{"id":10746,"date":"2012-08-22T08:00:53","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=10746"},"modified":"2012-09-17T19:03:42","modified_gmt":"2012-09-17T23:03:42","slug":"the-guy-in-the-red-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/22\/the-guy-in-the-red-car\/","title":{"rendered":"THE GUY IN THE RED CAR"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

“58% of commuters have experienced road rage while driving to work, and 9% have gotten into a fight with another driver.”
\n— <\/small><\/em>Wall Street Journal, 8\/15\/12<\/em><\/p>\n

Fifty-eight<\/strong><\/span> percent seems kind of low.<\/p>\n

I was<\/span> doing the speed limit, 35 mph, on North Park Boulevard at North Woodland in Cleveland Heights.\u00a0 A guy in a red sports car tailgated me.<\/p>\n

Not only did I give the guy the finger, I jumped out of my car at the light and yelled, \u201cThirty-five!\u00a0 The speed limit is thirty-five!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure the guy in the car was a guy; it was somebody<\/em> with tinted windows and vanity plates 1KAP, and the driver was aggressively tailgating me.<\/p>\n

Whoever it<\/strong><\/span> was, was nice, aside from being a bad driver.\u00a0 The person didn\u2019t jump out of the red car and come after me.<\/p>\n

Maybe I looked threatening.\u00a0 I had on shades!<\/p>\n

I hesitated telling my wife about the incident.\u00a0 I knew she would get mad.\u00a0 She would call me hostile.\u00a0 Correct.<\/p>\n

I had<\/strong><\/span> never jumped out of my car before and yelled at a driver.\u00a0 Do I have any explanation for my behavior?<\/p>\n

My best explanation is I was on my way to visit Michelle, my number-one employee, who was dying of cancer at 40. She couldn\u2019t talk, and she was on all kinds of tubes.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure who I was mad at.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

SIDE B<\/strong><\/big><\/p>\n

MICHELLE<\/big><\/big><\/strong><\/p>\n

My top<\/strong><\/span> building manager was Michelle Orozco.\u00a0 I\u2019d visit her first. She was always upbeat and set the mood for the day. She had problems — a lot of physical ailments, but she didn\u2019t complain much.\u00a0 She was my assistant.\u00a0 That was an official title.\u00a0 She got paid a little extra. She had grown up in Los Angeles and dropped out of high school.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Michelle Orozco<\/p><\/div>\n

She was a School of Hard Knocks honor student. When the city said I needed to cough up the names of all my tenants and their move-in dates for my annual housing license, I thought, \u201cWhat\u2019s that about? Big Brother?\u201d That\u2019s what I thought.\u00a0 Michelle said, \u201cThey want the names for RITA.\u201d\u00a0 The Regional Income Tax Agency.<\/p>\n

I paid Michelle to supervise my newer custodians.\u00a0 She showed them how to do evictions notices, how Tarnite was better than Brasso.<\/p>\n

Michelle moved<\/strong><\/span> back to California and left me. She wanted to try her hometown again, the Golden State and all that.<\/p>\n

She came back, because California was too expensive. She moved into one of my buildings as a tenant.\u00a0 I said, \u201cI\u2019m not promising you a job.\u00a0 And whatever you do, don\u2019t undermine the custodians in here now.\u201d (I\u2019ve had ex-custodians who stuck around and pestered the new custodians.\u00a0 The ex-custodian would call me and say, \u201cThe new guy isn\u2019t cleaning.\u00a0 He\u2019s drunk.\u00a0 He\u2019s swearing at the tenants.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Michelle — and her husband, Manuel — kept to themselves.\u00a0 They waited and eventually got their job back.<\/p>\n

She was<\/strong><\/span> my spy. I wondered if\u00a0 other custodians checked their boilers regularly in the winter.\u00a0 Did they \u201cblow down\u201d the valves?\u00a0 I asked Michelle, \u201cHow do we know they\u2019re doing it regularly.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said, \u201cThey\u2019ll do it because it\u2019s more of a hassle to have the boiler go out than blow it down.\u201d<\/p>\n

I hired Michelle when she was 25.\u00a0 Her mother worked for me. I hired Michelle\u2019s niece, also from California.\u00a0 I hired Michelle\u2019s sister.<\/p>\n

Michelle didn\u2019t<\/strong><\/span> steal or lie.\u00a0 She was a good cleaner.\u00a0 She could rent apartments.\u00a0 Sounds basic, but it’s not.<\/p>\n

She called just-looking apartment seekers \u201clooky-loos.\u201d I never did understand that. \u00a0 I heard it as “Lucky Lous.” She called air fresheners \u201csmellies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michelle knew the ways of Home Depot rental trucks, and how to access the junk yard with proper ID.\u00a0 More basics, but again, somewhat tricky. And which apartment buildings I allowed satellite dishes, and which I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

She was an optimist. She had a bright personality. She kept things on the sunny side — no small feat in the real estate biz.<\/p>\n

Michelle Orozco, 1971-2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“58% of commuters have experienced road rage while driving to work, and 9% have gotten into a fight with another driver.” — Wall Street Journal, 8\/15\/12 Fifty-eight percent seems kind of low. I was doing the speed limit, 35 mph, on North Park Boulevard at North Woodland in Cleveland Heights.\u00a0 A guy in a red […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landlord-biz","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10746"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11312,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10746\/revisions\/11312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}