Kirk Kaiser Speaker 1
Mickey Eberts Speaker 2
Art Huber Speaker 3
Danielle Young Speaker 4
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Glad you could join us on FM After Hours, the ultimate podcast for all things facility management. We’re here to take you on a journey into the ever-changing world of fm. Don’t forget to check out our gracious sponsor, remediate your trusted partner in fire and life safety, compliance and Granger for the ones who get it done. And with that, let’s dive in.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
All right, thanks everybody. Welcome back to FM after hours. Got the whole crew here. I’m Mickey. We got Kirk, we got Danielle, and we got art.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Careful guys. We’re in the presence of a celebrity. Okay.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Exactly. Do you even know what an influencer is? Sure.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
His
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Daughter told him.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Exactly. You are well on your way.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
You
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Are
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Influencer.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, art has a big head, both literally and figuratively. Wait, before I get ahead of myself, let me make sure, I think our sponsors remediate and Granger, and then I’m going to kick it over to Danielle to set it up.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
So I’ve gotten some feedback that people love hearing more about you. So we’re going to do a little bit more about that today.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
We’re
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Going to be jumping into more stories. I want to know about some pranks that maybe you’ve pulled in your history of your career
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Or just
Speaker 3 (01:12):
In
Speaker 1 (01:12):
General. It doesn’t have to be career, right?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
It doesn’t have, in general, if you have a top tier prank outside of work, I want to hear about it. So I’ll start off.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Okay. Good
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Work. In a corporate job, you’re in an office every single day of your life, and so you have to do something to kind of spice your day up. One of the many things that we do at our office is we hide little mini ducks around the office and then people are, they’ll go to a meeting and they’ll come back and there’ll be a new duck on their office. Is
Speaker 2 (01:45):
That you doing that?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
No, it was Sarah.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Oh, I got ducks everywhere.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Yeah, I still have, see prank is still happening and it stopped six months ago. Another one is when we get word that somebody is moving on to a new position or leaving their current desk, we’ll start hiding little photos randomly throughout their cubicle. My most recent was Jeff Goldblum. I would print off little mini pictures of Jeff Goldblum and tape them to tape dispensers, add Jeff Goldblum to a group photo that you have until they start noticing them. So that’s just something that I do.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Well, the duck one worked because
Speaker 3 (02:25):
The whole office was part of that.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I mean, I’d walk into my office and I’m like, what the hell is that? And then once you see it, you start looking around. There’s a duck there and there’s a duck there.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, that was funny.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yeah, so let’s talk more about that. Who wants to jump off?
Speaker 5 (02:43):
Because mine are always lame because I don’t have the guts that there’s some Mickey that I’ll have to remind him of to tell you. But mine is really, really lame. I was very young and I thought I was being really cool. And this is so lame compared to some of the things. Even your ducks is more exciting than this. But I was, at the time when I had started my career, I told you before that I was in environmental services and I was a supervisor at this huge hospital in Michigan, and the guy that was my boss had just been promoted into this role and he really knew nothing. I mean, he knew nothing about the business. This is back to all those conversations I had about degrees and all that stuff. He had a degree. So he was put into the assistant director position and he was my boss.
(03:31):
And we had been working now for about probably six months, and he really liked me and the work I was doing, he was really excited. I was getting things done and then I started realizing he was depending on me all the time for doing a good job. So I had this April Fools thing. I just told him, Hey, I thought about it. I’m going to join the military. I’m going to go into officer training school, and I’m resigning. And this guy was kind of complected in the first place. And I mean, he just went white. And I mean, I carried this thing on until April 1st and getting all ready to go. And he was just like, what am I going to do? He’s going to be gone. And then on April, oh, you’re
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Lucky. That was the response.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
I know exactly. Years after that I was thinking about this. He could have just let me go. I resigned. He thought I was
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Going, can you imagine if he really was good?
