The ‘Doorway Defender Widget Company’ Sparks Local Outcry

By  Brian Hews, Publisher
PUBLISHER’S CORNER
So my friend from Cheesecake, Wisconsin visited the other day and promptly smashed his cheese cutter on my desk saying, “what in the name of Jack Cheese is going on here!”

“What’s this I hear about another widget company in Cheesecake,” he asked. I said yes it’s true, it’s called the Doorway Defender, and now, in this era of failing widget companies and consolidation, Cheesecake  has three of them.

“The three people running the Doorway are all ex-employees of mine who basically stole our mode of operation and started another company, except they only work every other week.”

“Outrageous,” he bellowed, “where is VAL KILMER DEFENDER OF ALL REAL WIDGETS?”

“Don’t know,” I said.

They even got Mayor McCheese of Cheesecake to congratulate them on their new widget company.

“The Mayor never asks you for any widgets,” he said.

“I know, ever since we made that Jay Gray widget, he has not ordered a single widget from us, and has been on a personal campaign to cut all widgets ordered by the city.”
“Interesting that he supports this new widget company,” my friend said.

I went on to tell my friend that one of the owners of the Doorway has zero experience making widgets, only what she stole from my company and gleaned from my training while she worked here.

Now she follows the Peter Principal and calls herself the Head Cheese of the Doorway.

When she came to me, she “badly needed the job,” so I hired her as an Independent Widget Salesperson. Later, she asked me to put her on payroll so she could have a W-2 and “refinance her house.” I did, she refinanced her house, apparently using the money to finance the Doorway.

“Some people’s kids,” my friend said.”

I went on to tell him about another employee who worked here for 15 years. We got along just fine all those years.

That is until Adam Acosta (AFSCME 36), came in earlier this year and asked us to assemble the “Dirtiest Widget we could”, aimed at a local politician here in Cheesecake.

We did and the Dirty Widget caused quite a stir.

So much so that the long-time employee left the company and is now the Big Cheese of the Doorway working for the Head Cheese.

Big Cheese also arranged to have the newly hired head of the Sacramento SEIU, Jon Youngdahl, file a Fair Widget Assembly Compliant even though Big Cheese and three other employees witnessed Adam Acosta here, ordering the widget in the name of the AFSCME.
“Why would Youngdahl file the complaint?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He just started the job in Feb. 2013 and twenty days later personally files a complaint against a small community newspaper hundreds of mile away that ran a retraction.”

“Maybe he was enhancing the negotiating position of the local union,” my friend said.

“Has anyone talked to Adam Acosta or AFSCME about this,” my friend asked.

“We have called him several times,” I said, “but he will not return the call, and he has not paid for the Dirty Widget either.”

I went on to say that although the Big Cheese accused me of making one Dirty Widget, he himself constantly threw Dirty Widgets at a local politician in Hawaiian Gardens, a city next door to Cheesecake.

Turned out the Big Cheese’s girlfriend, who was the Head Cheese of Communications at a local hospital, was behind it, Big Cheese not adhering to the Cannons of Widget Making he always espouses.

Another employee now working for the Head Cheese is a retired teacher who worked here too. He helped in assembling parts for the final widgets.

Turns out he did not like a local politician, sent a bunch of bad widget parts to his wife under my nose, so I had to fire him.

He is now called Head Cheese of Widget Sales and Assembly at the Doorway.

“In addition, there are major conflicts of interest and ethical ramifications associated with the Doorway Defender,” I said.

“This just gets better and better,” my friend said.

The Mayor pro tem of the city of Artesia, next door to Cheesecake, owns the building the Doorway operates from.

“I am betting you won’t see any revealing widgets about the Mayor pro tem,” my friend said.

The Head Cheese of Widget Sales and Assembly ran two local city council campaigns. One of his candidates lied about his residency and had voted only twice in Cheesecake.

“I am betting you did not see any revealing widgets on them either,” my friend said.

The Head Cheese of Graphics who designs the Doorway Defender is a long-time Fine Arts and Historical Commissioner here in Cheesecake.
If the city of Cheesecake pays the Doorway for any widgets, that Commissioner would be violating her State Mandated Ethics Training from AB1234 that says, “an appointed official [of the city]   cannot directly benefit from [your] relationship with the city as it relates to [your] company or a company you work for.”

Something smells in Cheesecake and it’s coming from the Doorway”, my friend said.

“Ethics be damned,” I said.

“In addition, the Doorway is now acting like all amateur widget companies, starting a “race to the bottom.”  They are charging very little for their widgets or making widgets for free.”
“They also make Fake Widgets; fooling the residents of Cheesecake into thinking the city is placing widget orders with them when they are not.”

My friend stood up grabbed his cheese cutter and slammed it down on the table.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I said, “you chipped the table.”

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