Thanks A Million!

Posted on January 7, 2014 by xaviertrevino

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Last Saturday I finally got around to distributing my thank you cards to the tenants. It was easy because I had to do the mail on Saturday, we are a “drop house,” which means the mailman (or woman) drops off boxes of mail and we have to sort and deliver the mail to the tenants outside of their door. We have this big handmade mailbox with pigeonholes that we use to carry the mail up to the floors in. It sits in the lobby as the mail is sorted and until someone (me on Saturdays) can take it up to deliver it.

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There is one tenant who will obsessively come down and check his box every ten minutes until the mail got delivered, but that’s a story for another blogpost.

It was much easier years ago when I was the day doorman, I would bring in the cards and put them in the appropriate boxes and deliver them myself. Then when I became the handyman it was a little trickier, I didn’t really want to ask the doorman to do it for me, I actually didn’t want any of the other staff to know I was doing it.

I know I shouldn’t care what they think, I have a friend Ed, whom everybody refers to as “Buddha Ed” that says “what other people think of me is none of my business,” but like all other good maxims, it’s easier said than done.

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Not Buddha Ed.

So that and the scarcity of pre-printed thank you cards forced a two year hiatus on my thank you cards, but this year I was determined to do it.

When I first started giving thank you cards, about 13 years ago I could buy a box of 25 cards and envelopes for about $18. Then, 5 years ago or so, you could only get boxes of 12 cards for $15. We have a 64-unit building, but on average less than 58 of the units give Christmas tips. That meant I had to buy five boxes of 12, $75 worth, to make the cut. It was getting expensive.

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The 12 card box.

I always got these cards at Paper Presentation on 18th Street. I love Paper Presentation, one of the last real “Stationary stores” left in the city. Nobody uses paper anymore. I hope they don’t go out of business; I’d hate to have to go to Barnes And Noble for stationary. Come to think of it they are being put out of business too, by the digital world.

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My solution to the problem of rising thank you costs was to buy blank cards, and then I bought a “Thank You” stamp and I made my own. A little more time consuming, but it works for me. This is what I did the year before I became the handyman and I did it this year too.

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I added a snowflake this year, make it a little nicer.

Then, I used my brand new Mont Blanc fountain pen to write my thank you notes.

People who gave me less than $50 I just wrote “Thank you for your kind gift this holiday season.” $70 and above got: “Thank you for your kind and generous gift…” $100 and above I wrote “kind and very generous gift…”

Once, about 5 years ago, I was doing work for one of the tenants in her apartment right after Christmas. I was sitting on her couch assembling something or other for her new baby and we were chatting.

“It was really nice of you to do that thank you card.” She said.

“No problem, I like to let people know I’m grateful.”

“You know, I gave the super $600 and he didn’t say thanks. He didn’t say shit to me.” Wow, that was harsh, I thought. I didn’t know how to respond.

“Well, I can only speak for myself, I don’t know what’s in his head,” was all I could think of to say.

After people got the cards the other day, people started thanking me for the cards. Thank you for the thank you, and I always feel great when people tell me how thoughtful it was, etc.

One of the tenants, a new single woman who moved in about 3 months ago said, “you know, you’re the only one who said thanks, and I really appreciate it.”

Some people, though, DIDN’T SAY SHIT TO ME! No thanks for the thanks.

I remember one guy who left the building years ago chortling over how a tenant stared him down waiting for him to say thank you.

“Yeah, he was looking at me, waiting for me to say thanks, and I stood there and stared back at him and didn’t say shit.” I can never understand how people can get satisfaction from doing something like that, but it taught me one thing, not to expect anything from other people. I say thanks because it is the right thing to do, and whether they thank me back or not is none of my business. Doesn’t stop me from feeling awkward, though. 

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The Doughnut Hole

Posted on January 4, 2014 by xaviertrevino

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I have never had a cronut- nor have I ever had an overwhelming desire to have one.

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I’m told that people stand in long lines to get one of those, just like they used to stand in line for the famous Red Velvet cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker Street. I have to confess that I have had one or two of those, though I got them from Sugar Sweet Sunshine on Rivington Street instead, no line, no waiting. But you are made to think that you have to tip some pierced and tattooed kid a dollar for handing you a three-dollar cupcake on a napkin.

