The story of "The Home Game" - TL;DR
08-29-2018
, 07:14 PM
Deliverance
After the ****show that was the trip to the East Coast, the game ran very weak for a few weeks as the diabetes/pill pushers had come and gone like a flash in the pan. Clayton ended up OD'ing a few months later, and Trevor was electrocuted playing around with some high voltage wire and was never quite the same, or so I was told. Tim and Rhett didn't want to extend any more credit to those who already owed alot, and the number of cash players dwindled. Because of this there was a lull in the game, andTim was a daily grinder at the local cardroom, but short buying 2/5 and playing a shove or fold game just wasn't working out for him. One day he decided he wanted more and gave me a call.
"Hey, so I can't drive to Hard Rock because of my license. You want to go up there sometime? I'll pay for the gas and everything." I told him not a problem, as I needed to make a delivery of plants I had picked up in Miami and sold in Polk County to a veterinarian that was a client of mine. I figured I could drive up there, drop Tim off, go over to play poker and make it a win-win situation. A few days later we headed up in my new SUV, I dropped him off, and then headed East to the client. Besides the beach, Polk County has almost everything Florida has to offer. Amusement parks, mobile homes, shady small towns with high crime rates, rolling hills with estates, and suburbs of both Tampa and Orlando, as it sat in the middle of both metro areas. It was the place you thought of when you see the citrus farm on your carton of orange juice, and was also the place you would see COPS filmed regularly. During the daytime all was good in the county, but at night the creatures came out to play. Even though there were plenty of amusement parks nearby, the best way to be amused was to be a fly on the wall at one of the hundreds of shady gas stations in the area.
I got back to Hard Rock around 2pm and found the poker room quite empty considering the time of the year. There was no PLO game running, and around five 1/2 games and 3 or so 2/5 games. Tim was in a 2/5 game and spotted me walking in and we went through the doors to the smoking area.
"Dude, this game is crazy, this guy raised and then I went over the top with Ace-King in the big blind......" He went on to tell me that a guy turned a full house and he rivered a flush and lost 500 to 5
7. I had watched a few videos of the Trooper at the time and I felt like I was listening to his "the game was so good but I'm really stuck" rants. Well, if the game was so good, then I'm jumping in. There was an open seat at his table and it was always weird sitting at a casino with Tim at the same table. He would always bounce pretty vulgar jokes and remarks and I tried my best to give him a slight nod of approval while still trying to keep the table friendly. This was where Tim was lacking and Mike was a genius, I had to give him that.
I opened to 20 UTG with AQ and got two callers, one of which was a competent pro looking type in the cutoff. On a 973ss flop, I managed to pot commit myself with my two overs and flush draw to his flopped bottom set and rivered a spade for a thousand dollar pot. At this time I could definitely tell he was a pro because he took it like it was just another unavoidable situation. About a half hour passed with some nitty play, and he had started to chat it up with Tim. Over the course of the next forty five minutes he had managed to tell him about a great game that runs nearby and that he should go later. Tim proceeded to speak loudly across the table to me.
"You want to go to this homegame off I-4? This game sucks, it's too nitty." Tim was again unaware of his surroundings and everyone in a three table radius had heard. He also was unaware of Florida geography, and not only was I just in Polk County, but it was not nearby, it was a solid forty minutes in Polk City. Of course, I found this out too late as he gave me the address as we were leaving the parking garage.
"You do realize I was just in this area, now I have to drive back? This is like a half hour from Disney, you want to go there too?" I was just not looking forward to hanging out in Polk City for any reason. I knew one person from the town, he was a rare plant grower named Bubba. He liked AR-10s, all you can eat buffets, and was a professional at tooting his own horn. I tried to get along with him but he was like a redneck version of Tim, even dumber and narrow minded. I tried to talk Tim out of it, but honestly the curiosity of it had me a little interested. As we got off the Polk City exit, I saw it was another nine miles of back roads and listened for banjos as the paved road went to a hilly dirt road off another dirt road. Finally we pulled up a hilly driveway and into a clearing and saw a single wide trailer with a bunch of cars parked in front and an old RV parked back and to the right. Yeah, this was the place alright.
"Don't be surprised if everyone has the same last name here," I told Tim as we pulled next to a nice black early 90s 4Runner. Something about this truck I really liked, it was like walking past the girl of your dreams. It was clearly not new or anything special, but it looked a lot like the Toyota Pickup on the dealer lot from Back to the Future. I had already owned a blue one, but this one was four wheel drive and clearly in better shape. It wasn't a first gen 4Runner but it was close enough.
We walked up the steps which were not attached to the house and I actually stepped back as I realized they were homemade and supporting both Tim and I may be a challenge. He knocked on the door and it immediately opened with some guy in plaid shorts and a Hawaiian shirt answered named Walter introduced himself. This wasn't too bad as we walked in and it was literally a three room trailer with a bathroom and a back porch. I had a collared shirt on, and Tim had an N.W.A. shirt on, and we were getting looks up and down like we had just brought them salsa made in New York City. Walter was the best dressed out of the bunch - most had tank tops and ragged shorts and looked like they had just stepped off the set of Deliverance. Out of one of the outer rooms walked a lady who had clearly become a 24/7 drinker, you could tell from the skinny, flat body and wrinkled face that she loved Natty Ice. In her hands she was carrying what I thought was an oddly shaven cat, but soon realized it was actually a raccoon named Sammy. Despite all of this, the place was actually pretty clean, and it turned out Walter's ex father-in-law owned the place but he was out of town. Normally he lived in the RV with his ex-wife, but I guess this was his chance to get out and enjoy life a little. I introduced myself and took the offer of a beer, and immediately felt more at home than I would if I were sitting at a table with five or six silent pros in hoodies.
This was clearly a friendly game, and I don't know where a lot of these guys got their money from, but they played with hundreds on the table, something I had only experienced in Boca Grande. They loved betting their bills too, a lot of bets on the turn and river were a flat hundred and it came off as a tell of strength. It was a 2-5 game but it played a little bigger with straddles. The max buy-in was 500 and Tim and I were both in for the max, and it didn't take long until I got in the whole stack with A
Q on an A43hh against AK off which ended up holding. These guys were gamblers, no one ran it twice. They wanted all the money or nothing at all.
With booking a winning session far off in the distance and trying to make small talk with the other players, I asked who owned the 4Runner in the yard.
"That's mine," Walter said with a smile, "I've had that thing since I graduated high school in '03." I managed to find out it was a 95 with 110,000 miles on it, and ran great, but needed an O2 sensor. I asked him if he wanted to sell it and he told me to make him an offer. I told him 1500 and he clearly was not happy with that. I said my offer would stand as long as I was here, and he gave me a sarcastic smile as if he would never take me up on the offer.
