agendas
DollarBill and I were talking about the hood tonight. He still hustles for a living, in addition to having a regular hourly job now (GO BILL!) and in these hustles he gets the supreme privilege of interacting with a crazy bunch of clowns. Folks with money but no morals.
One of my favorites right now is a local house flipper. She bought a house for 10k, spent MAYBE 30k on a crew from craigslist (ie no insurance, social security wages, unemployment tax, etc) and materials (paint, sandpaper, wood) and sold a house for 125k. Cool. She's in business and made a profit. Turned around and did the same thing to the next house, sold it for 140k. This year this woman has sold real estate amounting to 265k with a total investment of maximum, 80k. American dream at work.
Now, I have no problem with someone making money. Hell, her flipping houses in such a way means that my little house where we made our home for seven years is more valuable. What I do have a problem with is her expectation that folks from the neighborhood fawn over her. She's in business and made money. End of story for me. In her mind she is doing some huge good generous deed for us poor folks and should be thanked over and over. Bow down and worship the great lady who saved two houses. She seemed to ignore all of the community building that has taken place in the past three years in the hood. Everything good was due to her working on two houses. It's all her. She's so special, important, and generous.
No. I refuse to do that. It's a small hood and things get back to me pretty quickly from different people. She was upset that I was not more grateful for her work in the hood. I made it pretty clear to her that I don't have an issue with her by sending her a buyer for her second house, but that she was making money. Don't expect me to congratulate you on performing your occupation well. I'm not your momma and my opinion shouldn't matter that much to you. I think that it's over and whatever attention and approval seeking she had going on was through.
I was wrong.
My next door neighbor got hoodwinked into replacing her original 100yr old windows with cheap vinyl ones through a city lead abatement program. They did nothing to abate the lead (which was covered btw) just ripped out her old windows. Now, in a historic district this is a big no no as it leads to instant loss of value in your home. I called the house flipper and asked if she knew of someone who worked to restore old windows. We talk for about 10 minutes and she takes it that I want to hire her crew to work on my neighbors house.
Uh...no.
I want to know if you have a contact of a professional window contact. I also was performing a test.
See, if she wanted to give back to the hood that she just made some killer profit on, here would be her chance. Get her illegal crew to work two or three days fixing the windows of this retired and out of work homeowner who had just been conned. By doing this, she would earn my respect and praise. I could say, look, she flipped those houses, but when push came to shove, she contributed back to the hood by helping one of our older homeowners out for free. She's not profiting off of us, she's profiting with us.
But, she says she can reinstall each window for $200-$400 each + materials depending on how badly the frames are damaged. Ok, I can respect that she is still making a living. Some other stuff comes up and out about the window job and I don't follow up with her.
Last night, DollarBill comes to tell me that she is mad that I called her. Wanted to know what my agenda was with the windows? Wanted to know why I call her to try to hire her? Wanted to know why I think we are cool? Wanted to know why I would talk to her? Wanted to know why the sky is blue?
She's looking for some angle. There must be an angle. The way she operates there is always an angle, always someone trying to cheat or steal something from you. I just wanted to give her the opportunity to give back to the hood that just helped her get 160k+ in her pocket. She didn't and that's fine, but I'm not mad at her about it. I don't respect her at all, but again, I ain't your momma, shouldn't matter what I think.
I thought perhaps in the past I had judged her too harshly. Thought you know, perhaps I should give her another chance to demonstrate what a quality stand up person she is. And she once again demonstrated that she is greedy and suspicious and just not that smart. or good.
(This is the same woman who was upset we did not work with her on our big house after she messed up the sizing of our new windows. We were replacing the half size vinyl broken windows with wooden original style and size windows. She measured wrong. Some were off by an inch width, some were right on. Some were off by a foot or more length, one was right on. Also somehow her cost to us of ordering the windows, when we were paying up front, was going to be more per window than if we ordered them ourselves. From the same dealer. By $50+ each window.)
