THE FIRE

In the Repo business whether it's auto or rent-to-own the neighborhoods we work in are very tough, the projects are the worse. When you go into a project neighborhood it can go two ways ,They will think it's funny and yell all kind of stuff at you or yell about the customer you are there to see or They get this neighborhood gang thing going towards you and start yelling profanity at you or sometimes they start throwing stuff at you or your truck. On this day I was in what is known as Bird city and of course all streets are named after Birds. On this day I had been in a long and timely conversation with a lady over her keeping a TV for another week without paying, and that is another lesson always try to keep these conversations short if can, what happens is the neighborhood starts getting into it with your customers and within a project it's close housing so everything is within ear shot of what I call the stoop people, it's the people who hang out on the stoop and try to get into other peoples business all day long. I had won my battle with the customer and as I was getting the hand trucks out of the small box truck I was in, the neighbors and the stoop people were in full force saying things like "If you where trying to pick my TV up I'd be kicking that ass!" and alot of things that have to do with me being white and crap like that. Today the crowd was bigger than most times. I know to never respond to them it's like gas on a fire, so I just went about my business. When I came out of the house a crowd had gathered around my truck and when I was pulling the TV up to the truck to load it up, the crowd got loud they started yelling and cussing, so I thought "I will just put this TV into the truck and get down the road, then strap it in. I got the TV into the truck and walked around to the cab and I could hear thing hitting the back and side of my truck and all kind of names were being yelled at me, your instinct is to yell back or to make some kind of gesture with your hands but I know this will not get you anything but some hospital time, so I just got in and took off. I had gone maybe 3 miles when I heard a car horn just continuously blowing, I looked to my right their was a guy in a city truck waving at me to roll down my window so I did this, he yelled at me "Hey Dude your truck box is on fire" I looked out behind me and I saw smoke! I waved at the guy then moved the truck all the way over to the shoulder. I jumped out and ran behind the truck and the smoke was boiling out. I pulled open the door and I couldn't see much but I knew if their was smoke their had to be fire! I couldn't see the TV so I grabbed the blankets from the back of the truck and the smoke just got thicker, about this time a guy in the yard next to where I had parked said hey" then he handed me a water hose so I started spraying into the back of the truck trying to stay away from were I had put the TV. I looked down I could see where it was coming from the blankets, they weren't on fire but their was a 2 ft ring of burning like a cigarette so I sprayed all them down good and then I could see again. The fire was out and the TV was ok but smelt like smoke but other than that and a black ring on the floor of the truck box everything was good. I was looking within the truck box to see if I could see what had started the fire and I found about 10 different cigarette butts in the truck box so I guess while I was getting the TV out of my customers house the idiots by my truck where thumping cigarette butts into the truck box.You can see that in this type of collections and repo it's good to be tough but it's always better to be smarter.