In the meantime, one of the residents of the trailer across the yard made her way over and came in, and silence came over the whole room. She was in her early 30s, a clearly stunning form of redneck beauty. She was wearing a wife beater and had poor quality tattoos around her shoulders and her waist area - what a shame. The facial expressions of all the guys was clear that they all wanted a piece of that action. It is rare that a poker game was fully interrupted by one woman, but she managed to do it. The smell of some body spray or lotion was almost enough to give goosebumps. This was clearly the ex-wife.
"I'm goin' to the store, y'all want anything?" She said in a very nice, polite southern style voice, not from Florida, it sounded more like an upper South accent, like Charlotte or Raleigh. I found out her name was Kimberly, and she was in fact from Greenville in the Eastern part of North Carolina. I asked her if she was going to take that 4Runner out, and apparently that was all they had.
"Such a beauty..." I said out loud to myself to which I got stares and elaborated, "the truck, I mean...." I don't think anyone believed me, but it was the truth, I wanted that truck badly. I awaited for its return as much as the other guys at the table awaited their Fireball from the liquor store. Fireball is essentially jet fuel for a redneck, I have seen people live off it for days. I knew when Kimberly got back the game was going to get really fun....or really weird.
Forty-five minutes later she gets back with a couple bottles, cigarettes, and lots of weird hot candy that was all grabbed up before I could really tell what it was. There was also a jar of that pickled hot sausage, that **** that sits in red liquid at a lot of convenience stores. I have never seen someone buy one, much less a whole bottle of it, and it smelled like a fiery arsehole. I asked Tim to come outside to smoke a cigarette with me just to get out of the house to determine a time to leave this place. It was 830 and had already been a long day of driving, and was at least a 90 minute drive home. It was starting to get a little rowdy too, and I wasn't about to go out by getting knifed in a double wide in Polk County. Tim wanted to stay longer but I really wanted to get home, the only thing keeping me around was that truck. I decided to go inside and ask Walter again.
"You sure you don't want to sell that truck man?" I said with a smile like I wasn't going to let it go.
"I'll tell you what, if I lose this stack, I'll sell it to you for $1500, but it isn't going to happen. In fact, I'll put a bounty on myself that I will give $100 if someone can felt me just to get more action." We agreed on that, plus I would give $100 to the same guy, so it came out to a $200 bounty on Walter. Everyone was all riled up at the extra action, and he already had a $1200 stack on the table. He gave the impression that it was all the money he had to his name so if he lost it he would have to sell the truck anyway. I even had him show me the title to prove he owned it and could sell it.
Walter seemed to be a competent player, but as he was aggressive, a little run bad could make me the new owner of that truck. The Fireball was taking effect and the only ones sober were Tim and I, we took one shot just to show we weren't there just to take their money. There were a couple stacks around his size, and he was getting chipped down a bit by better kickers with top pair, and I could see he was getting busted up a little. He started to open up his game a little more and lost half his remaining stack with a jack high flush over the nut flush and now the truck was really on the horizon. His aggression didn't stop, and around 10pm he opened to 25 and got two callers and saw a K
103 flop and he led out for 50 and got just one caller. Another low spade came on the turn and he kept the aggression on with 125, which was perfect for a river jam if he was a more advanced thinker. The 7 came on the river and he instantly jammed for around 300 and the opponent, my hero, went into the tank for about three minutes. Around that mark, he threw in three hundreds and Walter asked him what he had.
"Top two" he said, and held his hand as Walter declared he had a set of 10s. He flipped his cards around for the table to see and he actually had K10 for the second nuts. I was going to wait a bit but before I could even think of talking a guy to his left said, "Dude, you have a flush!"
"No, I have top two."
"Yeah, but you have a flush too man, show your cards!"
I thought Walter was going to blow up, he had accidentally been slowrolled, but he realized it was an accident. I saw his deflated temperament, something very similar to the way Donnie looked when he had given away dozens of stacks of red and green in his life. I didn't approach Walter about it immediately, but eventually handed the guy $100 in chips about 15 minutes later and cashed out. I told Walter I didn't want to be too late getting back home and he understood. I gave him the cash, he signed over the title and he proceeded to buy back into the game.
"I'm just gonna tell my ex-wife you're test driving it, she don't gotta know, you know?" I nodded somewhat understanding, but she was obviously going to notice it was gone the next day, so maybe he wanted to just buy a little time. He mentioned it was low on gas and told me how to get to the nearest gas station, it sounded pretty sketchy. I just bought this thing and never took it for a test drive, but a running 4Runner like this for $1500 couldn't be beat. I don't know what I was more nervous about - hoping it would get home or that Tim would wreck my car with no license. I said goodbye to everyone, and saw Walter standing next to his trailer as I made my way out with his high school heirloom. I made it a quarter mile from the Racetrac and ran out of gas and had to call Tim to go buy a gas can and bring it to me. Thirty minutes later I was on I-4 with this thing cruising at around 60, anything more and the tires were just too loud. I looked around the car and found a cassette tape that was blank and decided to pop it in, it was Florida-Georgia Line's first album. I could even smell the perfume his ex had on, it was quite nice and the sudden urge to go back and get his wife sat in the back of my head.
I finally got home two hours later to the condo and Nicole had popped in from her house unexpectedly. I had to explain why I was driving a strange vehicle that smelled like perfume, thankfully the story was believable thanks to the title and Tim explaining what happened. Honestly it wasn't her business, but women often get curious. Before Tim left to go into his house, he mentioned that he saw they were taking a ten dollar rake.
"I think I'm gonna raise the rake in the game, I have a plan."
I told him it was a terrible idea but I'd talk to him later - I had an O2 sensor to fix in my beautiful new truck.
After the ****show that was the trip to the East Coast, the game ran very weak for a few weeks as the diabetes/pill pushers had come and gone like a flash in the pan. Clayton ended up OD'ing a few months later, and Trevor was electrocuted playing around with some high voltage wire and was never quite the same, or so I was told. Tim and Rhett didn't want to extend any more credit to those who already owed alot, and the number of cash players dwindled. Because of this there was a lull in the game, andTim was a daily grinder at the local cardroom, but short buying 2/5 and playing a shove or fold game just wasn't working out for him. One day he decided he wanted more and gave me a call.
