Dunk’D: Bounce of the Dead Cat

I thought you might be entertained during the holiday season by an excerpt from Chapter 3 that describes the closing day inspection of the last and most interesting of the four stores I bought from Dunkin’ Donuts.

66 Fountain St, Excerpt from Chapter 3

The store contained about 400 square feet space, less than a third of the typical Dunkin’ Donuts floor lay-out, with perhaps half of this space essentially unusable.  A winding and ancient staircase accessed a second floor which was used for storage where the windows were painted to eliminate the chance of any sun or air being sucked in by mistake.  The customer service area was inaccessible to the staff.  My intrepid crew members would have to pry open a rusted exterior door which opened onto a busy cobblestone alley way with no sidewalks and then walk around the building, while avoiding the neighborhood vagrants and hookers, and then walk through the front door in order to clean the floor, fill the soda case or empty the trash.

On the day of the closing, soon-to-be-former franchisee Arthur Medeiros was kind enough to spare the store manager to generously show me around before he took the last penny from the register and handed me the keys.  “Let me show you the basement….” said the manager.  I was puzzled, “Basement, I don’t remember hearing about a basement” I said.  I didn’t see any foundation vents, bulkhead or signs.  “So where’s this basement”?  “Right here” the manager said as he walked into a miniscule employee bathroom and brushed aside a layer of dust from the floor. After finding a metal edge to a trap door he lifted it revealing a descending set of wooden stairs that disappeared into the darkness.  Somehow a spec of light found its way from the back door and settled on a deep pool of water where there should have been a floor  As I gazed downward I realized that the water was probably five feet deep.  Then I spotted fur.  Yes, there was a dead cat floating in the basement of my new store.  Then I noticed the electric panel to the store, located just a few inches above the water line.  Then I was told that the panel was original to the building.  I instantly knew what this meant – ongoing issues servicing my equipment and problems with city inspectors.  I wasn’t even sure how an electrician could access the panel, perhaps somehow by boat….

And so it went, I have a million of ‘em so stay tuned.