Let's Make a Deal

Because one of my co-workers left to work elsewhere, I had overtime last week and even more this week. The overtime will make up for the hours I lost on Labor Day, the hours I lost with the shipping depot when I car wouldn’t start, and the tow that cost $70 to get the GMC Jimmy to Monro Brakes. Very nice! The opportunity to make money is always out there, I just have to know what to do when opportunity presents itself. That brings me to Hector.

Hector is the guy that mows my lawn of property Alpha every three weeks. He used to charge me $40, but now it’s down to $35. The front lawn is simple but the real cost comes with property Alpha’s massive backyard. He lives across the street from me and has a wife, kid, and three Golden Lab Retrievers. He used to work at a school or something, but they laid him off and now he collects SSI and disability while doing odd jobs on the side. Anyway, as I was going to work Saturday I saw him hanging around his porch, trying to make it look as if he wasn’t waiting for me. As I walked to my car he stopped me and asked if he could mow my lawn because he really needs the money. Evidently he’s broke and doesn’t have enough money for food for his family. He said that, to sweeten the deal, he would do it for only $25. Since the lawn didn’t need much mowing, I told him that he could do it next weekend and I will give him the money for it today. I went to work thinking about the whole scenario. I found it strange that he would bring up his personal and financial problems so easily with someone he barely knows. I wasn’t mad at him because he wasn’t just asking for money, but also offering services at a reduced price. But I reembered the desperation in his voice and wondered: Is $25 low enough?

One of the things that make a good businessman is the ability to make the most of an opportunity, particularly through the “Art of the Deal". I got that from Donald Trump’s book of the same name. The book itself sucked, as it only had his commentary on the real estate deals he made. But I liked it because it emphasized the point that much of the profit in real estate is made through the contract—or the Deal. It’s seizing opportunity and knowing how to make a deal that would seem to work for both parties, when it really helps me more than the other. I have a few social experiments in Project MFMA that explore this, but those won’t start for another 4 months or so. I tried to think, but that never turns out well. So I decided to simplify the problem in order to solve it. Here’s what I came up with.

Hector has a service that I use (lawnmowing). He needs a product for his family (food). He wants my money ($35) to get this product, but knows that his service isn’t needed right now so he lowers his original price ($25), saving me $10. Because of my current lack of experience in making deals, I see only two solutions to make this worth my time. The first is to buy the food for him at a discount. Find someone that has food stamps and pay half what the food costs and bring it to him in exchange for his services. I’ll probably only have to pay $10 for $25 worth of food. The problem is that it’s a lot of work to buy someone’s groceries for them and go through all that stuff. I’ll only insert myself deeper into his miserable life and I’m not interested in that. So the first plan is out.

The second plan is to disguise money for services. I give him $60, but tell him that he has to do both Alpha and property Chi next week. Then, in three weeks, he has to do it again for both properties. He would normally charge $15 for property Chi so, if we went by his prices, I would have had to pay $80 to mow both lawns twice at his new prices. Under my deal I would save $20, as each mowing of Alpha would be $20 and each mowing of Chi would be $10. While he would normally say no, the desperation of the situation coupled with $35 right in front of him might make him say yes. After two days, this is the best plan I can come up with. Better make that food last, Hector. Chances are that by the time the second mowing is done, winter will start and then he's outta of usefulness with me because there's no mowing in the winter.

It may seem that I'm kicking a man while he’s down, and I am. But he's had plenty of opportunity to handle his financial problems in a reasonable manner. He and his wife own their two-family home. They would rent to worthless welfare bums who wouldn’t pay them and screw up the apartment. After a while, they decided not to rent to anyone anymore, even after I offered to find someone for the apartment free of charge (at the time, I wanted experience in renting out apartments). Hector and his wife spent $40,000 on upgrades to their home, the bulk of it going towards windows. Windows? $40,000 for fucking WINDOWS! The house is in a neighborhood where the value of a property is around $75k. Why the hell would you spend 40k on windows when it won’t bring the value of the property to equal what was spent?? Every year they put up a “for sale” sign and their asking price is usually around 100k. Nonsense. In fact, there is only ONE property that has gone up in value since it was bought in that entire neighborhood (from 74k to 83k). Which one? Yeah, that’s right. Property Alpha! And to top it off, they have a gas guzzling 2009 Ford Expedition that they drive nowhere because they don’t work, so why not sell it or trade it in for a more affordable vehicle with better gas mileage and lower car payments (or no payments at all)?

So yes, I plan to take advantage of someone’s idiocy and make things better for myself. It’s like a guy in the desert that had gold but no water. I’m the motherfucker with the water, but I need gold. How much gold I get depends on how desperate he is for water. I hope he’s really desperate because, now that I look at it, $50 seems more appropriate for Hector’s situation. I dunno, we’ll see what happens today. Victors don’t spurn opportunity. That what Megatron said. It’s also in Quark’s Rules of Acquisition. I get my financial advice from Donald Trump books, a Transformers cartoon villain and a Star Trek Ferengi. I’m either gonna be really good at this deal-making thing or really bad.