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Red velvet cupcake.

The cupcakes are good, but I wouldn’t stand in line for one of them.

I used to go to Teeny, on the other side of Essex Street with my wife, the lovely Danusia and have the peanut butter bomb, a 1,000-calorie plus mass of sugar, fat and wheat that did give me pause about swearing off line-standing.

When I fist saw pictures of people standing in line for these concoctions I thought it was ridiculous, it looked like they were giving away free crack or heroin, instead of charging outrageous prices for a bit of baked goods.

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Cronut line.

 But when I thought about it, I know that the combination of wheat, fat, and sugar affects the same pleasure centers in our brains as opiates, it begins to make sense.

I have to admit that there was a time in the distant past where I did stand in line for some of these pleasure-center stimulants, I’m not gonna say which, but anyone who lived on the Lower East side in the 80’s would be familiar with the long lines on the streets back then. I’m happy to say I don’t find the need to do so anymore.

Yesterday afternoon when I got to work, as I put my sandwich in the fridge before I changed into my doorman’s outfit I saw a big box of doughnuts from Dunkin’ Doughnuts. I looked inside and there were a few left out of what had to be a dozen doughnuts. I helped myself to a blueberry one for later.

The boss had bought them for the guys that he called in to shovel snow overnight during the storm. I was lucky enough to not have to shovel, though I shoveled through the last snowstorm, which I got no doughnut for, so I felt I was entitled to one of these.

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Not me shoveling snow.

So I took the doughnut up with me to the lobby, and set it on the rack that holds the fire hose to eat sometime later.

At five everyone left and I stayed in the cold lobby alone, thinking about when I should eat my doughnut. Definitely before the sandwich, which I usually have at 9 PM.

I would look at it every time I walked by to get a package or the mop to sop up some of the salty water people were dragging into the lobby, we wouldn’t want anyone to slip and fall and sue the management company, would we?

So I would look at it and think, I do a lot of thinking alone in the lobby; and I thought of the hole in the doughnut, others have thought about those holes too and invented things like munchkins and doughnut holes, and now cronut holes, but what it reminded me of the most was the hole in myself that I had at one time, a hole I was so desperate to fill that I did stand in a lot of long humiliating lines for something to fill that hole with, and hoping that they didn’t run out before I got to the front of the line.

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This, on occasion did happen. But I found out that when it did, I did not die; but it took awhile for that notion to sink in.

 

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Happy New Year!

Posted on December 31, 2013 by xaviertrevino

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This is my first end-of-the-year blog, being this is the first year I’ve had a blog, and I’ll have to say that’s one of my major accomplishments and successes this year, is this blog. Many thanks to all of my readers, and I wish you all a wonderful new year!

So, in no particular order, this past year I:

Did the Moth for the first time, put my name in the hat three times and got called up each time, the last time being on my birthday.

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This was on my birthday, at the Bell House in Brooklyn.

I turned 59 on that day. I hear 60 is the new 40, so that’s ok, I can be 40 twice, and do it better this time. The original 40 was a pretty miserable year.

I lost my handyman job in April, but two good things came from that; the freedom to write more, and this blog, which I probably wouldn’t have started without the time or the axe to grind.

I flew a plane for the first time in August, shortly after my birthday.

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Me flying the plane. I did a 90° turn.

I didn’t see my son Javier this year, and I miss him. Maybe next year!

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Lou Reed died, unexpectedly. I thought he would live forever, but he does live forever in the great music he made. Taylor Mead died too, I remember hanging out with him on a boat ride I took in 1975.

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Two people in the building died, one was 95 and the other was 89.

We bought a couch early in the year, the very first new couch I’ve ever bought.

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We are hoping to buy a house and a car this year. It will be my first car, so my kid got me beat since he bought his first car in the summer.

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The beach down the block from the house we are buying.

I saw Anthony Weiner on the subway one afternoon, shortly after he lost his primary bid. Not too many people on the train noticed him.

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The Weiner on the B train.

I have not made any New Year’s resolutions, though my wife has urged me to let go of some stuff and be nicer to certain people. Maybe I will, but I’m not promising.

