Skip to main content

Icecreamgate - Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul) loved this story from The Beancounter!

 

I love the book; it’s fun, it’s well written, it’s interesting, and I learned some things I didn’t know about.

(Jack Canfield, Chicken soup for the Soul)

“Did they take anything Mr. Isaac?” “Luckily Pablo, I keep the alcohol locked in this room behind the steel door; but they did take some of the beer.” Isaac arrived this morning to find thieves had broken into the bar and stolen some of his inventory, and Officer Pablo has come to investigate. “I think it was kids, and they only took what they could carry Pablo.” “I agree Mr. Isaac, otherwise they would have taken more. Do you have insurance?” “Yes, but even with a low deductible a claim would raise my premiums.”

Officer Pablo takes a few pictures and notes, then heads toward the door. “I will see what I can find out Mr. Isaac.”

 Moments later Melissa comes through the front doorway. “Isaac! We need your help!” The young lady is upset and in need of assistance. “It’s Carter, he got himself in trouble last night and the police have thrown him in jail!” Moments later, Jake catches up to his friend as he trips on the threshold coming through the doorway.

 “Careful Jake!” Isaac of course is dealing with his own problems but decides to put them aside for now as he always does when someone else needs his help. “Alright, calm down kids, it’ll be fine.” Isaac finishes putting the fruit juices in the fridge, and then starts to head for the door. “Let’s go see what we can do.” As the three step out of the bar, Isaac locks the door behind him, and flips over the ‘Closed’ sign. 

 After a ten-minute drive in Isaac’s truck, the group arrive at the local police station.  “Buenos días Señor Isaac. What can I do for you today?”  The local police officer knows Isaac and greets him as a friend.

 “Buen día Miguel, ¿cómo es su familia?”

 “He knows the Police Melissa!  Does Isaac know everyone on this island?”

  “Are you kidding me Jake? This is great!”

 Isaac and Sergeant Miguel chat in Spanish for a few moments.

 “They seem to be friends Jake. Maybe he can pull some strings!”

 A few minutes later the officer takes the key ring from the wall, and beckons Isaac and his friends to follow.

 “Mr. Carter, it appears you have some visitors.” The officer unlocks the cell door and motions Carter to follow him down the hall and into an interview room where his friends are waiting.

 “Carter! Are you okay?” As Carter and the officer step through the doorway, Melissa rushes over to give her friend a hug.

 “Just a minute, we need to talk about last night.” Sergeant Miguel steps in between the two and beckons them all to take a seat at the table.

 “Mr. Carter, what you did was not appropriate on our island.”

 “I know” Carter responds.

 “The next time you have to go to the bathroom you cannot use a tree in the town square.”

 “I’m sorry officer.” Carter hangs his head apologetically ashamed of his behaviour.

 Isaac then explains to Carter that not only was his behaviour inappropriate for any country, but as an educated professional there is an additional obligation to act beyond reproach, even in his private life. “You cannot bring discredit to you or your profession Carter!”

 “Alright, I will let you go with one day community service, which you will do tomorrow.”

 “Community service?! Doing what?” Carter only has a few days left on the island, and it looks like one of them is planned for him.

 “Tomorrow at 8:00 and you will find out.” Sergeant Miguel has Carter stand up, removes the handcuffs, and motions the young man towards the door.

 “Thank you officer.” Carter starts to make his way towards the door as the others stand up and prepare to follow him.

 “8:00 AM!” Sergeant Miguel emphasizes.

 As the students and their mentor are walking through the doorway of the interview room, Isaac stops and turns. “Did I ever tell you about the time I worked in jail?”

 “Oh no! Not now Isaac!” Melissa blurts out, which leads to a few laughs among the group.

 “Let me tell you about Icecreamgate!”

 Melissa shakes her head in disbelief as the group turn around to make their way back into the room.

 “Here we go!” Although the stories have been very enlightening, Melissa just wants to get out of the Police Station.

