You Must Pay The Rent!

"You Must Pay The Rent!"

Imagine me saying that line with a top hat, a cape, and a skinny waxed mustache. That's how I picture myself everytime I have to collect delinquent rent from my tenants. I don't enjoy it. I put it off as long as possible hoping the check will be in the next days mail. But in nearly 20 years of doing it, I must admit it has gotten easier. And that's a good thing because there is a whole lot of rent that's not getting paid these days.

One of my first (and worst) situations was trying to get money from a Chester Fried Chicken franchisee in one my food courts. The guy was retired after a career in the Army where he ran NCO clubs. He thought he had the skills to manage a small fast food franchise and he sunk his entire life savings ...against his wifes vehement protests...into this venture. He was already circling the drain before I got to the mall and became his landlord and nothing I could do was going to save him. He was going out of business and my orders from corporate were to get as much money as possible from him to settle his debt. He and I and our attorneys met in a conference room and the guy was literally in tears. He said he lost everything and his wife wasn't even speaking to him. And although I personally would have let him off the hook, I had to ask him for more money. He would make an offer and I'd step out of the room to call my boss and come back in and have to say "not good enough". At the end I only ended up with about twenty percent of what he owed but it took most of what he had left and we even made him sell his van to give us another couple thousand. When he left I could tell that facing me was nothing compared to what he was going to face when he got home.

It was an ugly experience but I definitely learned something from it. It's easier to collect rent if people think you are a son of a bitch. Word got around the mall that the new mall manager took a guys van and made him cry. For three years in a row after that I received the annual award for having the lowest collection balances in the company.

When I switched jobs, rent collection was still an important part of the job description. We had a Christmas store that was always struggling with rent, but I knew that the guy lived in a nice home, drove a nice car, and was frequently in the society pages, so I didn't feel that bad for him. I ended up suing him and he showed up in court with a cashiers check for the entire $30,000 that he owed. It was strange since he had been claiming poverty just the day before but I had my money and didn't question it ...until the police questioned me 6 weeks later.

Turns out that Mr. Christmas was also the president of the local charter school and he had embezzled from them to pay me. We returned the money to the school and evicted Mr. Christmas, who is still in jail as I write this. The story made the paper of course, which was fine with me. Because now my tenants know that there was a guy who would rather go to jail than owe me money. You don't have to be a son of a bitch but sometimes it doesn't hurt if people think you are!