There is little to make resolutions about, when I was married to my first wife, she would say every December; “This year we’re gonna quit drugs.” I would say, sure hon, this year. When it happened it didn’t happen in January. So I’ve done that, some time ago. Since then I also lost a lot of weight, quit smoking, and improved my health. I don’t have diabetes anymore.

My body does hurt more every year though, especially my knees and lower back. Not debilitating, mind you, but it certainly is annoying. I’m glad I don’t let it be the focus of my day, the pain is just something else I have to deal with, like waiting for the F train.

I keep watching the end of the year shows and the one image that keeps popping out as the highlight of the year is Miley Cyrus. She is certainly pleasing to look at, so I put her on the banner for this post.

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I’ll miss Breaking Bad, I remember when it first came out I wouldn’t watch it because I thought it was glorifying (or at least justifying) drug use but it truly was an amazing, complex look at what is inside of all of us. And to me, I think that’s the biggest thing I learned this year, that this is an amazing, complex world, both ugly and beautiful at the same time, and I’m glad to be part of it.

 

 

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Adventures in Subway Riding

Posted on December 28, 2013 by xaviertrevino

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The train for me to catch on weekends is the 11:31 J train out of Essex Street. If I miss that, the next train comes at 11:47 P.M., a 16-minute wait. To get to that train, I have to get the 11:07 Far Rockaway A train out of the 86th Street CPW station, the one by my job. During the day, I would wait for the B train, which connects with the M train and gets me home in 35 minutes total. But there are no B trains after 10P.M., and there are no B trains at all on the weekends. That means the A to the F to the J. If I’m lucky and make that 11:30 J out of Essex, I can be turning the key in my door by 11:47, just as the next J train is leaving Essex Street.

The lovely Danusia had a hard time wrapping her head around the fact that the MTA has a schedule, and most trains come very close to the appointed time.

Yes, Virginia, there is a schedule.

 At least the A and the J trains do. The F and M trains are a different story. They don’t call the F the “Forever” train for nothing. That’s why even if I’m lucky enough to catch the 11:07 A train, I’m still filled with the anxiety that the F train will be late pulling into West 4th Street, and I will miss the 11:31 J train. Riding the subway is all about anxiety, at least for me.

Will the train come on time? Will it stop in some station inexplicably for 5 or more minutes, assuring I miss the expected train? Will there be a smelly homeless person on board? Aggressive panhandler? A guy that can’t sing? Subway dancers who might kick you in the face while swinging from a pole? A group of drunken teenagers?

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The kind of subway dancer I can take.

 

I could go on, but you get the picture. I can deal with most of that stuff as long as the train comes and leaves on time.

I tried to vary the routine, to sometimes-disastrous results. Thursday night, for example, I hopped on the M-86 bus at Columbus Ave., there’s always one at 10:58 and gets caught at the light just as I’m walking out of the building. Sometimes I catch it, sometimes I don’t. I ride it one stop to CPW and get the A train. Someone once asked why I would ride the bus one stop, and I said “for what I pay for a monthly metro card I’m going to ride as many busses and subways as I can.”

Anyway, Thursday night I caught the bus and I thought, “what if I take the bus to Lexington Ave. and take the IRT down to Chambers Street, where I can catch the J?”

And so I stayed on the bus, enduring a pang of anxiety in my chest as the bus opened its doors at CPW.

“Get off? Stay on?” My heart raced, I forced myself to stay on the bus and not bolt out of the door as it was closing. Be brave, I thought. It might be better.

And I was off on a new adventure.

The bus driver stopped at a green light at Madison Ave., waiting for it to turn red. She was ahead of schedule. I hate when they do that.

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“Can’t you wait till after Lexington Ave.?” I wanted to shout. The light changed to green after what seemed like hours, and she slowly gave the bus some gas. We got to Lex and I ran across the street to the downtown 4-5-6 trains. I could hear a local pulling out. I looked up at the time board, wonderful things those timers, and it read “6 to Brooklyn Bridge: 6 minutes. 4 to New Lots: 11 minutes.”