 “I was working as a finance officer in a medium security prison, and the inmates had a canteen where they could buy pop, chips, chocolate bars, and various other snack items. Some of them lived off the canteen because the food was awful.”

  “Then don’t go to jail” Carter blurts out.

 “Really Carter?” Isaac raises his eyebrow and looks at Carter who looks down at the table.

 “During the summer they would sell ice cream cones at the store but did this out of a special fund-raising account.”

 “Fund-raising? For what?” asks Jake.

 “Well, you see Jake, the inmates were allowed to have social activities, and sometimes their family could participate when they came to visit.”

 “Nice jail” Melissa comments.

 “Socializing and having family visit was an important part of the reintegration agenda Melissa; they all get out some time, and in many cases, move next door to us.”

 “God, I hope not!” Jake and Carter laugh at Melissa’s look of horror.

 “Anyway, they had these two guys who were in for racketeering.”

 “Of course they were” Sergeant Miguel contributes sarcastically as he has seen his share of criminals.

 “Well, these two guys were given the job of managing the ice cream shop. They had to order tubs of ice cream and cones, ensure they had napkins, and keep track of who got what, which they did on cards in a Rolodex®.”

 “Rolodex! What’s that?” Melissa asks.

“Little cards attached to a rotating frame Melissa; each one had the inmate’s name, when and how much credit they put on the card, and when they bought a cone.”

 “I suppose computers were out of the question?” Carter askes politely trying to redeem himself.

 “No, they had them for the main canteen, but not for this account Carter.” Isaac explains how the inmates had jobs in the prison and their pay, which was only $5.00 per day, was electronically maintained in a computer which linked to the canteen system. For the ice cream account, the money was transferred from the inmate’s account to the club account electronically, and the amounts written on each inmate’s rolodex card to be drawn down as the received their ice cream cones.”

 “Why not put a canteen terminal in the ice cream shop Isaac?”

 “Well Jake, because of the location of the shop and the fact it was only open three months of the year, it was not worth installing the system.”

 Isaac continues with the story. “One day, the Assistant Warden came to me with a kite.”

  “A Kite?” Jake askes. “Like the thing that floats in the sky?”

 “No, it is a piece of paper given to a staff member anonymously ratting someone out Jake.” The mentor smiles then continues with the story. “The kite said the two guys who were running the account were stealing from it, and I was asked to do an audit.”

 “You’re kidding me? This was Icecreamgate?” The group laugh at Isaac.

 “Oh yes, this was my claim to fame Melissa!” Two more police officers have joined the group for the story.

 “We started out by looking at the opening inventory from the beginning of the season, which was zero of course. We added up the purchases, subtracted the ending inventory, and came up with what should have been the number of units sold. Of course, they sold cones not 5-gallon buckets, so we had to convert everything to cones.”

  “Oh my God, you didn’t?” Melissa asks.

 “Yes, we did Melissa; we took a new pale of ice cream and counted out the number of scoops.”

 “But why not just divide the litres of ice cream in the bucket by the size of the scoop Isaac?” Melissa asks.  “Wouldn’t that have been much faster and less…sticky?”

 “Well Melissa, how big of a scoop you make can vary by person, and how ‘overfull’ they make the scoop.”

 “If they were stealing ice cream, wouldn’t it be to their benefit to overstate the size of the scoop Isaac?”

 “Very good Carter!” Officer Miguel pats the young man on the back. “They tried that, but we compromised on the size.” Everyone laughs once again.

 “How many?” asks the Sergeant. “How many scoops in a bucket?”

 “I can’t remember Miguel, that was years ago; but what I do remember ironically is when we compared consumed ice cream to the sales records, we were short 30 pales at a cost of $33 each.”

 “$1,000!... of Ice cream?”

 “That’s right Jake.”

 “Now there’s a scandal.” One of the other officers weighs in, which results in more laughter.

 “Okay, so how did you determine how many were sold versus consumed Isaac?” Carter asked intrigued by the story.

