The boss from hell and other franchise stories...

From today's Seattle Times comes this story of a restaurant with an absent boss: bq. Fast-food shop owner takes off, employees take over It was a scene right out of "Home Alone," but the locale was a Quiznos Sub shop in North Seattle, where the franchise owner was absent for weeks and the skeleton crew made do with a dwindling food supply and a lot of irate customers. bq. "Due to bad owners we are out of a lot of things, please do not get mad at the employees & manager," explained the cardboard sign on the door. bq. Inside, the dessert section was empty, the chip shelves were mostly bare (except for jalape�o chips) and the soda machine was fringed with little white "out of order" signs (except for Vanilla Coke). bq. "I'll have a large Out of Order," cracked one customer on Tuesday. bq. "Is that with ice or without?" Dawna Lentz, the store manager, shot back. bq. Things had been this way since November, Lentz said, just a month after the sub shop opened in a little strip mall on Holman Road. The owner had it for one month and then bailed? Way to go -- probably thought he just had to sit back and let the $$$ roll in. He hit the big-time. What a Putz! Lentz, the store manager, kept the store running: bq. Since food vendors would no longer deliver on credit, Lentz drove to discount grocers to buy lunchmeat, using cash from the previous day's till. She bought the special Quiznos bread from other franchises, rationing part of what was left after the lunch rush, so there would be enough for the crew working the dinner shift. bq. "Crew" was a generous term, since only three other employees remained from a staff that once topped a dozen. They started quitting around the time their checks started bouncing, Lentz said. James Zambrano, 26, stuck with the restaurant out of loyalty to Lentz, even though his unpaid wages reached about $450. There is a happy ending though: bq. After being contacted by reporters, Quiznos representatives inspected the Seattle shop and removed Lentz's handmade signs. Yesterday, the company replenished the food supply and brought in support staff. bq. Lentz and others were paid the wages they were due, Quiznos spokeswoman Stacie Lange said yesterday. Lange added that the store is being transferred to new owners. bq. Lentz worried that she'd lose her job over the mess. But so far she's still the store manager, although now she's prohibited from talking to the media. bq. Lange said the franchise owners decide whom to hire or fire. But, she added, "The employees who were there yesterday are still there today." Cool!