WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — If someone vandalized your property, would you give them a chance to make it right before you called the police?
The owner of Eastern Standard is doing just that. On their social media posts on Facebook and Instagram, Eastern Standard shows surveillance video from the front of the lounge.
It shows a man walking up the sidewalk to their building. He dumps out the plants in the planters, throws the plants in the streets, and takes the planter.
The post asks Triad folks to let them know if they know anything about it and if they can help identify the man, there is a $300 reward. The post also directly talks to the person who did it: You have until Wednesday at 5 pm to call us to discuss how you will correct the situation. After that, we will call the police.
“I'm not the one to be so critical or judge who he is or his actions, I just want to give him a chance to come to us and say, it was not a good thing to do, not my finest moment, I'm very sorry, what can we do to make it right,” said David Havens, owner of Eastern Standard.
Havens added, “While it's very expensive and hurtful, and irritating to us as a business, it's not quite worth messing up someone further than they may be in life and put an undue burden on someone if we can avoid it.”
Havens says the damage adds up to about $1,300 between the damage, the theft, the loss of plants, and the clean-up.