Why hasn't SpaceX, worth $2T, paid this Bay Area chef the $70K it owes him?(www.sfchronicle.com)

34 pointsby hn_acker4 hours ago13 comments

14989aiuh4 hours ago
It is worth $2T on paper because they issued an artificially small float. They have a small fraction of Ford's revenue and tons of risky debt:
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/spacex-get...
This may be the first domino in a systemic AI loan and debt crisis.
- ben_w3 hours ago
  I dunno about first domino, but I do suspect new laws will get written to prevent future businesses performing a "Musk scheme".
hn_acker3 hours ago
Just because a headline is chosen to make you feel semething doesn't mean it's clickbait. The headline is the editor's/author's restatement of the restaurant owner's own questions which were quoted in the article body.
timpera4 hours ago
> An accountant for SpaceX called Bell on Friday to inform him a payment was being processed — a call that came “shortly after” the Chronicle reached out to the company a second time for comment. Bell, however, told the Chronicle that this was the third time he had been told his payment had been initiated.
From non-paywalled article: https://www.rawstory.com/elon-musk-2678070490/
hn_acker4 hours ago
The original title is:
> SpaceX is worth $2 trillion. So why hasn’t it paid this Bay Area chef the $70,000 it owes him?
- epolanski4 hours ago
  Is there anything "original" anymore when it comes to thumbnails or titles?
  They are tweaked all time to maximize views.
silverFork3 hours ago
What was interesting was that had promised to pay him 3 times already. If _M_sk had paid for it himself.. it will be like $5 to him or few seconds to accumulate $60k from interest alone.
- toomuchtodo3 hours ago
  It’s about power and control, as it always is in this context. It would take but a moment to arrange a wire transfer, it is an active choice not to make the vendor whole.
righthand4 hours ago
> Bell did not sign a written contract with SpaceX, but said he verbally agreed to the company’s terms of payment within 30 days.
Wrong move. Though I’m sure he’d win in court regardless, it is now a much longer drawn out process.
- gibbitz3 hours ago
  Exactly. SpaceX saves 70k by waiting for the chef to go bankrupt waiting for his day in court. It's the Trump playbook and is money and power weaponizing the court against justice.
ciconia4 hours ago
> “It just kind of hit me,” Bell said. “We’re the blue-collar guys cooking this food, hustling to make this work for these young kids making like six figures, and this entity that has a trillion dollars, can’t pay us?”
Welcome to tech bro utopia, where humanity in its entirety must grovel and worship and lick the boots of those who in their magnanimity allow us merit-less wretches to work for them for pennies, or, as in this case, for free. Oh what a wonderful future these guys have in store for us!
- bulbar2 hours ago
  Exactly. How people think that billionaires in power will act for the best of the general population is beyond me. The current US billionaire-president even campaigned with "draining the swamp", while he is part of the very elites that are at one end of corruption. Well, now they are at both ends.
qwe102983 hours ago
The Musk brigades have flagged this evidence of financial troubles from the front page.
addaon4 hours ago
(Paywalled.)
deadstate3 hours ago
Because spacex is run by a mean and petty sociopath cunt.
mgoetzke4 hours ago
[flagged]
bko4 hours ago
Why is some random vendor dispute newsworthy?
I miss real journalism. I don't know what the hell this is
- hn_acker3 hours ago
  > Desperate, Bell called SpaceX’s senior accountant on Sept. 17 and left a voicemail. “I said, ‘Something seems a little weird, and I don’t know if I should be getting a lawyer,’” he said.
  > Bell said he received two responses within the hour. The first was a call from the accountant, who told him his payment had been initiated and should land in his bank account in the next few days. Bell said that as of Oct. 9 it had not arrived.
  > On Friday, shortly after the Chronicle reached out to SpaceX for the second time, an accountant called Bell and told him payment was on its way. Bell said this is the third time the company has told him payment has been initiated.
  This is just how "random" vendor "disputes" go? I disagree.