Speaker 5 (04:20):
He was good. He would’ve brought in your replacement.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Exactly. And you would not have known God. He would’ve had you. So good.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
I said, that’s as much as I’ve ever done. That was crazy. I thought about it afterwards. I could have gotten fired or I would’ve had a job. Those
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Are always the best pranks. Whenever you have a lead up time to the actual prank happening, you’re really choosing to invest your time into this.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
And yeah, he had bought into it. Oh, that’s great for you. I wonder. I’m going to tell him because he is dying.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Great. Now I’m really going to have to enlist. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I love pranks, right? There can be little one. You seem like a
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Prankster.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Little ones where you’ll go in one person’s office and take their mouse and go put it in the other person’s office and vice versa. And then they come out of a meeting and they’re both running each other’s computers, right? Stupid little things. But then there’s obviously the more elaborate ones, but then there’s a spur. I don’t know. They all got their categories. So I’ll tell you one. So not a work story, but we went up to Canada and went on a bird hunt. And so in a bird hunt, you guy got to get up super early to go put everything out and everything. And so the night we’re in the middle of nowhere and we check into this, what’s the definition of a hotel or motel? Motel is two stories or less. It was a motel. I
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Always thought a hotel was when you were inside a motel was when you had the door, the
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Door outside. Then it was that classifies too. Then it was a two level hotel in the middle of nowhere Canada. And so we check in and there’s like seven or eight of us. And so the first guy that checks in is one of my buddies, and we belong to this club called Arrived Outdoors. It’s like an adventure club here locally. And so you go do trips and stuff and everything together. And so the guys,
(06:10):
And so you go up there and so he checks in and the guy, and he had been up there the year before and it was my first year up there. And he checks in, the guy shows, he shows up and he calls the guy Winston. And I didn’t know if that was the hotel manager’s name or not, or if that was a joke. They both chuckled and I’m a little confused, but whatever. So he is like, oh, Winston. And he is like, so he’s like, all right Chad. He goes, Hey, Chad, room 1 0 3. So in my mind I’m like, just keep Chad 1 0 3. So we all go through the check-in process, and that was that evening. We’re going to get up super early in the morning. So we went to the hotel karaoke bar. Oh my gosh. And had way too many libations. And so we’re leaving the karaoke bar. And so we’re going past, I’m like, oh, I forgot something. So I go back to the, and as they walk around the corner, I go to the hotel front desk. If you call from your room, they know it’s coming from your room.
(07:09):
So I walked up and I’m like, Hey, Winston, I dunno if the guy’s name or not. And he is, he’s just standing there. And I’m like, Hey, so Chad Dodge, room 1 0 3. And I go, can I go wake up, call for 4:00 AM and it’s like two. And we got to get up at six because Chad earlier in the night was complaining if he ever woke up, he could never go back to sleep. And he’s like, I don’t like to have the lights on. And I was just stumble into the shower. And so literally the wake up call came, he stumbled in the shower, got all ready, couldn’t go back to sleep. So we show up at breakfast and he’s got bloodshot eyes, and he’s like, oh no. And he’s like, dog cussing Winston. He’s like, Winston gave me an effing wake up call and he’s going at it.
(07:53):
And so we go out and we come back and later at the end of the night we go have dinner and we come back. And so we have another night, nowhere else to go. So we go back to the karaoke bar. I would just the worst thing of all. And so we go walking by and Chad, as we’re walking by the front desk, Chad goes, oh, stop. And he goes walking up to the front desk and he goes, all right Winston. He goes, I want to make sure I don’t have a wake up call. So he is like, you don’t have anything for room 1 0 3, can you check? He’s got a sheet. And he’s like, nothing on the sheet. And he looks in the computer and there’s nothing in the computer. And he’s like, I don’t have anything for you. He’s like, okay, fine. He goes, so I want to a wake up call for 5:45 AM And he’s like, okay. And again, it’s like one 30 or two o’clock in the morning. And so I turn around, I go back to the front desk,
Speaker 5 (08:39):
No, no. And
Speaker 1 (08:40):
I’m like, I walk up and I go, Hey, Winston. I go, Chad Dodge, room 1 0 3. And he looks at me and I go, wake up, call for 4:00 AM and he just looks at me and I literally go in my pocket and pull out a $5 bill. I mean a $5 bill. It’s slided across. And he goes, 4:00 AM It is flexing at the computer. We should wake up for breakfast the next morning. Chad is losing. It is like if Winston was there, he is going to go kill him, right? So he’s had no sleep for two nights in a row. So the next night he literally, and Chad’s a big dude, he was a middle linebacker for K State. So he is,
Speaker 3 (09:19):
He’s big guy,
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Big dude. And so he ripped the phone out of the wall that morning. So he didn’t have a phone. So the irony though was like, we get to the airport, and if you’ve ever had your phone, you can always get to the camera. You can’t get to the, but, so he went to the restroom, left his phone out there. So I just started taking pictures of people’s feet and their rear ends and all these pictures and left his phone back then. But the beauty of the joke that you said earlier is when it manifests itself. So never really said anything, right? So during the breakfast and stuff, there was a few of us that knew what I was doing, but by and large, I never said I did it right?
