I Was Robbed at Knifepoint

Imagine being thrust from the steam of dishwashing into the chilling grip of a robbery at knifepoint, all over a paltry $27. That's the stark reality I faced one fateful night at Pizza Hut. This episode isn't just about a crime; it's a deep dive into how these heart-stopping moments can pivot our paths, pushing us towards unexpected horizons and demanding we reassess our worth in the cold eyes of corporate indifference.

This heart-racing tale segues into a raw reflection on the power of appreciation and the sting when it's withheld. As I peel back the layers of my journey from a Pizza Hut manager to a driven entrepreneur, you'll see how being undervalued by higher-ups can be the catalyst for taking the reins of your own destiny. Through my story, we explore the scars left by such an ordeal and how they can evolve into a newfound appreciation for oneself, urging you to recognize your uncharted potential. Join me as I share this transformative phase of my career, highlighting why every individual's contribution deserves recognition and how this acknowledgement can profoundly influence not just personal trajectories but also the very fabric of our self-worth.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What's up everybody. Welcome to the titanium vault. I'm your host, rj Mason. Third, and today I'm here to tell you a story about the time that I got robbed for $27. Now, this didn't happen anytime recently. This is from way back in my Pizza Hut days. I was trying to remember exactly how many years ago what's man makes me I'm aging myself here. I believe it was somewhere around 15 to 16 years ago, but I've talked about the story a few times. But I really kind of wanted to break down exactly what happened, what my feelings were after, and now, 15, 16 years later, my big takeaway from a business perspective about what happened when I got robbed for $27. So here's what happened.

Speaker 1: 0:56

I was a Manager at Pizza Hut. I was not quite a general manager yet. It was somewhere in between my shift manager and my assistant manager. Days I Was closing the restaurant and the way that this work was is as the night progressed, you let your staff off to save on labor costs, so you eventually cut your Customer representatives that were answering the phones. You got rid of the people that were helping you clean the restaurant. You got rid of your cooks and eventually dwindled all the way down to where it was just the manager and a Closing or two closing drivers for deliveries. Now I'm sure things have changed now at Pizza Hut with things like Uber Eats and Door Dash and things like that, but that was the way that this restaurant back then Performed. So we're at the end of the night. It's the last order I made the pizza. The pizza comes out, I cut it, put it in the box, tell my delivery driver a the orders up. He finishes doing the dishes, grabs it, checks the map where he's going. This is pre GPS on cell phone days. It was a long time ago, man and he leaves.

Speaker 1: 2:13

What had happened is is the two gentlemen that robbed me had stood outside of the restaurant as if they were waiting on their order and watch delivery drivers walk up to the door and punch in the code and Then come in throughout the night. So they've actually just figured out what the code was to the delivery driver door At this point, because I was alone Inside of the restaurant. I had already locked the front door, so the only person that was supposed to even have the ability or access to come in was an employee through that delivery driver door. So delivery driver leaves. I've got some music blaring on the radio and, if you don't know, I listen to heavy rock music. Not the most comforting music to be blaring over a radio when you get robbed at knife point.

Speaker 1: 3:10

I Walked around the corner, I grabbed the pan from the pizza that I just cooked, I took it to the back sink to wash it and as soon as I am putting the pan in the little Dishwashing tray, I push it in, shut the dishwasher. I actually hear the code punched in the door and the door open and I look and it's. The door is right in my line of sight. It's probably about, I don't know, 20 yards away from me we were a long, skinny pizza hut and as soon as the door open, I see two guys wearing black hoodies, mask and carrying knives. You know they start screen screaming profanities. You know I put your hands in there. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1: 4:07

Now what's crazy about this is you know that scene on Crocodile Dundee where it's like you call that a knife, this is a knife. I have no Australian accent, so sorry. Normally I'm fairly decent in accents, but I don't have an Australian accent. He pulls out the big blade. I could have done that because I was literally standing by all of our dishes and we had some massive knives right there. But I kept my composure, put my hands in there and said I don't want any trouble. They ran up, they made me get down the ground and they put the knife up to my throat. I didn't have the big beard at the time.

