Once, for a short period of time, I was an evictor. (or is that evictress?)
This was an offshoot of a landscape/apartment maintenance job I had after I graduated from high school. Occasionally, as part of the job at the apartments the supervisor would round us up from all over the grounds and we would drop our weed buckets, stop planting flowers, or stop fiddling with the sprinkler heads and heed the call of “Eviction!”
We would all hop into the back of the bossman’s pickup and he would drive us over to whichever apartment needed to be gutted. There were usually four or five of us, and we would walk in, armed with industrial size plastic bags.
A couple of months after I started, the apartment manager approached my friend and I about some sidework. He asked us if we wanted to do some “off property” evictions when there were slow days at the apartments.
“We could use some more girls on our team, heh heh,” my manager said and winked ominously. My friend declined-she had done a couple evictions on the property with me and decided that she didn’t like turning a person’s entire physical life out onto the front lawn of an apartment building. I asked her later what she thought he meant by wanting “more girls on the team.” She was older than me (21 to my 17) and I respected her opinion.
“Oh, well, women evictors are probably less likely to get into fights when you take all of the people’s stuff out of their house.”
“Hmmmm.”
I thought about it for a day or so and then decided I could use the extra cash that “off-props” would bring. My first job was in a skeezy apartment building downtown. We climbed out of the beat-up van and stood around waiting for orders while our supervisor went to see if the occupant was in the apartment, and what the situation was. As I went into the apartment, the first thing I noticed was how…pink… it was. Almost everything in it was very gamine and revolved around the theme of love of one kind or another. In the middle of the apartment stood the soon-to-be- former occupant, sobbing into a cel phone. Her voice was frantic, but her face was surprisingly emotionless.
“Daddy, they’re here right now! Can you pick me up, please? All my stuff’s going to be out front.” A pause ensued in which I could here a male voice rumbling from the other end. She continued, “Well, can you have Tim come over then, please? I have NO-WHERE-TO-GO!” She stomped her tiny foot for emphasis on the last four syllables.
I broke off my blatant staring at this point and got to work, stuffing her personal possessions into bags willy-nilly while the men carried out heavier pieces of furniture. It was on odd collection of possessions- the bookshelves were full of sex manuals and the apartment was covered in frills and lacy drapes. There were magnets of nude people on the fridge and nude sculptures on the end tables. The whole effect was pretty untasteful and giving me the creeps- it reminded me of Toulouse-Lautrec’s whorehouse paintings, as decorated by someone with a KMart budget.
Attached to a light switch was a miniature rubbery green penis. I found out later, after I nabbed it, that it glowed in the dark. This was the only eviction job I ever stole something from, and I’m not sure why I did it-perhaps I wanted a souvenir from this weird environment.
After we got all of the woman’s belongings out on the lawn my supervisor locked her out and we were on our way. I watched her through the small back window of the van as she stood on the front lawn idly kicking at pebbles and calling the fourth or fifth person to see if they could come get her. I had a feeling this wasn’t the first time she’d been evicted.
On the way back my supervisor mentioned that he heard from the big boss that she was a stripper.
“Looks like she brings her work home, huh?” he said, and everyone had a big laugh but me.