  - bko3 hours ago
    Isn't this like every other dispute that goes to a public forum and gets resolved? You see these every other week where Google or some other company locks someone out of their account and then they make a stink and then it gets resolved.
    hn_acker3 hours ago
    When people get locked out of their Google/other accounts, Google/other usually doesn't have a contractual obligation to have a good reason for disabling the account (and thus money/compensation is not owed or overdue in such cases).
- nvdk4 hours ago
  An invoice being just a few days over it's due date is indeed not really serious. I don't think it's a smart move on the restaurant either, if they had any intention on continuing the contract this just about kills it.
- hluska4 hours ago
  It’s the San Francisco Chronicle’s Restaurant section.
  - nomel3 hours ago
    I saw it on the hacker news front page.
Kevin_Flynn4 hours ago
I'm going to pretend to take the headline seriously, without reading it.
1. Because real companies have accounts payable procedures, where transactions are examined and processed according to procedure, in varying degrees of time, depending on the circumstance.
2. Profitable companies, or those that hope to be so, make sure there is always a backlog of work available, which creates some amount of delay in all payments.
3. Elon whispered in someones ear and said "the food sucks, take care of it." This is pure speculation on my part, but it makes for a good scene in a villian movie.
- hn_acker3 hours ago
  > 1. Because real companies have accounts payable procedures, where transactions are examined and processed according to procedure, in varying degrees of time, depending on the circumstance.
  > 2. Profitable companies, or those that hope to be so, make sure there is always a backlog of work available, which creates some amount of delay in all payments.
  Your first two points are addressed by:
  > Desperate, Bell called SpaceX’s senior accountant on Sept. 17 and left a voicemail. “I said, ‘Something seems a little weird, and I don’t know if I should be getting a lawyer,’” he said.
  > Bell said he received two responses within the hour. The first was a call from the accountant, who told him his payment had been initiated and should land in his bank account in the next few days. Bell said that as of Oct. 9 it had not arrived.
  > On Friday, shortly after the Chronicle reached out to SpaceX for the second time, an accountant called Bell and told him payment was on its way. Bell said this is the third time the company has told him payment has been initiated.
  Your third point can go unaddressed.
  - Kevin_Flynn2 hours ago
    > Desperate, Bell called SpaceX’s senior accountant on Sept. 17 and left a voicemail. “I said, ‘Something seems a little weird, and I don’t know if I should be getting a lawyer,’” he said.
    Were I the CEO of SpaceX, I would have been certain to implement a program that instructed employees to be on the alert for suspicious ( desperate ) sounding callers, requesting payments outside the ordinary workflow.
    > Bell said he received two responses within the hour. The first was a call from the accountant, who told him his payment had been initiated and should land in his bank account in the next few days. Bell said that as of Oct. 9 it had not arrived.
    From having managed a restaurant myself, I can tell you, theres a million details that an owner/manager has to get right on any given day, and they have to do it every day, consistently, or the customers leave.
    Perhaps, he heard "payment was initiated" but what was really said was "your invoice is in the system and were processing it" but, because he mentioned the forbidden word "attorney" that immediately altered the procedure required. This happens in the auto insurance industry. If you tell your insurance company you have retained an attorney, the way they deal with you changes.
    This story can be framed either way, and thats why I didn't read it.
    If it said "class action lawsuit filed ... 1,000+ vendors claim SpaceX has punked them" ... I'd read it.
    hn_acker2 hours ago
    > Perhaps, he heard "payment was initiated" but what was really said was "your invoice is in the system and were processing it"
    If that were what happened, what might have led the restaurant owner to get a misunderstanding of the "the payment... should land in his bank account in the next few days" sort?
    Kevin_Flynnan hour ago
    Realistically, people misunderstand each other all the time.
    Corporate workflows across different industries complicate this.
    Theres no reason SpaceX as a corporation wouldn't pay it same as any other bill.
    If it is being treated 'special' its because of some unique attribute, concerning this particular transaction, due to some human foiable.