The Cheapest Person Ever

Most of you reading this are familiar with me only as an entertaining (well, entertaining-ish) voice on the radio or a guy who writes about the travails of loving a horrible NFL team (oh, Redskins, how I swear your ups and downs will someday lead me to seppuku). But one of the masks I wear most often in my day-to-day life is that of CEO and generalissimo for life of my very own locksmith company. It’s a surprisingly fun job that pays the bills, allows me to assign my own hours, and, once in a while, puts me in touch with some very interesting characters (although none of them have been bored, busty housewives or barely-clothed college coeds requesting a “big tool to open their tight little lock.” Has porn lied to me?) Today, I present you with a tale of one of these fascinating people.

The Sunday had started like any other. I was driving on my way to a friend’s house to participate in one of our famous swimsuit-and-lingerie-models-only orgies (okay, it was to play with Magic cards while the soundtrack to Conan the Barbarian blared in the background. Happy?) when I received a call from an unknown number. I answered the phone, and my heart immediately sank.

Now, I’m not a racist (the instant anyone says that, be aware that they’ve probably participated in a few Michael Bolton from Office Space moments), but whenever a customer calls and speaks with this particular ethnicity’s accent, I know I’m in for absurd amounts of haggling (which annoys me to no end). Sure enough, I got an eight minute explanation as to why the $55 I wanted to charge her to pick the lock to her front door (easily $30 cheaper than anyone else’s price, mind you) was too much and she couldn’t afford it. I was praying for this woman to hang up over the price issue so I could go and play with cards depicting elves and dragons like a normally adjusted 28-year-old male, but no dice. Just like that, play time was over and I was on my way to let this woman into her house.

A few minutes of driving go by and I receive a second call from my customer. As a locksmith, the second call is never good. It means they’ve either managed to get in their house and you’re no longer needed or they feel like haggling some more over the dollars. Any way you slice it, it’s probably something I don’t want to hear, and I long for a button on my cell phone I could press to send the caller to a special “Fuck you, pay me!” voice message. This lady goes for broke, however, and I receive a request that’s new even for me: She wants me to pick her and her child up from their current location (apparently not the house address she had me plug into my GPS) and then drive them back to the house that they want to get them into.


Now, perhaps I’m overreacting, but when did I become a free limousine service? Was she trying to bust my balls with a clever, white-guy-plays-taxi-driver-to-the-indian gag? I felt like reenacting this scene from Pulp Fiction with her in the role of Jules. What balls on this chick. I mean, I’ll do anything for a friend, but I DON’T KNOW HER FROM EVE. AT LEAST OFFER TO TOSS IN A FEW BUCKS FOR GAS! At this point, I viewed the entire job like Vietnam: The more time I spent entangled, the more I would lose. Better to just go ahead and get things over with.



I drove up to the house where my customer was located and gave a ring to let her know I was there. She opened the door, then, in a very considerate move, spent two or three minutes having a conversation with her friend before finally leaving the house as I sat in my car with the gas running, praying for Vishnu to appear in a puff of smoke and beat this shit out of her with all four of his arms. The ride to her house was a delight, filled with awkward silence as her child wiped her muddy boots all over the back seat of my pristine vehicle. I’ve never wanted to share my passenger’s belief in reincarnation more, because if I did, I’d have slammed the three of us into a telephone pole just to make sure she’d come back as a tapeworm (though, with my luck, she’d probably reincarnate inside my colon).


The house I finally pulled up to was a sprawling McMansion with a BMW in the garage (I suddenly felt tremendously remorseful about despising my customer’s haggling, given how obviously dire her financial situation was). After a few moments, her door was opened and I was handed three $20 dollar bills, which changed my entire mood, because I felt the extra $5 was a nice little “Thanks for going the extra mile” move. But no, C. Mahatma Burns wasn’t done. She cleared her throat, indicating she wanted change back. “I’m sorry, I don’t have any cash on me” I replied (which was the truth). “Not a problem at all!” she exclaimed, bounding off to the kitchen junk drawer, from which she pulled a gigantic roll of $5s, $10s and $20s that would have choked Ted DiBiase. $55 later and an article richer, I was on my way. Ain’t life grand?

Tagged as: FML,  Ted DiBiase.