Adrianne: Hey everyone.

Regina: Hey.

Billy: Hey.

John: Hello.

Adrianne: Are you all familiar with the concept of internet justice?

Billy: I think so…

Regina: Like, people on the internet complaining about things?

Adrianne: Sort of. It’s where something happens in the real world — some injustice happens — usually some person is wronged and then that person or another person on their behalf takes the case to the internet, broadcasts it on Twitter, on social media, or through a GoFundMe or something and then through public pressure justice reigns down.

John: So it’s like using the internet to signal boost a problem of some sort.

Adrianne: Correct. I think it’s not much different from the way you might’ve used the press in the past. It’s just a way to get a story out through public pressure and achieve justice. When it works, it’s the most satisfying thing in the world. Anyway, I came across what seems to be a campaign asking for this kind of internet justice from 2016. It’s a petition on change.org and I came across it in a totally random, accidental way. It seems like it got a lot of attention within a small local community but it never got any news coverage and there’s no closure. And I was totally not intending to go down this particular rabbit hole, but now I’m kind of invested in it and I really want to know what happened .

Billy: Wait, I’m sorry… were you just browsing change.org trying to find… I don’t understand.

John: You just gotta, like…

Regina: This is my usual routine.

Billy: Back up a second, I don’t understand how you ended up on this.

Adrianne: Right. So I came across it randomly because I was on Facebook. I deleted my Facebook — my real Facebook — a couple of years ago, and now I just have this dummy Facebook account that I just use to join different kinds of groups looking for story ideas. I was looking at a Facebook page which is related to the multi-level marketing scam LuLaRoe. This is a company, like, one of those companies where they get people to try to sell stuff to their friends but it’s really a pyramid scheme.

Regina: Is it like the essential oils-type ones?

Adrianne: Right. I’m on this Facebook page — it’s a LuLaRoe Facebook page — it’s like a negative LuLaRoe Facebook page.

John: What’s it called? What’s the page called?

Adrianne: It’s called LuLaRoe Defective Fail. So this is a couple layers deep into some LuLaRoe forum drama.

Regina: Oh my God.

Adrianne: Anyway, you know how internet communities can kind of just like break into sects. So I was trying to sort through all of this drama and I go over to the about page. The about section doesn’t say anything about LuLaRoe or about this page. It seems totally unrelated. It says, “We, the community of Archdale/Trinity and further surrounding areas as well as out of state, want Abed Hassan back as the Manager/Operator of Biscuitville #171 of Archdale, NC.”

Billy: I’m sorry… Biscuitville?

Adrianne: And then it says, in all caps, “WE THE UNDERSIGNED WILL BOYCOTT ALL BISCUITVILLE LOCATIONS UNTIL HE IS REINSTATED TO HIS PREVIOUS POSITION.”

John: Oh my God.

Billy: What is Biscuitville? Is that a thing?

Regina: That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Oh yeah…

John: I hear the word “Biscuitville” and all I’m thinking is, “How do I get there?”

Regina: “Does Biscuitville deliver?”

Billy: Wow. They have 57 locations.

Regina: Yeah guys, we’re going to Biscuitville.

Billy: This is actually exactly what I thought it is, which is a chain local to… oh yeah, it’s North Carolina and Virginia.

Regina: “All biscuits served at Biscuitville restaurants are made from scratch, hot every 15 minutes”

John: Oh.

Adrianne: It’s like the Krispy Kreme of biscuits.

Regina: Wait, there’s also Pizzaville?

Adrianne: Apparently Biscuitville is a spin off of Pizzaville. They were just looking for something to make in the mornings and they hit on this biscuit thing. The biscuits start outselling the pizza… this is according to the Wikipedia page. So it’s interesting that you all seized on Biscuitville because the main character of these two sentences is not Biscuitville but former manager/operator Abed Hassan.

John: Of #171. Store #171.

Adrianne: Correct.

John: I’m looking at the careers page now.

Adrianne: I Googled this little bit of text and I figured it would lead to some, you know, it would be a Know Your Meme page or it would be an Arrested Development quote or something, and it’s not anywhere else. There’s only one result which is obviously the original source of the quote, which is a petition on change.org. People are so riled up about this.

