REPO MAN

After I graduated from college (UWGB - class of 1996) I eventually found a job in Milwaukee. What was my job? I worked for a place called Remco. It was a rent-to-own store, owned by the same people who own Rent-A-Center.

For those of you unfamiliar with this type of business, what it is is a place for people who have no credit or bad credit, to get quality items such as furniture, appliances and electronics.

Rent-to-own stores sort of have a bad reputation in the media and such. Because they feel that they prey on poor people. And I can see their point. Because the prices these stores charge are outrageous. Customers either pay on a weekly or monthly basis, for a period of time - be it six months, 12 months or 18 months. And in the end, the customer will pay roughly double (sometimes more, sometimes less) than what it would cost them brand new at a regular store.

Back in those days, a customer might pay $500.00 for a VCR. Sounds insane! But in all fairness, our customers were people who simply don't have any other means to obtain these things. And in all fairness, a lot of our customers stop paying at some point. And that means that unless they return the item, or we can amicably pick it up, they end up stealing it. And that of course is the reason why the stores' prices are so high. It's a vicious circle.

Not surprisingly, stores like this thrive in the inner city. Inner city folk represent about 95% of the customer base. And my store was on 23rd & North on Milwaukee's north side. And for the record, that is right smack dab in the middle of the hood. Milwaukee's north side is the "bad" side of town. It is where most of the crime occurs.

So picture this. I'm a little reddish-blonde-haird kid from a small white-bread town in Wisconsin. And I suddenly found myself as a collector in the hood. If there was ever someone who looked non-threatening and out of place, it was me! My job was to try and collect the money from our customers who were past due. Ideally, we would call them up and have them come down to the store to pay. But let's face it. Most of our customers didn't have phones. So that means, we had to get in the van and drive to their homes to try and collect. And if we couldn't collect, we had to try and repossess the stuff. Repossession was a last resort. We'd rather have the money. Besides, no one wants to have to carry out a bedroom set. That shit's heavy!

I did that job for close to two years. I had quite a few memorable experiences. I repossessed a refrigerator from a second story apartment, all by myself - with no dolly. I was threatened. I heard occasional gunshots. I saw a fight in the street - where a gun was pulled. I saw panhandlers, hookers, drug users, drug houses, and garbage - lots and lots of garbage in the streets. I also saw that so many people have little or no regard for their environment. So many trash everything around them - their streets, their apartments, their furniture. Seriously, you'd be disgusted at the sight of some of the stuff we repossessed. Some of the homes smelled so bad that you would literally tear up. I mean call me crazy. But when I finish eating a piece of chicken, I throw my bones in the garbage, not on the living room carpet.

So anyway, it wasn't all doom and gloom. I liked my coworkers. And we had an awful lot of fun there. Well, I had this one particular customer who lived in this dark and gloomy apartment complex - just a few blocks from where Jeffrey Dahmer had lived actually. And everytime I went there, it creeped me out. It was a three-story complex with maybe eight apartments on each floor. She lived on the third floor. There were always several lights burnt out in the hallways. So it was darker than it should be. And there were absolutely no windows anywhere, with the excpetion of in the apartments themselves. And to top it off, there was only one door in and out of that place. I often thought to myself that if I was ever going to get killed on that job, it was going to happen in a place like that.

Well, I had a customer in that building. Her name was Nicole. I won't say her last name because it wouldn't be proper. (Trammell) She owed money on a living room set - sofa, big puffy chair, lamps and tables. She had no phone, was never home, and would never respond to the tags I'd leave on her door.

There was one other collector in our store. His name was Dave. I always called him Grumpy Dave because he was a hot-headed asshole. He was basically unpleasant 95% of the time. He had a different approach to the customers than I did. He would yell and scream. I took more of a "kill them with kindness and make them feel guilty" approach. But hey, whatever works. Both Grumpy Dave and I were the two best collectors in our entire market - which included about 13 Milwaukee stores, as well as stores in Fond Du Lac, Sheboygan, Manitowoc and Green Bay. And considering the fact that our store was in the worst neighborhood of all of them, that's quite an accomplishment.

So one day I headed out to Nicole's place again. And this time, Grumpy Dave went with me. Had I been able to get inside her apartment, I would have needed him to help me carry the stuff out of there - assuming she refused to pay. I considered Grumpy Dave a necessary evil most of the time.

