My Cousin's Cafeteria Wanted to Raise Prices, So I Made It Fail

I'd just come out of a meeting with a few of my executives about relocating the company.

That was when my cousin Clement Armstrong showed up.

He ran a cafeteria on the ground floor of our building.

Most of his customers were our people.

Look, it's already the end of the month. Might as well go ahead and order next month's meal vouchers now.

"And that twenty-dollar voucher you've been ordering needs to go up. Let's make it thirty."

I couldn't help frowning.

"Clement, a lot of my employees have been complaining that the portions at your cafeteria keep getting smaller."

"A twenty-dollar combo plate, two meats and two sides, isn't even enough to fill them up, and now you want to raise it to thirty?"

He just spread his hands and sighed once I'd finished.

"What can I do? Ingredient and labor costs keep going up."

"Anyway, business is good at your company. It's not like you're short on the money."

That actually made me laugh.

"In that case, starting next month the company won't be ordering vouchers from your cafeteria anymore."

We'd recently bought a new office building downtown.

I'd been planning to hand the cafeteria contract over to Clement.

Not anymore.

He froze for a second.

Then his face darkened.

"Carly Pruitt, if you stop ordering from my cafeteria, where are your thousands of employees supposed to eat?"

"You know as well as I do, out here there's my big cafeteria and a handful of little diners, that's it."

"And this place is so far out. Delivery's a pain and it costs more too."

I gave him a cold look.

He clearly thought he had me over a barrel.

"That's not your concern," I said.

Clement scoffed, a cold smile on his face.

"Fine, fine, we'll see about that."

"Next month your people can go hungry for all I care."

Then he stormed off in a huff.

That evening my mother called out of nowhere.

"Carly, why aren't you ordering vouchers from your cousin's cafeteria anymore? He came and complained to me about it."

I was annoyed, but I explained patiently anyway.

"He's never satisfied. I can't keep letting him have his way."

She just made an impatient sound.

"Enough. He said his costs keep rising, so a price bump is normal."

"Your company's doing well, isn't it? Why fight him over something like this?"

"Just hurry up and order the vouchers. You know what your aunt Bertha is like..."

That did it. I hung up on her.

Mom, after everything Bertha put you through back then, you're still going to swallow it and stay quiet?

By noon the next day.

I got an unexpected call from Clement.

"Ha, come see for yourself. My cafeteria's just as packed today!"

"Carly, did you really think that without your company my cafeteria would have no business?"

He was practically dripping with smugness.

After I hung up, I sent my assistant Cecil Finch down to see what was going on.

He was back before long.

"A lot of them are our own people."

That caught me off guard.

"Why would everyone still be eating at the cafeteria?"

This month I'd had accounting deposit the meal stipend straight onto the employees' paychecks.

"The cafeteria used to play favorites. When we paid with vouchers, they'd deliberately give us less food."

"Now everyone just scans and pays, so the cafeteria can't tell who's who, and the portions are actually normal again."

Cecil said it with a grin.

I didn't know whether to laugh or shake my head.

"Then let them be. It's no loss to us anyway."

But that evening.

Clement called again.

"Carly, what's going on? Are your people still coming to eat at my cafeteria?"

"My take today is down by half. Not even twenty thousand!"

"I'm telling you right now, you're not to let them eat at my cafeteria anymore!"

It only took a moment to figure out what had happened.

Now that the cafeteria couldn't use the vouchers to tell who was one of ours and shortchange the portions,

he was serving the same ingredients but selling far fewer combo plates.

So now he was hurting over it, feeling like he'd taken a big loss.

"That's not something I can control," I said.

It had been his idea in the first place, swapping the company's meal stipend for vouchers at his cafeteria.

That had let him all but monopolize our employees' lunches, dinners too.

And now he wanted to forbid my employees from eating there.

There was no logic to it.

"Fine, fine, we'll just see about that!"

Clement hung up, furious.

Cecil came rushing in.

"There's a fight at the cafeteria downstairs. They've smashed the place up!"

My heart jumped. "Are they our people?"

"I don't know yet. I hear it's total chaos down there right now."

I grabbed my phone.

"Come on, let's go take a look!"

We went down to the cafeteria on the ground floor.

A crowd had packed in tight, three deep on every side, nobody able to move.

"Ms. Pruitt's here!"

People from the company recognized me and cleared a path.

I stepped through to the middle.

Clement was locked in a fistfight with a young man.

Both of them had faces already swollen and bruised.

When they saw me, they finally broke apart.

"What's going on here?" I asked.

Clement gave a resentful grunt.

"This guy from your company said the portions were too small, and then he goes and smashes up my cafeteria!"

The young man was furious.

"I already told you I'm not with Ms. Pruitt's company. What gives you the right to serve me such a tiny portion?"

