I too have fallen victim to BD's (although I was in the dreaded head office) and it left me feeling rather miffed. I was a COBs darling, racing through my apprenticeship, achieving awards from both outside of BDs and from within. I was the face of doing an apprenticeship with Bakers Delight in brochures and I even got an all expenses paid trip to Melbourne for a week where everything was laid on and Roger and Leslie made a point of being friendly and getting to know me. When I qualified as a baker although I had no desire to be a franchisee at this point I longed to remain part of the "Bakers Delight Family" so I packed up, moved interstate and took a position as a training and development consultant.
One month later I threw down my company credit card, the mobile phone, the car keys and my laptop onto my immediate supervisor's desk and stormed out. I was a highly awarded BAKER who had been turned into a "shop b!#@$" for lack of a better term. She would send me out to stores to "teach franchisees and their staff how to upsell and merchandise" - something I had a basic knowledge of but it was far from my area of expertise. What it really amounted to was me doing a day's work behind the counter as a sales girl.
More and more frequently I was also filling the gap on the counters in the failing COBs stores. I was also made to "tick and flick" potential franchisees in training. It didn't matter that they weren't actually competent in certain areas (thus setting them up to fail). She insisted they had paid their money to be trained so I would make sure they were signed off.
In the end ethically I could no longer stand it so thus stormed out because I knew I was helping people towards their ruin. I contacted my "friends" Roger and Leslie as I was incredibly upset at what this manager was doing to their business. I got sent on my way as a egotistical little upstart and they pretended they weren't even really sure who I was but, and I quote the man himself "when you come to your senses we will welcome you back to the fold". Huh! For such a long time I really believed Bakers Delight was still superior and that it was just a silly misunderstanding revolving around "that woman" who was my immediate supervisor.
Today I found out she was fired 12 months ago and had a brief moment where I thought "oh good I can finally go back" but as I read this website it has occured to me that if they had ever really valued what I had to offer their business they would never have let me walk away. If I went back now it would be crazy - I wouldn't get to walk away again because BDs is a sinking ship and so the only way out would be to swim, a pastime I never really enjoyed.