True Story©... Another Satisfied Customer
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With the lawn season winding to a close for the year, I'm having to turn to other things to pass my time. As I explained last month, clearing my Moe Phillips email box of unread messages was entertaining enough, but as a "do it to death" personality, I was finished in no time so here I am, back bored as it gets and a LONG ways to spring.
Nearing the end of my rope and close to my idle hands becoming the devil's playground, I received a phone call on the burner line...
Me: "hello?"
Her: "is this Moe?"
Me: "uhh..."
Her: "Moe Phillips? Do I have the right number?"
Me: "Yeah, it's me. Who's this?"
Her: "You don't know me but you know my father"
Me: "Do I?"
Her: "Yes, you helped him when he reached out to you last year."
Me: "mmhmm"
Her: "He is a preacher and he asked you about--..."
Me: "... about how to grow his ministry to be able to expand his reach."
Her: "Yes, and you told him that starting a for-profit business employing church members might get him the attention he might need in the community."
Me: "Never heard from him again, how'd it go?"
Her: "He opened a car dealership and it was a quick success--..."
Me: "That's great!"
Her: "... until it wasn't"
Me: "Uh oh"
Her: "I'm here now trying to make sense of his books and digging in his stuff I found you and his email with you."
Me: “Sounds… ominous.”
Her: “How much time you got?”
Me: “I got nowhere to be, let’s hear it.”
Her: “Okay… Daddy meant well, and your advice was not bad at all. A church giving back to the community by EMPLOYING the community of its members is commendable.”
Me: “Mmhmm…”
Her: “But–… I should just get to the long version of what happened.”
Me: “I’m ready, I think.”
Her: “He used funds initially meant to be rolled into the ministry to buy into and license the dealership. Stellantis – Dodge and them – answered his call first and he established the whole plan. He had some land already and used that. The members of our church come from a lot of different professional backgrounds, so we had everything. Mechanics, salespeople, cleaning and housekeeping, secretaries and even a couple of notaries. He hired them all!”
Me: “Great man.”
Her: “Yeah! Well that means that everyone was in place to begin working as soon as the dealer was up and stocked with things to sell and fix on.”
Me: “Nice.”
Her: “Well my daddy–… we weren’t even allowed to say ‘crap’ around his house as kids for fear of being punished for cursing. When the Dodge Hellcat and Demon became his big sellers, he had the body guys remove ‘Hell’ from them and replaced it with ‘Heck’ and the ‘Demons’ were rebadged as ‘Archangel’.”
Me: “Wow.”
Her: “I know, kind of lame, right?”
Me: “You said it, not me.”
Her: “But get this, it WORKED!”
Me: “Work?”
Her: “When word got out to the community that people were going to the new Dodge dealer for Hellcats and Demons and left with Heck Cats and Archangels, EVERYONE wanted in. Dodge themselves weren’t even mad at it and even more were being allocated for his dealership for the modification. The local news did a profile on him and the dealer, attracting more customers and members alike.”
Me: “Sounds like he was winning then, no?”
Her: “Yes and no.”
Me: “Whoo boy.”
Her: “Ugh… On the other side of this, he still had a church to run as well. He held church membership and the duties of such over his employees. In that, church attendance stayed up.”
Me: “So what is the problem?”
Her: “The problem was that he knew intimately what everyone was making and–…”
Me: “… oh shit.”
Her: “Indeed! He knew what everyone was making and took it upon himself to charge them their tithes right off of their pay since he was signing the checks.”
Me: “That can’t be legal.”
Her: “But people are conditioned in the community to not question clergy, so it worked.”
Me: “No comment.”
Her: “Until several months in. One of the mechanics had recently had a baby and was working SUPER long hours to get together a down payment to get his wife and newborn into a house and not an apartment.”
Me: “Lemme get my popcorn.”
Her: “Huh?”
Me: “Nothing, keep going.”
Her: “When the mechanic saw he had done HOURS of work and the dollars weren’t making sense when he was paid, he noticed that 10% had been stricken right off the top.”
Me: “And he complained.”
Her: “Loudly.”
Me: “And what did your dad do?”
Her: “Accused him of stealing from God.”
Me: “So in other words, he gaslit him.”
Her: “I have to admit.”
Me: “And what did the man do?”
Her: “He called the IRS to anonymously ask if that was legal.”
Me: “And they said?”
Her: “They asked for more information so they might look into it.”
Me: “Stop stopping, please.”
Her: “He was hesitant at first but when after complaining and daddy kept it up, he packed his toolbox up and went to another dealer, calling the IRS back on the way out. They dug into the books and scrutinized where the initial money had come from and following the money led them to the church books and the lack of information they contained. When it was established that untaxed church funds were used to start a for-profit business and–…”
Me: “But he was at least using the ‘tithes’ and some of the profits to pay the church back, right?”
Her: “Well…”
Me: “RIGHT?!!?”
Her: “Yes, but he did so in a manner so as to avoid paying taxes on any of it, and–…”
Me: “Now you’re calling ol’ Moe Phillips to help you guys think your way out of it.”
Her: “Well I figure you kind of owe us at least that much since this was kind of your idea.”
Me: “My idea was for HIM to start a business, not commit tax fraud! I save THAT bit of advice for my nephews, who know I am joking when I say it.”
Her: “Well here we are now and as I try to make sense of this, I need to know what you are going to–…”
Me: “Holy shit, sista, hol’up a second my dogs are conjugating verbs in my living room again. I’ll be right back.”
Her: “What!?”
One minute passed. Three minutes. Five minutes. DAMN this woman is patient!
Her: “Hello? You still there?”
Eight minutes pass, I finally get the ‘dootdootdoot’ tone that she has tapped out and hung up.
I rush back to the phone and block her number.
Another satisfied customer!
I wonder if that mechanic got a new church as well as a new job.
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