Clement ground his teeth.

"Your boss is standing right here and you're still going to deny it?"

"Did your boss put you up to this on purpose?"

Then he turned on me, still full of complaint.

"Some piece of work you are, Carly Pruitt, pulling a stunt this low!"

"My cafeteria can't do business anymore today. You're going to pay for every bit of this loss!"

I couldn't help frowning.

One of the company's employees came up to me.

They explained that today, to keep our people from "getting a free ride," the cafeteria had simply cut everyone's portions down.

This young man hadn't taken it well, argued with Clement, and then smashed a few bowls.

Then the two of them had gone at each other.

"Are you actually with our company or not?" I asked the young man, my tone hard.

"Hmph. Still playing dumb, Carly Pruitt? He's yours!"

"There are plenty of witnesses here today. Don't even think about weaseling out of it!"

Clement jumped in first, a smug edge on his face.

The young man knocked his hand away hard and pulled a card from his jacket.

"Take a good look. This is my work ID. I'm with Avery Corp next door!"

Clement took the ID and looked at it, then stood there dumbstruck.

Then he shook his head, unwilling to accept it.

"No way. This is fake, right?"

"Carly Pruitt put you up to posing as Avery Corp, didn't she?"

"You're all posing as people from other companies today, and Carly Pruitt's behind all of it, isn't she?"

He finished and glared at me, his whole face full of hate.

Then the officers arrived and took Clement and the young man away.

Clement kept insisting the whole time that I'd put them up to it, demanding the officers take me too.

But plenty of people vouched that it had nothing to do with me.

Clement still wouldn't let it go. Before he was hauled off, he told the cafeteria staff to treat everyone like they were from our company.

Cut everyone's portions.

Clearly he meant to keep fighting us.

The result was that more than half the cafeteria crowd cleared out on the spot.

I went back up to the company.

First I had finance add a $300 meal stipend to every employee's pay.

To cover the extra they'd spent ordering delivery.

Then I told Cecil to start rounding people up.

Before long, food trucks started pulling up to set up shop downstairs.

Some selling quick meals, some fried rice and noodles, some breakfast sandwiches and savory hand pies, and even some doing barbecue.

By evening the trucks downstairs had stretched into a long line, quite a sight.

Then Cecil came running over.

"Boss, there's trouble downstairs again!"

"What's going on now?" I asked Cecil.

"Mr. Armstrong and the vendors outside got into a fight!" Cecil said.

"Clement's back?" I said, surprised.

"Yeah, just got back. Took one look at all the food stalls out front and blew up."

"He wanted the vendors gone, they wouldn't leave, so he started flipping their stalls, and it turned into a brawl."

Cecil said it grinning from ear to ear.

I didn't know whether to laugh or shake my head.

I went downstairs with Cecil.

There was Clement, with a pack of his cafeteria staff.

He was squared off against a crowd of vendors, both sides shouting insults.

Off to one side, a food stall had been knocked over onto the ground.

The whole area was a mess.

Onlookers ringed the scene, plenty of them still holding food in their hands.

The second Clement saw me, his teeth clenched all over again.

"Carly, we're family, whatever else. You wouldn't let me raise prices, so now you're teaming up with outsiders to come after me?"

I frowned.

"Back when your restaurant downtown went under, I got you the spot here to open the cafeteria, and I lent you a million dollars to start it up."

"To help your business, I switched the staff meal stipend to meal vouchers so everyone would eat at your place."

"And you turned around and treated my company's people like dirt, shorting their portions more and more, and now you want to hike the voucher price by fifty percent."

"You tell me, is that any way to treat family?"

The moment I said it, the crowd around us started jeering.

"He's an ungrateful snake, greedy and rotten to the core!"

"Clement's Cafeteria should just shut down already, or there's no justice in this world!"

"Don't worry, Ms. Pruitt, from now on we've got your company's meals covered!"

The vendors were even more worked up, like they'd all closed ranks against a common enemy.

They'd all taken turns setting up their stalls downstairs before.

Business had been pretty good.

But Clement had run every one of them off, half sweet-talking, half strong-arming.

Now they'd finally gotten to vent it all out.

Clement had no comeback for any of it, his face flushing from purple to green.

"Fine, fine, we'll see about this!"

He stormed back inside with his cafeteria staff, seething.

But before long, a whole crowd of officials showed up.

City inspectors, business regulators, people from every department.

Clearly Clement had filed complaints against them.

But the vendors had kept the place spotless and orderly.

They'd even cleaned up the stall that had been knocked over earlier.

So there was nothing to write them up for.

The officials gave a few reminders and left.

Clement had been waiting at the cafeteria door to watch the show.

Seeing how it went, his face went from purple to black.

