A little trailer park drama

Today marks a year I've been working at my current job. I really like working at Sidtek (BTW I made that site), albeit it doesn't always pay every single bill every month, but it is a lot of fun. Tomorrow we'll be going to the business expo. For the past month and a half or so, I've been working hard on case mods and...well...this Hard Drive Collage Mobile Transit Unit. I really don't know how to describe it other than what I've done on my web page, so just follow the link. Most likely I'll be posting pictures of my latest and greatest case mod too.

Trailer life has been a little too exciting recently. This month we get two leaks for the price of one. A little while ago we sprung a leek under the bathroom sink at a "T" joint, and yesterday a new leek was discovered between the 12Volt water pump and something else that I don't know what it does. I'm guessing it's some kind of water filter. In any case, I guess I'll learn soon enough.

Now for a little trailer park drama...

Being the nice guy that I am, I do some minor computer repair for the front office here in the RV park. Normally I don't charge them because it's simple stuff; like removing floppies from the disk drive so they boot up. I only actually charged them once because I had to do a Windows reinstall, and since my loyalty to my job has increased with raises I'm not inclined to do under the table work. So I charged the RV park what I would charge any other customer for a reinstall of Windows, and they were happy. Not only where they happy they got a computer back up and running, but you see my boss is such a nice guy he let the RV park take the charge off of my rent instead of paying him. I certainly wasn't going to complain.

This all happen just before my electric meter stopped working. It's my curse to be an honest guy, so when I paid my electric bill I told them about my meter. No harm, I still got 3 weeks of free electricity. The front office was so happy with me, because seriously, who would say anything if their electric meter just stopped? They were so happy with me they sent me a fictitious electric bill to "recoup" their loss? Their loss? They're a freakin' RV Park! They have at least 200 people paying $265 a month, and they're worried about my few weeks of free electricity? On top of that they charged me more for the time my meter wasn't working than I've ever used before. The most I've ever spent on electricity was around 55 Kilo-Watt hours a day; they charged me 62.

My first instinct is to go in the front office and give them a piece of my mind, but after talking it over with my boss I came up with a new plan. The RV park showed me that they don't give a damn about anything but money. They didn't take into account that I've done all kinds of work for them without charge because they're more than landlords; they're neighbors too. I was always taught to be nice to neighbors. Apparently they weren't raised in such a way (kind of sad since I'm 24 and they're at least 100 and they don't understand the concept of neighborly). I also understand that it's not fair to blame the park, it's really just one person. Everyone else is actually really fair and neighborly. Anyway, back to my plan. They're greedy and care more about money than being neighborly or even satisfying customers, so they came up with an electric bill that could never hold up in court. And now, next time I go to take a floppy disk out of the drive, they get charged our minimum of 1 hour labor--$81.19.

So that was my plan, I wasn't sure when it would be put into effect, but guess who called the repair shop the day after I got the phony electric bill? Yup, you know it was my RV park. I was out of the shop for all of 12 minutes (so this includes drive time there and back) and charged them $81.19. When I went to go pay their made up bill I was able to hand them an invoice that was actually a few dollars more. My theory here is, I'm going to treat them the way they treat me, like ruthless bushiness men.