"Yeah, I did it": Florida Tack Shop Owner Cops to Midday Meltdown

LOXAHATCHEE, FL—Carlos Moyas’s shift at Dee’s Tid-Bits tack and farm supplies store on Avenue G started as it usually did last Thursday. And then took a wildly unexpected—and wet—turn for the worse.

According to the longtime employee, the alleged incident happened 20 minutes before closing time when owner Thomas Dee Hickman, 65, interrupted a conversation between Moyas and a customer he was assisting in the grass seed aisle.

“He asked me if I’d mopped the back room yet, to which I replied that I was finishing with this customer, and I’d be right there,” Moyas said. “Tom gives me this strange look, and then walks off without saying anything.

“I thought that was that, but then a minute later, he’s back with the mop bucket, and he pulls the mop out of the water, slowly, just looking at me as we’re all watching it drip. And then, suddenly, he plunks the entire mop down on my head,” he continued.

“The customer I was helping had a dog with her, and it started cowering under the shelf. The woman, herself, was pale as a sheet, and no one knew what to do next. I was just standing there, mortified, and sopping wet from head to toe in dirty water with a mop on my head like some crazy Raggedy Ann wig. But Tom wasn’t done yet.

“He starts yelling something about the ‘The employee checklist! The employee checklist! I’ll show you the employee checklist!’ and then he just turns on his heel and walks back up the aisle, pulling bags of seed and fertilizer and mowing equipment off the shelves as he goes.

“I was trying to apologize to the customer, and there’s water everywhere, and the dog is whining and barking crazily. I didn’t know what to do.”

Moyas filed a formal complaint with HR, a position also filled by Hickman, and said he was placed on unpaid leave, pending the outcome of an internal investigation.

When reached for comment, Hickman’s lawyer initially provided the following statement to Horse Network:

“The allegations against Mr. Hickman are patently false. These fabrications are completely salacious, fallacious, gratuitous, and riddled with inconsistencies. The story paints a picture of Mr. Hickman that is fully at odds with his reputation as a respected former rodeo clown with more than 40 years of experience, a local business owner, and a church-goer with deep ties to his Loxahatchee community…”

When reached for comment directly, however, Hickman, surprisingly, had come to a very different conclusion.

“Well, that’s a bunch of Rocky Mountain oysters,” he said after being read back his lawyer’s statement. “Let’s just call it what it is. I f*cked up bigtime, didn’t I?”

Hickman went on to detail that he was truly sorry for his “deeply inappropriate” actions toward Moyas who, he said, had been “a phenomenal employee for all the years he has worked for me.”

Hickman’s excuse?

“I’m kind of a d*ck, plain and simple. It’s not the first time I’ve gone off the rails, Moyas can tell you that. I could offer excuses about being kicked in the head by several rodeo bulls over the years, or hitting the sauce too hard after hours, or some five decades worth of unchecked depression and anxiety. But I’m not going to do that.

“Because, in reality, those are things I probably should have been unpacking with my therapist ages ago,” continued Hickman, who said he has offered Moyas backpay for the time that he’s out, as well as a managerial position complete with a significant raise if he ever chooses to come back to Dee’s Tid-Bits—regardless of whether or not he plans to pursue assault charges against his boss.

“I guess my ex-wife was right all along,” Hickman admitted, thoughtfully. “How’s that for a kick in the teeth?”

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