The Power of Conflict by Jon Taffer

Author:Jon Taffer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

Gutterball!

Take, for example, the Lucky 66 bowling alley and bar I rescued in the Season Seven episode “Gutterball!” Put plainly, owner Mike Draper was an asshole. Turnover was so high, he couldn’t keep bar staff for more than a couple of months. Mike had installed a gym upstairs to work out and blow off steam so he wouldn’t scream at people, but it wasn’t working. He’d fired Miles, his bowling alley technician, nine times! Mike was obnoxious not just to his staff, including his son Jay and his granddaughter Daphne, but the customers! He owed $1 million on the place and was losing another $10,000 to $15,000 a month as more and more customers voted with their feet.

While Lucky 66 was popular enough in the years after Mike bought it in 2003, in its previous five years of business, profits started drying up as bowling alleys became less of a destination. He hadn’t done much to enhance its curb appeal, with a small sign on a nondescript building with peeling white paint in a strip mall off Route 66 near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Physically and operationally, there was a lot of runway for improvement. But the real problem was Mike’s attitude.

“I don’t share the philosophy that the customer is always right,” he informed my producers.

I’d sent over three young people to do recon for me. First, he ignored their requests for water.

“I’ll be with you when I’m done, okay?” he told them. “If you are trying to get under my skin, you are getting there. . . .”

Then, after two rounds of shots, he tried to cut them off, asking one of the young men how much he weighed. Mike was not only rude, disrespecting the biggest spenders in the room, he was physically threatening as he put his hand on the guy’s shoulder and said:

“I’m not serving you anymore. You got a bit smart to the wrong person. I am the owner, and you will leave!”

It was time to really get under Mike’s skin, so I came in with all guns blazing. I was incredulous that a bar owner who was bleeding cash would have the audacity to treat new customers this way. So I yelled with an appropriate blend of anger and disgust in my tone as I challenged him on the behavior I’d just witnessed.

“Do they appear intoxicated to you?” I asked Mike, not bothering to wait for the answer. “How would you feel if I put my hand on your shoulder like you did to him and pretty much said, ‘I don’t like you and I want you to leave here because I said so’?”

“I guess I’d be upset,” Mike mumbled.

“Because the person who did that to you would be an ass!” I shouted. “Why were you an ass to him, Mike?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have an answer for you,” he said.

Then I called in the whole team: Jay; Joel and Joel Jr., the father-son duo who owned the food concession; and Miles and his son, who kept the thirty-six bowling lanes functioning.

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