(10:00):
So it was like two or three weeks later, we were in our club. We’ve got a clubhouse type area. And so he’s sitting there and so he’s telling something about the duck hunt. And then he goes, and this whole thing is, and I can hear him telling about getting these wake up calls and stuff, right? Wake up. And so I go, as I’m walking by, he’s telling the story and they’re all laughing. And I go, Hey, Chad, by the way, that was me. And you see the 10 or 15 seconds it takes to register? And he goes, M, right. He’s just like, you got me good. Right? Then as I’m walking, I turn and I go, oh, by the way, all those pictures in your phone, that was me too. And he has lost it. It was good. It had manifested itself for weeks.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
That’s amazing. They are my favorite kinds.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
I love the idea that Winston was willing to take an Aspen.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
For
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Five, $5. Yeah, no. So later on he goes, how did you get Winston to do it? The second night I go, A Fiverr. He goes, Winston did it for a Fiverr. I’m like, yeah, that’s awesome.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
So mine, I know what you going to tell? Yeah, I got to be careful because most of mine are X-rated.
Speaker 5 (11:14):
Well, there’s one, the best one, or that I know of, I is, I don’t know which one you were going to tell, but this is the you or Tommy getting even putting his name on all of the,
Speaker 2 (11:31):
You got to tell that one.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
That is
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Unbelievable. Alright, so first let me start with the prank. He played on me.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Okay,
Speaker 2 (11:37):
So I got married, I started working at UPS at 17, I got married at 18. Now today’s a different time. So I’m choose my words carefully. My first wife was aggressive. And what I mean by that is she’d beat the hell out of you. So if we got into an argument now, she was very small. So
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Scrappy, imagine he, he not chosen those words carefully. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
I’ve heard it different. Exactly. I, and she’d sneak up behind you. She’d throw frying pans at you. So I mean, you had to be on point, right? If you were doing something to upset her, you needed to pay attention. So I work at UPS. I would take an apple every day to UPS, and I’d eat it as a snack. And one day I go to the area where I’m working and somebody took a bite out of my apple. So I’m aggravated, like you don’t mess with somebody’s food. So I’m pissed. So I’m trying to figure out who took a bite out of my apple. Everybody’s acting like they don’t know what’s going on. So I get aggravated, but there’s nothing I can do about it. So I go home. No, I work third shift. So I go home, I go to bed. When I wake up, my wife is trying to kill me.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
What?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
And I don’t understand. She’s throwing stuff at me, she’s swinging at me, she’s trying to kick me, and I’m blocking and running and hiding. And this is a long time ago, 19 88, 19 89, we had an answering machine. So she hits this message, and it’s this female voice, very sexy, saying, basically, Mickey, I took a bite out of your apple.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Oh, no.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
And something like, wait till you see what I bite next, right?
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
So my wife heard this message and thinks I’m now doing something I’m not supposed to do. So she’s ready to kill me, and I am in the middle of trying to defend myself and deal with the situation. And then it hits me. So I call Tommy and I’m like, dude, I’m going to hand you, I’m going to hand my wife the phone, and you’re going to tell her right now what you just did. And it was him. And so he cleared it up, and she stopped trying to kill me for a little while. Now, fast forward, we ended up getting a divorce. Wonder why? And I will say most of the time she was trying to beat me up. I probably deserved it. So no hard feelings just in case she’s around the corner
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Trying to be politically correct
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Over. I know. So hard. So hard, right? I know. Because if we weren’t doing this with other pi, the words I’d be using would be completely different.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
If we were at, I’m going to need, if we were at the karaoke bar, it would be different. Exactly. We’re
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Going to need to get the unedited.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Okay. So fast forward, I’m divorced, and I am quasi dating this girl, and she says this Halloween, and I said, what do you want to do for Halloween? And she said, now I’m young. I mean, I’m 25. She says, I want to go to the chamber. I think it was called. So the chamber was, I don’t know if it even exists now, but it was a club in Atlanta that was a bondage s and m club.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
It’s funny, right before you sit there, be like a swingers club. And then
Speaker 2 (15:17):
It actually was. And so Halloween night we go, and I mean, the things people were wearing, just standing in line was amazing. But essentially, you go into this big massive warehouse. And there’s, for the lack of a better way to say it, there’s stage after stage, after stage row after row after row of people doing different things.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Have you ever been to one? No,
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I have. Yeah. Right. I mean, they’re doing it. And each one has a different kind of fetish theme. And I’m cool. I’m like, okay, this is good. And even more so if they like you, they’ll try to pull you in. So
Speaker 4 (16:02):
I’m
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Going to say this. We were there for a while. So you come out of the club, and it’s almost like you enter a gift shop, but it’s this massive lobby, and there’s these tables and they’re lined up all along the wall. This was a long time ago. So I go to this table, and so there’s little pads, and every pad is a different fetish. And essentially if you fill this out, they will send you magazines for these different fetishes.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
Oh,
Speaker 1 (16:42):
No.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
So Tommy Downs lived at 27, 28 Cordite Loop in Snellville, Georgia. I think the zip code’s 3 0 2 7 8. So what I did, and this took me an hour to do this, and I had the girl that was with me doing it with me, it was 27, 26, 27, 25, 27, 24, 27, 21.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Oh, everyone around him,
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Every one of
Speaker 1 (17:08):
His neighbor. Oh, that’s even better. Oh, it was so good.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Yes. Oh, that’s really good. I don’t remember with his
Speaker 5 (17:15):
Name on it. Yes.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
And I don’t say anything. Right, just like you’re talking about. Right. So months go by and then all of a sudden he’s like, what the fuck did you do? Oh my God,
Speaker 3 (17:29):
That’s so good.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Now, these are some hardcore fetishes, right? They’re, I mean, it’s hardcore. And so his neighbors, they’re bringing them to him. They’re coming to us. Hey man, this is for you. So then now his wife calls me and she’s like, I cannot believe you did this. I’m so embarrassed. And I’m just like, yes, that was so good. That was the best I’ve ever heard. Oh my
Speaker 3 (17:59):
God.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
So I’m proud of that.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
I’m going to have to ask him about that.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Tell
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Me about your magazine subscriptions.