The entire dinner hour, the cafeteria stayed empty, dead quiet.

Outside, it was buzzing, like an open-air market at festival time.

I had Cecil arrange for someone to talk to the vendors.

We invited them to open stalls in the cafeteria of our company's new office building.

Rent-free for the first year, but the quality had to be guaranteed and the prices reasonable.

By the end of the night, more than twenty vendors had jumped at it and agreed in principle.

I also told Cecil to speed up the company's relocation.

That day I worked late.

I was just packing up to head home.

My phone suddenly rang.

It was Gerald Armstrong.

"Carly, what is wrong with you, ganging up with outsiders to squeeze out your cousin's cafeteria?"

"If it weren't for your cousin's cafeteria before, your company's people would've had nothing to eat. Now you want to kick him to the curb once he's served his purpose?"

"Your aunt and I doted on you your whole life, and it turns out you're nothing but an ungrateful snake!"

He kept railing at me, not giving me a single chance to speak, so I just hung up.

Ha. When I was little, Bertha Armstrong bullied my mother constantly, and none of you ever gave me a kind look, and you dare say you doted on me?

But right after that.

The family group chat blew up too.

Bertha fired off a whole string of messages in the group chat.

"Well, Carly, you've got money and clout now. Guess poor relatives like us just aren't worth your time anymore?"

"Sigh, it's Clement's own fault for being too honest. He only wanted to give his cousin a hand, so he went and opened a cafeteria out in the middle of nowhere."

"And then someone's business gets better and better, and she just forgets who helped her"

Twisting the truth, dripping with false pity.

The whole chat went strangely tense.

Not long after, my mother called me.

"Carly, honey, why are you butting heads with your cousin?"

"Just apologize to him, all right? Order the meal vouchers on the terms he wants."

"You know how it is, keep the peace and everyone prospers. If your aunt really kicks up a fuss, none of us can handle it!"

She was frantic, and there was almost a sob in her voice.

I mumbled a few words to calm her down and hung up.

If anything, it made me more sure of my plan.

The next day I got to the office.

Clement was already there waiting, and he'd brought someone with him.

Norman Walker owned the building we rented.

"Mr. Walker, what brings you here?"

I was a little surprised.

Norman was all smiles.

"Heh, Mr. Armstrong dragged me along."

"Your lease is down to just over a month, isn't it? About time we signed a new one."

"Let's make it another three years. How about a fifty percent bump on the rent? Paid in full, up front."

I couldn't help frowning.

"Mr. Walker, fifty percent is a bit much, don't you think?"

Norman turned to look at Clement instead.

"Is it too much? What do you say, Clement?"

"Not at all."

Clement let out a laugh.

Then he pulled me off to the side.

"That's right, the whole thing was my idea."

"You get to gang up with outsiders to squeeze me out, but I'm not allowed to team up with people to deal with you?"

"But if you agree to order vouchers from my cafeteria, and raise your prices fifty percent"

"I can talk Norman into knocking the rent down for you."

Clement looked thoroughly pleased with himself.

Watching him play the smug little schemer, so sure he had me right where he wanted me, I couldn't help laughing.

"Fine, fine, everything's negotiable."

"But I've got something urgent today. Can you both come back tomorrow to talk it over?"

I went back to my desk.

Clement and Norman traded a glance and nodded, satisfied.

"Sure, we'll come by tomorrow."

The two of them had barely left when Clement suddenly turned back.

"Carly, you know you're just making trouble for yourself, right?"

"You could've just agreed to my terms. Now you're going to pay a lot more."

"I told you you'd never beat me. Chalk this one up as a lesson. A lesson you paid cash for!"

With that he swaggered off, humming to himself.

I didn't so much as blink. I turned and called Cecil in.

"Get everything moving. Starting tomorrow, we're relocating the company."

Early the next morning.

I'd just reached the office when I found Clement and Norman already waiting downstairs.

"Carly, there you are! We've been waiting ages!"

"Norman's agreed to only raise the rent forty percent. That should make you happy, right?"

"We brought the contract and everything. Let's get it signed!"

Clement said it with a smug little flourish.

I smiled.

"Mr. Walker, I'm sorry, but we've decided not to renew."

Norman, all cheer a second ago, just stood there dumbstruck.

Clement's face changed too.

"Carly Pruitt, what's that supposed to mean? You're not renewing? You giving up the business?"

"Don't let your temper get the better of you. Just sign the contract like a good girl, before you regret it"

He was still talking when a chorus of horns sounded in the distance.

A long line of trucks came rolling toward us like a dragon.

"What is that?" Clement blurted out.

"That would be my company moving out."

I said it mildly.

Clement and Norman froze like they'd been struck by lightning, staring in disbelief.

Then panic spread fast across both their faces.