only in america

10 years ago I recieved a call from a man, his name: Momadue Bodge he was from Senegal Africa, He was broke down on his new 63ft Sea-Ray This boat roughly goes for 2.2 million. We did all the warranty work on Arneson surface drives and he told me his prop snapped off in which it did. the prop was 13k it was a Rolla. I sent a guy up to Michigan with a new surface drive and prop, roughly about 30k worth of parts plus the labor. Company policy was to collect from the customer in case the problem was not warranty and it was not (he hit something) My boss ok'd the repair, he was the vp of the company without payment and i also spoke to Momadue and he said he had millions......Well repair is done and payment is due, weeks go by with endless calls trying to collect with no avail.
over the loud speaker I was paged by the CEO to report to his office... I could hear something different in his voice, went up to the his office and he said shut the door and sit down at his eye level to the desk chairs. next to me was the VP with that look...you know thwe one, well anyways next thing that happened was the ceo threw a newspaper article in my face and he said read it.
What it said was... small investor indicted for bilking 10 million bucks from CEI. and guess what..... all his a$$ets were siezed including the Sea-ray and guess whos out 35k, you guessed it. I was one sentence from being on unemployment. A couple weeks go by and I found out where the boat was dry docked and called the yard and told them i had to finish up some warranty work and they said no problem, when I arrived with another guy they pointed me in the direction to the back of the yard... it was in a good spot. Well next thing I did was backed the pick up right under the drives and an hour later we were on our way back to Cleveland, not with one but two drives and 2 props.
A couple months go by and the boat goes for auction, it fetched 400k except it needed some props and drives, guess who got the call....you got it. Well long story short I handed the CEO a check for 58 grand or so and thats the end of this story. I never did get a pat on the back and that lucky bastard sitting in jail for a couple of years waiting to get out and spend some of that cash he stashed. any morals to the story? you figure it out

Moral of the story. If you're going to buy a 2.2M dollar boat. Wait and buy it at a repo sale and save yourself 1.8M. Glad you got out of that situation. Those are never fun. They do make for good stories though.

-John

Moral of the story is never waiver from policy, if someone above you pay grade wise says to, get it in his hand writing with the date and their signiture on it. You stay out of trouble that way. I know this because we have stupid bosses at my work that will tell you to do something, and when it's wrong they try to use you as their scape goat. I only let it happen once and never again. If it sounds stupid to me they have to give me the instructions in writing.

I should've split the 58k with them

thanks John, Im not one to BS either the stories i write are as close to as i remember,i got some other good ones from when i use to travel into Venezuala and mexico to work on boats. i was alot younger and dumber.In those days I was as today a grease monkey and seen some things that are hard to believe and it was an experience that gave me a different outlook on the way things are I guess it makes me very opinionated. I hope it doesnt come across as bragging. I spent alot of time in places (under armed gaurds and by myself and it scared the sh*t out of me and the reason i was there was to repair thier boats)
and your right everyone does add different things and different point of views and it keeps you coming back....
I kinda miss 79   eric

kinda like a whart, irratating always bugging you, but then when its gone you miss it