Speaker 5 (18:06):
Yeah. You still getting ’em?
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
He got the address right now. He corrected all the address, right?
Speaker 2 (18:13):
He started it. I’ll tell you another one. He did, this is terrible. So I think I’m like 18. So again, I was sort of rough. I didn’t communicate. I hadn’t learned to be social yet. And he was my boss, and he was trying to get to know me. So he went around to the guys that I work with and just asked questions about me. And they were like, oh, yeah, he’s married. His wife’s name’s Shannon. He grew up, he went to Far Park, senior high, dah, dah, dah, dah. He comes down to the area where I’m working, and there’s a belt packages and all this stuff. And he starts saying, Hey, man, somebody told me you were from Far Park. And I’m like, yeah, yeah, I am. He goes, yeah. He goes, I didn’t spend a lot of time down there, but there was this one girl that I met, and she was a freak. And so I’m like, okay. And so he starts describing her, and he’s describing my wife. No way. And then I’m not going to say her name, right? Yeah, yeah, totally. He says, her name is da da. And I go over the belt. I don’t even say a word. I go over the belt, land on top of him, and I’m throwing punches. And the guys, of course, they grab us, pull us apart, and he’s like, I got you. And I’m like, you’ve lost your mind. He got you so good. He did.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Oh, man.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
So he’s not innocent in this whole thing. He
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Had it coming.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah,
Speaker 5 (19:56):
No
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Doubt. Oh my gosh. Can we say stuff like this?
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Is
Speaker 2 (20:01):
This okay?
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Yeah. Is
Speaker 2 (20:03):
It too much?
Speaker 3 (20:03):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Okay. Sure.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
But that’s what most of my stories are like.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Yeah. I think if anything, it’s given ’em a glimpse into the, you can be just Mickey and all these guys and be where you’re at in your career.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Well, I mean, I’ve said this. If you asked me back then what I thought my trajectory could possibly be, it would not be this,
Speaker 4 (20:26):
Right?
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I mean, it would not be. So it is what if I can do it? You can do it. Yeah,
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Right? Yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:38):
Just stay out of jail, right? For the most part.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
There’s
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Ways around that. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 3 (20:47):
I don’t even know where to go from here.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have told those stories.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
No, it’s okay. We can play around with it, so it’s fine.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
Well, one of the things that, bringing it kind of back to our work world, thank you Art. There’s art it we’re having fun, and we got to come back. It’s not a prank. It could be considered a prank, but it wasn’t really on purpose, a prank. But after we worked together for multiple years, and we went on to different careers, and I hired ’em again. Again, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I called them up and said, I need some people. And this job was where I was a regional director of a bunch of hospitals that we had contracts with, and we had one in Ohio, and Oh my God. I’ll let you finish the story, but I’ll start it. Oh, God. So this one hospital where I didn’t know that much about it because a regional director, I never went to the, I mean, I go visit the administrator and say, how are things going?
