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Scamming in Au Bon Pain

While trying to finish my speech for 360Flex at Au Bon Pain, I witnessed one of the oddest things I've seen in awhile.

The whole second floor of the restaurant (the Au Bon Pain near MGH, for the Bostonians reading) was full of people trying to schedule interviews or interviewing potential "employees", people who mentioned they had no money and were looking for a second income. It's hard to explain, but it was like a scene out of Glengarry Glen Ross, trying to keep people on the phone for as long as possible, using every trick I could think of to get people to go to some conference. We asked an employee why all these people were allowed to run the place as an office, and they said they've had a lot of people complain and were talking with the police. But "they couldn't kick them out since they bought something", which makes no sense to me.

I'm a bit tempted to go back there tomorrow myself, but I don't see that I'll have time, especially since I plan to go to Joey Lott's talk at BFPUG.