“I just couldn’t leave her; even after all she’s done. She needed my help, at least that’s what I kept telling myself.” Patrick Romanesko revealed while sitting in a blue computer chair in the back room of Papa Murphy’s Take N’ Bake Pizza in Kimberly, Wisconsin. I was sitting on a stack of flour bags that the other employees use for seats. Around us there were flashes of light from the sun reflecting off the cars outside. Just then two people walk outside past the store, probably going to Family Video which was just right next door.

“Then the bills got over than what even I could pay for, I had to get another job to help pay. It was always about her, until I couldn’t even support myself” He looked down, as if ashamed of something. Then there was a loud, doorbell like sound. And a Co worker yelled back to Romanesko,
“Pat! Can you grab till please?” He excused himself and went up to the lobby to help a customer. And I was left still wondering why he gave up everything he owned to an 18 year old girl who was clearly using him just for his money.

Romanesko was never really accepted as a child. He grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin, and lived with his mom and dad. He tried whatever he could to get his parents to notice him, but they just never did. When he was 23, he got a job at Papa Murphy’s as a Shift Supervisor. And a year later, he got promoted to manager of the store. And since it was the newest of the stores, they needed to hire. Romanesko has a thing for hiring girls he likes. So he hired Crystal. Crystal is an eighteen year old girl who went to Little Chute High School. After getting to know Romanesko a little better at work, she started asking him for things.
“At first it was just a couple of dollars here and a couple of dollars there. Then she got needy,” Says Emily Reed, a Co-Worker who has worked with Romanesko since he got the job. Then Crystal confessed to Romanesko that she had enough to pay her bills, but not enough to buy a new pair of shoes after paying the bills. So in an attempt to have someone notice him, he paid her bills. Crystal was thrilled.
This became a habit, and things kind of went downhill when she asked him to buy her the $350.00 Prom dress she wanted, while she went with somebody else. At this point everybody was telling him to stop paying for her. He had nothing in his house except for a bed, and a small TV. He was barely making ends meet as it was, while Crystal was using him to pay her bills, car insurance, clothes, and cell phone bill. The last straw was, after she quit, Romanesko broke down because Crystal was pregnant…with someone else’s baby. This started his, still occurring, habit of going to the local bar every day, sometimes even right after work, and not returning home until 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. There have been times when he had to call co workers like Emily to drive him home because he was too drunk to drive.
“This was one of those ‘I told you so’ moments, but nobody said anything to him for a while and let him settle this for himself like he asked us to.” Reed said.
“One day I just stopped texting her, and ignored all of her calls. But she didn’t leave me alone. So the last time she called me, instead of letting it go to voicemail, I picked it up, and when she asked me for $150 dollars for something I can’t even remember, I blew up at her.” This call happened at work, and other co workers reported that they could hear him yelling at her even though he was outside. When he came inside, he looked like he was going to cry because he felt so bad after what he had just done.
Crystal never called him again, Romanesko stopped talking about her like he always used to, and everything just kind of went back to normal, well, almost normal. Romanesko is now living in a nice house, driving a nice car, and he learned a lesson about earning respect and attention. After his breakdown, people started to realize that he needed more respect, for his health.
“If they don’t like me, fine, whatever, I have friends now. And I know that my co workers are there for me too,” Which makes me very proud to be working for Patrick Romanesko