Exit, Stage Wrong...

A tenant in our shopping center is in the process of skipping out on her rent, and I find the whole process both inconsiderate and distasteful.

The tenant in question is the owner of a hair salon called "Whatever It Takes," which may win the award for the absolute worst name for a hair salon I've ever heard--it's saying, more or less, "We'll Do Something No Matter How Butt-Ugly You Are." We knew she was in trouble because we could see that she sometime went for entire days without a single customer (or a married one, either!). It's difficult to make money without customers, I know, but that's a problem with her business plan, not with the landlord...

Friday afternoon, she backed a truck up to the salon and began emptying the place. Thing is, she didn't just take furnishings--she had some guys with her, and they actually took the sinks off the wall. Of course, her lease specifies that once something like a sink is affixed to the store, it becomes property of the landlord, so in doing that she violated her lease.

What made it worse, though, was that the guys who took the sinks out didn't really know what they were doing, so they didn't manage to totally turn off the water through the pipes that were once attached to the sinks. This meant that water continued to drip slowly, gradually creating pools in the floor. Those pools of water are spreading out from one side of the store to the other, and they're seeping under the wall boards separating her space from the businesses on either side of her.

Of course, she doesn't care. She's too busy trying to figure out how to avoid her lease responsibilities to actually think about the tenants around her. It's likely that someone who ignores legal obligations is bound to ignore ethical ones as well.

Apparently, "Whatever It Takes" describes her method of conducting her business as well...