The Expert Podcast

Occasionally, we like to recount some stories of business experiences from the past, and this one goes back many years into the 1980s. There was a business that we managed and had oversight of, which had a warehouse. This warehouse was located in a rough part of town, and occasionally, on weekends, the warehouse would be broken into. People would steal things, but they weren't really high-value items; they were lower-value industrial items in this warehouse. However, the owner of the business did not want these things being stolen.

One of the solutions was to hire a security guard. This was a rough and tough former military guy who was somewhat of a fringe society type. He didn’t live in a nice place and wasn't a polished individual. He was a nice enough guy, but a rough one. He would patrol the warehouse at night like a security guard. This was in the northern part of the country, and in the winter, it was cold. The warehouse was not heated and was freezing cold.

The security guard, named Charlie, would sleep on the concrete floor in the warehouse, and to him, it was no big deal. He was used to very austere and rough environments. At some point, the owner felt bad for Charlie sleeping in the warehouse and said, “Don’t worry, you don’t have to sleep in the warehouse. We’ll come up with something else.” Charlie was a little disappointed because he liked doing this, but the owner didn’t think Charlie should be there over the weekend at night in the freezing cold.

The owner of the business then decided to hire patrol dogs and found a guy named Stan. Stan was another character. He had been severely burned as a young kid when he was kidnapped and forced into a barn that caught on fire. He had third-degree burns over much of his body and was disfigured. Stan’s job now was to train attack dogs and guard dogs. He was hired to provide two security dogs to patrol the warehouse at night and on weekends.

At the end of the day, when the company shut down, Stan would show up at the warehouse, bring his dogs out of his car, open the door, put them in, lock the door, and everyone would leave. No one would go near the dogs. These dogs were savage Rottweilers—mean, slobbering, with big teeth. No one wanted to be around them, including me. Usually, I or someone else was one of the last people to leave. We would be there waiting for Stan. He would show up, crack the door open, put the dogs in, lock the door, and that would be the end of it. The next morning, we wouldn’t go inside until Stan showed up. We’d unlock the door, and by then, the dogs would be out, chomping and slobbering at the door when they heard us in the parking lot. Stan would just come up, grab their collars, and put them in his truck, and then leave.

One morning, after a weekend, I went to the door and there were no dogs. I peeked in and didn’t see any dogs. I knocked on the door and yelled. Normally, by then, the dogs would be practically diving through the glass trying to get to me, but there were no dogs. Finally, Stan showed up and said, “Where are the dogs?” I replied, “I don’t know.” He said, “Well, open the door and go in there with me.” I refused, saying, “I’m not going in there. These dogs are crazy.” He insisted, saying, “We’ve got to get the dogs.” I said, “I’ll unlock the door, but you have to go in there and get them.”

Stan didn’t know his way around in the dark, so I had to show him around. One of the guys who worked at the warehouse carried a gun legally as part of his everyday life. He said, “We’ll all go in, but Bob’s going first with the gun. If these dogs come, Stan, I don’t know what to tell you, but I’m not going to get eaten by a dog.” So, we walked through the warehouse with flashlights but couldn’t find the dogs. We didn’t see anything or hear anything, so we went upstairs. The warehouse had three or four levels. Finally, we went down into the basement, where there was a lot of industrial machinery. Halfway down the row, we found the two dogs, with ropes tied to their collars. They were sitting on the floor, tied to a big piece of machinery. There was a little note tied to one of the ropes that said, “Your dogs are pansies, love Charlie.”

What had happened was that Charlie had been offended by us having dogs in this warehouse. He had come into the business, let himself in, defeated the dogs, tied them up, and left to send us a message that he wanted his job back. To make a long story short, Stan was very embarrassed, took his dogs, and left. We never saw him again. I talked to Charlie and asked, “What happened with these dogs? How did you do it?” He simply said, “They were just like anybody else. I just punched them in the face, knocked them out, and tied them up.”

Now, none of this is good. You don’t want to be abusing dogs, and you don’t want to be messing around with guns or anything else, but this was a different time in life, and a lot of things were happening. This is one of those interesting stories that happened in life—something you wouldn’t do again. I probably wouldn’t have Charlie manning a warehouse again, and I probably wouldn’t use these dogs again. But it’s an interesting story that we tell people as a kind of show-and-tell scenario of things that happened in business that you don’t expect.