All Black Nothing

When I first came to Smalltown, I wanted nothing but black tenants. I thought it'd be cool to have black tenants that I can give discounts to and help them succeed. I wasn’t really concerned too much with profit and wanted all my tenants to be black professionals that make money. Nice thought. One year and 4 evictions later, I scrapped that plan and started renting out to all kinds of people, so long as they matched my job and quality criteria.  Recently, I’d been trying to get a list of reliable handymen together to call whenever a repair needs to be done. With Gonzalez already in the bag, I wondered if I could get a group of black repairmen together on that list.

I hired a lawn mowing guy, Lamore, to do the lawns for both property Chi and Charlie. The agreement was to do both lawns every two weeks and he would charge me $40 every month. On paper, it was a good deal. After about a week, I had to call and remind him to do the lawns. I was there as he mowed Chi’s lawn and did a very good job. That was on the 10th. Since then, he hasn’t been back to either property. He didn’t even do the back lawn of Charlie. I was about to call him today to remind him about the lawns, but I decided not to. Why do I have to constantly remind these idiots to DO THEIR JOB? The agreement was for twice a month. Today is the 31st and nothing has been done since the 10th. Isn’t that a breach of contract? Doesn’t that mean that Lamore can go screw himself while I find someone else to do the job?

Alfonso is another guy that I’m having issues with when it comes to doing things on time. When he took Kylie Ray’s windows to be repaired, I had to call him almost two weeks later to bring back the repaired windows and reinstall them. Even now, I told him to let me know how much I owed him. That was last week! How does one run a business and not care when payment is received?! I’m purposely not gonna call him to see how long it takes for him to call me with a final bill. The black people in Smalltown have a hard time understanding the concept of enterprise. It’s very simple really. Someone that you’re connected with in some way (in this case, skin color and the experiences attributed to it) needs a service that you provide. You do it well and they continue to use your services. As the enterprise grows, the service provider is given more work to do. As they grow together, they give each other tips and helpful references. They grow symbiotically which gives an extra pair of eyes to watch the other’s back. That’s my definition of good business and enterprise. That’s the way different cultures have grown in this country. They come here and find people like them to help get started, and then they grow together. It’s how the Irish took over the police force; the Arabs took over corner stores and 99 cent stores; the Indians took over the engineering and medical world; and how the Jews took over the media and legal field. The only person who seems to understand this concept here is Gonzalez. Is it really so difficult? I remember a Nigerian guy responding to an ad I put on Craigslist a few years ago to replace a screen door. The asshole knew I was Nigerian yet gave me an extremely high price (which I was willing to pay) and didn’t even show up to do the work. A Ukrainian guy came and did it perfectly the very next day for $100 less. For shame.

I’ll go on Angie’s list and find someone—forget Lamore. I dunno if this is more of my impatience with the speed of repair work (as I discussed here) or if almost everyone around me is completely incompetent. I like the concept of “All Black Everything”, but it’s clearly not gonna happen in my case. The blacks of Smalltown are too narrow-minded and short sighted to see the value in doing good business on a consistent level with others like them. I’ll still keep a lookout for African and black handymen, but I won’t make it a priority like I did before. Race can't be a deciding factor if I'm gonna be successful at this business. Just like my tenants, it’s the best people that I go into business with.  Screw the short sighted losers. I don’t have time to babysit.

Update (8/1/2013 at 8:10am): Lamore called me last night saying that he's gonna mow the lawn today. I reminded him that he needs to do it twice a month. Let's see what happens now.