"Hey, so I can't drive to Hard Rock because of my license. You want to go up there sometime? I'll pay for the gas and everything." I told him not a problem, as I needed to make a delivery of plants I had picked up in Miami and sold in Polk County to a veterinarian that was a client of mine. I figured I could drive up there, drop Tim off, go over to play poker and make it a win-win situation. A few days later we headed up in my new SUV, I dropped him off, and then headed East to the client. Besides the beach, Polk County has almost everything Florida has to offer. Amusement parks, mobile homes, shady small towns with high crime rates, rolling hills with estates, and suburbs of both Tampa and Orlando, as it sat in the middle of both metro areas. It was the place you thought of when you see the citrus farm on your carton of orange juice, and was also the place you would see COPS filmed regularly. During the daytime all was good in the county, but at night the creatures came out to play. Even though there were plenty of amusement parks nearby, the best way to be amused was to be a fly on the wall at one of the hundreds of shady gas stations in the area.
I got back to Hard Rock around 2pm and found the poker room quite empty considering the time of the year. There was no PLO game running, and around five 1/2 games and 3 or so 2/5 games. Tim was in a 2/5 game and spotted me walking in and we went through the doors to the smoking area.
"Dude, this game is crazy, this guy raised and then I went over the top with Ace-King in the big blind......" He went on to tell me that a guy turned a full house and he rivered a flush and lost 500 to 5
7. I had watched a few videos of the Trooper at the time and I felt like I was listening to his "the game was so good but I'm really stuck" rants. Well, if the game was so good, then I'm jumping in. There was an open seat at his table and it was always weird sitting at a casino with Tim at the same table. He would always bounce pretty vulgar jokes and remarks and I tried my best to give him a slight nod of approval while still trying to keep the table friendly. This was where Tim was lacking and Mike was a genius, I had to give him that. I opened to 20 UTG with A
Q and got two callers, one of which was a competent pro looking type in the cutoff. On a 973ss flop, I managed to pot commit myself with my two overs and flush draw to his flopped bottom set and rivered a spade for a thousand dollar pot. At this time I could definitely tell he was a pro because he took it like it was just another unavoidable situation. About a half hour passed with some nitty play, and he had started to chat it up with Tim. Over the course of the next forty five minutes he had managed to tell him about a great game that runs nearby and that he should go later. Tim proceeded to speak loudly across the table to me."You want to go to this homegame off I-4? This game sucks, it's too nitty." Tim was again unaware of his surroundings and everyone in a three table radius had heard. He also was unaware of Florida geography, and not only was I just in Polk County, but it was not nearby, it was a solid forty minutes in Polk City. Of course, I found this out too late as he gave me the address as we were leaving the parking garage.
"You do realize I was just in this area, now I have to drive back? This is like a half hour from Disney, you want to go there too?" I was just not looking forward to hanging out in Polk City for any reason. I knew one person from the town, he was a rare plant grower named Bubba. He liked AR-10s, all you can eat buffets, and was a professional at tooting his own horn. I tried to get along with him but he was like a redneck version of Tim, even dumber and narrow minded. I tried to talk Tim out of it, but honestly the curiosity of it had me a little interested. As we got off the Polk City exit, I saw it was another nine miles of back roads and listened for banjos as the paved road went to a hilly dirt road off another dirt road. Finally we pulled up a hilly driveway and into a clearing and saw a single wide trailer with a bunch of cars parked in front and an old RV parked back and to the right. Yeah, this was the place alright.
"Don't be surprised if everyone has the same last name here," I told Tim as we pulled next to a nice black early 90s 4Runner. Something about this truck I really liked, it was like walking past the girl of your dreams. It was clearly not new or anything special, but it looked a lot like the Toyota Pickup on the dealer lot from Back to the Future. I had already owned a blue one, but this one was four wheel drive and clearly in better shape. It wasn't a first gen 4Runner but it was close enough.
We walked up the steps which were not attached to the house and I actually stepped back as I realized they were homemade and supporting both Tim and I may be a challenge. He knocked on the door and it immediately opened with some guy in plaid shorts and a Hawaiian shirt answered named Walter introduced himself. This wasn't too bad as we walked in and it was literally a three room trailer with a bathroom and a back porch. I had a collared shirt on, and Tim had an N.W.A. shirt on, and we were getting looks up and down like we had just brought them salsa made in New York City. Walter was the best dressed out of the bunch - most had tank tops and ragged shorts and looked like they had just stepped off the set of Deliverance. Out of one of the outer rooms walked a lady who had clearly become a 24/7 drinker, you could tell from the skinny, flat body and wrinkled face that she loved Natty Ice. In her hands she was carrying what I thought was an oddly shaven cat, but soon realized it was actually a raccoon named Sammy. Despite all of this, the place was actually pretty clean, and it turned out Walter's ex father-in-law owned the place but he was out of town. Normally he lived in the RV with his ex-wife, but I guess this was his chance to get out and enjoy life a little. I introduced myself and took the offer of a beer, and immediately felt more at home than I would if I were sitting at a table with five or six silent pros in hoodies.
This was clearly a friendly game, and I don't know where a lot of these guys got their money from, but they played with hundreds on the table, something I had only experienced in Boca Grande. They loved betting their bills too, a lot of bets on the turn and river were a flat hundred and it came off as a tell of strength. It was a 2-5 game but it played a little bigger with straddles. The max buy-in was 500 and Tim and I were both in for the max, and it didn't take long until I got in the whole stack with A
Q on an A43hh against AK off which ended up holding. These guys were gamblers, no one ran it twice. They wanted all the money or nothing at all. With booking a winning session far off in the distance and trying to make small talk with the other players, I asked who owned the 4Runner in the yard.
"That's mine," Walter said with a smile, "I've had that thing since I graduated high school in '03." I managed to find out it was a 95 with 110,000 miles on it, and ran great, but needed an O2 sensor. I asked him if he wanted to sell it and he told me to make him an offer. I told him 1500 and he clearly was not happy with that. I said my offer would stand as long as I was here, and he gave me a sarcastic smile as if he would never take me up on the offer.
In the meantime, one of the residents of the trailer across the yard made her way over and came in, and silence came over the whole room. She was in her early 30s, a clearly stunning form of redneck beauty. She was wearing a wife beater and had poor quality tattoos around her shoulders and her waist area - what a shame. The facial expressions of all the guys was clear that they all wanted a piece of that action. It is rare that a poker game was fully interrupted by one woman, but she managed to do it. The smell of some body spray or lotion was almost enough to give goosebumps. This was clearly the ex-wife.
"I'm goin' to the store, y'all want anything?" She said in a very nice, polite southern style voice, not from Florida, it sounded more like an upper South accent, like Charlotte or Raleigh. I found out her name was Kimberly, and she was in fact from Greenville in the Eastern part of North Carolina. I asked her if she was going to take that 4Runner out, and apparently that was all they had.
