WHAT ANIMALS TO BRING TO A JOB INTERVIEW

Before I hire a building manager, I interview the candidate at his residence.

One man’s house had no front stoop, and he had four dogs in the living room.  There was hardly any non-dog space in that house.  We wound up in a bedroom on the third floor.  There was a big bird up there.

How about a doormat that says “Got beer?”

I once hired a woman with that doormat and she worked out well. She was a steady worker and controlled her drinking.

Ethnic factory workers are usually solid too.   Too bad they don’t exist anymore.

Ethnics or factories?

Both.

Benny Artino, a building manager, worked the day shift at Eaton Axle. His wife, Betty, was the world’s best cleaner.  She wanted to be buried with a can of Comet.  I gave Betty an unlimited cleaning budget.  She liked to vacuum the halls every day.  I didn’t try to stop her.  Why would I?

When the Artinos’ son Paisan bought an apartment building in Tampa, he asked my advice, and I said: “Buy the biggest building you can afford.  You might have one boiler and one roof for multi-suites, or you can have the same  one boiler and one roof for a double house.”

One of my worst hires was a cocaine addict. She ran up my Home Depot account with charges for an air compressor and tool box.  The gift certificate $50 was over the top.   She fenced the items.

After I fired her, I went to Taco Bell to reconsider.  My father had given an employee a second chance after she had ripped him off, and she had repaid my dad and stayed on the job.

But my custodian — the coke head — had told me, “I have a few shopliftings but I never stole from people.”  Was I not people?

I stuck with fired. I didn’t say, “You’re fired.”  I said, “If you turn in the keys this weekend, I’ll pay your moving expenses and give you four-hundred dollars, and I won’t call the cops.”  Sometimes it pays to pay people to move.

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My favorite manager, at least to listen to, was  “Roy Hamilton,” circa 1978.  (“Roy Hamilton” is a composite of  several former building managers.*) . . .

Bert, little bitty buddy, I’ll tell you one thing I done: I had this old car, couldn’t get it to do nothing.  I pushed and pulled and beat on it.  Then I throwed it over a cliff by the Rapid ravine. I said, “Let’s throw over a car.”  Me and my boys done it.

My old lady was against it.  She was the biggest woman for churchgoing you ever seen.  She thought she was better than me.

She was skinnier than a stick. Totally emancipated.   And ornery.  When she got money, that heifer, watch out.    Man, I didn’t dig her.

She’s still here, on Madison,  over a jukebox.  She breaks 100 on a good night at Mahall’s [bowling alley].   She came at me with a mouth full of beer.  Got all over the floor and balls.

She’s got claws. They all do.  Bert, there’s a lot of good-looking heads out there just waiting to nail you to the cross.

She makes me sick. Ferocious of the liver.  That’s a situation.  Nobody comes between me and my beer, but that broad somehow does.

It’s all in the numbers.   Course it is.  I ain’t asking for much.  This upcoming  repression is going to be  so bad it’ll shake your teeth loose.  I  just want to be reborn the poodle of a rich lady.  That’s my next life.

Little bitty buddy, you got a number?  Ain’t nothing but 1, 2, 3.   Give me a number.   What’s the new rent on apartment 34?  $235?   That’s my number.  You just gave me a number!

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* “Roy Hamilton”  is mostly the real Roy Hamilton, a Tennessee-born building manager who was a painter at Midland Steel (Cleveland). He died in 1984.   Note:  I lifted several lines (in the first two paragraphs of this “Roy Hamilton” saga ) from Arkansas writer Charles Portis, to get in  gear.

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1 of 2 posts for 10/20/10.  Please see the post below too (which was technically put up yesterday).

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