<\/p>\n
Before I hire<\/strong><\/span> a building manager, I interview the candidate at his residence.<\/p>\n One man\u2019s house had no front stoop, and he had four dogs in the living room.\u00a0 There was hardly any non-dog space in that house.\u00a0 We wound up in a bedroom on the third floor.\u00a0 There was a big bird up there.<\/p>\n How about a doormat that says \u201cGot beer?\u201d<\/p>\n I once hired a woman with that doormat and she worked out well. She was a steady worker and controlled her drinking.<\/p>\n Ethnic factory workers<\/strong><\/span> are usually solid too. \u00a0 Too bad they don\u2019t exist anymore.<\/p>\n Ethnics or factories?<\/p>\n Both.<\/p>\n Benny Artino, a building manager, worked the day shift at Eaton Axle. His wife, Betty, was the world\u2019s best cleaner.\u00a0 She wanted to be buried with a can of Comet.\u00a0 I gave Betty an unlimited cleaning budget.\u00a0 She liked to vacuum the halls every day.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t try to stop her.\u00a0 Why would I?<\/p>\n When the Artinos’ son Paisan bought an apartment building in Tampa, he asked my advice, and I said: \u201cBuy the biggest building you can afford.\u00a0 You might have one boiler and one roof for multi-suites, or you can have the same\u00a0 one boiler and one roof for a double house.\u201d<\/p>\n One of my worst hires<\/strong><\/span> was a cocaine addict. She ran up my Home Depot account with charges for an air compressor and tool box.\u00a0 The gift certificate $50<\/em> was over the top.\u00a0\u00a0 She fenced the items.<\/p>\n After I fired her, I went to Taco Bell to reconsider.\u00a0 My father had given an employee\u00a0a second chance after she had ripped him off, and she had repaid my dad and stayed on the job.<\/p>\n But my custodian — the coke head — had told me, \u201cI have a few shopliftings but I never stole from people.\u201d\u00a0 Was I not people<\/em>?<\/p>\n I stuck with fired. I didn\u2019t say, \u201cYou\u2019re fired.\u201d\u00a0 I said, \u201cIf you turn in the keys this weekend, I\u2019ll pay your moving expenses and give you\u00a0four-hundred dollars, and I won\u2019t call the cops.\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes it pays to pay people to move.<\/p>\n *** Bert, little bitty buddy, I\u2019ll tell you one thing I done: I had this old car, couldn\u2019t get it to do nothing.\u00a0 I pushed and pulled and beat on it.\u00a0 Then I throwed it over a cliff by the Rapid ravine. I said, \u201cLet\u2019s throw over a car.\u201d\u00a0 Me and my boys done it.<\/p>\n My old lady was against it.\u00a0 She was the biggest woman for churchgoing you ever seen.\u00a0 She thought she was better than me.<\/p>\n She was skinnier than a stick. Totally emancipated.\u00a0\u00a0 And ornery.\u00a0 When she got money, that heifer, watch out.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Man, I didn\u2019t dig her.<\/p>\n She\u2019s still here, on Madison,\u00a0 over a jukebox.\u00a0 She breaks 100 on a good night at Mahall\u2019s [bowling alley].\u00a0\u00a0 She came at me with a mouth full of beer.\u00a0 Got all over the floor and balls.<\/p>\n She\u2019s got claws.<\/strong><\/span> They all do.\u00a0\u00a0Bert, there’s a lot of good-looking heads out there just waiting to nail you to the cross.<\/p>\n She makes me<\/em> sick. Ferocious of the liver.\u00a0 That\u2019s a situation.\u00a0 Nobody comes between me and my beer, but that broad somehow does.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all in the numbers. \u00a0 Course it is.\u00a0 I ain\u2019t asking for much.\u00a0\u00a0This upcoming\u00a0 repression is going to be\u00a0 so bad it’ll shake your teeth loose.\u00a0 I\u00a0 just want to be reborn the poodle of a rich lady.\u00a0 That\u2019s my next life.<\/p>\n Little bitty buddy, you got a number?\u00a0 Ain\u2019t nothing but 1, 2, 3. \u00a0 Give me a number. \u00a0 What\u2019s the new\u00a0rent on apartment 34?\u00a0 $235?\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s my number.\u00a0 You just gave me a number!<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n * “Roy Hamilton”\u00a0 is mostly the real Roy Hamilton, a Tennessee-born building manager\u00a0who was a painter at Midland Steel (Cleveland). He died in 1984. \u00a0 Note:\u00a0 I lifted several lines (in the first two paragraphs of this “Roy Hamilton” saga ) from Arkansas writer Charles Portis, to get in\u00a0 gear.<\/p>\n —<\/span><\/p>\n 1 of 2 posts for 10\/20\/10.\u00a0 Please see the post below too (which was technically put up yesterday). Before I hire a building manager, I interview the candidate at his residence. One man\u2019s house had no front stoop, and he had four dogs in the living room.\u00a0 There was hardly any non-dog space in that house.\u00a0 We wound up in a bedroom on the third floor.\u00a0 There was a big bird up there. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landlord-biz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2225","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=2225"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8552,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2225\/revisions\/8552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMy favorite manager,<\/strong><\/span> at least to listen to, was\u00a0 “Roy Hamilton,” circa 1978.\u00a0 (“Roy Hamilton” is a composite of\u00a0 several former building managers.*) . . .<\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"