Yup, I wrote about it (partially) here.
The one incident which sticks in my mind is a Wednesday in 2005, where I was in Kansas City. Our manager had flaked out and hired a bunch of (obvious) crack addicts to deliver the books. Well, they disappeared after taking about 8,000 books out of the warehouse, so for this, and other reasons, I was sent to clean up the mess and had to find the 8k books. So I went to the addresses they put on their applications, found one woman who said “Yeah, he spends his time at ADDRESS, smoking crack”. I went to the address, it was an obvious crack house (you just knew), and … the very next day… rounded up some big guys at the Home Depot (where the contractors hung out @ 7 in the morning looking for day work). Told them what was up, paid them $150 each, they got into the van I rented, and we went to get our books.
It was bedlam! I knocked on the door and someone opened it to see a white guy who looks like a detective (me) and three big husky guys behind them. They screamed, left the door open and ran away, whereupon we entered… and yes, it smelled like literal shit + chemicals… and I was just yelling “You all had better get out before the police arrive! Fucking leave, if you’re smart!” Well, most of the crack users got the fuck outta dodge, some were too wasted (or sick) to move, and we proceeded to load the books (which were in the garage) in the van and took them back to the warehouse.
Two days later, I was giving a presentation to the head of Sprint’s phone book division about how MDS (the family business) was their best option to deliver even more books, the man none the wiser that the guy he was talking to had just been in a crack house rescuing 8k books (about $160,000 of product given how Sprint’s valuation method calculated the worth of the books). We got the business and kept it until my stepmother decided to take a leading role in the business development side and pissed off all of our largest clients because she was a complete and utter shit.
But that’s another story…
(Sorry for the off-topic digression!)