(21:53):
And of course they, oh, you’re spending too much money or whatever. But then I go see the director that was placed there and say, fix this, fix that, whatever. Well, I had this one where the guy just gone. He was gone, and I needed to send somebody, and Mickey wanted to leave where we used to be at together. And I said, well, I can give you a job today, and you can be out there next week. Get on a plane. You’re out in Ohio, and you’re going to be the director, the interim director at this hospital. So off to Ohio goes,
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Okay, so first of all, let’s back up a second.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
Oh, you’re going to have to give all this, this stuff.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
So first of all, it wasn’t. It was, he’s right. Hey, man, I’d like to make a change. I need help. We will hire you. So I say, okay, you get the job offer. You turn your notice in. You don’t do it before. So I turn my notice in, I come back, I’m like, Hey, man, I turned two weeks in. He goes, that’s not going to work. I need you Monday. It is Friday. I need you Monday. Well, I don’t advise this. You shouldn’t do this. I did it anyway, but I did it. And I said, okay, I’ll do it. But the job was a travel job. It was a 10 day on four day off rotation. And so you said earlier, you either know how to travel or you
Speaker 4 (23:13):
Well,
Speaker 2 (23:13):
I never really traveled before. So I go, I tell my wife at this time, Emily, I’m like, I got to go buy a suitcase. I got to go buy clothes.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
We wear suit and ties.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Yeah,
(23:27):
I didn’t have suits. I didn’t have ties. So I go Mad dash Saturday, buy all this stuff. I’m on a plane Monday morning. He doesn’t give me the context. He says, I didn’t know the context. He says, meet me in Pittsburgh. Right. So I get on the first flight out to Pittsburgh. It’s early Monday morning. Atlanta’s greatest. It’s a direct flight. I land in Pittsburgh. He’s not in Pittsburgh, Kansas. No, this is, I know. No, he’s in another place. It was a short drive over to the Ohio, but he’s in another place in Ohio. So he’s like, I need you to go to this hospital. This is before GPSs. I’m using a map. I’m not good at that.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Dude, you have those books. Oh my
Speaker 2 (24:13):
God, the atlases
Speaker 1 (24:15):
So bad.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
So that’s all he says.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
He
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Says, go there and talk to this guy, Dan. I can’t remember what his last name was. So I’m like, okay. I think it’s just your first day at work. Normal first day at work. Right? No problem. So I get to the hospital, get parked, go in, find Dan. I walk into Dan’s office
Speaker 4 (24:33):
And
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Dan, I say, Hey, my name’s Mickey. I work for so-and-so. I’m here to be your interim director. And he looks at me and goes, so are you going to steal from me too? And I’m like, what? And he goes, the last guy in your position stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from me. And I’m like, okay, well, I’m not going to do that. So I’m like, well, I’m just going to go down to the facilities area. So I go down to the facilities area, I walk in, I introduce myself to people. That’s not how this is supposed to go though. Supposed to have somebody with you who’s already been there that’s introducing you,
Speaker 5 (25:08):
Blah, blah,
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Blah. But this ain’t the worst part. In the director’s office. I walk into the director’s office, there’s a guy standing there wearing a suit. He turns around and looks at me and goes, who are you? So I say, my name is Mickey, and I’m the interim director. He holds his badge up. It’s the FBI. What?
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
It’s the FBI. And he wants to interview me. Sit down. He’s been
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Here for five minutes.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Exactly. Let’s connect the dots. Right. So it’s a hospital. They receive funding from CMMS. The director was running the scam on fire stopping. Nonetheless, he had hired a company to do fire stopping, had people coming in the middle of the night, faking hours coming in and coming out and paying the company, which was not a company he
Speaker 5 (25:59):
Was getting
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Totally,
Speaker 5 (26:01):
Nothing was getting done either. No work.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
No. So I finished with the FBI guy, which ultimately went like, I’m not talking anymore. Get the hell out of here. I didn’t do anything right? Because FBI people, they can be assholes. That’s probably not good to say either. You might want to cut
Speaker 5 (26:20):
That in the scrub of this.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
So I walk outside because I can’t do this in where the people are. So I walk outside to the parking lot and I’m like, what
Speaker 3 (26:33):
You get into?
Speaker 2 (26:34):
And I was like, huh, it’s fine, man. You’re good. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
That isn’t even the end of that story either, because the fire stopping work and all that was supposed to be getting done was being promised. They knew they had a joint commission survey coming up, and they knew about, because this other director had identified need all this money to get all this work done. And it was all supposed to be getting done, and none of it was getting done. And here comes joint commission weeks later that he’s there. And again, we talked about this in one of our past, immediate threat to life and jeopardy, what do they call it?
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Imminent. Imminent. Imminent jeopardy or something
Speaker 5 (27:12):
Where they basically tell you they had to close the doors of the hospital. All that was happening when this joint commission showed up for him.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
And I mean, this is a silly, I mean, actually we ended up doing a fantastic job.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Right? I was going to ask to circle back around. Did you get that back pick and span?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Oh yeah. It was all fixed. This was back when you, what was that thing called? You could do a building manage program,
Speaker 5 (27:40):
Maintenance
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Program. PFI. Where
Speaker 5 (27:43):
Improvement.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
As long as you listed it on your PFI, they weren’t allowed to cite you. It’s not like that anymore.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
They changed it. Yeah. They’re like, no, that doesn’t work anymore. You just can’t have it on a list and not do anything.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
But we had like 1500 items Oh my.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
On your list. On our PFI list. So they couldn’t, so you’re the reason why they changed it? Well,
Speaker 5 (28:06):
No, it isn’t actually that place. It was us. It was us, but it wasn’t that place. It was the place before that where 1500, I think we had 4,000. We had 4,000 on the
Speaker 1 (28:16):
No way. Atlanta.
