Back when franchising was new and Colonel Sanders was still actively visiting restaurants, he was quite the terror. My mother-in-law worked in one of the first KFC locations in Washington State and he used to show up unannounced and disrupt everything. He would imperiously burst into the back areas, point out flaws or processes he felt didn’t measure up and act like a crazy person. He would fire employees, throw utensils and cooking pots on the floor, threaten to close the place, and even give away food to customers that happened to be in the stores at the time. Keep in mind that he didn’t reimburse the store for the food he gave away. He’d just do it on a whim and leave because he was goddamn Colonel Sanders.
This behavior continued even after KFC was bought out and he was kept on as a consultant and “face” of the company. It was one of those weird things where he’d bust into a store location, do his fuck-you-I’m-Colonel-Sanders bit and corporate guys would tag along behind him to tell everyone not to worry. When he “fired” an employee or threatened to close places, these guys would have to discretely let store managers know that no one was actually fired and that he had no power to do anything.
Later, I read other accounts of him that matched what my mother-in-law had told me. The guy was quite the character.
Bonus fun fact: Sander’s once shot a man.
[quote]
Sanders was managing a Shell gas station in Nashville during the late 1920s and was at war with a competing Standard Oil station down the road. Matt Stewart, the owner of the Standard Oil station kept painting over a sign that was advertising Sanders’ business. Sanders and Stewart were both hot tempered men, and pretty soon Sanders threatened to shoot Stewart if he kept messing with his signs.
Sanders was meeting with two district managers from Shell one day when they saw Stewart painting over the sign yet again. Sanders and the two men rushed down to stop him. Stewart saw the men coming, jumped off his painting ladder and started shooting. Robert Gibson, one of the Shell managers, was killed in a hail of Stewart’s bullets. Sanders grabbed Gibson’s gun off his dead body and returned fire along with the surviving manager, H. D. Shelburne.
“Don’t shoot, Sanders! You’ve killed me!” Stewart reportedly said. Obviously, Sanders hadn’t killed Stewart but he was indeed wounded. And in the wake of the bloody mess all the surviving men were arrested. The case went to trial and both Shelburne and Sanders got off without serving any time. Matt Stewart on the other hand received 18 years for murdering Shell manager Robert Gibson.
Stewart died two years later at the hands of a deputy sheriff who it was rumored had been paid off by the surviving relatives of the Gibson family. The deputy sheriff was never charged.[/quote]