"Such a beauty..." I said out loud to myself to which I got stares and elaborated, "the truck, I mean...." I don't think anyone believed me, but it was the truth, I wanted that truck badly. I awaited for its return as much as the other guys at the table awaited their Fireball from the liquor store. Fireball is essentially jet fuel for a redneck, I have seen people live off it for days. I knew when Kimberly got back the game was going to get really fun....or really weird.
Forty-five minutes later she gets back with a couple bottles, cigarettes, and lots of weird hot candy that was all grabbed up before I could really tell what it was. There was also a jar of that pickled hot sausage, that **** that sits in red liquid at a lot of convenience stores. I have never seen someone buy one, much less a whole bottle of it, and it smelled like a fiery arsehole. I asked Tim to come outside to smoke a cigarette with me just to get out of the house to determine a time to leave this place. It was 830 and had already been a long day of driving, and was at least a 90 minute drive home. It was starting to get a little rowdy too, and I wasn't about to go out by getting knifed in a double wide in Polk County. Tim wanted to stay longer but I really wanted to get home, the only thing keeping me around was that truck. I decided to go inside and ask Walter again.
"You sure you don't want to sell that truck man?" I said with a smile like I wasn't going to let it go.
"I'll tell you what, if I lose this stack, I'll sell it to you for $1500, but it isn't going to happen. In fact, I'll put a bounty on myself that I will give $100 if someone can felt me just to get more action." We agreed on that, plus I would give $100 to the same guy, so it came out to a $200 bounty on Walter. Everyone was all riled up at the extra action, and he already had a $1200 stack on the table. He gave the impression that it was all the money he had to his name so if he lost it he would have to sell the truck anyway. I even had him show me the title to prove he owned it and could sell it.
Walter seemed to be a competent player, but as he was aggressive, a little run bad could make me the new owner of that truck. The Fireball was taking effect and the only ones sober were Tim and I, we took one shot just to show we weren't there just to take their money. There were a couple stacks around his size, and he was getting chipped down a bit by better kickers with top pair, and I could see he was getting busted up a little. He started to open up his game a little more and lost half his remaining stack with a jack high flush over the nut flush and now the truck was really on the horizon. His aggression didn't stop, and around 10pm he opened to 25 and got two callers and saw a K
103 flop and he led out for 50 and got just one caller. Another low spade came on the turn and he kept the aggression on with 125, which was perfect for a river jam if he was a more advanced thinker. The 7 came on the river and he instantly jammed for around 300 and the opponent, my hero, went into the tank for about three minutes. Around that mark, he threw in three hundreds and Walter asked him what he had."Top two" he said, and held his hand as Walter declared he had a set of 10s. He flipped his cards around for the table to see and he actually had K
10 for the second nuts. I was going to wait a bit but before I could even think of talking a guy to his left said, "Dude, you have a flush!""No, I have top two."
"Yeah, but you have a flush too man, show your cards!"
I thought Walter was going to blow up, he had accidentally been slowrolled, but he realized it was an accident. I saw his deflated temperament, something very similar to the way Donnie looked when he had given away dozens of stacks of red and green in his life. I didn't approach Walter about it immediately, but eventually handed the guy $100 in chips about 15 minutes later and cashed out. I told Walter I didn't want to be too late getting back home and he understood. I gave him the cash, he signed over the title and he proceeded to buy back into the game.
"I'm just gonna tell my ex-wife you're test driving it, she don't gotta know, you know?" I nodded somewhat understanding, but she was obviously going to notice it was gone the next day, so maybe he wanted to just buy a little time. He mentioned it was low on gas and told me how to get to the nearest gas station, it sounded pretty sketchy. I just bought this thing and never took it for a test drive, but a running 4Runner like this for $1500 couldn't be beat. I don't know what I was more nervous about - hoping it would get home or that Tim would wreck my car with no license. I said goodbye to everyone, and saw Walter standing next to his trailer as I made my way out with his high school heirloom. I made it a quarter mile from the Racetrac and ran out of gas and had to call Tim to go buy a gas can and bring it to me. Thirty minutes later I was on I-4 with this thing cruising at around 60, anything more and the tires were just too loud. I looked around the car and found a cassette tape that was blank and decided to pop it in, it was Florida-Georgia Line's first album. I could even smell the perfume his ex had on, it was quite nice and the sudden urge to go back and get his wife sat in the back of my head.
I finally got home two hours later to the condo and Nicole had popped in from her house unexpectedly. I had to explain why I was driving a strange vehicle that smelled like perfume, thankfully the story was believable thanks to the title and Tim explaining what happened. Honestly it wasn't her business, but women often get curious. Before Tim left to go into his house, he mentioned that he saw they were taking a ten dollar rake.
"I think I'm gonna raise the rake in the game, I have a plan."
I told him it was a terrible idea but I'd talk to him later - I had an O2 sensor to fix in my beautiful new truck.
09-16-2018
, 02:11 AM
Finally caught up. Great thread TST, up there with WarmDeck and ChuckBass for me.
Keep posting, gl with everything. Look out for yourself, that toxic MIL is bad news. If you ever make it to Vegas lmk, just post itt
Keep posting, gl with everything. Look out for yourself, that toxic MIL is bad news. If you ever make it to Vegas lmk, just post itt
09-16-2018
, 10:02 PM
10-05-2018
, 05:02 AM
Truestoryteller pls make this happen
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=2602
The two most baller people on 2+2 design a garden
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=2602
The two most baller people on 2+2 design a garden
10-26-2018
, 09:02 AM
Scenes From A Florida Nursery AKA Getting A Real Job
The dealing opportunities at Tim's game were really drying up. Games were running intermittently, people owed so much money that about half the players that would normally show up on the Thursday games were still there. My neck was constantly on fire and I would have to switch in and out of the box a lot more often than I wanted to, and get out and play. I felt my position at the game was slipping even though I had been there longer than anyone at the table. It became painful to watch people go busto with the $200 they brought and then asked to borrow $200 more three times over. I guess Tim was hoping they would win it back, but when two or three people are doing the same thing, they are just winning back each other's borrowed money. The worst, however, was when Rhett would be on his second and third buyin. He was like that guy in Tombstone who ran the crappy game in the saloon that they couldn't get him out of, and finally Wyatt Earp scares him off. He would whine and ***** and he had a resting ***** face that would win an Academy Award.