Speaker 5 (28:16):
This place was 3 million square feet of stuff. And it was again, a disaster when we got there. So our only choice was to create this PFI. And we had a whole team of guys. I mean, we had blueprint set this thick. The guys just went through the whole place and marked ’em all up. Gosh, it was a work of art and I didn’t do it, but it was a work of art to have all this stuff identified. And the inspector, it wasn’t a life safety inspector at the time. It was the administrator back then.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
The
Speaker 5 (28:45):
Administrator went, nothing I can do with this. You’re good.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Now in Ohio, 4,000
Speaker 5 (28:50):
Items
Speaker 2 (28:51):
On the PFI in Ohio, that’s not what they did. Because at this time it was a life safety code surveyor. And that guy said, this ain’t right. We got to call Chicago.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Right now there was nothing they could do, but they made a big deal out of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
They’re like, we’ll be back in three years and we’re going to have this changed.
Speaker 5 (29:12):
Well, at the time, we were a contractor to that place and everything that was happening in that hospital during that survey, wanting him to close it down and all this stuff was caused by us. Right. Man.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
And then I’ll tell you, it was interesting. So this hospital was a union hospital, and so UPS was union at the time. So I had some experience working with unions, but all unions are different. How you interact with them are different. I had only been there two days. So the first day was the FBI thing, right? The second day, the electrical lead, who was also the union steward, I still remember this guy’s name was Mike. Guys, hope he listens to this, right? And the plumbing guy’s name was Tom. They come into my office and they’re all upset because, so the way this worked was you had a director of facilities and you had a director of construction. The director of construction was a hospital employee. I was a contract employee. They had a bunch of construction going on, and according to the contract, all the copper went to the facility. Not the contractors, but the contractors wouldn’t. They were taking the copper. The facilities guys would go get it and the go to get it, and they would tell ’em no. So they tell me this. So I’m like, let me see. See the contract. So I read the contract, they’re right.
(30:43):
I’m thinking, you need some way to get ’em on your side. I’m like, this is a great opportunity.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
So
Speaker 2 (30:50):
I’m like, okay, here’s what I want. Get every cart you can get.
(30:55):
They go get 10, 12 carts. I’m like, you guys follow me out there. We’re in the courtyard of this hospital. And I said, don’t do anything other than load the copper on the carts, no matter what happens. And they’re like, they’re looking at me. I’m crazy. I’m like, I’m serious. Just start loading the copper on the cars no matter what anybody says. So we walk out into this courtyard and my guys start piling up the union, the construction guys come down, they start screaming, what are you doing? We’re talking $15,000 of copper. This guy’s all in my face. And he’s pointing at me. He’s yelling at me. I’m being surrounded by construction workers. And I’m like, what are you going to do? And I’m like, I lose it. We’re yelling at each other. And I’m just looking, just trying to keep it going until my guys are gone with the copper. Then they’re gone with the copper. And I’m like, I take off from that day on. I was a hero. It was awesome. And we ended up having $15,000. And so every month we had a monthly party. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it was awesome.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Did you invite the union guys?
Speaker 2 (32:03):
No. And that did not, the
Speaker 5 (32:05):
Contractors or the contractors?
Speaker 2 (32:06):
That did not go well because the director of the construction, I’m convinced, was on the tape. Oh, no doubt. So he called me, wearing me out. And so that was the other thing. The two, Mike and Tom heard me cuss out this guy because I’m like, dude, you’re a crook. The contract clearly states. Right. That was a fun story.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
That was a good time.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
It’s like a superhero story.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
I don’t know if I would do it today. Yeah. Yeah. That was a long time ago. I could have gotten beat up pretty bad. I wasn’t there. So it’s okay. When you were younger.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Yeah,
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Much younger, right?
