WHY SCRIBE QUIT HIS NEW JOB AFTER 2 WEEKS, conclusion

Having located the correct townhouse, Rob had me once again stand outside in full view of snipers and pissed off broke people while he jogged around back and pounded the windows. Apparently while he was back there, one of the customer’s neighbors started to say something about dog food before realizing Rob didn’t live there.

“What are you doing?” the man asked.

“I’m here to pick up some merchandise they haven’t been paying for,” Rob said.

“Get ‘em,” the man replied.

I hate to keep referring to my online trainings, but another thing they told us never to do was divulge personal account information to anyone except the actual customer or that person’s spouse. Yet another rule broken in the field.

Rob kept up his knocking for a while, came back around to see if anyone had shown up in the front, then went back to knocking. He told me before leaving that he’d spoken with the store and had been advised that the customer’s dad was on the way to make her open the door and return the living room set. Supposedly, she had to go pick up her kids from school in a few hours. Naturally, Rob went and blocked in her vehicle.

I glanced around for any sign of he dad’s arrival, freezing my hot ass off. Sub-zero temperatures and winds whipped through my pull-over fleece and bounced off my ski cap as I looked. I saw a gray minivan cautiously approach the area before coming to a stop in the parking lot. This happened a couple times and then a cop car showed up. Sighing, I waited for what I expected to be a negative situation. Instead, the cop slowly approached me, his posture stopped over, his face plastered with a grin, and said, “Welcome to Clarkston!” He started laughing. I told him why we were there and where Rob was the cop, still chuckling, walked around and got him. The two of them emerged from the back laughing and smiling.

The idiot in the SUV slowly pulled in the parking spaces across from us and backed out and left, no doubt feeling like a total dumb-fuck. How they couldn’t have seen the van with the multi-colored rent-to-own sign is beyond me. Rob and the cop bullshat for a while and the cop finally left us there. Rob informed me that our presence is considered a civil dispute and the cops can only make us leave if the home-owner or lease-holder requests it. Since the woman was still pretending she wasn’t home, (Rob saw her from the window in the back) we didn’t have to go anywhere.

Rob told me one time a customer’s hysterical girlfriend asked to have them removed from the property and the cop told them to go but since she wasn’t the home-owner, they waited until the cop left and went right back to start knocking on doors and windows again.

What a fucked up career choice, I thought. We remained there for a while longer; the woman never did come out to get in her car. Eventually, Rob received word from the store that they wanted us to come back at 5:30.

“I don’t know how the fuck they think we’re gonna be able to pick up the shit at the next place and this stuff. They better send help.”

As it turned out, we wouldn’t have to come back. We headed out to the town of Highland next, a tiny speck of uneventful that makes Clarkston look like Gotham City. After a stopover at Wendy’s to grab lunch where the staff was so slow-paced we nearly screamed at them, we headed to yet another house.

“See, this is why this store is so fucked up,” Rob told me. “Look how fucking far some of their customers are. We would never have a customer this far away ‘cause what if we have to run ‘em?”

“I was wondering why they had somebody so far out,” I replied. “Didn’t really make sense to me.”

It soon would, however, but first we had to find the damn place. It took longer than expected. Rob stopped at a gas station where a pimply-faced teen happily told us which way to go. Once back on the road, Rob chuckled.

“That kid seemed pretty excited to give us directions, didn’t he?”

I laughed. “It’s probably the biggest thing to happen here in a decade.”

We laughed. It was good to have that moment because then the tension really hit us. Hard.

We got to the tiny house in Highland and went to the door. A Hispanic kid came to the door. Now I understood it. They must have lived in Pontiac and moved. Rob, in possession of balls as big as church bells, had the kid show his ID to prove he was eighteen so we would enter the house with his permission. The kid had Rob call his dad who grew highly upset. Rob had him call the store and try to work out a payment arrangement which apparently didn’t happen because we got he call to start removing the merchandise. We had to take out a huge kitchen table and chairs with benches and a child’s bed made of heavy wood.

As we started taking out the kitchen stuff, a car suddenly pulled up and a fat-faced Latino started yelling from his window. “Why you didn’t wait for me, mane? Why you didn’t wait for me? What the fuck? You just start taking my chit?”

