that you used the term “not really” more than once in your last email to me to answer a simple yes or no question. I think you set this whole wiretapping thing up and didn’t tell corporate, your dad, your customers or your employees because you knew it was a shady thing and didn’t think anyone would dig into it.
Stop your illegal wiretapping and inform your employees and customers of what you have being doing for the last two months.
The biggest problem I have right now is this: By knowing what is going on, I feel like you have made me an accessory after the fact. Every time I answer the phone at Planet Sub, I know the person on the other end is being recorded. Ignorance of the law is no excuse so where in the Hell does that put me and every other employee at the shop?
Rob Hurlbut
Rob,
This is Ryan’s reply to me:
Please see the information below from TTP.
We value your feedback and you as an employee and appreciate the need you have to be an advocate for the other employees as well as the consumers, however, in this case you were completely off base and rather than asking ask questions you made assumptions.
First, as you can see below the legality of listening to employee phone calls is not in question. To further elaborate on what Elisa stated, we would have also been covered under the The Business Extension Exception which is a federal exemption (according to TTP) and would override the laws you stated, I did look this exemption up and I tend to agree with them.. However, as I stated in my prior email ONLY the calls routed though TTP’s online number were being monitored, not calls to or from our main line. With that said, if you know something we do not I would love for you to share it, if TTP is in the wrong we would want to make sure they knew it.
With that said…. None of the above really matters much, after finding out about the calls being recorded I had my own issues regarding consumer privacy related to PCI compliance and the storage of audio files containing credit card information, because of this I requested that TTP turn off the monitoring and remove any data weeks ago. I had not logged in to the dashboard until moments ago to verify what she said below was correct. Further, I have told TTP to not use this program at any Planet Sub Locations in the future.
To address your personal attacks…..
I was not aware that TTP was recording calls until our 1 month meeting, and very shortly after that meeting I requested they stop recording the calls as soon as I processed the fact audio files containing consumer credit card data could be stored and potentially compromised.
When you called turn the page you either did not ask the right questions, or as you can see below did not get the right answers.
The fact of the matter is that your assumptions in this email were incorrect, and calls have not been recorded since I requested them to stop a few weeks go. Personally, I have not been, nor do I (obviously) have any desire to spend hours listening to phone calls….
Here is a question for you… Even if the calls were recorded, why would I do this? What would I stand to gain from spending time listening to folks placing orders over the phone? How would that make sense and why would this be an effective use of my time?
I use the term “Not really” because you asked if calls coming in and out of planet sub were being recorded. I further elaborated to say that TTP was recording only incoming calls from the marketing line that THEY own and not our actual business line.
We will discuss your email internally and decide what, if any, corrective action should be taken. Again, we appreciate your desire to stand up for what is right, but your assumption that we would do something wrong, or that we do not hold the same values regarding consumer privacy was incredibly disheartening. With that said, I understand that you were trying to stand up for something you saw as unjust, however, you approached it incorrectly.
We will have a follow up call on wednesday or thursday to finish discussing this when Rocky in on site to finish discussing this.
__
Ryan Joy
Director of Franchising
t: (816) 295-0611 | m: (417) 459-9201
e: ryan.joy@planetsub.com
w: www.planetsub.com
This is what TTP sent to Ryan and then forwarded to me:
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Elisa Haake
Date: Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 4:56 PM
Subject: Call Tracking for Online Marketing
To: Ryan Joy
Hi Ryan,
There are a number of reasons why an employer may wish to monitor or record its calls —to ensure quality of service, help train new workers, etc. In our case it is to monitor the quality of leads that we are bringing through online marketing efforts. This is pretty standard practice in our industry. The calls that were being recorded were from the number we are using for online marketing. That number should not be used in any other marketing and to my knowledge, no other calls are being recorded.
Just so you know, it is legal for employers to monitor business-related telephone calls to and from their own premises. You were correct that Title III does allow business to monitor employee phone calls. It is important that you don’t target a specific employee and that you use the same rules for each employee. We have done a lot of research on this and you are well within your right to monitor the calls in this way.
You were correct that Title III does allow business to monitor employee phone calls. It is important that you don’t target a specific employee and that you use the same rules for each employee. We have done a lot of research on this and you are well within your right to monitor employee phone.
We went over the dashboard and how you can listen to calls, after our first month of working together. Our time and your time is important, and I know that neither one of us would have the time to listen to every call. The times that it might be useful would be for employee training, or if we say we are bringing you increased leads, but you aren’t seeing it in the store. You might want to see where the disconnect is. It really helps to make sure you know that we are doing our job.
After our conversation regarding PCI compliance, I did stop the recording and I have removed that feature from the dashboard. Nobody has access to listen to calls, on our end or yours. I understand that the credit card information that your store may get, may be an issue, even though the storage of the information is in full compliance there could be an issue on access to the site.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks!
Elisa
Elisa Haake
V.P. Franchise Marketing Group
A Turn The Page Company
Mobile: (816) 462-9127
www.franchisemarketing-group.com
Does anyone else smell the bullshit wafting off these emails? I ended up having to suffer through a conference call with Rocky and Ryan. Mike was supposed to be there but as I explained, he’s a pussy so he didn’t show up until the very end and contributed nothing. The entire call was nothing more than a speech by Ryan telling me that he is hardly ever wrong and that I was disrespectful by emailing the only person at Planet Sub that knew the recording was going on. He never came clean to the employees he lied to or the customers whose credit card info was recorded.
Moving on.
There should be, in theory, one salaried manager in the store at any given time. That’s not the case because they get paid whether they are there or not so why the Hell would they stick around if they don’t have to? Late one night I was working with a fellow peon when the health inspector came by. Why would a business have a minimum wage, glorified fast food dishwasher deal with a health inspector? Because they don’t know any better! They had a person that they told isn’t worth more than minimum wage as a liaison between them and the entity that can shut them down. Dumb da dumb dumb DUMMMMMMMB!
Check it out for yourself the next time you are in Planet Sub in Denver. Go into the bathrooms and feel the lack of hot water as you wash your hands without any soap. Enjoy the mice nests in the storage closet between the bathrooms and the room next to the exit door by the men’s bathroom. Bring a recyclable item to an employee and then watch as they throw it into a regular trash can.
My last blog post is titled, “Fucked And Fleeced At Planet Sub In Denver” and it details how the franchisee owners of Planet Sub in Denver are stealing from employees. The owners fired me and the corporate offices have remained silent. Maybe I can get a response with THIS post which details, in a roundabout sort of way how the franchisees are stealing from them. Only time will tell. Cheers!
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