Sitting in the condo one evening I was on Craigslist looking at the job classifieds and saw a job offer for a landscape designer. The pay was not that great ($15/hr plus commission sales), but anything with some stability sounded good at the moment, and there was room for growth in the sales department. I felt that most landscapes in Florida were generally boring and basic, and I was very much in my comfort zone in this line of work. I sent an email to the address provided, heard back the next day, and after seeing that I had been in the plant business for ten years and had worked for some high end clients, told me to come in for an interview. The address he had provided was to a nursery and landscape center I liked to call a "gourmet nursery". The plants they offered were not much different than Home Depot or Lowe's, but they had larger sizes and offered full service landscaping. I had been to the garden center a few times over the past 12 years, I don't think I ever bought anything. I walked in and heard Caribbean music playing, overpriced wind chimes making noise throughout the interior, and went to the owner's office. He was definitely a good ole Florida boy, though not as friendly and outgoing as one would imagine. It was pretty clear he had inherited this grandfathered in property and was a little bit lost in the administration of it. I sat down with him and a little bit of frustration seemed to follow him around like clouds follow Linus in Peanuts. I was in the sales room, the nicest room in the building, clearly set up to relax a customer's mind as they decided whether or not to buy an overpriced landscaping package for their cookie cutter home.
"So, you have an impressive resume here. You used to work for Fairchild as their nursery manager?"
"Yes, I just couldn't handle Miami and the cost of living was too high compared to what I was getting paid."
"So you are money motivated then?"
"Of course I am, this isn't the best business to be in for it, but I enjoy the work I do so I am willing to make that sacrifice."
"You think you can upsell packages to customers?"
"I think I can offer options for customers that you may not have considered before."
At this he was a little taken back, it appeared something new being brought to the table gave him a bad taste in his mouth, like vinegar in his sweet tea.
"I can offer you connections for palms at prices you can mark up and sell around here. New palms that are getting hot in the landscape and other ones you may not have considered. Have you heard of Satakentia and Kentiopsis? They are perfect palms for the area."
He was not a big talker, his facial expressions did most of his talking. This nursery center was grandfathered in from the 1980s when the rest of the areas were zoned for gated neighborhoods. He appeared to have the same view on change as IBM did back then. He was still doing well in business, but adapting to new landscape styles and what a customer wants is what would keep you in the game. He had this unhappy look as if he had to make way for change but hated it.
"Alright, well why don't we put you on for some ride alongs with our current landscape designer. Are you free this Thursday or Friday?" I didn't want to tell him why I couldn't make it in on those days, but I explained I would be free starting the following week. He told me to be there at 8am Monday and look for a white van. The feeling of someone telling you where to be and when just never sat well with me. Even at my job in Miami I had a window for working and was on my own. For the rest of my adult life I had always worked on my own terms.
That Thursday the game ran pretty well, I was getting through dealing with copious consumption of painkillers, lots of laughs were had, and as 430am on Friday morning rolled around, the thought of working this new job felt like I was giving up. I knew I should be running my own business around consultation, and this job was going to pay a maximum of 50k a year. The idea of a fixed income was not appealing to me. I had to make steady money though, and my curiosity was piqued. As Monday came around, getting up at 7am was brutal, and I saw the van waiting for me.
"You're the new guy, huh? I'm Dale, I only do this part time, you would be taking over for me." I introduced myself and as it always does in April, the dry warm weather was starting to come back to Southwest Florida. As I got in the van I noticed the AC wasn't on. Dale explained that they had two vans - the newer one didn't work, and this one didn't have AC.
"So you only have one van then." I tried to reason with him that even if you have two vans physically situated on the property, if one did not run, then only one was useful. I was starting to sweat as the sun started to get a bit more intense. We drove ever so slowly to our first consult, all the way out by the interstate in a tract housing block of a gated community. These gated communities were just a joke. Anyone can just wait for a resident to come in and roll right behind them, I would do it all the time. Every house looked the same, barely landscaped, small lots of land, and little to no creativity. We approached a house that looked like it was literally finished yesterday, and an older gentleman came out. We introduced ourselves and I watched and took notes. Dale asked a few simple questions about color, size of plants how much money they would like to spend. I decided to ask a few different questions.
"Do you like palms with a smooth trunk? Would you like a hedge to cover that side view of the Publix across the street? Do you want your yard to look different than the others on the block?" Dale looked like I was asking big no-no questions, creativity was not a priority. I wasn't really getting a lot of feedback from this guy, it appeared the builder hadn't planted enough plants in their perfectly box-shaped yard and they had to bring it up to code. How ****ing boring.
As we got back to the office to set up the design of the property, I see that Dale is starting to sketch this property and make cute little bushes and palms where he wanted his design. I went over to the computer as I didn't want to break out any crayons or coloring books and I am a terrible artist.
"What are you doing? You can't use those computers over there!" A third guy, Don, was sitting at one computer using landscape software. "You are supposed to draw it up and then I will convert it to a computer generated landscape." Don was not a mean person, but he was very edgy and made me nervous when we were all in the landscape office. He also knew the owner of my first nursery very well, who was a borderline schizophrenic and it actually made a lot of sense.
"You mean to tell me I have to draw this landscape to scale with pencils?"
"Yes, then I will generate it on my program."
"Landscape Pro 2.1?"
"Yes, you have to go to school to use it right though, to get in line with Florida codes."
I had no idea what that meant other than "don't take my job from me", so I saw there and felt like I was in art class. It was like designing a web page on paper then having someone actually make it for you - way more time than it needed to be. I finally had it drawn out, brought it to Don, and after a few minutes he came to me with a puzzled look on his face.
"I don't have the codes for these species, we don't spec out plants we don't carry in the nursery."
"Why not, there is a higher profit margin on the specimen plants?"
"Well, I'll put them in, but I don't know how much the boss is going to like this."
I just gave him a quick cynical smile and headed out for the day. It was Thursday and Tim's game was running tonight. I couldn't handle being in that office with those guys who were so routine in their designs, pumping out slightly different versions of the same landscape plan. I was out in the employee parking lot smoking a cigarette when I see one of the rickety golf carts trudging along the uneven path with an old man at the wheel. The parking lot was just an extension of the specimen tree rack in the back and palm fronds and coconuts littered the ground.
"The customer parking is up front - this is where the boss makes us park our cars." This guy was a real charmer with his toothless grin and condescending attitude.
"I am working with the landscape design team, I am here a couple days a week."
"In that case, there is no smoking on the property for employees." This guy really came over here to **** with me like this?
"Sorry I didn't catch your name."
"People call me Grumpy."
"Do they now? I'm Liam, I'll be leaving soon."
