The Continuing Adventures Of Your Own Personal Jesus

...a pack of lies. Pure and simply put, your mate of a mate told you a pile of crap. It's one of the most common mantras that we hear on a daily basis; "A mate of a mate told me..." or, "I know this guy who knows this person and they did/got/heard about..." I'm here to tell you that none of the myths you've heard are based in truth at all. And doesn't it upset people when you tell them the real story, because what you're doing is calling either them, or their mate of a mate, liars. I don't believe they are liars, but knowing what they're saying isn't the truth means that they're not on the level. First one: "My mate knows this girl and she applied for a house and got one two weeks later." Wrong. Doesn't happen. Has never happened. I'd heard this one too, before I started work. I stay in touch with some people from where I grew up and this one has been around since the early 1980s. This myth has gathered...

And then there was the guy who came in and asked if we had a bin handy. My co-worker pointed him to where the little wire bin with the little garbage bag sat on the ground. He wandered over, picked up the bin and promptly vomited into it. After a minute he wiped his mouth, spat and came back and attempted to continue on as if nothing had ever happened. And then there was the guy who walked in and placed his hand on the counter. I recoiled as I noticed something leaping from his skin and onto the counter. I moved back and asked him to please remove his hand from the counter, he looked at me, looked down and said, "Oh yeah, lice. Sorry, forgot." The Windex and Pine-O-Cleen got a good work out that day. And then there was the guy who lived in a house so filthy that when it was inspected one of the people who went out there became sick. So sick in fact that the local quack was stumped, so he sent them to another doctor. That one was stumped as well, the person was getting sicker...

A recent comment jogged a memory about avoiding responsiblity. I got a phone call late last year from a person who was going to be evicted and, understandably, wasn't all that pleased about it. Such is life. From word go she started screaming so I did my three warnings policy: I tell them three times that, if they keep screaming/swearing, then I'll hang up. After the third I usually hang up anyway because I know where it's going. She had gripes and off she went with them. The first was that we gave her no warning that we were going to evict her. Wrong. It takes months to evict and in that time the tenant will get several letters inviting them to come into the office and work out an arrangement to avoid the eviction. They'll also have someone visit them, more than once. She'd ignored all the letters and avoided the people visiting. No contact, tough. But that wasn't her fault, she was busy as we didn't try hard enough. A letter a week for three months? Please...

This one was a doozy. Ages ago, when the weather was a lot warmer (although this week is going to be warm as well - the heat draws them out) I was sitting there on front counter watching a one day international, in short, having a very quiet day. Then the day exploded and shattered into a thousand pieces. The lessons it taught me were that the duress alarms aren't really worth a lot. The day was passing, albeit slowly, but passing all the same when a hurricane thundered through the door. I'm not a small guy but I was dwarfed by this one. He was a good six foot six or seven and about the same across his chest. He wore shorts and shoes and that was about it. Very large and looking very nasty. He stormed to the counter and slammed a card down on the desk and roared, "Who the f*ck gives you the right to tell me what to f*ckin' do??" I looked blank and behind me I heard the sounds of the door not only closing as my co-worker left the scene but also the tell-tale sounds...