Franchisee From Hell! Awards: Luke Benjamin, Pizza Time
(FranchisePick.Com) They say that good franchise companies don’t sell franchises, they award them. After all, franchisors are 
trusting their franchise owners with their most valuable corporate assets: their brand names. Their reputations. The goodwill they’ve spent years and millions of ad dollars cultivating.
Sometimes that trust is severely misplaced, and the franchisor gets its very own Franchisee From Hell! By definition, the aggravation, bad press and brand-damage of a Franchisee From Hell! wreaks on a franchise system clearly outweighs and franchise fees, royalties or ad contributions the FFH! could ever contribute.
Of course, Franchisees From Hell! are much appreciated by the blogosphere, for they feed its insatiable appetite for stories of dysfunction ranging from clownish (like Subway Franchisee From Hell! Cousin Vinny Agnello) to the inexplicable (like Holiday Inn franchisee Charles Morais) to the tragically bizarre (like Quiznos’ sex offender and murder suspect Michael Mele).
Hypothermia Time Pizza… Now Hiring!
Today’s Franchisee From Hell! Award winner comes to us from Richard Chemiel’s hilarious No-Name247 whose blog post states “…Luke Benjamin, franchise owner of Pizza Time in Lacey WA, got upset when his employees left the furnace on all night. So Benjamin shut off the heat, and point blank told employees that if they don’t like working there, to find another job.”
Luke Benjamin, who obviously knows how to keep them good-fer-nothing employees in line, posted the following note:
“If you don’t want to work here quit, otherwise shut up and do your job. The next person I hear complaining is off for two weeks. We don’t have heat!! You guys screwed up, not us. You want to blame someone, look in the mirror.”
It’s All About the Benjamin’s, Baby…
Benjamin is a well-rounded Franchisee From Hell! in that his Human Resource skills are surpassed only by his Public Relations savvy. He not only unashamedly agreed to be interviewed by King 5 news, but gave the camera crew full run of the Ice Station Zebra:
The temperature was 55 degrees when we went in on Friday, but we saw something else. There’s a space heater in the office where Benjamin’s wife – the real boss – runs her accounting business.
Then we get to the real truth of the matter.
“It doesn’t look good, but she’s my wife and my boss and she tells me what she’s going to do and I’m not going to argue with her,” said Benjamin.
When asked about the chilly treatment of his workers, Pizza Time Franchisee From Hell! stated “If they can’t deal with it then there are plenty of other jobs out there.”
Unfortunately for both Benjamin and Pizza Time, there are plenty of other places to order pizza, too.
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Tags: dispute, employees, Lacey, luke benjamin, pizza franchise, PIZZA TIME, sean kelly, WA