By Grant Pick
“Equity stakes, employee training, rich benefits and expanding opportunities have kept the company devoutly entrepreneurial while developing employee loyalty that is unusual in a business notorious for high turnover,” said Business Week in a flattering 1992 profile. “The result is a company with the resources and staying power of a chain and the spirit of a corner bistro.”
Melman, the Lettuce CEO who has long advertised his informal management style, was only a fleeting presence. “He would sweep through Papagus once a year,” Duncan says. “It always seemed like Jesus Christ coming through.”
“I thought of my face,” says Duncan. She turned away from a mirror so she couldn’t see herself. Her hands looked charred. “I felt Brillo on my head where my hair had been.”
Koutsogiorgas says he and Banakis stood vigil near the hospital emergency room. “The hospital people asked me if this was a workers’ compensation case, and I said, ‘Hey, here’s my credit card. Treat the lady the best you can,’” says Koutsogiorgas. “That was my position and that of Mr. Banakis.” The two managing partners stayed around for the next day or two, says Koutsogiorgas. “Adrianne was always a happy, jolly person, and we wanted to be encouraging and caring. Here she’d been involved in such a horrible accident, like Chernobyl or something. She could only look at herself and wonder. But the doctors gave us more reassurance as to the final outcome–that Adrianne would be lucky, that she would resume a normal life. That gave us hope.”
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Bob visited, apologized, and left a card that read, “I’m sorry this had to happen to you. Please get well soon.” When Duncan spoke to Banakis, she begged him not to fire Bob, but soon he was out of a job. “Yorgo came and brought flowers,” says Duncan. “He stood there uncomfortably, and the phraseology he used was telling. ‘I’m sorry this had to happen,’ he told my mom. His semantics removed Lettuce from any culpability.”
Duncan says that before Koutsogiorgas came to visit, “I told her to behave–and she did.” In general, she says, “My mother wasn’t warm and cuddly–she was cold, I’d say. But she reacted the way a parent would react if their daughter was severely injured.”