Regina: “Shame on you Biscuitville.”

Adrianne: They will not go back to Biscuitville at any location. “We want Abed back. Abed made Biscuitville. He is the heart of the restaurant.”

John: Wait these comments… there are so many comments. And. like, 1500 signatures.

Billy: What happened? Why was he removed?

John: “I think that Abed was done wrong and I’m tired of corporations letting longtime faithful employees go in order to bring in cheaper, less qualified people.” That has 10 hearts.

Billy: Okay so now we have a theory…

Adrianne: For why he was let go? Mmm.

Billy: He was too expensive. He hit the biscuit ceiling.

Regina: Well, no but there’s this one… but there’s another one that says something about having a knee-jerk reaction, which implies that maybe he did something wrong. Where does it say… “Shame on you for not doing your due diligence before settling on a knee-jerk reaction.” So maybe there was a complaint?

John: Yeah. “Shame on you Biscuitville for your actions without considering the man as a whole, and his importance to your customers.”

Billy: What did he do?

Regina: We gotta know.

Adrianne: So I looked up the population of Archdale, North Carolina — which, as we saw, this petition appeals to more than just the people in Archdale but also the people in Trinity, the surrounding communities, and out of state — but just for perspective, I looked at the population of Archdale, which is around 11,400. So the population of signatories on this petition is about 13% of the equivalent population of Archdale.

John: Oh my God.

Adrianne: So my questions are two: 1. Why was Abed supposedly let go from this Biscuitville that he worked at for over 30 years? 2. Did this petition work? Did Abed get his job back?

John: Adrianne, I really want to know why the excerpt was on that Facebook group.

Adrianne: Okay.

John: Where’s the closest Biscuitville?

Adrianne: It looks like the closest one is in Virginia. Central Virginia.

Billy: It says it’s only a 6 hour and 16 minute drive from my house.

Adrianne: Oh God.

Billy: You could leave first thing in the morning, be there by lunchtime, spend a few hours there, and then be back by a reasonable hour.

John: Yeah, I would drive.

Adrianne: Dude. You guys are on your own.

John: Coming up: Bojangles gets bombarded.

Adrianne: Hi y’all.

John: Hello.

Adrianne: I’m back from Biscuitville

John: Did you actually go to Biscuitville?

Adrianne: No.

John: Oh.

Billy: Oh. We gotta go!

Adrianne: I took a metaphorical trip down to Biscuitville. So I looked into this controversy around Biscuitville #171 in Archdale, North Carolina, and it’s former general manager whose name is actually pronounced “ah-bid hass-in.” So not not “ah-bed” as I was saying before. If you guys remember, I came across Ahbed’s story because it was referenced in a totally unrelated — confusingly unrelated — Facebook page about the multilevel marketing scam known as LuLaRoe. And I think, John, you were the one who really wanted to know how the text about Abed’s situation ended up on this other Facebook page.

John: Yeah. They have no… well it seems like they have nothing to do with each other.

Adrianne: Right. So I did figure this one out. So on Facebook you can look at a page’s history and see if it’s changed names. And this page was created on April 13th, 2017 with the title “Justice for Abed Hassan, former Biscuitville of Archdale, NC employee”

Billy: Yes! I knew it.

Regina: But then why reappropriate the page instead of just making a new one?

Billy: Because you already have all those followers.

Adrianne: Maybe to make it look bigger? Yeah. So that’s all the clues from the Facebook page, but I was able to figure out who started the Change.org petition for Abed. Her name is Mandy Brown and Mandy was an employee at Biscuitville when Abed was let go. She said he was her favorite boss ever. She literally just had a baby, so she was not able to do a phone call but she told me a little bit over Facebook. This is Mandy: “We came in one day and the rumor was running that change was about to happen. Then a few short days later he was ‘let go.’ As far as I know without any compensation or retirement package after having been a loyal and longstanding manager for them. My first reaction was dumbfoundedness. I didn’t think a company would be that stupid.”

John: How long was Abed there?

Adrianne: 43 years.

John: That’s so long.

Adrianne: It is indeed. Two generations.

Billy: We have to stop… as a culture, we need to stop assuming that companies are caring or smart.