Speaker 1: 4:41

They put the knife up to my throat and they made me get down on my hands and knees because they didn't want anybody to see through the windows what was going on. So I essentially had to crawl on my hands and knees from the back dishwasher to the cash register, which was behind the front desk so you can't actually see it from the front, where we actually kept our money. And they made me open the cash register, which I still remember this moment of like. They wouldn't even let me see the keyboard, but I had opened the cash register so many times that I didn't even have to see it. I could just feel it and it was like boom, f1, down, enter F2, and then it opened the cash register. And so I did that.

Speaker 1: 5:26

They opened the cash register and they grabbed $27 out of the cash register because I had been dropping money in the safe throughout. That was like one of our responsibilities as the manager is to make sure that there wasn't a ton of cash left over in case you were robbed, which is crazy to think about. So they grabbed the $27 and they freak out. They're like where's all the money? No, it's in the safe. So, upfront, we did have two cash registers that were never used. So they wanted me to open those, which was a lot more difficult because they weren't on the screens to be open. So I had to go. I had to get them to the appropriate screens. I'm minding now we're upfront where literally anyone on East Chase Parkway or outside the restaurant could see what was happening. So they really wanted me to stay down low and I'm struggling to figure it out At this point in time.

Speaker 1: 6:24

One guy has the knife to my throat. He's telling me what to do and the other one is running around the restaurant trying to figure out if there's anything valuable for them to steal, right. So I opened the register that had no money in it. I told him had no money. He sees it. He makes me open the other one it has no money and then he tells me to open the safe. Well, this is a time lock safe. It could not possibly be opened until 9 am the next morning. I tell him he makes me take my keys out, makes me put the key on there, makes me punch in my code. I punch in the code. Still it says right there time lock safe is locked, cannot be opened until 9 am.

Speaker 1: 7:08

At this point in time I don't know if he was on drugs, I don't know if it was just an emotional reaction, but he was livid. He was at the point where he was ready to do bodily harm. Now what he had done is is, when I had opened the cash register above the safe and then he told me to open the safe, he essentially pushed me from like me squatting in a catcher position to where he pushed me, where I'm like very vulnerable and sitting on my butt and he's holding the knife like this to my throat, and he actually started screaming at me and calling me names and kind of losing his composure and he started to press the knife against my throat. And actually this was the first time I got really scared that something I can be physically harmed. You know, I thought up this point. They just wanted money.

Speaker 1: 8:07

But this was like hold on, he might be crazy enough to like try to kill me or just hurt me. So I actually swatted the knife away and I said yo, dude, I do not wanna die for pizza. That's money. Okay, that you can have it for all I care, I just I can't get it. I can't. There is no way for me to get you the money and I don't know why. But the next fear that I had was is just out of pure frustration, he was going to stab me in my thighs because of the way that I was sitting and because of where he was and the way that he was holding the knife.

Speaker 1: 8:44

At this point I was really worried that he was just going to randomly to stab me to see if I would react different to give him money. And it was right at this moment that I started to have these thoughts and fear and I kind of was like positioning myself to either push him away or try to defend myself. The other guy came around and goes dude, he ain't lying, we gotta get out of here. We've been here for too long. And so the other guy that was not like as emotionally invested into getting the money, because he had been running around the store grabbing who knows what or looking through what I mean there wasn't anything to get except some pepperoni and dough and sauce, and I mean there's just there's not a whole lot of valuable things that you can steal from inside of a pizza. He had determined it was time for them to go. So they made me it the out my pockets. They stole my cell phone. Funny enough, they didn't steal my car keys in my car, they sold my cell phone. They took my wallet and then they ran out the door.

Speaker 1: 9:48

And so as soon as they ran out the door, like, I followed behind them to see where they were going, cause I knew they only had knives at this point. And so it was like, well, I'm gonna go out. And I saw they ran literally straight to the left across the street, into the apartment complex that was next door to the pizza hut, and ran up in there. Now what was crazy is is that we had a wingstop right next door and there was multiple police officers eating inside of that wingstop. I ran inside, I locked the, I dead bolted the door at this point, so I knew that there was no way for them to get in. I hit the panic button, which immediately notifies the police department, and 911 then calls and says you know, was this panic button pushed on purpose? Yes, it was. I'm just robbed a knife point. Okay, the police are dispatched.

Speaker 1: 10:38

On the way Police got there, I told them right where they went. I'm like they went right across the street to that apartment complex and they essentially told me hey, there's nothing that can be done. We're sorry that this traumatic experience happened but, yeah, basically sorry, that's a shitty thing to happen, but there's no way in the world we're gonna go over there, we're gonna find them. They were masked. I couldn't tell them anything other than their ethnicity and general height and weight and what they sounded like when they were screaming at me. Now, that's the traumatic event. They got $27 and some things out of my pocket. Everything was replaceable. I didn't get hurt. Thank God I was able to keep my composure and and not escalate the situation moving forward.

