The Well Dressed Hustler with Balls of Steel
There’s this one fellow who’s hustled two of my colleagues, one of our drivers, and a rabbi. He's attempted to hustle some of my company’s clients and a few of the other neighborhood businesses. His method was fairly straight forward: he’d wait until after business hours, then tell folks he worked for us but had locked his car in our garage and left his key to the garage at home. Could they give him a lift to [insert town far enough away to be inconvenient but not so far as to be implausible]? No? How about $20 for the train? Well, OK then.
His ruse went awry when he actually had the balls to walk into our place of business and tried a similar line, claiming to work for the business across the street. Needless to say, we showed him to the door and reminded him that our business is very, very tight with the local police precinct.
We didn’t hear anything about this guy for six months.
So, today I get a call from a local Chevy dealership asking us when we were planning on picking up our ’97 Chevy Whatsitsname. We own no ’97 Chevys of any sort, I informed the man, and I asked him who had dropped off the car for repair. A well dressed well mannered guy? soft but well-spoken? in his early to mid 30s? on the tall side? acts demure, even a bit effete? very short hair? racial features sort of indeterminate? Indeed. Well, let me tell you a little bit about this fella…
So it will be interesting to see how Mr. Hustler with the Balls of Steel reacts when he comes to pick up “our” company car and discovers that several uniformed officers would like to take him for a ride in another type of car altogether. In an odd way, I’m actually kind of rooting for him. Just a little bit.
His ruse went awry when he actually had the balls to walk into our place of business and tried a similar line, claiming to work for the business across the street. Needless to say, we showed him to the door and reminded him that our business is very, very tight with the local police precinct.
We didn’t hear anything about this guy for six months.
So, today I get a call from a local Chevy dealership asking us when we were planning on picking up our ’97 Chevy Whatsitsname. We own no ’97 Chevys of any sort, I informed the man, and I asked him who had dropped off the car for repair. A well dressed well mannered guy? soft but well-spoken? in his early to mid 30s? on the tall side? acts demure, even a bit effete? very short hair? racial features sort of indeterminate? Indeed. Well, let me tell you a little bit about this fella…
So it will be interesting to see how Mr. Hustler with the Balls of Steel reacts when he comes to pick up “our” company car and discovers that several uniformed officers would like to take him for a ride in another type of car altogether. In an odd way, I’m actually kind of rooting for him. Just a little bit.
posted by digitalprimate at 5:01 PM
1 Comments:
Had a guy in a suit with a couple of cell phones run a 'car broke down, about 15 blocks away, need about $5 for transbay bus ticket to get home. have no money but could hook you up with some computer merchandise or write you a check later' etc etc. He was only marginally believable but it's one of those things that's hard to walk away from. The person I was with gave him $5 mostly to just go away I think. I told him I've lived in Berkeley too long to trust strangers in need of money. Especially skinny people. I don't care if you're in a suit, if you're skinny you're probably on crack.
-hurtstotouchfire
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