Adrianne: Corporations are your family.

Billy: Oh, okay. Sorry. You’re right.

Adrianne: So there’s there’s all this response and outrage from the community. But Abed did not get his job back, she told me. However, the petition was not for nothing. I called Kimberly Cates, who is part of the Archdale/Trinity Chamber of Commerce, and asked if she remembered when Abed got fired.

Kimberly: Someone posted something on Facebook and I was like, “No way.” And I guess if you’ve researched it you’ve seen how it just totally turned us upside down because we were like, “What? They can’t fire him! He is Biscuitville. He’s the face of that company.” I was just shocked and in disbelief. I thought it was a joke at first.

Adrianne: Kimberly is also vice president of the Parent-Teacher-Student Association at her daughter’s school, so she’s very involved in the community. And she said the petition did make a dent.

Kimberly: Absolutely. It was a very noticeable difference in their parking lot. I didn’t go for the longest time just to kind of boycott or, “I don’t want anything to do with them,” you know? Kind of stomping my foot just a little bit. But then right down the street the Bojangles, those poor people they were bombarded. And they couldn’t handle the business.

Adrianne: I asked if she knew why Abed got fired and she didn’t. So I called Abed.

Abed: Good morning.

Adrianne: That’s Abed Hassan.

Abed: I’m almost 70 years old, and I came to the United States in 1967 after the Six-Day War in Lebanon. I’m from Lebanon and my father was working for the United Nations and he had some friends in the United States. So he sent me here.

Adrianne: He went to Stanford, then moved to Chicago for business school where he met “a nice looking young lady,” and she was from Archdale and so he followed her to the South.

Abed: It’s a really small community. It’s a great community to live in. Everybody is so down to earth. It reminds me of back home, actually.

Adrianne: Abed started working in Biscuitville before it was Biscuitville. It was Pizzaville.

Regina: It just feels insincere, you know? You can’t be good at everything.

Billy: Personally, I think it’s easier to be good at biscuits than it is at pizza.

Adrianne: So the story of how he got hired at Pizzaville is basically unbelievable. He told me he walked in one day, ordered food, they got super busy and he asked the manager, “Hey do you guys need help?”

Abed: So I volunteered. I said, “If I may help you, or do something, I would be glad to.” And they said, “If you can take orders.” And I said, “Okay, I can do that.”

Adrianne: You went in to order food and then they got busy and you jumped behind the counter?

Abed: Yes ma’am. I sure did.

Adrianne: That’s amazing. I’ve never heard of anyone getting a job that way.

Billy: That’s incredible. What year was this?

Adrianne: What’s 43 years ago?

Billy: I don’t know, this isn’t a math podcast.

Regina: It’s 1976.

Billy: 1976. Yeah, okay. So I’m reading the history of Biscuitville and by 1972 the founder had six Pizzaville locations. His first biscuit-only location was in Danville, Virginia in 1975. So he was really on the forefront of Biscuitville.

Adrianne: He was.

Billy: He was there when there was just a small collection of Pizzavilles in the 70s.

Adrianne: Yup. According to Abed he makes manager within three or four months at this Pizzaville. He’s, like, a total star. And I asked him what’s important for a restaurant to get right. He said it’s not about the food, it’s about the people.

Abed: You want to go to a restaurant, you don’t want to just sit and order and eat and leave. You want to feel the closeness, you want to feel the hospitality, the friendship, the atmosphere, the attitude of the people. You know, attitude means a lot. I knew just about every person who walked in. If I don’t, I would say, “My name is Abed Hassan. It’s good to have you. If there’s anything I can do please let me know. I’m here at your service.”

Adrianne: So my conversation with Abed basically backs up everything I’ve heard from everybody else. Everything people were saying in the petition. He’s like a hospitality prodigy and that leads me to ask, “Why would anyone fire this person?”

Adrianne: After 43 years, what changed that all of a sudden you were let go?

Abed: The company changed direction. Altogether over 50 people were fired from Biscuitville. Actually the ones that had been with the company more. Over 30 years. 33, 35, 37, 20 years. We were making good money and they have some new people making half what we make.

