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.
A guy I’ve been camping with every Thanksgiving since the early 80s is a retired lawyer. Every year we’d blast the previous years law texts to let off steam. Our favorite trick was to put an explosive target inside the book before using it for target practice. Made for messier cleanup, but very satisfying.
An old hotel in my city, which used to be high-end with a similarly high-end restaurant, had a quasi-library in said restaurant. This was at the beginning of my book resale business, so of course I checked out the contents sale they held before the building, which was also chock-full of asbestos, was demolished. Most of the library consisted of a) Reader’s Digest Condensed Books; b)infested with black mold; or c) RDCBs that were infested with black mold.
And plenty of vintage law books, also basically transformed into sawdust. I did find a few items that I could use.
I could certainly see pharmacists doing something like that with our favorite doorstop, the Physician’s Desk Reference. (However, some of the older ones are actually fairly valuable.) They’re fine for laypeople, but no, pharmacists don’t use it for any other reason. (Nor do pharmacists usually wear those Nehru-jacket things; maybe I mentioned that already.)
Not to mention the crystal containers that every rich person seems to transfer their liquor into. I understand why movies and TV shows do it— it looks ‘fancy’ and avoids dealing with branding issues. But in real life, nobody is doing this, especially with top-shelf liquor. Ain’t no way a $1000 bottle of Pappy Van Winkle or whatever is getting poured into an anonymous container, no matter how fancy the container is.
And the Well-Dressed Rich Person will casually motion to his visitor and say “Help yourself… now, what do you know about that investigation?” with NO indication of what’s in the anonymous crystal decanter.
I’d be unable to answer any of WDRP’s questions. My mind would be busy with “What did he just offer me? Is it a 20-year Pappy that I’d regret not trying? Is it something I’d hate, like a single malt that’s been poured through a handful of moss and peat? Could be ginger ale… oh, I know what I want. I wish that it was Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Soda…”
Great, I’ll just start up my 8 hour tape recorder so we can record your confession. Just start with your troubled childhood, take me through your entire rise to power, and then lets try to end on some sort of ironic twist where presumably some important life lesson can be learned by any third parties listening to this later on.
In The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Lisbet nails her half-brother’s feet to the floor. He feels no pain, so doesn’t notice until he finds he can’t move.
Not going to see if this has been mentioned before, but…
I’m asleep. The woman I live with, who shares my bed, dressers, closets, bathrooms, etc., decides she has had enough of the JohnT Experience (shocking and unbelievable, of course, but let’s just go with it for the purposes of this post). She gets out of bed, clears out all her stuff, empties the dressers, removes her clothes from the closet, loads it in her car, erasing all evidence of her from my life. I awaken sometime later, to an empty home.
How I don’t wake up during all this activity is beyond me, but I’ve seen it in Sex and the City, The Sopranos, and other shows just this year alone.