I put out the cigarette behind the car and got in and headed back to the condo. I contemplated really going through with this whole 9-5 life, living a very predictable life, and making a predictable amount of money with a ceiling. The last time I did it, I had a dream job that had a lot of benefits to it and I still left after a year. I got home to the condo and Nicole knew it was poker night at Tim's house. The only thing that got me through the day at the garden center was nibbling on Lortab when no one was looking and not giving a **** about the IT guy's freakout on me. Now that it was over, poker was my opiate. I loved to eat painkillers, but when at the table, I rarely was high on them. I forgot about them as I was more focused on the game, the social aspect, and the thrill of stacking opponents. Painkillers were my way of getting through the rest of life.
This particular game was going to be full of dealers, usually my favorite, but it could definitely be swingy. Peter wasn't showing up to the games anymore thankfully, one of the few people in the home game scenes I had just come to hate. He represented everything that a home game shouldn't be - antisocial, **** talking, berating players for bad play as he gets stacked, and threatening violence. I wish I could put Grumpy in the game and watch his face as he lost stack after stack and he how fast that toothless grin came off his face. I was falling into that problem that most people who worked a 9 to 5 have - they talk about their job whenever they aren't at their job. That job was so far away right now it didn't even exist. What did exist however was me getting in almost 300 bucks with AK versus Nice Shoes KK
and binking an ace on the turn. Doubling up right away in a cash game is one of the best feelings - feeling like you have accomplished so much in so little time, that you can make a mistake or two and still be in the black. I really did feel a little guilty doing Shoes dirty - he had a wife who had left him, had lost his house, a lot of his money went straight to child support, and poker/gambling seemed to keep him alive. Still, it was poker, and feeling like this will make you leave any game broke.
The door to the rear of the house, which was rarely opened, suddenly busted open and you could feel the pressure break inside the sealed house. It caught most people at the game's attention and around the dark corner a figure appeared, bearded and dirty. It was Bookie. I know I mentioned Bookie was no longer to be seen in the poker games, and he wasn't, but he managed to set up new living quarters in Tim's backyard. Apparently no one had known about this, including myself, but it was nice to see him again, even if he was broke and occasionally smoking crack. He turned out to be a hit, sort of like a bit of nostalgia, looking back at a bit of the past in this poker game. He had come in to take his daily shower, but he told us what had been going on since his disappearance. He had met up with a younger woman who had introduced him to crack in their times together. Any money he still had left was wiped out, so he decided to rent out his recently deceased grandfather's house to his old booking partner's in-laws. After a few months, they eventually had stopped paying, and took up squatting in the house while Bookie lived in a tent out back after his truck broke down. He eventually sold everything he had except the house, which was in probate, and had asked Tim for a place to stay. Tim couldn't trust him inside because of the crack issue, but he allowed him out back and let him come in for food and showers. This was the same guy who was bringing 10-30K to games at the German's house. This was the guy you saw when you watched those "No one says they want to be a junkie when they grow up" commercials back in the 90s. It was a very real reminder of the dangers of drugs, gambling, and when both of these vices meet.
Out of respect for the fact he had given so much action in the games of yesteryear, I said hi to him and he was all smiles and even smacked me in the stomach and asked me why I was getting so fat. I told him I had started drinking strawberry Monster protein energy drinks, and he laughed. He would pound these things down like beers at a frat party, and when he was out, I always made a run to RaceTrac to get him more to keep him happy. Tim was a little irritated at Bookie and kind of shooed him out the back door like he wasn't supposed to be there and was scaring the players. A couple of the newer players didn't know who he was and didn't believe it when we told him he was the biggest player in this game just a year ago. Maybe having a 9 to 5 wasn't such a big deal, the security in it was great, and felt even better as I flopped bottom set on a J96 two tone board and got it in against middle set drawing nearly dead. Back to even and the game running into early morning, I called it quits with a 10 dollar loss. That whole evening essentially was a loss to me, eight hours of play and nothing to show for it.
On Monday morning I came into the office, ready to do some more ride alongs and landscape work, and the boss called me in to his office where he seals his deals for designs, much like a car dealership.
"I feel though you have a knack for landscaping, your knowledge of palms is exceptional and I feel like you would be a better salesman out in the nursery. You would sell large palms and plants and get commissions for them." I agreed to give it a try, and he pointed me to an employee I had run into a few times, a high energy guy about my age who seemed to have some knowledge about plants, nothing amazing. Apparently he was going to be my supervisor.
"What we do Monday mornings outside of season is make sure everything is trimmed up real nice. You want to get a pole saw and start on the Queen Palms in the middle row?" I thought I was selling palms, not trimming them. I wasn't even going to use power tools, but the migrant workers had a golf cart and all the power tools you need for this work.
"If you need to get to some of the fronds up high, get on a pallet and ask Grumpy to boost you up on the forklift. There was no way this was covered under their insurance, and Grumpy was quite grumpy about helping me out. When I had finally gotten down after balancing myself 8 feet up in the air on a palled held up by a forklift, I was called in to the administrative office by a lady who told me that before they could add me as an employee, they needed my social security card and I needed to take a drug test. I had lost my card a while back and told them I needed to go to the office, which they let me go do. On the way, I had a very important realization that I would never pass a drug test, I had been taking Lortab without a prescription - I had just been taking Nicole's pills because they were a stronger dose and she had insurance, I didn't. I was never going to be able to explain this to anyone without sounding like an addict, so I figured I would just go home and **** the job. I wasn't a tree trimmer, and I felt like the owner had given me the Florida hoodwink. That IT guy was obviously pissed I was doing the same work as him and had to have thrown me under the bus. Working for myself didn't seem so bad after all, Nicole wasn't such a fan of the job either, she had already mentioned that she wanted me to move down to her house with her, and I had been hesitant. It is hard when you have had a life somewhere for twelve years to suddenly pick up and go, to leave friends and family behind, even it is just an hour away. It was definitely something I had to think about for a bit before I made any decision, but the decision to leave the "salesman" job was a no brainer.
I never set foot on that property again or contacted them, and they didn't bother contacting me either. Whenever someone mentions their name I steer them clear of their overpriced inventory and shady sales tactics.
The dealing opportunities at Tim's game were really drying up. Games were running intermittently, people owed so much money that about half the players that would normally show up on the Thursday games were still there. My neck was constantly on fire and I would have to switch in and out of the box a lot more often than I wanted to, and get out and play. I felt my position at the game was slipping even though I had been there longer than anyone at the table. It became painful to watch people go busto with the $200 they brought and then asked to borrow $200 more three times over. I guess Tim was hoping they would win it back, but when two or three people are doing the same thing, they are just winning back each other's borrowed money. The worst, however, was when Rhett would be on his second and third buyin. He was like that guy in Tombstone who ran the crappy game in the saloon that they couldn't get him out of, and finally Wyatt Earp scares him off. He would whine and ***** and he had a resting ***** face that would win an Academy Award.