Speaker 1: 11:32

Then the point me bringing this up on the podcast. I showed up. I continued to show up for the job. It was my time made a living, so I was supporting myself at the time. You know, in my, my early 20s, I had a responsibility as a manager. Luckily enough, the the general manager that I was working for was kind enough to move me to a lot more opens than closing. Now I will say I still have like some scary moments, some herky-jerky moments, where I'd be in the restaurant alone and the door would open. You know PTSD, if you will, from the situation, but I continued to show up and I never thought about quitting the job.

Speaker 1: 12:19

Now the point in me bringing up this on podcast is is a couple years later I've been promoted to a general manager to go over a restaurant, essentially like a flip. I've used this analogy before, where you know if you're a general manager, you get promoted. You're essentially get promoted for one or two reasons. The person before you've retired or quit, or they got fired because the restaurant was in disarray. And that's what I got. I got a restaurant that was in disarray and it was my job to resurrect it, to flip it, turn it into a good restaurant again, and gentlemen from Jacksonville, florida, flew in from corporate and essentially said you're nothing but an overglorified shift manager and that was my last day at Pizza Hut. I quit right after that.

Speaker 1: 13:09

And what's crazy is is I look back and what spurred me to have this on the podcast today is one I want to share more the story my story, it's, you know, made me the person I am today, and this is obviously a frightening, traumatic experience in my life. But the big takeaway that I have for this moment is is that a potentially life-altering moment right being robbed at Knife Point such a traumatic experience I never once questioned continuing the job. That was never even a conversation in my mind. But being disrespected, not feeling appreciated by the corporation that was working for instantly severed my eight-year tenure ship at Pizza Hut instantly. And as business owners, people that want to grow teams, think about that. Maybe I don't have the same reaction as most people. Maybe most people, that traumatic experience would have been the end of your tenure ship, but think about how important respect and being appreciated was to me. It made me alter my career. It led to this moment where now I control and am able to create my own reality. That's why I wear that on my wrist every single day create your own reality.

Speaker 1: 14:53

I had no control over my reality, my destiny, and I realized that the moment that that man came in and as I'm sitting here and I'm bleeding over resurrecting this restaurant and I am hiring and firing managers and I am training the staff and I am essentially rebuilding it from the ground up. I got told we don't appreciate you, I don't have respect for what you bring to our organization. That man knew nothing about me. That man had no idea that just two years prior to that moment, I worked 47 straight days for that company without a day off. 47 straight days not having control of my destiny made me realize I've got to get out of here. I have to go have the ability to create my own reality as a business owner.

Speaker 1: 16:06

Take this story and realize the importance of appreciating and respecting those that choose to work for your organization, that are sitting there and bleeding for your company. Allow them to feel like they control their destiny, because up until that moment I felt like I did. I had the ability to work hard and gain their respect and gain their trust to then get promoted from delivery driver to shift manager, from shift manager to assistant manager, from assistant manager to general manager. I don't know when that was ever going to stop. I knew it wasn't going to be what I was going to do forever. I knew at some point in time I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I was enjoying the experience of learning how to run a business for a Fortune 500 company. What ended that was the moment that I felt disrespected by the corporation and not appreciated for what I had given them.

Speaker 1: 17:16

My big takeaways from being robbed for $27 all these years later is I no longer have PTSD about being robbed. I no longer have bad dreams about having a knife held to my throat. I can easily talk about it and tell the story, but I could still vividly remember the feeling inside that was given to me when I was disrespected, and I realize that all of my efforts are not appreciated by this job. I have to find a way to create my own reality. That is the takeaway I have for being robbed for $27.

Speaker 1: 18:07

If this story resonated with you, if you appreciated me sharing this story, let me know in the comments. Make sure you like the video. Subscribe to my channel. If you're listening on Apple, make sure you leave us a five-star review. Same thing on Spotify. Guys, we appreciate you. I appreciate all the love and support we get and thank you for being a part of our journey to help us create our own reality. Every single one of you are appreciated by me and I'm grateful for all the support you guys have given us over the years. Thank you so much.