The Union story sounds highly suspicious to me. Having been around labor unions my entire life I feel that I know a bit about their methods. And none of them involve “union goons”. Were you by chance just watching Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront”?

Unions today are afraid of their own shadows. Any mention of “goons” or other hard-handed tactics leads promptly to threats of the Rico Act enforcement. And you can bet that management is waiting for any excuse to pounce.

My guess is that the story was either planted my management (which in case you don’t realize is more corrupt than any Labor Union), or some low-level con artists were posing under the “union” mask.

Phil, I know the first story, but a litle diferently. The goons actually ravaged the place, only to be found bound and shot. They didn’t know that the owner of the restaurant was related to one of the families.

Yeah, all the goons work for corporations in TX…

I’m glad Texas is a right to work state. None of those union goons down here.

A number of years back the company that I worked for had an exhibit at a large trade show in the Silicon Valley area. When the show was over and it was time to pack up and move out, the union thugs let us know that unless some of the computer gear was donated to them, it would be days before our stuff was moved out of the exhibit hall. To get us out of there, management allowed some of the equipment to disappear. It really teed me off.

When I was in college, I worked part time at a local Bradlees department store. To work in the store you were required to joing the union. If I remember correctly there was a $300 dollar initiation fee and weekly dues given in tribute each week there after.

At one point the union honchos decided that we needed to go out on strike and held a meeting to discuss it at some gangster hall over in Dorchester. The hall was filled with old ladies and teenagers that worked at Bradlees making just over minimum wage, and the union thugs all arrived in their Mercedes and Caddies.

We were out on strike for some weeks and in the end the union got us a nickel an hour raise.

I hate unions and always will.

Intresting to note – so many comments on the chocolate/Dog discussion – none on the violence in NY !!!!

chocolate, or at least the active ingredient as far as canines go, theobromine, can actually be used to poison coyotes…

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/ws/nwrc/is/05pubs/johnston052.pdf

When I was elementary-school aged, our old golden retriever used to hunt for our halloween bags each year. A smart golden retriever is often more resourceful than a human child; she usually managed to get into one of the bags. I suppose it was mostly milk chocolate, mixed with a lot of non-chocolate candy, and she would eat at least a couple pounds of candy. She’d generally spend an evening lying on her side groaning, but recover quickly. She lived a long, healthy life.

Snopes says that it’s true, chocolate is poisonous to dogs…

http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/cocoa.htm

A quick google search will show you that dark chocolate is three times more toxic than milk chocolate and bakers chocolate three times worse still. A few ounces of bakers chocolate can kill a large dog like my lab.

Philip didn’t tell the whole story. I have two dogs, a husky and a lab. My mom called poison control and they had her induce vomiting in both dogs and immediately go to the vet. The lab threw up a ton of chocolate (well, maybe a pound) in the cab on the way to the animal hospital on the east side. Once there, they induced vomiting in the husky who was clean (smart? lucky? asleep?). They pumped activated carbon into the lab (she looked like a war refugee). When she threw that up, they convinced me that she had to stay overnight for observation–given that she had eaten it all herself. She was fine thoughout. Her tail never stopped wagging.

Would she have gotten ill if she had not been induced to vomit (with a combination of hydrogen peroxide and yogurt)? Who knows.