La-dee-da lady. Go somewhere else please or just stop expecting us (neighbors) or me (GhettoQueen) to suck your figurative cock.
One of my favorites right now is a local house flipper. She bought a house for 10k, spent MAYBE 30k on a crew from craigslist (ie no insurance, social security wages, unemployment tax, etc) and materials (paint, sandpaper, wood) and sold a house for 125k. Cool. She's in business and made a profit. Turned around and did the same thing to the next house, sold it for 140k. This year this woman has sold real estate amounting to 265k with a total investment of maximum, 80k. American dream at work.
Now, I have no problem with someone making money. Hell, her flipping houses in such a way means that my little house where we made our home for seven years is more valuable. What I do have a problem with is her expectation that folks from the neighborhood fawn over her. She's in business and made money. End of story for me. In her mind she is doing some huge good generous deed for us poor folks and should be thanked over and over. Bow down and worship the great lady who saved two houses. She seemed to ignore all of the community building that has taken place in the past three years in the hood. Everything good was due to her working on two houses. It's all her. She's so special, important, and generous.
No. I refuse to do that. It's a small hood and things get back to me pretty quickly from different people. She was upset that I was not more grateful for her work in the hood. I made it pretty clear to her that I don't have an issue with her by sending her a buyer for her second house, but that she was making money. Don't expect me to congratulate you on performing your occupation well. I'm not your momma and my opinion shouldn't matter that much to you. I think that it's over and whatever attention and approval seeking she had going on was through.
I was wrong.
My next door neighbor got hoodwinked into replacing her original 100yr old windows with cheap vinyl ones through a city lead abatement program. They did nothing to abate the lead (which was covered btw) just ripped out her old windows. Now, in a historic district this is a big no no as it leads to instant loss of value in your home. I called the house flipper and asked if she knew of someone who worked to restore old windows. We talk for about 10 minutes and she takes it that I want to hire her crew to work on my neighbors house.
Uh...no.
I want to know if you have a contact of a professional window contact. I also was performing a test.
See, if she wanted to give back to the hood that she just made some killer profit on, here would be her chance. Get her illegal crew to work two or three days fixing the windows of this retired and out of work homeowner who had just been conned. By doing this, she would earn my respect and praise. I could say, look, she flipped those houses, but when push came to shove, she contributed back to the hood by helping one of our older homeowners out for free. She's not profiting off of us, she's profiting with us.
But, she says she can reinstall each window for $200-$400 each + materials depending on how badly the frames are damaged. Ok, I can respect that she is still making a living. Some other stuff comes up and out about the window job and I don't follow up with her.
Last night, DollarBill comes to tell me that she is mad that I called her. Wanted to know what my agenda was with the windows? Wanted to know why I call her to try to hire her? Wanted to know why I think we are cool? Wanted to know why I would talk to her? Wanted to know why the sky is blue?
She's looking for some angle. There must be an angle. The way she operates there is always an angle, always someone trying to cheat or steal something from you. I just wanted to give her the opportunity to give back to the hood that just helped her get 160k+ in her pocket. She didn't and that's fine, but I'm not mad at her about it. I don't respect her at all, but again, I ain't your momma, shouldn't matter what I think.
I thought perhaps in the past I had judged her too harshly. Thought you know, perhaps I should give her another chance to demonstrate what a quality stand up person she is. And she once again demonstrated that she is greedy and suspicious and just not that smart. or good.
(This is the same woman who was upset we did not work with her on our big house after she messed up the sizing of our new windows. We were replacing the half size vinyl broken windows with wooden original style and size windows. She measured wrong. Some were off by an inch width, some were right on. Some were off by a foot or more length, one was right on. Also somehow her cost to us of ordering the windows, when we were paying up front, was going to be more per window than if we ordered them ourselves. From the same dealer. By $50+ each window.)
La-dee-da lady. Go somewhere else please or just stop expecting us (neighbors) or me (GhettoQueen) to suck your figurative cock.