Sitting in the condo one evening I was on Craigslist looking at the job classifieds and saw a job offer for a landscape designer. The pay was not that great ($15/hr plus commission sales), but anything with some stability sounded good at the moment, and there was room for growth in the sales department. I felt that most landscapes in Florida were generally boring and basic, and I was very much in my comfort zone in this line of work. I sent an email to the address provided, heard back the next day, and after seeing that I had been in the plant business for ten years and had worked for some high end clients, told me to come in for an interview. The address he had provided was to a nursery and landscape center I liked to call a "gourmet nursery". The plants they offered were not much different than Home Depot or Lowe's, but they had larger sizes and offered full service landscaping. I had been to the garden center a few times over the past 12 years, I don't think I ever bought anything. I walked in and heard Caribbean music playing, overpriced wind chimes making noise throughout the interior, and went to the owner's office. He was definitely a good ole Florida boy, though not as friendly and outgoing as one would imagine. It was pretty clear he had inherited this grandfathered in property and was a little bit lost in the administration of it. I sat down with him and a little bit of frustration seemed to follow him around like clouds follow Linus in Peanuts. I was in the sales room, the nicest room in the building, clearly set up to relax a customer's mind as they decided whether or not to buy an overpriced landscaping package for their cookie cutter home.
"So, you have an impressive resume here. You used to work for Fairchild as their nursery manager?"
"Yes, I just couldn't handle Miami and the cost of living was too high compared to what I was getting paid."
"So you are money motivated then?"
"Of course I am, this isn't the best business to be in for it, but I enjoy the work I do so I am willing to make that sacrifice."
"You think you can upsell packages to customers?"
"I think I can offer options for customers that you may not have considered before."
At this he was a little taken back, it appeared something new being brought to the table gave him a bad taste in his mouth, like vinegar in his sweet tea.
"I can offer you connections for palms at prices you can mark up and sell around here. New palms that are getting hot in the landscape and other ones you may not have considered. Have you heard of Satakentia and Kentiopsis? They are perfect palms for the area."
He was not a big talker, his facial expressions did most of his talking. This nursery center was grandfathered in from the 1980s when the rest of the areas were zoned for gated neighborhoods. He appeared to have the same view on change as IBM did back then. He was still doing well in business, but adapting to new landscape styles and what a customer wants is what would keep you in the game. He had this unhappy look as if he had to make way for change but hated it.
"Alright, well why don't we put you on for some ride alongs with our current landscape designer. Are you free this Thursday or Friday?" I didn't want to tell him why I couldn't make it in on those days, but I explained I would be free starting the following week. He told me to be there at 8am Monday and look for a white van. The feeling of someone telling you where to be and when just never sat well with me. Even at my job in Miami I had a window for working and was on my own. For the rest of my adult life I had always worked on my own terms.
That Thursday the game ran pretty well, I was getting through dealing with copious consumption of painkillers, lots of laughs were had, and as 430am on Friday morning rolled around, the thought of working this new job felt like I was giving up. I knew I should be running my own business around consultation, and this job was going to pay a maximum of 50k a year. The idea of a fixed income was not appealing to me. I had to make steady money though, and my curiosity was piqued. As Monday came around, getting up at 7am was brutal, and I saw the van waiting for me.
"You're the new guy, huh? I'm Dale, I only do this part time, you would be taking over for me." I introduced myself and as it always does in April, the dry warm weather was starting to come back to Southwest Florida. As I got in the van I noticed the AC wasn't on. Dale explained that they had two vans - the newer one didn't work, and this one didn't have AC.
"So you only have one van then." I tried to reason with him that even if you have two vans physically situated on the property, if one did not run, then only one was useful. I was starting to sweat as the sun started to get a bit more intense. We drove ever so slowly to our first consult, all the way out by the interstate in a tract housing block of a gated community. These gated communities were just a joke. Anyone can just wait for a resident to come in and roll right behind them, I would do it all the time. Every house looked the same, barely landscaped, small lots of land, and little to no creativity. We approached a house that looked like it was literally finished yesterday, and an older gentleman came out. We introduced ourselves and I watched and took notes. Dale asked a few simple questions about color, size of plants how much money they would like to spend. I decided to ask a few different questions.
"Do you like palms with a smooth trunk? Would you like a hedge to cover that side view of the Publix across the street? Do you want your yard to look different than the others on the block?" Dale looked like I was asking big no-no questions, creativity was not a priority. I wasn't really getting a lot of feedback from this guy, it appeared the builder hadn't planted enough plants in their perfectly box-shaped yard and they had to bring it up to code. How ****ing boring.
As we got back to the office to set up the design of the property, I see that Dale is starting to sketch this property and make cute little bushes and palms where he wanted his design. I went over to the computer as I didn't want to break out any crayons or coloring books and I am a terrible artist.
"What are you doing? You can't use those computers over there!" A third guy, Don, was sitting at one computer using landscape software. "You are supposed to draw it up and then I will convert it to a computer generated landscape." Don was not a mean person, but he was very edgy and made me nervous when we were all in the landscape office. He also knew the owner of my first nursery very well, who was a borderline schizophrenic and it actually made a lot of sense.
"You mean to tell me I have to draw this landscape to scale with pencils?"
"Yes, then I will generate it on my program."
"Landscape Pro 2.1?"
"Yes, you have to go to school to use it right though, to get in line with Florida codes."
I had no idea what that meant other than "don't take my job from me", so I saw there and felt like I was in art class. It was like designing a web page on paper then having someone actually make it for you - way more time than it needed to be. I finally had it drawn out, brought it to Don, and after a few minutes he came to me with a puzzled look on his face.
"I don't have the codes for these species, we don't spec out plants we don't carry in the nursery."
"Why not, there is a higher profit margin on the specimen plants?"
"Well, I'll put them in, but I don't know how much the boss is going to like this."
I just gave him a quick cynical smile and headed out for the day. It was Thursday and Tim's game was running tonight. I couldn't handle being in that office with those guys who were so routine in their designs, pumping out slightly different versions of the same landscape plan. I was out in the employee parking lot smoking a cigarette when I see one of the rickety golf carts trudging along the uneven path with an old man at the wheel. The parking lot was just an extension of the specimen tree rack in the back and palm fronds and coconuts littered the ground.
