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The parent page of this document (see link above) was written in the summer of 2011 about some very unpleasant problems with some very unpleasant people at Emerald City Pizza Hut, in Mukilteo, Washington (Seattle). One of the main complaints found on the parent page speaks of ECP's apparent preference for hiring bosses that scream, berate, swear and threaten.

Near the conclusion of the page we did a quick and dirty search for other documents related to peoples' experiences with ECP so as to provide a few links in case readers wanted to read other opinions / takes on the company. Linking to other points of view is, of course, the very essence of the Internet. It's what helps mankind to learn, to move forward, and to be better. We were interested, then, in the page posted by Rick Knowles complaining of the very same problem within Emerald City Pizza Hut, and so we linked to it, as anyone might normally do.

 

Here are a couple of lines from the page that had been long-posted by Knowles, a former ECP employee. It was titled, "The Worst Boss in the World", or something to that effect. Here's a cut-and-paste snippet from that page before it was axed. Knowles had been talking about his ECP boss and how he had grown weary of that boss screaming at him, and how he (Knowles) had asked the boss to stop it:

"....He [the boss] muttered out an apology and offered up some explanations of his different pressures of the day. My peers continued to get shredded over the phone by him [underline mine]. He remained hot-tempered and fiery, but he never spoke that way to me again. He remained a terrible leader in general, so the next two years of working for the guy weren't that pleasant...."

A little hateful, in our view...but it was clearly an unpleasant situation and the behavior was certainly uncalled for on the part of Rick's boss. Rick's story helped to document the fact that Emerald City Pizza Hut was literally world famous for hiring and maintaining the employment of screaming, swearing, abusive bosses for at least more than a decade.

When Rick Knowles discovered that the parent page of this document had linked to his editorial about the worst boss he ever had, he immediately emailed us and told us that our page was far too hateful for him to allow us to post a link on our page, to his page (seriously). Yes, the sentiment coming from Knowles was frightening, inasmuch as the Internet is THE quintessential medium for the dissemination of ALL views and opinions, and to think that anyone had the power or authority (or the time and energy) to dictate who could or could not read or link to a publicly posted document was, well, an order of magnitude beyond bizarre. We sat here and slowly shook our heads. Knowles unceremoniously demanded that we remove the link on our page, to his page. Of course we did not.

I'm not sure what our feeling was regarding this once in a lifetime request. --Irritation, probably. Certainly amazement. Puzzlement. Sadness at the stupidity of it. And the notion that every single time you think you've seen everything, step back a few paces and brace yourself, because, I promise, you ain't.

We're always amazed at folks who lament bad treatment at the hands of others, yet will not only do nothing to stop, curb or even limit that bad behavior, but who will on occasion even defend it. I'm not sure where this irrationality comes from. Rick's experience with the worst boss ever occurred way back in the early 2000's. ECP's behavior became exponentially worse over the years since then. It is to the point now where virtual legal warfare is being waged against ECP because of their bad, illegal and irresponsible policies regarding bosses. It's shameful and socially irresponsible for people to see bad people doing bad things to others and ignore it. If a man ran up to your child and punched your child in the face, you'd do something about it. Now that you've stopped the man from punching YOUR child, what do you do when the man punches the child next to yours? Do you then turn your back and walk away? If you do, we don't respect you, and we don't respect Knowles for the very same thing.

Instead of deleting the link to Rick's story, we replied to Knowles as follows:

Your experiences with a bad boss [Knowles refused to even name the guy] and your efforts to rein in that behavior accomplished nothing except to help in your particular case. ECP's apparently conscious regimen of hiring and rewarding bad bosses has escalated exponentially over the years because.....why? Because they were allowed to get away with it. No one STOPPED THEM, including you. You fixed your own situation, with no apparent regard for those to come after you. Now, ECP is documentably far, far worse, and it is actually ruining lives. Yet you STILL don't want to be associated with the action that is required (virtual warfare) to stop this company from this behavior. Reason helped in your particular case -- it worked only as a happenstance, not as a proven or repeatable method. Reasoning with this outfit documentably does NOT generally work. ECP is now as rouge as they get. Not only will you not TAKE the action required, you don't even want to be ASSOCIATED with the action that's required. I cannot respect that. The people who are still employed there and who are being victimized daily do not respect that. Thanks for your social conscience. You got what you wanted, and to Hell with anyone who came after. No reply will be received. Good grief.

But Rick Knowles just couldn't choke down the fact that our page linked to his.
As of 8-30-2011 his page now reads as follows. The "hateful tone" that Knowles refers to is the paragraph shown above. It is the only thing we've ever written to him.

We frankly find ourselves wondering just what Rick Knowles considers "hateful". We find ourselves wondering just what Rick's boss's demeanor WAS when Rick found it so offensive. Perhaps Rick Knowles finds everything everyone says to him to be hateful. We just don't know.

Had Knowles gone above his boss ten or twelve years ago, and made a formal complaint of such treatment, perhaps ECP would have begun looking at the problem and perhaps so many employees who came after Knowles would have had a slightly easier time of it. But this didn't seem to occur to Knowles. He got his particular problem solved, and then apparently left the rest of his peers to rot. That just isn't right.

We wanted to post this so as to clarify our side of Rick's story. If our speech on the parent page is hateful, then so be it. We DO, as a matter of fact, hate Emerald City Pizza and most of those who make up its upper management staffing, so when we describe their antics and stunts, yes, horror of horrors, our speech is apt to sound (and be) hateful. Our suggestion to those who are offended by such speech is to get a life and suck it up. Get out into the real world and see what REAL hate speech is all about and you'll find ours to be pretty tame. We do NOT hate Rick Knowles, nor do we hate his opinion regarding his "Worst Boss Ever", nor do we hate his silly, spoiled, childish decision to take his toys and go home if he couldn't prevent us from linking to his page. We don't hate any of that. We just think it's as wimpy as it gets.

And then some.