TROY — In what is believed to be unprecedented in the local restaurant scene, the entire staff of The Shop resigned after service on Sunday, leaving the future of the downtown gastropub uncertain, former employees said.

As of this morning, the website has had all information removed except for the phone number and email address. There is also a cryptic message on the site, "Do better. Please," that is echoed in a photo that appeared overnight on The Shop's Instagram page. It shows the same words, written on a chalkboard that previously contained the list of daily specials. Former staff said the message was directed at The Shop's owner, Kevin Blodgett.

Ex-employees said that abandoning The Shop at the beginning of Troy's Restaurant Week, which typically is a lucrative promotion for participating businesses, was immediately precipitated by last week's debacle with MyPayrollHR. The Clifton Park payroll-processing company went out of business suddenly on Thursday, and an out-of-state bank it worked with auto-withdrew paychecks once and sometimes twice last week from the bank accounts of employees who received direct deposits from MyPayrollHR's approximately 4,000 clients nationwide, including many locally, The Shop among them.

Long-simmering tensions between management and Blodgett had led to a plan for the mass resignation this coming Friday, after most of Restaurant Week was over, employees said. But according to interviews with multiple people involved, Blodgett’s response to the payroll problem, which left a number of staff with minimal or negative bank balances, exhausted employees’ willingness to work with an owner who they said was largely absent and noncommunicative, and was erratic, unpleasant or abusive when they did interact with him.

Blodgett owns and redeveloped the huge former Trojan Hardware building that is home to The Shop, at the corner of Fourth and Congress streets. Although he lives in an apartment upstairs, he never appeared in the restaurant or communicated directly with most staff after the payroll problem, employees said. Instead, he sent a text message to Jared Barton, The Shop’s operations manager, telling him to refer employees to their respective banks, employees said.

“That was it for us,” said Barton, who said the staff of more than two dozen employees felt abandoned at a time of significant crisis. “It really showed us again his inability to lead a group of people,” Barton said.

Blodgett did not immediately return messages left on his voicemail, on The Shop’s voicemail and at the restaurant’s email address.

Five employees who resigned Sunday night all said that Blodgett, despite living above the restaurant, was essentially a nonentity in the running of The Shop over the past several years, communicating almost exclusively through Barton and the executive chef, Rich Matthews. The two, who are engaged to be married, were the de-facto proprietors of The Shop, employees said. Matthews and Barton described a fraught relationship with Blodgett, who at times seemed to have blocked their cell numbers from his phone and would go weeks without responding to emails or meeting them in person. Barton said that two years ago, he would interact with Blodgett several times a week; however, Barton said, “Since this summer started, it’s been maybe 10 texts total. That’s it.”

Matthews and Barton said they decided in mid-August to start looking for other work when Blodgett cut their pay without warning — by almost 50 percent for Barton, 12 percent for Matthews. (Barton, who also worked as a server in addition to managing front-of-house staff and handling multiple office matters, was able to offset the reduction by working extra shifts waiting tables, he said, but said he still was bringing home 25 percent less.)

Believing that some staff members would also want to leave if Barton and Matthews resigned, they told employees about their intentions, to give them several weeks to job hunt. Every staff member agreed they would quit if Barton and Matthews did, the pair said.

“If they were leaving, I was not going to continue working for (Blodgett) without them,” said Josh James, who was the bar manager of The Shop for about three years. “I’d watched his behavior degrade to the point where he was just not present in the business, and when he was, he was abusive, especially toward Jared and Rich.”

James added: “I couldn’t in good conscience work for him.”

“He was one of the most absent owners I’ve ever worked for,” said server and bartender Roshi James-Shivalila. “He would come in occasionally and make it known that he was the owner, but he wouldn’t even know what we had on the menu.”

Emily Herendeen, a graduate student in social work who was a server at The Shop for five months, said that despite her short duration, “I could tell right away that (Barton and Matthews) really cared about us, really wanted to foster a sense of family. I’ve been in the industry for 13 years, and in my experience, that kind of feeling is unique.”

When it became clear that they and many others intended to leave, she said, “I really didn’t want to stay and potentially be in an environment that was negative or toxic without these two people who had made the place what it was for me.” Herendeen said that in her five months at The Shop, she saw Blodgett walk through the restaurant once or twice. He never spoke to her or otherwise communicated with her in any way, she said.

Other, longer-tenured former employees said they stayed despite difficulties with Blodgett because they felt they had developed a strong rapport with their co-workers. Matthews had run the kitchen since a couple of months after The Shop opened, at the end of October 2014. Barton arrived as a part-time server soon after, and by the following spring had become full-time and was assuming more managerial responsibilities, he said. James was a veteran of almost three years, and James-Shivalila for almost as long.

“To me, what The Shop was about was the atmosphere that management created for the staff and the customers,” said James-Shivalila. “Without that, there was no reason to be there.”

Most of The Shop’s 26 employees were there to say goodbye on Sunday night, according to employees, and some former staffers came by as well. Matthews said he collected 25 letters of resignation. (One employee, worrying a resignation in writing might harm his ability to file for unemployment, declined to write one, but he told colleagues he did not intend to return to work, other former employees said.) The letters were left in a folder on the bar of The Shop, according to a photo provided by Matthews, along with a box that contained everyone’s keys related to the business.

Barton and Matthews have new jobs in the hospitality industry, but at the request of their employer they declined to reveal details yet. They said 24 of the 26 employees of The Shop already have new jobs or what Barton characterized as “strong leads with a second interview lined up.” The remaining two at the moment are not looking for other work, they said.

Former employees said they assumed Blodgett would close The Shop.

“I just don’t see how he can come back from this — or that he’d even want to try,” said James, the former bar manager.

Although Matthews and Barton controlled The Shop’s social media and were the ones who scrubbed the website and put the “Do better. Please” message on Instagram and the website, they did not formally announce anywhere that it is closed, though they say they assume that is what will happen. Matthews changed the voicemail greeting to say The Shop is closed until further notice.

“We don’t work there anymore, and we’re not the owners, so we’re not in a position to say that with any finality,” Matthews said. Referring to Blodgett, he said, “It’s up to him.”

“We developed a community that we believed in, that we cared about,” said Matthews. “It was hard a lot of the time, but it gave us the opportunity to learn how to run a business and to be a part of a really great experience with what was happening in Troy over the last five years.”

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