Speaker 1 (32:45):
It’s like we’re talking about travel too. I actually going with people that don’t really know how to travel because you just watch the funniest freaking thing. They’re
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Just lollygagging.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Well, they don’t even know. I remember one time this guy, Derek Smith, he the work for us, and he’s one of our first real big service salespeople. And he had never really traveled much. And I had had a job. I’ve been traveling for a long time. It’s like, you’re going to go for an overnight. We’re going to go San Antonio, have a back, got a backpack. Like a backpack. That’s it. He shows up with this big square suitcase, not even a square one. I’m like, I don’t even know where you get that thing.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
You put a body in it. Did
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Your grandma have it or did it have all the labels on it from all the places they had been? I was like, what is that? And then he had all this stuff, and I’m like, whatever. But then you got to wait for him to go get the check luggage, and you got to, it’s like, you are killing me.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
You learned to consolidate so fast when you travel. You
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Do. And so where he learned though, is we got done early. And so we go to the airport, and so you can only check your baggage four hours before a flight. Oh, really? So we got done eight hours at a time, and there was a direct flight going home, and we’re going to get there with 20 minutes of spare. So we go up to go put our stuff on the belt, and his square knee wouldn’t go to the slicer thing. And I’m like, I’m see at home, man, you got to stand up, have fun waiting. Got on the flight and went. So he goes up to the gate and he’s like, I need to check my bag. They won. And they’re like, you can only fly standby. Oh no. And you can’t take your bag in. So it was like the ultimate catch 22. So sure as shit, next week we had to go somewhere. Guess what? He showed up with
Speaker 3 (34:33):
A backpack. Backpack,
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Right? Yeah. You learn real quick.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
A learner.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah. He was the same guy that beat me to Indianapolis for the house takeover thing. He was too quick. He was too quick. Yeah, he learned too well. Yes.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
So what was it, what week? When did we go to New York for the board meeting and the strategy session? Last week? Week. Was it last week? Yeah. So all these years I’ve been traveling. I get to the hotel room in the evening in New York, and I’m unpacking, and I left my pants stop. So what’d you wear to travel? Well, luckily the board, no, I had a
Speaker 5 (35:12):
Pencil. I’m just wondering
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Now. It was a banana hammock. Yeah. No, you didn’t notice.
Speaker 5 (35:18):
I know.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Come on, man. Come on, dude. Everybody else did. I wore a pair of, I don’t know what you call, but they’re just comfortable pants. They’re not dress pants, right?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Are they Lululemons? You got a board meeting?
Speaker 2 (35:31):
No. And yeah, so I am unpacking, right? I got, okay, I got my jacket, I got my tie. I got my nice shirt, I got my belt, I got my socks that matched my tie. And then I’m like, I left the pants. So luckily, I mean, first of all, it’s New York, so there’s clothing stores all over the place. And second of all, the board meeting wasn’t until two. So I just got up, had breakfast and went and bought some pants. But that’s embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
That’s awesome. Oh my gosh. Yeah. When my first deal traveling was literally, I had had an internship, and they told me, they gave me a job offer before I even graduated. So I’m working last year of school and I’m going to graduate school. So I’m like 22 years old. And they’re like, all right, so go to Chicago and go see these people. So I’m like,
Speaker 4 (36:25):
Okay,
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Okay. And I’m a Midwest kid. We drove everywhere. I think I’d been on a plane twice before that. And so now I’m like, this is freaking great. I got to freaking go on a plane. And so get up to Chicago and go up there and they’re like, here’s the corporate deal to go rent cars. And then I get up there and they’re like, well, you’re not 25. And I’m like, huh. So four hours later, they had it sorted out with a company. Right? Now I go get there and I was going to go get an ATM, and I just forgot about it all. And I had $12 in my name. Well, back in the day on the Chicago Tollway, that didn’t get you very far. Pretty soon I ran out of money. I’m like, they turned me back around and I had to go get off and go find an ATM machine. It was just this comedy of over and over and over. And I’m like, man, this traveling thing is rough. So my very next trip, I swear, was they sent me to New York, and I swear they were just laughing about this whole thing. So I go to New York, get a rental car. You don’t take a car to New York, because he took the car to New York. It was like, I think
Speaker 5 (37:34):
I got my car.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
I think I paid $170 that night to park it. It was like, oh my gosh, man.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
So how many times or have you ever been detained at the airport?