 “From the Rolodex Carter and the canteen transfers to the cards; here we did have an opening balance from unused credits at the beginning of the season, plus amounts added, less the closing unused balance on each card.”

 “There you have it, units sold per revenue records versus the units consumed” answered Melissa triumphantly.

 “Precisely Melissa, see how easy auditing is!” The students are dumfounded, as they never imaged during their four years of training, they would have to count scoops of ice cream let alone work in a jail.

 “Are you saying they ate all this ice cream without paying for it?” Jake had been fairly quiet until then, but he knew there was more to the story.

 “Not at all Jake, as I said before, in the jail the inmates are not allowed to have money; instead, they use other commodities to barter.”

 “Like what.”

 “For example, the head of the ice cream store smoked a particular brand of pipe tobacco.”

 “They could smoke!” Melissa couldn’t believe that inmates would be allowed matches or a lighter inside a jail.

 “At that time yes Melissa.  This inmate always had a package of this tobacco, yet he never bought any according to the canteen system.”

 “So people would buy the tobacco for him and trade it for ice cream that cost him nothing” clarified Carter. “Why not just buy the ice cream cone? Why would they buy him tobacco and trade it for the cones?”

 “It was all part of their protection scam Carter. The value of a bail of tobacco was much higher than the value of the cone.” 

 “So, what happened to these guys Isaac?”

 “Well at first Jake, they claimed they were giving ice cream to the children during Sunday visits.”

 “Of course, blame it on the children!” Carter is starting to get over his fear of the jail.

 “But the funny thing was, not one staff member who worked at the visits area remembers ice cream cones being given away.” The officers, who find the humour in this due to their experiences with criminals, are laughing so hard one of them must leave to go to the bathroom.

 “Okay, so what happened next Isaac?” Melissa loves to hear Isaac’s stories, and despite wanting to get out of the Police Station only a few minutes ago, she urges him to keep talking.

 “They both got sent to the Maximum-Security jail in the next town.”

 “What? Seriously?” Jake blurts out.

 “Yes Jake, they got Maxed!” Now even Sergeant Miguel is laughing. “But it didn’t end there; a week later the same assistant warden came to me about concerns with the fried chicken account.”

 “Chickengate!?” laughed Carter.

 “Yeah, well Carter, I kicked him out of my office!”

 “That wasn’t the end of the story though; three years later, I was now working at the Minimum-Security institution, when one day I crossed paths with one of the guys. Of course, during the three years I was fearing for my life as he was a mobster.” Miguel chuckles. “As we pass each other we both nod.”

 “That’s it?”

 “Not quite Melissa; you see, he gets four steps past me when I hear him call out from behind:

 ‘Thought you had me with that ice-cream thing didn’t you?’”

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Our new blog: Daniel W. Elliot - Business author and learning facilitator

  I have decided to combine Business Blunders and Forward Looking Business Training under one place. Visit my blog danielwelliot.blog.spot.com for weekly discussions on various business topics.  Daniel W. Elliot, CPA (danielwelliot.blogspot.com)

Meet the Students... and try a sample of the upcoming audiobook version!

Two years later…   “How’d you do on that one Melissa?” Jake questions.     “I don’t know Jake; I hate Income Tax!” Melissa responds passionately.     “And you want to be an accountant!?” laughs Jake.   The fourth-year university students have just finished their mid-term exams and are hours away from starting Spring Break.     “Let’s find Carter; our plane leaves in four hours Jake and we don’t want to miss it!” Not wanting to waste any time, the three friends are pushing their luck booking a flight in the afternoon of the same day as their last exam.   “There you are Carter! Where have you been?” Melissa and Jake finally meet up with Carter in the school parking lot.   Carter rushes up to them. “I forgot my passport and I had to go home and get it!”   Knowing the time frames were tight, the three friends brought their suitcases to school putting them in the back of Melissa’s SUV in the morning so they could head straight to the airport after their exam was over. Due to Carter’s side t

What does Jack Canfield think about The Business Blunders Series?

  The Beancounter - The business student's guide to the real world. Interview by Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul)