True Story©… ‘Tis the Season

 

     I am beginning to feel like I am running low on options…

My face is known in the community after my previous attempt at shaking things up using people’s short-sightedness for details.
Detective Woodpenis is onto me and I can’t use the Moe Phillips name as a shield for criminal enterprise, lest he will perk up and show his face back at my house.

I need something new to do,  here y’all!

     For those among us who don’t follow me on The BookFace, you’re aware that I have re-created myself as a fitness douche of sorts sharing details of my workouts every weekday.  It started last summer in the form of my walks on my lunch break.  This summer, I have upped the game with longer walks and doing them at 5am while still throwing in a lunchtime one as well.
This matters to the presentation due to where I live and what kind of people are outside between 5 and 7 in the morning.  There are people getting on and off of the bus going to first shift jobs or coming home from third shift ones.  There are unhoused people milling about, and there are housed-but-hustlin’ types out trying to come up off of the comers and goers.

     Over the course of the summer, I learned which people were which of the above paragraph and kinda made sense of peoples’ schedules.  I knew which people would just say ‘good morning’ and scurry along to mind their own business as well as I would the ones who would forget that I just told them that I don’t carry anything during a workout other than my phone and inhaler and therefore didn’t have any cash to give.
Rinse and repeat…  Either the addicts that hang out next to Home Depot have the memory of a goldfish or really think that the very next day will be the one that the guy in the big blue headphones will remember to bring money out with him at 5 in the damned morning.

[Phlip note: no, no it wasn’t]

     I had an idea…
If the people out in the street in the morning need money that I am not willing to freely give and I need an overface to my shenanigans, why not fix one problem with another?  Last Friday, I did my north-and-back route, which takes me down the block next to Home Depot and just as I expected I was accosted…

 

Them: “Good morning, my man.”

Me: “Morning.”

Them: “You got any change I can get?”

Me: “I don’t, I don’t carry anything when I workout.”

Them: “Thanks anyway--…”

Me: “… hol’up.”

Them: “Hmm?”

Me: “You gon’ be out here later on?”

Them: “Should I?”

Me: “I get a lunch break at noon, meet me in the corner of the Home Depot parking lot by that gas station right there at about 5 after.”

Them: “umm…  Okay”

Me: “I’ll be in a white SUV.”

Undeterred by having had to stop, which normally INCENSES me when I am trying to keep moving for the whole hour, I finished the workout and went home to wake the wife and kid.
Over the intervening five hours, I mapped out my plan and went to meet with the individual to map out the plans.

     12 o’clock comes and I make the 1.16mi drive over to the parking lot to meet him and gave him his instructions…

 

Me: “Look, I’mma give you this cash here.  Go over to the gas station and buy TWO burner phones.  Keep the change, that’s you.  One for me and one for you.  Put the number to mine in the one you keep and you’re gonna meet me here tomorrow at 10am.”

Them: “And then what?”

Me: “We got a lil job to do.”

Them: “How much does it--…”

Me: “Not physical work, I will explain it in the morning.  You’re either in or gimme my money back right now and I will find a teenager to do--…”

Them: “No, I want it!”

Me: “Aight, bet…  10 in the morning, don’t be late!”

Them: “Can I bring anyone with me?”

Me: “You wanna split YOUR cut with them?  I ain’t.”

 

He hops over the rail and runs into and out of the store, and comes right back…

 

Them: “Okay, I got the phones.  They said the number is right here on the side.”

Me: “Cool, take mine down and once we’re done tomorrow, you can keep it to do as you please.  Dress like you will be talking to white folks tomorrow, aight?”

Them: “What’s your name, bro?”

Me: “It’s best we don’t exchange those.”

 

     Saturday morning comes and I am back in the corner of that Home Depot parking lot.  He is there and ready to roll, dressed in a white button up and some Dickies.  Good enough for what I got in mind.  I pull up and unlock the door and he hops in.

 

Me: “Aight, we’re going WAY out to the north side today and knocking on doors.  I have your script and paperwork in the visor there.  I need you to pull it down and MEMORIZE it, like to the point where you can recite it without having to read from the paper.”

Them: “But why?”

Me: “Sales is a lot easier when the person selling is confident.”

Them: “And you need me to do this because…?”

Me: “Because I am giving back to the community by offering employment opportunities.”

Them: “Oh, okay.  Thanks!”

Me: “You’re welcome.  Now please, study up.  This is important.”

 

     We had to go WAY out to the far north side of town, because I had already burned down Irving Park with this same stunt last year and didn’t want anyone to sniff it out before we had at least made SOME money.
At the end of a 30ish minute drive, he had proven to me that he had the lines down and was ready to roll.

     We came to the first subdivision and I stopped at the corner so I could explain what comes next…

 

Me: “Look, I’mma let you out right here.  I will drive to the end of this street and you will knock on each door until you get back to me.  Repeat your script and show them the order forms I gave you.  When you get down to the end of the street, hop in the truck with me and we will move along to another subdivision until we run out of order forms.”

     Simple enough, right?  He hops out and goes right to work.  I won’t pretend to know how the conversations went, but his script went as follows…

“Good morning, sir/madam.  My name is [name here], but my friends call me [nickname].  We’re out here in your neighborhood on this fine morning offering you the opportunity to support our organization by buying some boyscout cookies.  They’ve been such a hit in years past that we’ve made them an annual thing.  We have new flavors for this run, which you can see on the order form.  You’ll see that we have replaced ‘s’niggerdoodles’ with ‘blumpkin pie spice’.  Since we’re still waiting on the paperwork for our 501c(3) and currently can only take cash and cashapp, you can find the payment information on the last page.”

     As I’m sure you recall, we had some fun flavors last year, including Lemon Party Delight, and Chocolate Starfish Fudge among others.  I am pretty sure that my playing fast-and-loose with that s’niggerdoodles one is where the wheels came off the cart though, so I had to think on the fly when editing/typesetting the “order” forms.  I did the same little trick with the purposely small lettering in the middle of the flavors because, after all, I am an asshole.

     Our guy was KILLING his lines and quite apparently using his rebuttals to any questions asked, because while I sat at the end of the street fiddling with Words With Friends, my boy scout cookies cashapp was already EN FUEGO.  I would venture a bet that he was selling at three out of every five houses he went to!  I can’t wait to see how much of this comes in as cash.  At $7 a box, the average order was for six or so boxes and most sent a little extra as a “tip.”  Twenty houses on this block, $45 or so per “sale” with about three in five buying, we made over $500 on the first street alone.  Like last year, we chose a street a couple of blocks over to avoid neighborly conversations spoiling the game before we were done.

     After doing four streets in the neighborhood, we had blown through the 50 order forms I’d printed.

[Phlip Note: tell my Wife Person™ I will replace the printer ink tanks]

After the big success of the first street, the subsequent ones were just a TOUCH less so, but we still cleared almost $1200 in cash and cashapp, with most of it being CashApp.  We got the FUCK out of the neighborhood and pulled aside in a Dollar General parking lot to settle up.

Me: “Alright, we got $926 in cashapp – weird number, but whatevs – and...   two-sixty three, four… $265 in cash…”

Salesman: “Good haul for less than two hours work.”

Me: “Right?  Here…  You keep all the cash and again that phone is yours to do with what you choose.”

Salesman: “What about the cookies?”

Me: “What cookies?”

Salesman: “The boyscout cookies we were selling?”

Me: “Nah, homie…  We scammoin’.  That is why we way out here in damn near Summerfield, where nobody know us.”

Salesman: “Wooooow…”

 

     I sent all the CashApp money to my personal account, withdrew it to my bank and promptly closed the Boy Scout Cookies one before even putting the car back in drive…  There may have been more to come, but I didn't have the luxury of time to wait and see before people would inevitably start disputing charges.

Okay, so no one came out after us or called the cops on us, everything is all good, right?

RIGHT?!!?

Wrong™!

     Tuesday morning, I was cutting my back yard and came into the office for a swallow of water.  In my garage, the burner phone was ringing all crazy, back to back to back to back.  Like an absofuckin-lute dumby, I answered it.

Me: “Hello?”

Caller: “Who is this?”

Me: “Who is calling?”

Caller: “My son found the order form for those goddamn cookies you sold me.  He searched on Google what a ‘blumpkin’ is and--…”

Me: “HA!!!”

Caller: “This isn’t fucking funny!  He went to school and wouldn’t stop saying it, and now my wife is blaming ME!!!”

[Phlip Note: if you didn’t know what a ‘blumpkin’ was, do not Google that shit in mixed company!]

Me: “Where did you get this number?”

Caller: “I called the number on this bullshit order form and the other guy told me he worked for you.  I want my money back!”

Me: “This is a crank call, right?”

Caller: “No, I want my--…”

Me: “Are they bringing back Crank Yankers again?”

Caller: “No, and I swear, if you don’t give me my--…”

     I hung up the phone, jumped in the car and drove DEEP into the woods and dialed a local weather number before pitching the phone out the window.
I pray this man just chalks this up as a loss and doesn’t make a call that has Detective Woodpenis at my fuckin’ door again.

     I’m getting out the boyscout cookie game after this.