The Poop room

There is a part of town where all the young bars are. It is the affluent, yuppyish, well to do part of town where things are nice and the people gather to socialize. It is usually no big deal to work over there, other than the fact the houses are historical and need new wiring, but the people and insides are generally nice.

One house I approached looked just like all the others on the outside. It was a 1940's brick home, with newer remodeling done. The home owner opens the door and I enter. Inside is the typical pier 1 layout. All the prints on the walls, the pillows, the furniture, all run of the mill current style. The one peculiarity was the smell.

It was the smell of what I imagined a large fruit plantation would smell like after the harvest rain. All the leftover fruits have fallen into the leaf litter and begun to rot along with the fertilizer laid down for next year. All of that, but wet and moldy. It was quite odd, and nothing I had ever smelt before. I had a job to do, so I ignored it and started surveying the television for the reasons it was acting up.

My investigation led me to believe the issue may be outside, and I asked the customer the best way to get out back. "Should I go around front, or do you have a back door?"
The customer smiled, and with a motion of his hand said, "Follow me through the poop room."

He led on down a hall, and to a room with a door leading outside on the opposite end of it. Between me and the door was a room sized chocolate cake, with a thin slice cut from the middle of it. There was several inches of caked dog shit covering the floor except for the path that was worn down by continual paws treading over it. With a gag I tread through, and made it outside. I redid the outside and had the customer check the tv to see if it worked. Thank the goddess it did.

Loose Dogs

Working for a long time for a cable company you tend to get to know your town. You learn the histories of the people who you encounter. You know what happens in certain neighborhoods. 

I worked on a house on the edge of town, I forget doing what, but it was semi rural, with the neighbor an acre or two a way. I remember that the guy had a big loose dog. It was intrusive, in my face, barking, and liked to run up and down the road a lot. 

A while later I worked on his neighbor's house doing an install. I was hooking everything up and the dog came over and started chasing the dogs of the guy whose house I was working on. The guy proceeded to tell me about the dog, and how it annoyed all the neighbors, and the guy never chained it or apologized for its behavior.

Year later I go back to fix the guy's cable from house 1, who owned the big loose dog. I am fixing his cable and I mention his dog.  He gets a sad face, then an angry one. "Ya some asshole poisoned him!  Who the fuck would do that?" 

He had no clue about how his dog affected his neighbors, and I kept silent about it.  

Moral:  Raise a prick dog, and someone will potentially poison it. 

I will admit after an hour being up an a pole with little yippy rat dogs barking on me, sometimes I feel like cooking up some rat killer biscuits. I never have though out of fear of the Thinner effect.    Eat your own pie boy!

The apartments by the river.

I have two stories I wished to share that occurred in the same apartment complex.

My company has a policy about backing up. Do everything you can to not back up. 25% of all company vehicle accidents happen while backing up even though we back up 1% of the time. 

Taking that into consideration here I am driving around this parking lot looking for a good parking spot. I go through a narrow area between two buildings. A lady is blindly backing out of a spot (too small for my van) and I see she doesn't care about backing out in front of my moving vehicle. On the other side of this drive area between parking spots is a landscaper sitting in his truck with a trailer behind it.
     She backs out, and rather than back with her back to my vehicle and go out the open way, she does the opposite and has her car facing me. She backs out and expects me to back up to let her out. Behind her is open air and exit.  

I can't back up, I cannot see behind me, and I have no one to guide my backing. I sit and look at her.  She starts flipping out in her vehicle. I smile as she screams at me like a twisted angry mime. 

I have my window down, as does the landscaper. He looks at me, I look at him, and he nods, pulling out to let the crazy freak lady leave.  



The second story is down a few buildings in the same complex.

I am parked waiting for work. La dee da, nothing going on. I watch two people conversing wildly, their hands moving. One person has the face of Hun uh, no way on. The two walk over towards my van. I expect the usual, hey can I have something for free routine and look forward to waving them away, so I roll down the window. Instead of focused on me, they stop and look down at the grease spot in the empty parking spot next to me. I look at it, and then ask. "What's up?"

      They point down to the spot and tell me that a guy was beat to death right there this morning, and that is a blood spot. Whoa.