Well, 6 is sooner than 11, and my choice was made. But as I boarded the 6, I thought, the 4 will beat it to Chambers Street, no doubt about it. But I stubbornly stayed on the 6, even as I saw a 4 pulling into the 14 Street station as my 6 was leaving. I should have trusted my instincts and gotten off, I thought.

Of course the 4 passed us somewhere between Astor Place and Bleecker Street.

My 6 finally wheezed into the Brooklyn Bridge stop, and I got out and speed-walked to the J. There was one leaving just as I got to the top of the stairs.

I had better luck with a spur-of the moment adventure last Sunday.

The A train was late, it pulled in at 11:10. I knew there was no chance of getting that 11:31 out of Essex. But when we pulled into 59th Street, a was D pulling in. I got off the A and ran across to the D. I had an Idea. If we didn’t catch up to an F train I would stay on the D to Grand Street, and get out and walk to the Bowery stop on the J train, a two-block walk. If I was lucky I would catch the 11:31 at 11:29, one stop earlier.

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When the train pulled into Broadway-Lafayette street, my last chance to connect to the F, I felt the familiar anxious flutter, stay or go. I stayed. I got off at Grand and speed-walked to Delancy Street. I made it to the Bowery stop and heard the train pulling in downstairs. I ran down the stairs and made the train. I looked at my watch, and it was 11:29! Success. I was home by 11:47.

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“You’re home early.” Danusia said as I walked through the door.

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Ghosts Of Christmases Past

Posted on December 24, 2013 by xaviertrevino

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This is my first Christmas blog, and I thought and thought about what to write about. I wanted to call it “Have yourself a tacky little Christmas,” somebody in the building added these tacky CVS ornaments to our corporate styled tree, and candy canes, the candy canes were gone the next day; the kids took them all.

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I could go on about the meaning of Christmas, but since I’m not religious and don’t believe someone can rise from the dead, that’s out too. But I do believe in the idea of kindness and loving your fellow man, a tough thing to do in this day and age, but I have to say the season does soften me up a bit, so what I’ve been doing is writing down little recollections of Christmases past and how they affected me, and so here they are, in no particular order.

 

It’s been warm so far this winter, record breakers I hear, but I do remember one Christmas when I was 14, I went to midnight mass with my sister and wore just a Barracuda style windbreaker over my tight orange mod pants (it was 1968) and wasn’t cold at all. We went to midnight mass because we could open our presents when we got back home.

One Christmas I trudged up to Hell’s kitchen with a pint of Imperial whiskey for my 84-year-old dad who I suspect was drinking mouthwash because he was poor, why else would you have 5 bottles of Listerine in the medicine cabinet; and after years of trying to get him to stop drinking he thought what the hell, if he wants to drink, let him drink. He, on the other hand thought I was trying to poison him; he actually opened the bottle and sniffed it first.

            “Drink up, pop!” I said. You should have seen the look on his face.

He gave me a copy of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock that he’d found in the garbage somewhere. That was OK because I knew he was poor and at least had thought of me.

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I thought it was a science fiction book but it’s not. 

In 1992 I was living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and on Christmas day I took the B-61 bus up Bedford Ave. to buy drugs in a building on South 3rd Street, that day it was freezing cold, in the low 20’s, and I remember standing in the stairwell of this almost abandoned building waiting for someone to bring “the stuff” and shivering my ass off.

It was cold because it was a city-owned building, and had no heat and the front door didn’t close properly (or lock, for that matter) and the cold wind just swept through the stairwell. Suddenly the lookout, the guy who stood just inside of the unlockable door and peered though the wire mesh glass square in the steel door came running up the stairs.

            “The cops!” He said breathlessly as he ran into an apartment and closed and locked the door behind him, leaving me and a dozen other hapless chumps standing in the stairwell. We all stood quietly, hoping the cops would deem it too cold to get out of their car, when we heard them turn on the car P.A. system. I heard the mike key and a cop’s disembodied voice said; “Merry Christmas, assholes!” and with a chuckle and a snort, they shut off the mike, gunned the engine, and roared away in the spirit of giving.

