For Julia

Everyone can blame Julia for this. She asked.... (and, no, I am not crying silently to myself because no else asked!)

She asked about Shannon's threatened arrest, and to tell the story it needs a little background. I'll try to be brief. I said, "TRY."

Many moons ago, when my grandfather was in charge, another sauerkraut factory contracted with "us" to bag sauerkraut for them. We had no direct orders from customers. All of the orders came through this company. This worked for many years, even after my grandfather's death and my Dad owned the company.

Now, the owner of this other company died a few years back and his daughter took control. Unfortunately, she was not as good at running the business. In my husband's opinion, she started treating the customers poorly. I'm not exactly sure about the time, but when the contract came up, my Dad wanted the option to sell his own label and to sell to anyone he wanted to. So, we did not contract with this company again. Instead, we were more of a free agent. We would still sell to this company, but we would not be limited to this company alone.

Well, this woman ended up selling her company(and the customers with it) to our and, formerly, her competition. The traitor. A company that recently was fined about $50,000 for code violations. I'm just saying.......

Now our competitor wanted to keep us around for 5 years. Meaning, we would sell through them and in 5 years we would.....disappear. Not so fast, you mean, old company. We didn't want to go down without a fight. A couple of the customers wanted to stay with us, and fought to do so. Hebrew National (yes, our kraut is blessed by a rabbi yearly) was the main one we needed to keep in order to have a good chance of staying in business. They wanted to stay with us. Yahhhh!

Some customers we did lose, so there was an obvious transition period. The customers pays for there packaging so it belongs to them. We had most of it because we were still packaging for them. The other factory wanted to begin packaging so it was agreed that they would come and get SOME of the materials. Well, when the truck driver got there, they said that were told to pick up ALL of the stuff. Ummmm, nooooo, we still need it. We were being nice to give them some of the stuff because there was no official order or paper work to show that they were legally entitled to it. My husband told them, "No." See, my parents were on vacation and Shannon was left to deal with this. Lucky, him.

Shannon talked to someone in charge at the other company and this person threatened to call the police and have him arrested. Shannon told him to go ahead and call. This man, also, told Shannon that he would tell the truck drivers to just break in and take the stuff. You're kidding, right? Go ahead and try. He carries...if you know what I mean. (No, he wouldn't have pulled out a weapon, but he would have been tempted to.)

Well, there were many phone calls between this other man in charge (I have a few names I could call him, but I shall refrain), Shannon and my dad in Florida. In the end, the police were never called, no one was arrested, and the other company only got the stuff that was agreed upon before hand.

Wow, at the time this was happening this story seemed interesting. Now that I've taken the time to write it down....it's something less than thrilling. It would have been a better story if he was arrested. Next time I tell it, I'll make myself the heroic wife of a wrongly convicted prisoner. That would be more entertaining. For now, I'll stick with the truth.

Julia, to answer your other question...Yes, my Dad has plans to send Shannon to other stores(i.e. Wegman's) to present the product. He doesn't mind. He said it was fun and he enjoyed doing it more than he thought he would. I would hate it, but since I don't have to do it, I don't have to worry about it.




And because Stacy said that no post was complete without a picture.......my man with his first turkey.