1 Comments You Are Following This Story Aren’t You?

Article written by the awesome Sean Lloyd on the 24 May 2010

You are following the Patrick O’Shea piece I wrote, right? Well actually I wrote a 9 liner piece on O’Shea properties closing down, that basically turned itself into some sort of story book with the all the juicy details of what happened. Check this latest comment:

22 May 2010

I have nothing nice to say about Patrick and his wife. I worked for them, and although I can’t say he owes me anthing financial because I played the same card at the end – ‘If you don’t pay all my commission Patrick, I’ll sue you and drag your name through the paper’. He paid up – even a deal that took over a year to complete.

He pays well, but boy, you earn it. The problem is simple. Patrick sold office equipment before he bought the Master Franchise. He got the best in to buy his franchises, but he co-owned or had to take back failed branches as part of the legal agreement. He is the epitomy of idiocy and his wife is a joke. To treat the sales of property in the same light as a fax machine was a joke. His ’sales training’ was stupid, focussed on fax machines and a waste of my time.

A meeting with Patrick was him at his laptop, Blackberry on the side, cell phone next to that – and he would alternate between the 3 whilst you were trying to explain the difficulties with sales, and what you felt as a long standing professionals, what you needed from him to increase market share and bottom line. He never listened, had his own narrow minded opinion (which was always about when he was in office equipment), and refused to listen.

He took my idea of developments in Mauritius and excluded me, totally, even though I gave him everything. He also took my idea of opening his own property company (albeit too late), and selling Engel & Volkers, but because he tried to do it himself, knowing diddly squat about property and managing people – talking to people mind you, he lost everything. Naturally it takes a long time to wind things up with liquidations, and so he is still enjoying some of his material possessions which he is obsessive about.
A very sad sad situation – how two people can steal from others, even family and friends, and still enjoy ‘their’ property which is probably protected by some or other ownership title. Ill gotten gains will only earn them ulcers.

I wish them all the treatment by others that have been metered out in their time. Siobhan, Patrick is a cheat – he had numerous affairs, so why you are still with him and standing by him is beyond me. I guess you propably did the same, so all is fair in love and war.
To the family who I think did not suspect a thing. I am sorry this all happened to you and I hope your lives turned around for the better, and that you will find happiness. I hold no judgment against most of you. Ryan Cohen, I am not so sure. Patrick’s puppet on a string. You must develop more back-bone than allow yourself to be dragged to the same level as Patrick.
Before I resigned, I phoned the ex managers, current managers, randomly selected staff members to contact and ask how they felt about working for Patrick – I did not have one person who had anything nice to say about him – in fact, the level of hatred was astounding. Most were in the process of moving to other companies, as they just could not take it anymore.
I wrote to Hamburg – a letter of complaint regarding the fact that I had to register myself and my agents under my own real estate company so that we were legal, as we had not been registered as Patrick said he would, that we were being paid our of funny companies – I think there was even a car wash once, and that bills were not paid, our Telkom account had been cut off, and the landlords wanted to know when they were getting paid. A year after I had stormed out there, I got calls from Cyberagent wanting to know when they were getting paid. A joke.

I am now out of the industry, and although I believe strongly in the Engel&Volker brand, I will never deal with them, even though Patrick has no vested interest anymore.
Patrick, I hope I bump into you one day – not to be mean, but to shake your hand and thank you for teaching me one thing: That new money is cheap, that high fliers that think they are the Godfather of their industry are nothing of the sort, and not to be impressed by fancy cars, houses, champagne and name dropping. That is what you taught me – people like you and your wife are shallow idiots who are essentially uneducated in the most fundamental senses.

You will never enjoy peace – your children will always feel shame when they read things like this blog and for that, I pity them.
In my line of work, it is very possible I will come across you – and the cards will be turned. I look forward to that day.

Oh, anyone know anything about that developer in Sea Point who supposedly committed suicide, yet there is some murder investigation where Patrick’s name has apparently been mentioned as a suspect because he owed this poor chappie so much money? I heard a vague story last night – would be interested to know how much is true, who the poor chap was and if there are any links to sites relating.

To all those who suffered under the ‘leadership’ of Patrick O’Shea, I wish you all the best in the world, that you learn to forgive and move on as I did. He is not as important as he would like to think he is. I only came across this site because I was looking for something relating to this developers death – and was not surprised at all the hate mail. Be kind to yourself, you deserve it. One day you’ll meet up with Patrick again and you can be the kind of person he should have been to you. Don’t be nasty to him – you merely bring yourself down to the same level. Be better, and show him how to treat others.