Where’s the Beef?
My Aunt and Uncle are rather wealthy farmers. They have spent the last several decades building up new divisions of the business for their kids to run and eventually inherit. One of the big expansions was going from simply raising beef cattle to handling the butchering and selling the meat themselves.
Anyway, for the butcher shop they built a beautiful million dollar shop and sent my cousin’s husband to butcher school to get all his licensing to be the operations manager while my cousin would be bookkeeper. They never did a thing to earn it and were essentially handed a golden ticket.
It’s a little complicated what happened next, but after a few years my Aunt/Uncle started getting negative feedback about how the place is run. When they spoke to my cousin’s husband they offered him more money thinking it was a motivation issue.
They were already overpaid and could afford their own million dollar home. The husband made a snarky retort that he already makes that much. That raised red flags, they ended up looking at the accounts and things seemed fishy.
They went to the business after hours and took the bookkeeping files, the husband found out and drove to their house to essentially scream at them in rage. In the end it turns out they had embezzled over a million dollars by cooking the books.
They got kicked out of the family business (with no legal repercussions and a fat buyout bonus) and generally have little to do with any of the family. My Aunt and Uncle have made attempts at reconciliation because they want to see their grandchildren, but have been thus far rejected.
It’s insane because they were handed everything and it still wasn’t good enough. They were going to inherit the business and they blew it. Story credit: Reddit / Regnes