Restaurant offers man a job instead of pressing charges after business vandalized
(The AEGIS Alliance) – After a man launched a brick into his dining establishment’s door in Augusta, Georgia, on Saturday early morning, Carl Wallace was not surprisingly aggravated.
“You know my initial response was, you know, anger, frustration,” Wallace said to TODAY Food. “I realized that we’re gonna have to kind of put up a Facebook post about our door looking really, really bad because here we are going to put up two sheets of plywood over the front door to just get through the day.”
The male suspect searched around the cash register at Diablo’s Southwest Grill as the alarm system roared, Wallace stated his security video revealed, yet there had not been anything in the register.
As he was creating the post to clarify to customers why the restaurant’s front door resembled a mess later on that early morning, Wallace came to an understanding.
“It really kind of occurred to me that it’s… Easter weekend and to just extend an olive branch,” he thought. “You know, extend the layer of forgiveness and kindness and give the… would-be robber some redemption and a different path.”
So rather, he created a post with a job application offer for the suspect.
“Our burritos are such a smash hit we’ve got people breaking in at 4 am for their fix. So if ya see our door looking hurricane fabulous at Wheeler Rd this is why,” Carl Wallace posted. “To the would-be robber who is clearly struggling with life decisions or having money issues… please swing by for a job application. There are better opportunities out there than this path you’ve chosen.”
“No police, no questions. Let’s sit down and talk about how we could help you and fix the road you’re on. Sincerely Carl,” he offered.
His forgiving message quickly went viral. Wallace claims he’s spoken with news media in Europe and also in Australia to share his tale. He stated he’s likewise being texted by pastors from around the nation who support the choice he made.
“You know I kind of looked at it from the robber’s perspective of, you know, this really isn’t working… One of my things as an employer that I like to ask my employees (is) what are their goals in life and what do you want to do and what can we do as a company to help you achieve your goals?” he described.
“I would ask the robber the same thing: ‘What are your goals in life and is thus putting you on the right path to achieve those goals?’
“And so it was just a little bit different approach to, you know, a bad situation.”
Wallace included that if the individual that barged in steps forward, he has no intent to press any charges.
“Putting this person through incarceration to then get out to make it harder to find a good-paying job,” he described. “It only makes it worse. Sometimes, even I feel that our system in life is broken sometimes for some people … We’ve been doing the same thing for 200 years and it’s not worked.”
“Maybe everybody should offer some kindness and a way to help the fellow person versus continuing to harm what is already broken.”
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