Well, a few days earlier, Grumpy Dave had purchased some pepper spray. We weren't allowed to carry anything in terms of protection. But he carried it anyway. And I knew that he was very anxious to try it out.

So we get to Nicole's building and knock on her apartment door. And lo and behold, someone was actually home! Now, by law, if we can get our foot inside the door, and can enter the dwelling, we can legally refuse to leave if we don't have our stuff with us. So that was our goal. We can't force ourselves in though. We have to be allowed in.

On a side note, remind me to someday tell you the story of how I tricked someone into letting me in their apartment to "call my boss to discuss the situation." Boy, was that woman angry when we repossessed a ton of stuff!

Back to the story. Nicole's door is opened by three young women - none of which were Nicole - allegedly. I say allegedly because I had actually never met her before. So we tell them that we're there to pick up the living room set. Of course they refused to let us in. They knew the game. And it ended up being a pissing match between us and them. It resorted into laughing though, because we all knew we had no chance of getting in there. It was just fun and games.

After a few minutes, we knew it was futile to continue. So we walked down the hall to the steps leading down and out of the building. The three women continued to taunt us a bit. And then Grumpy Dave shouted, "Ho, ho, ho!" No, he wasn't giving his best Santa Claus impression. He was referring to the three mdoel citizens as "ho's."

Well, no sooner had we reached the bottom of the stairs, then we heard the sound of multiple footsteps tearing down the hall. As we got outside and got back to the van, the three women shot out of the door, stood on the stoop, and shouted insults to us yet again. One of them threw a beer can. Another one grabbed a broom and waved it at us. Why? Who knows. I was laughing at the scene. And so were they. Then Grumpy Dave poked his head out of the van window (I was driving) and said, "Why don't you come here and wave that broom!"

Oh lord... I knew exactly what was coming next. Not to be showed up, the woman came over to the van. Grumpy Dave grabbed his pepper spray. Once she got close to the window, he opened up and sprayed her in the face. And that girl went down like a rock! What had been fun and games now turned serious. Her friends came to her aid, while Grumpy Dave yelled at me to go. I backed out and headed back to the store. Meanwhile, there were screams of anger trailing behind us as we left.

So we get back to the store. And Grumpy Dave informed our boss what happened. He tried to play it off as a situation where he was merely defending himself. But he's the one who antagonized the woman and invited her to come over to the van. What an asshole!

About an hour later, two cops come to our store. Apparently someone back at Nicole's apartment called to report the incident. Grumpy Dave fully admitted to what he did. The police officers read him the riot act, informing him that it was against the law to use such a weapon, and not report it. Believe it or not, Grumpy Dave got mouthy with the cops - even though they were threatening to arrest him! Eventually he backed down. I think they issued him a citation though.

Before they left, one of the cops informed us that there were about 20-30 relatives of this woman who were back at the apartment complex. And he said they were hopping mad. He warned us that there could be trouble, and that we should be careful. Great!

Grumpy Dave decided that he was going to take the rest of the afternoon off - leaving the rest of us at the store. What a guy! Well, about an hour later, we got another visit. This one was from Mike - our former delivery driver, who had quit about a year earlier. Unbeknownst to us, Mike was the sister of Nicole. And Mike was mad! He burst into the store shouting, "Where's Dave!" Yikes!

Well, Grumpy Dave was gone. Thankfully our store manager was able to calm Mike down and defuse the situation. Had Mike not known us, I shudder to think what could have happened as retribution.

The aftermath of that event is that about a month later, our market manager found out about the incident. And Grumpy Dave was fired. That was a happy day! Also, although my boss told me to to simply stay away from Nicole's place, and not pursue our stuff, we ended up suing her over the property. This was a common practice if the customer had paid less than half of the term of the rental agreement. So a few months after this incident, the sheriff's department went over there, got in, and repossessed the entire living room set.

And there's more. The furniture was in relatively good condition - which was somewhat of a rarity. So it was put back on the floor in order to resell it. And about that time, my now-wife was getting an apartment of her own, and needed some furniture. My boss always had the option to "cash and carry" any item. He could sell it very cheaply, depending on how much money had already been paid on it. In this case, for about $75.00, the store would make a profit. So he sold the couch and chair to her. I helped deliver it. And before long, we would occasioanlly having sex on that couch.

That couch had a colorful history. If only it could talk.