Billy: So he’s saying his theory is that some of the more veteran employees of Biscuitville we’re expensive, and so rather than continuing to pay them, they’re like, “We’ll just bring in some younger people who are cheaper.”

Adrianne: Cleared them out. Yeah.

Billy: Okay.

Adrianne: So did they give you an explanation?

Abed: Yeah. They gave me a piece of paper. Made me sign a piece of paper that said my speeds of service was not up to standard. Speed of service is like three minutes. Mine was three minutes and 13 seconds.

Adrianne: So Biscuitville was timing how long it took customers to get through the drive-through. And upper management was claiming that #171’s average time was too high. But according to Abed, the company had been happy with his performance pretty recently before that.

Abed: And I was actually three years before that I was #1 speed of service in the whole company.

Adrianne: Abed actually sent me a few of his performance reviews and they were glowing. From 2014, “Abed did a great job with food and labor costs this year. Had the best profit percentage in the district.” In 2015, “His leadership and community involvement has helped the store grow.” His review does list some items needing improvement, but they do not include speed of service. It says, “Utilize marquee to draw in new quest from the highway, improve quality assurance score, meeting deadlines, and reading and responding to emails,” as areas that need improvement. Can relate.

John: Same.

Adrianne: And he said just six months before he was fired the company had given him a bunch of awards.

Abed: They gave me a trophy for best profits as a percentage of sales. They give me the best food cost of the company. I think was close to Christmas and they let me go April 12th.

Adrianne: So you must have been so surprised. You must have felt horrible.

Abed: I did.

Adrianne: In September of 2015, Biscuitville brings in this guy Jim Metevier. So this guy Jim, his resume seems to be all about growth. He’s, like, corporate guy. He’s really big time at Yum Brands, which owns KFC and Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. At KFC He worked his way all the way up to COO and then he moved into Chief Restaurant Excellence Officer.

Billy: CREO.

Adrianne: CREO, exactly.

Regina: C-R-E-I-O.

Adrianne: So Jim joins Biscuitville and he says he wants to bring in “new and younger guests” and “improve operational efficiencies.”

Billy: So we’re millennials killing Biscuitville? And he’s trying to get them in?

Adrianne: Millennials are killing Biscuitville, and Jim Metevier is here to help.

Billy: Throw some avocados on those biscuits, Jim. What are you doing?

Regina: It’s a good suggestion.

Adrianne: His description of his own time at Biscuitville, he says he shattered all previous sales records and developed a plan to “further drive brand relevance and unleash unit growth.”

John: Where did he say that?

Adrianne: LinkedIn.

John: Okay.

Adrianne: So basically this guy’s the big corporate hot-shot who has come into change little old Biscuitville, make it hip with the millennials, and unleash unit growth. He brings in a bunch of his Yum Brands people, and people start losing their jobs. And according to Abed, Biscuitville #171 then lost a ton of business.

Adrianne: So the petition, people said they would stop going to eat at Biscuitville. Did that happen?

Abed: They lost 38% of their business when I left. The reason I know that is because, actually, my district supervisor, they fired him after that.

Adrianne: Meanwhile, Abed’s phone is ringing off the hook.

Abed: Bojangles called me. They wanted me to work for them. Arby’s, they called me to work for them. I mean, I didn’t even go to look for a job. They were coming to me.

Adrianne: He ends up taking a job at Zaxby’s, which is a chicken chain, and he hired his old employees. Have any of you googled Zaxby’s?

John: How do you even spell Zaxby’s?

Adrianne: Z-A-X-B-Y-S

Billy: Yeah, I just googled it.

Regina: Zaxby’s.

John: This looks delicious.

Billy: You’re talking about “Absolutely Craveable Chicken, Zalads & Zappetizers?”

Adrianne: Yes. Zalads and Zappetizers. You feel like a Zalad? I’m kind of craving a Zalad.

Billy: Abed’s the force behind all of this.

Adrianne: So Zaxby’s is a fast-casual chain. It’s a little bit bigger than Biscuitville. 123 locations. Zaxby’s does chicken. They do chicken wings, chicken fingers, chicken sandwiches. Also Zalads and Zappetizers.

John: Naturally. Zaturally.