"The customer parking is up front - this is where the boss makes us park our cars." This guy was a real charmer with his toothless grin and condescending attitude.
"I am working with the landscape design team, I am here a couple days a week."
"In that case, there is no smoking on the property for employees." This guy really came over here to **** with me like this?
"Sorry I didn't catch your name."
"People call me Grumpy."
"Do they now? I'm Liam, I'll be leaving soon."
I put out the cigarette behind the car and got in and headed back to the condo. I contemplated really going through with this whole 9-5 life, living a very predictable life, and making a predictable amount of money with a ceiling. The last time I did it, I had a dream job that had a lot of benefits to it and I still left after a year. I got home to the condo and Nicole knew it was poker night at Tim's house. The only thing that got me through the day at the garden center was nibbling on Lortab when no one was looking and not giving a **** about the IT guy's freakout on me. Now that it was over, poker was my opiate. I loved to eat painkillers, but when at the table, I rarely was high on them. I forgot about them as I was more focused on the game, the social aspect, and the thrill of stacking opponents. Painkillers were my way of getting through the rest of life.
This particular game was going to be full of dealers, usually my favorite, but it could definitely be swingy. Peter wasn't showing up to the games anymore thankfully, one of the few people in the home game scenes I had just come to hate. He represented everything that a home game shouldn't be - antisocial, **** talking, berating players for bad play as he gets stacked, and threatening violence. I wish I could put Grumpy in the game and watch his face as he lost stack after stack and he how fast that toothless grin came off his face. I was falling into that problem that most people who worked a 9 to 5 have - they talk about their job whenever they aren't at their job. That job was so far away right now it didn't even exist. What did exist however was me getting in almost 300 bucks with A
K versus Nice Shoes KK and binking an ace on the turn. Doubling up right away in a cash game is one of the best feelings - feeling like you have accomplished so much in so little time, that you can make a mistake or two and still be in the black. I really did feel a little guilty doing Shoes dirty - he had a wife who had left him, had lost his house, a lot of his money went straight to child support, and poker/gambling seemed to keep him alive. Still, it was poker, and feeling like this will make you leave any game broke. The door to the rear of the house, which was rarely opened, suddenly busted open and you could feel the pressure break inside the sealed house. It caught most people at the game's attention and around the dark corner a figure appeared, bearded and dirty. It was Bookie. I know I mentioned Bookie was no longer to be seen in the poker games, and he wasn't, but he managed to set up new living quarters in Tim's backyard. Apparently no one had known about this, including myself, but it was nice to see him again, even if he was broke and occasionally smoking crack. He turned out to be a hit, sort of like a bit of nostalgia, looking back at a bit of the past in this poker game. He had come in to take his daily shower, but he told us what had been going on since his disappearance. He had met up with a younger woman who had introduced him to crack in their times together. Any money he still had left was wiped out, so he decided to rent out his recently deceased grandfather's house to his old booking partner's in-laws. After a few months, they eventually had stopped paying, and took up squatting in the house while Bookie lived in a tent out back after his truck broke down. He eventually sold everything he had except the house, which was in probate, and had asked Tim for a place to stay. Tim couldn't trust him inside because of the crack issue, but he allowed him out back and let him come in for food and showers. This was the same guy who was bringing 10-30K to games at the German's house. This was the guy you saw when you watched those "No one says they want to be a junkie when they grow up" commercials back in the 90s. It was a very real reminder of the dangers of drugs, gambling, and when both of these vices meet.
Out of respect for the fact he had given so much action in the games of yesteryear, I said hi to him and he was all smiles and even smacked me in the stomach and asked me why I was getting so fat. I told him I had started drinking strawberry Monster protein energy drinks, and he laughed. He would pound these things down like beers at a frat party, and when he was out, I always made a run to RaceTrac to get him more to keep him happy. Tim was a little irritated at Bookie and kind of shooed him out the back door like he wasn't supposed to be there and was scaring the players. A couple of the newer players didn't know who he was and didn't believe it when we told him he was the biggest player in this game just a year ago. Maybe having a 9 to 5 wasn't such a big deal, the security in it was great, and felt even better as I flopped bottom set on a J96 two tone board and got it in against middle set drawing nearly dead. Back to even and the game running into early morning, I called it quits with a 10 dollar loss. That whole evening essentially was a loss to me, eight hours of play and nothing to show for it.
On Monday morning I came into the office, ready to do some more ride alongs and landscape work, and the boss called me in to his office where he seals his deals for designs, much like a car dealership.
"I feel though you have a knack for landscaping, your knowledge of palms is exceptional and I feel like you would be a better salesman out in the nursery. You would sell large palms and plants and get commissions for them." I agreed to give it a try, and he pointed me to an employee I had run into a few times, a high energy guy about my age who seemed to have some knowledge about plants, nothing amazing. Apparently he was going to be my supervisor.
"What we do Monday mornings outside of season is make sure everything is trimmed up real nice. You want to get a pole saw and start on the Queen Palms in the middle row?" I thought I was selling palms, not trimming them. I wasn't even going to use power tools, but the migrant workers had a golf cart and all the power tools you need for this work.
"If you need to get to some of the fronds up high, get on a pallet and ask Grumpy to boost you up on the forklift. There was no way this was covered under their insurance, and Grumpy was quite grumpy about helping me out. When I had finally gotten down after balancing myself 8 feet up in the air on a palled held up by a forklift, I was called in to the administrative office by a lady who told me that before they could add me as an employee, they needed my social security card and I needed to take a drug test. I had lost my card a while back and told them I needed to go to the office, which they let me go do. On the way, I had a very important realization that I would never pass a drug test, I had been taking Lortab without a prescription - I had just been taking Nicole's pills because they were a stronger dose and she had insurance, I didn't. I was never going to be able to explain this to anyone without sounding like an addict, so I figured I would just go home and **** the job. I wasn't a tree trimmer, and I felt like the owner had given me the Florida hoodwink. That IT guy was obviously pissed I was doing the same work as him and had to have thrown me under the bus. Working for myself didn't seem so bad after all, Nicole wasn't such a fan of the job either, she had already mentioned that she wanted me to move down to her house with her, and I had been hesitant. It is hard when you have had a life somewhere for twelve years to suddenly pick up and go, to leave friends and family behind, even it is just an hour away. It was definitely something I had to think about for a bit before I made any decision, but the decision to leave the "salesman" job was a no brainer.
I never set foot on that property again or contacted them, and they didn't bother contacting me either. Whenever someone mentions their name I steer them clear of their overpriced inventory and shady sales tactics.