Losing Life Riverside

Part II - You Can Edit That Out, Can't You?

I called a good friend, who is an attorney, with my devastating news. Devastating on two fronts – the obvious one where I realized that all that we’d invested, both financially and emotionally, and all that we’d accomplished the last two years at The Riverside was at the stools edge, ready to topple into the bowl and be flushed down the toilet. But perhaps even more disturbing was me coming to grips with my naiveté regarding the banks total manipulation of us and our money. I trusted them implicitly, viewing them as my most essential and necessary partner in this venture. Learning that they were anything but a partner, in fact, they were an adversary, made me question my core ability to comprehend the most basic mental tasks – reasoning, deducing, anticipating, obviating, etc.

I also always thought I was a pretty good judge of people – well go right ahead and throw that notion to the four winds. To think that this bank lady that I trusted so entirely – I can’t begin to tell you the information I shared with her, not only financial but personal – was probably the most devious, evil, dishonest person I’d ever encountered. It was as if I decided that it was probably OK to try and French kiss a hooded cobra. I sat in this woman’s office and cried both in sorrow as I recounted my financial situation, and in joy, as she told me everything would be alright. Little did I know that as I was pouring out my heart & soul, her hands were under her desk sharpening a scythe that would make the Grim Reaper envious, while her gentle demeanor was masking what she was really probing for as she looked at me with her comforting eyes; namely, the best part of my fleshy personage to whack away at with that toad sticker she was honing.

My lawyer friend was fired up when I told him the situation, saying “just because the bank says it’s so doesn’t mean it’s so! Let’s put these bastards on notice that you’re not going to just sit back and let them have their way.” His thought being that in these tough financial times, and with the current national and legal mood regarding financial institutions, that there wouldn’t be a judge in the world that would let them take our hotel from us if we were current on our payments. But first and foremost, I needed to go on record with the bank and write them a letter detailing some of the issues – the fact that they lied regarding a refinancing, and another heretofore unmentioned issue of them promising, and then reneging on a line of credit.

When we were in discussions regarding our loan before purchasing the hotel, it was discussed at length and I was promised a line of operating capital, which was to be secured by the equity we had in the hotel. It was detailed in every cash flow statement, every operating statement, and explicitly discussed in my business plan; all of which were approved by the bank loan officer, the loan committee and the board of directors. I would have never considered purchasing the hotel without a line of credit. Not even close. Take that cash infusion out of my five-year projections and the venture would be dead after two years, as all of my numbers reflected.

When the time came to sit down and request the line, about 10 months into the venture, the loan officer had me give him year-to-date financials and a write up on the general state of the business, including improvements we’d made to the hotel and actual sales and expense numbers vs. budgeted numbers. I complied, and off he went to the loan committee for what I was assured was a done deal. (I wasn’t asking for much – less than 5% of the equity we had in the hotel – just enough to get through the end of the year until the busy holiday season refilled the coffers.)

When I received the news that, in fact, the line of credit was denied, I said to the banker, “We’re dead”, and he didn’t deny it. As previously mentioned, every financial blueprint I’d come up with had that line being essential to our survival; I never figured it any other way.

So a letter was written that detailed what I felt were misrepresentations by the bank that were critical in the failure of the business. My job in writing the letter was to enlighten Billy Banker regarding some of the past history, regardless of his professed lack of interest in “past history.” The letter was to be written in three parts, part one being “we were promised this”, part two was “you welched on your promises”, and part three, to be completed by my lawyer friend, was “now here’s what we’re going to do if you don’t make things right.” I had no clue as to the legal what we can and what we can’t do, so I let the lawyer have at that.

I write parts one and two, and when I get to part three, I decided to have a little fun and vent, as I knew my friend might get a kick out of it, and it might make me feel a little better. In lieu of the legalese that my friend would supply, I started part three of the letter with “So, Grand County Bank, all I can say is BIG FAT HAIRY F**K YOU! You lying, thieving pack of bastards can rot in hell, assuming hell will have you!” Then I emailed the letter to my friend.

He sent me back an edited version, changing some of my text in parts one and two, and adding the all important legal piece at the end of the letter. He used that Microsoft Word program where the deletions are shown in red with a line through them, and the additions are in blue. I cleaned it up, or so I thought, and sent it on to Billy Banker. I then went to lunch. After lunch, I decided I’d open the email I sent to the banker and re-read the letter, trying to get the feeling Billy Banker would get when he opened and read this legal tour de force.

“Ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit!”, I said to myself; I inadvertently sent Billy Banker the original, the one where I end it with “So, GCB, BIG FAT HAIRY F-YOU!”

I thought I got rid of all of the colorful deletions and additions; especially that real colorful part at the end of my original letter. But nooooo; unfortunately, and again with very bad timing, there are still some applications in Microsoft Word that I’ve yet to master.

So really really fast, I sent another version – this time as clean as our bank account – to Billy Banker in an email that said “Please disregard the previous draft submission. Clean version attached.”


To be continued……