“Sir, please don’t yell at me,” Rob said. “We’re just doing what we’re told.”

“This is billchit!” the man got out of his car, followed by two young kids and his portly wife. “Why you going in my fucking house? I didn’t give to you permission!”

“Your son said...”

“No, he didn’t! My son said that? No, he didn’t! Which one?”

“Your son inside, sir.”

The man walked in and spun back around, pointing to someone on the couch. “Him? He’s only fourteen!”

“Not him. It was George.”

Deflated, the man switched gears. “You don't come in my house and take my chit without me home, OK? You dont’ go in my fucking house! I pay all the time! You taking my chit ‘cause I didn’t pay?”

“Sir,” Rob said, voice quivering a bit. “Please don’t yell at me. I don’t even know your situation.”

“I pay all the fucking time!”

“Sir, I don’t even work at that store, I’m just helping out, okay? Please try to remain civil.”

“I’m not mad at you!” the man yelled. “I’m mad at the whole fucking place!”

“I understand that, sir,” Rob replied. “I’m just doing what they told me to...”

“Fine, take the chit but dont’ fucking scratch nothing!”

We started loading the “chit” as carefully as possible. Amazingly, the man left us there with his wife and kids and sped off, hopefully to work or something. We felt for the guy. How humiliating it must have been to have his neighbors seeing this, not to mention the fact that we were removing a child’s bed and leaving nothing in its place.

The bed was a nightmare to remove. We had to dismantle it and carry it down the narrowest stairway I’ve ever seen. Loading everything on the truck took twice as long as it should have because of how cramped it was. One the way back, Rob bitched and moaned about what a poorly run store it was and how he was being taken advantage of because he offered to help out but he would continue to do so because he wanted to be a manager. I listened and nodded and felt my mind leaving the van and looking into the future and I didn’t like what I saw.

The next morning Biggie Smalls the manager approached me and said, “So, you ready to run some customers on your own?” Before I could reply, he said, “I mean, you went out with me and Jack and Wil and Rob. That’s more than they did for me when I started.”

What the fuck else could I say at that point except yes? Son of a bitch. He gave me a route that showed all but one of five customers in Pontiac. The words of Rob from the day before came back to me, “Now, I wouldn’t do a lot of this shit in Pontiac. Hell, I got robbed at gunpoint there at a gas station!”

As I hit the road, I realized how much I didn’t want to do this. I drove past customer’s homes in areas where obvious drug dealer lookouts lingered on the corner and stared at me. I went into neighborhoods with houses so decimated you could see straight through them to the other side of the street. I saw hostile, psychotic looking people of white, black and Hispanic origin and I said, “Fuck this shit!”

After having gone to the door of a customer whose son has grown increasingly hostile with the running according to the notes, I drove around and tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do. Should I lie and say no one was home? Some of them weren’t. Or should I just go back and tell Biggie it wasn’t for me and, as my friend Anthony used to say, get the fuck on down the rock? I finally decided I needed to contact the only other person this would affect. She agreed with me that I couldn’t do that job.

“Why should you work a job where people are constantly worried about you?” she said.

Shocked, I decided right then and there to go back to the store and quit. She called back a few minutes later and insisted that I should tell him I had a family emergency first, leave early and apply for unemployment, making sure I was still eligible. I told her he wouldn’t believe that and she said it didn’t matter and that it was even better if he thought I was full of shit. All good points.

As I walked back inside, the district manager who had dealt with the screaming chick said, “Hey, Scribe! I was startin’ to get worried that you got beat up or somethin’!”

I ignored his comment and stupid laughter and went into the Biggie’s office and handed him the paperwork. I told him nobody was home and that I didn’t get to the last place because I got a call that my "fiancé" was in a car accident. He didn’t believe me, I could see it. He asked me her name, which is against every Human Resources law on the books, not to mention when he asked which hospital. I gave him two possibilities and left.

The Unemployment lady told me I was eligible and so I filed. As if now I’m still waiting. I mailed a resignation letter thanking Biggie for the opportunity to learn about rent-to-own but wasn’t interested in being a repo man and never looked back.

That’s me story, ladies and gents. Up next, the earth-shattering post 200!