Billy: Okay. But this is great. I mean, that would be great for him to be in a franchise environment, right? Because then he would be immune from the same kind of corporate hammer coming down.

John: Are you immune?

Adrianne: I’m not sure that he’s immune from corporate pressure. However, he does seem to be having a good time there and they asked him to help open up this place. He’s doing marketing and catering. It seems like he’s very happy, and he brought along a bunch of his old employees and he says he thinks 90% of his customers have come to see him at Zaxby’s.

You remember this guy Jim Metevier, the new president of Biscuitville?

Billy: Yes.

John: MmHmm.

Adrianne: Jim didn’t last very long. After about a year, the company announced that he’s leaving to spend more time with family.

John: That’s never true.

Adrianne: And then it also seems like a lie because he then took another job at Mountain Mike’s.

Billy: Mountain Mikes? What’s Mountain Mike’s?

Regina: We had to travel more guys.

Adrianne: You guys need to get on top of your regional fast food chains.

John: “Mountain Mike’s Pizza: crispy curly pepperoni.” This cheese doesn’t look right to me.

Billy: A pizza company with a headquarters in Oakland, California? Uh, no offense, that’s trash. I’m into Biscuitville, I’m into Zaxby’s. Mountain Mike’s? No.

Adrianne: No thanks.

John: It’s a Mike too far.

Adrianne: Anyway, Jim Metevier, Mountain Mike’s. Took that job in 2018. Congratulations, Jim. And then…

Abed: Four months ago they start calling everybody back. The ones they fired.

Adrianne: They start calling everybody back.

Billy: So you’re telling me a bunch of Taco Bell people don’t know how to make biscuits? Surprise, surprise.

Adrianne: They called it a lot of his friends, they haven’t called him yet, and as far as he knows only one person took the job. Everybody else said, “No thank you.”

To go back to my original thing about internet justice, it seems like in this case internet justice was attempted but the internet failed to deliver swift and powerful recourse. Like it would’ve been more satisfying if Biscuitville had said, “Oh no, we’ve lost all our business. No one’s coming to Biscuitville anymore and they’re all angry on Twitter. The people have spoken. Abed, we want you back. Here’s a big bonus.”

Billy: Well ultimately it was his reputation, right? It was the thing that he said is most important in hospitality, which is connecting with people.

Adrianne: Exactly. So in the end, Abed gets hooked up with a new company that makes delicious chicken and Jim Metevier joins a company that makes puffy looking pizza with toppings that look like they came out of a can.

Billy: All’s fair in love and biscuits.

Adrianne: I reached out to Biscuitville and Jim Metevier. They did not respond.

Adrianne: Do you ever eat at Biscuitville?

Abed: Since I worked at Biscuitville? No. Every time I pick up my grandson, we pass through Biscuitville, he said — he calls me a Baba — he said, “Baba turn your head, turn your head. Look look look look look.” And I said, “Look for what?” He doesn’t want me to look at Biscuitville. He wants me to look at the other side. He said, “Don’t look, don’t look!” I said, “Okay. Okay.”

Billy: So wait, is LuLaRoe a scam or not?

Adrianne: Yeah.

Billy: Okay, got it.

John: That’s your takeaway from all this?

Billy: I dunno, I just wanted to check.

John: Underunderstood is produced by Adrianne Jeffries, Billy Disney, Regina Dellea, and me, John Lagomarsino.

Regina: Check out our website underunderstood.com for show notes and little fun transcripts and stuff like that. You can also follow us on Twitter or Instagram. We also have a subreddit.

Billy: Please send us your questions! if you have something you can’t find on the internet, please send it to us. We want to help you out. Send it to hello@underunderstood.com.

John: You may remember a couple of episodes back we set up a website where you can track whether McFlurries across the country are mixed or not mixed. We’re still collecting data. Go to flurryindex.com to enter your data. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, listen to the episode “What happened to the McFlurry.” We’re going to try to do some followup reporting.

Billy: It’s pretty split. It’s crazy. We’re a nation divided.

John: Not stirred.

Billy: You could kind of say the results are… mixed.

John: Okay. Thanks for listening! We’ll be back in a week.