By David Strickland, Vice President of Kenton Brothers
At our Christmas party this year we asked the KB family members to share their 2019 New Year wishes with us. Please take a few minutes to hear what they have to say.
To all of our friends, family members, and customers we wish you the Happiest New Year and a great 2019!
From the Kenton Brothers Family (both human and puppy) we want to wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
By Kristen Harper, Controller and HR Manager at Kenton Brothers
One chilly, rainy morning I was walking through our beautiful new KB Truman facilities to take out a bag of trash. I made my way to our dock, opened the door to toss the bag in the dumpster and what to my wondering eyes did appear? Our dumpster was gone and our recycling dumpster was knocked over with recyclables scattered amiss….
My first thought… Why in the world would someone steel a trash dumpster? My second thought… Surely no one would take a trash dumpster. Maybe our waste services company took it for some reason. I decided to call them and check this theory out. Well, it was a poor theory. They didn’t come and take it, so who took our dumpster! It was the mystery to be solved.
Thank goodness we’re a top notch security company with only the best security cameras placed strategically “EVERYWHERE” I knew I would have my answer soon. Several people on our staff huddled around a monitor to watch surveillance videos. What we saw was magical.
Due to an unusually high amount of precipitation, the drains behind our facility had backed up. This created a three foot deep lake behind our building. Our two dumpsters performed the most glorious synchronized dance I’ve ever witnessed. It was like a real life version of Fantasia. We were mesmerized and just couldn’t look away.
The answer to where our dumpster went? It was behind the building the entire time… just a little further back than usual. The KB Missing Dumpster mystery has been solved. Please enjoy the amazing “Dance of the Dumpsters”.
By Kristen Harper & Kassie Lyons
Here at Kenton Brothers, our coworkers are more than just people we work with.
A few months ago, we sent Jeremy Shinneman, one of our technicians, to Colorado for a job. It just so happened that at the same time another technician, Chris Skinner, was in Colorado visiting family. Chris’s family was having a BBQ, and invited Jeremy to join them. Here’s what Jeremy wrote about his experience:
“When you’re sent out of town states away for work, and a fellow co-worker just so happens to be on vacation seeing the in-laws, you go on ahead and invite yourself over to the BBQ! Shake the man of the house’s hand, hug mom, and don’t leave any left overs! Thanks for letting me crash the party brother!!”
This pretty much sums it up that at Kenton Brothers, we value our culture above all else. We spend as much time with each other as we do our own families so we truly work to build and maintain those internal team relationships. We’re not your traditional corporate business… we take the time to get to know each other’s families, hobbies, and share in the ups and downs as a team. We believe this makes us a stronger team!
Just another day, living the KB way. #KBWAY
Kenton Brothers is in the final stages of renovating our new facility in the Truman Corridor. One of the reasons we chose this particular building is that it’s ten times larger than our old facility and better to showcase our cutting-edge security technologies. Ironically, our surveillance camera installation team had not yet gotten around to installing cameras on our building’s exterior. We were the cobbler whose children have no shoes.
Instead, we were focusing on the landscape, which takes a lot of hard work. The grounds were cleaned up and leveled. There was weed mat rolled out. Big holes were dug in which to plant various bushes, shrubs and trees. Finally, we were ready for the finishing touch – decorative rock, which was scheduled for delivery the next day.
One of our new boxwood shrubs had been yanked right out of its lovingly and painstakingly-dug hole!
There’s an old saying that goes something along the lines of, “There are two types of people in this world. Those who own security cameras and systems and those who’ve never been burglarized.” The Boxwood Bandits shook us out of our renovation mindset and got our surveillance team in gear. What if these green-thumbed thieves returned to help themselves to more of our shrubs?
Our security installation team worked well into the night to install commercial surveillance cameras on our building to watch over the plants (and the rest of the grounds).
Early the next morning, (2:24 a.m.) a couple walked up to our building with a construction cart and began digging up and carting away our new shrubs. How do we know? We watched the video footage. The shrubs couldn’t be far away, so a few of our employees canvassed the neighborhood and located our missing boxwoods.
Kansas City Police Department officers also watched the video on one of employee’s phones, and we showed them the house where our kidnapped shrubs were being held. Police questioned a woman who came out of the house wearing the exact same shirt she was wearing in the surveillance video. She said, “That’s not me.” Police asked, “Would you like to press charges?” We said, “Yes. Yes we would.”
Thanks to commercial-grade surveillance, these Boxwood Bandits were busted. With the Kansas City Police Department’s help, we were able to retrieve our shrubs and re-plant them.
Kenton Brothers Systems for Security is a nationally certified Woman Owned Small Business Enterprise (WBENC). Being a member of this highly respected association enables both government and private organizations to fulfill requirements pertaining to minority contracts.