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Never
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Once. Never. Okay. So I’ve been detained three times. Three. Tell me here yours.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
So we were on a hunting trip up in Canada, and I made, I don’t do this anymore. The backpack that I used to in the plane I used to go along with. And so went out hunting and came back. And so we’re international travel now Canada. And so go to go get on, and all of a sudden the whole line stops and they’re like, a bunch of people come around and I’m like, oh, this is not good. So I had an empty round, not a live round, round, but an empty round, but you would’ve thought it was a live round. So my buddy, who I’m with is behind me laughing his ass off. He cannot stop laughing. So they question me and rerun all my stuff and write my name on the list, which I got randomly searched every time. Then for the next six months, there’s no randomness about it. But finally I get through the line. And then, so my buddy, Andy was laughing at me. He goes, and he had a live round in his deal. So I felt I got off good. They ran him twice. The right act that I got.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
He got put on the watch list.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
He did for two years. He was getting randomly detained. So it was like that was no fun.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
I got stopped once with my Kindle in my backpack. It’s like an electronic, it looks
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Like you left it and you didn’t do that.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
And then of course,
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Rule breaker,
Speaker 3 (39:25):
And I’m such like a scaredy cat when it comes to stuff like that. My palms were immediate, we’re going to need to see you. And I’m like, okay. And they’re like, what is that? And I’m like, oh, it’s a Kindle. It has my spicy books on there. Don’t take it away from me. So that’s the one and only time I’ve ever been stopped. It can What
Speaker 2 (39:42):
About you? Three? Three? Yeah. That’s impressive. I’ll tell one because doesn’t involve a scuffle.
Speaker 4 (39:50):
Wow. This guy.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Yeah. The other two involves scuffles. So I’m at an airport, I don’t want to name the airport. It’s a massive airport. And I don’t, up until this point, I hadn’t been there a lot. I’ve landed there for, what do you call it? Connections.
Speaker 5 (40:10):
Connection,
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Right. But I had stayed in the city and I went to the airport. And so I am trying to figure out where security is, right? So I look at the sign and it says, train to security, which is weird because you don’t normally take it. But I get on the train and I go, and I’m the only one on the train. There’s nobody. So it goes to this, it stops, and it lets me off at the, and I’m thinking it’s security, but it just goes to the concourse. So I step out of the train and I’m looking around, and so the concourse is to my left and security is to my right. And somehow I bypass security. So I go, I’m like, this ain’t right. So I go to security and I say, Hey man, I just got to this concourse without going through your line. So immediately they’re like, come with me. So I get surrounded. So they take me upstairs to a holding cell. They come in, they’re like a bunch of people asking me questions. I’m trying to explain it to them. They’re treating me as a criminal,
Speaker 1 (41:22):
Right?
Speaker 2 (41:22):
I’m getting aggravated.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
I was honest with you.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Yeah, I’m getting aggravated. As a matter of fact, at one point they were like, we’re going to cuff you. And I’m like, that’s not going to work out. Well,
Speaker 4 (41:31):
We’re
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Not going to do that, luckily. So these were the TSA agents, luckily almost said the city, the police department comes in and starts saying, Hey, what’s going on here? So I explain it. So the sergeant walks me down, he says, show me what you’re talking about. So I show him and he goes, oh, this isn’t good. So essentially they were doing construction and they were supposed to route traffic one way, but they didn’t in this one spot. And so he’s like, oh man, thank you for telling us. So we go back upstairs because my bag’s upstairs. So I’m thinking, I’m going to get my bag and go. They’re not letting me go. So they come back and they got a bunch of papers. They want me to sign an NDA and I’m not going to talk about it
Speaker 1 (42:21):
On
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Them. And I’m like, I’m not doing that. Yeah. I’m like, I got to go. I got to a plane in 15 minutes. I’m not signing anything. And as a matter of fact, if you don’t let me go now, I’m going to tell everybody I’m going to put it on a podcast. That’s right. I’m going to put it on a podcast. That was before I had the podcast. And so eventually, and this was while I worked at Remediate. This
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Is recent.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Oh, man. Yeah. This was probably a year ago.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Oh my gosh. Dang.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Yeah. Crazy.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
I got checked for a while after that too. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Know if that happened to me, I would’ve died. I’m just like, I’m dead. I get so scared when that happens.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
What’s crazy when you tell stories as time flies.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
Yeah,
Speaker 1 (43:04):
It’s time. It is
Speaker 3 (43:06):
Insane. Oh man.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Yeah. So we’ll be back on track on our next episode. It’s all fun. We’re gearing up for the holidays. We’re just, I wanted you guys to know a little bit more about these guys. So that’s what
Speaker 1 (43:20):
We did. I’m sorry.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
In the past few episodes,
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Art’s mostly a rule follower now.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
Yep, exactly. He
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Is. You know what he said to me one time? He said, Mickey, you have to learn how to do it the right way. Wow.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
No, thank you.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
But I can get there faster doing it the wrong way. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
That’s what we got for you guys today. Alrighty.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Yeah. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Thanks, guys. Perfect timing.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Don’t
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Forget, shout out.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
He’s an influencer.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Oh yeah. Exactly. Thank you for hanging out with us on FM After hours. Make sure you follow us on all of our social media platforms for your regular dose of Facility Insights. As always, a big shout out to Remediate and Granger for their gracious sponsorships. Catch you next time on FM after hours.