 

The poorest Christmas I ever had was the first year I was married to my first wife, I was on welfare and she was on unemployment. I gave her a purple kimono from Azuma that cost ten bucks and a ceramic Hello Kitty piggy bank. It was the first time I’d heard of Hello Kitty and Kitty was my pet name for her. I forget what she gave me, probably a book or socks.

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The best Christmas when I was married was the fist year I worked as a building service employee and got $1500 in Christmas tips. My ten-year old son Javier got Optimus Prime that year. It cost $40.

The year before I got divorced my wife and I gave each other the same thing, a long handled back scrubber from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. If you are married, beware double gifting.

 The year I got divorced, my fist Christmas alone in 20 years I spent at some Protestant Church in Hells Kitchen with a bunch of homeless people listening to a fat guy play a cheap electric organ and singing hymns. I cried my eyes out when we sang “Adeste Fideles.”

Christmas since then have been pretty good, I’ve remarried to a wonderful woman, the lovely Danusia, and we always have a little Christmas Eve get together that we invite people who have no where to go. She likes to make a traditional Polish dinner, and I get to help and spread some cheer.   

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Buy A Tree For Christmas

Posted on December 21, 2013 by xaviertrevino

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When I was a kid, my mother used to wait till Christmas Eve to buy a tree. She said the tree men didn’t want to be stuck with trees after the holiday and it would cost less. Then, she would bargain:

Tree man: “$4, lady.”

Mom:       “ $2, mister.”

“ Sorry, lady; has to be $4.”

Mom, making a sad pitiful face, holding out two crumpled dollar bills, then pulling out some change, saying to me in Spanish: “Tell him it’s all I have,” displaying another 85 cents in coins in her hand.

“ My mom says that’s all she has.”

“Yeah, alright kid, take the tree.”

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This Years model

Many years later, in December of 1979, just before I boarded a jet for my first commercial flight to Fort Jackson SC for the start of my stint in the army I became a tree man of sorts. Or at least I dragged the trees out of the forest with my brother; somebody else was set to sell the trees, since my brother and I would be in Fort Benning Ga for most of December.

We’d spent the fall at the Albany Skydiving center with our crazy friend Brad jumping out of planes and doing odd jobs around the place. Brad hit on the brilliant idea of chopping down some trees and driving them to NYC and selling them on 158th Street and Riverside Drive, in front of the garage we’d summered at that year. So Bob Rawlins, the proprietor of the skydiving center got out the chainsaw and we trudged into the snowy woods outside of Duanesburg, NY to cut down some Christmas trees. Bob cut, we dragged. Then he welded a neat steel frame onto a two wheeled flatbed trailer and we tied a bunch of trees on it.

We drove to NYC the next day to set up our tree selling business. This involved talking to the garage guys, offering them a piece of the action to let us put the trees in front of the garage, and enlisting the aid of Arlo, the Mormon painter who lived above the garage and painted large canvases of small birds. He called the paintings “The Titmouse Series.” I found out a Titmouse is a small bird.

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A titmouse

Arlo, blond, curly haired and Utah accented, agreed to sell trees and hang on to the money for us, since Brad had to go to Zephyr Hills in Florida to keep jumping out of planes since it was too cold to do it upstate anymore and we were joining the army.

That weekend Bob took us out to dinner at Old Homestead on 14th Street and Brad treated us to Evita on Broadway.

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I loved this play

My brother Luis and I were back three short weeks later to find out that Arlo the Mormon painter had sold all the trees but had absconded with the money. He was hiding somewhere in Brooklyn. We had to go back to Fort Benning the day after Christmas, but Brad called to say he’d tracked down Arlo to his girlfriend’s apartment in Fort Greene.

“He told me he had to spend the money because he was broke.”

“What did you do?”

“I did a little dance on his head until he came up with the money. I’ll give you your end the next time you come to New York.”

We never did get that money; like I said, Brad was crazy and I figured it was best to just let it go. But it sure was nice to see our trees lined up on 158th Street.  Image

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My gift to myself this Christmas, it’s the first thing under the tree. I couldn’t resist throwing this in…

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Housing Records

Posted on December 17, 2013 by xaviertrevino

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There was a woman who lived in the building for 59 years before passing away last spring at the age of 95. She moved in the year I was born, in 1954 with two small children and a husband that died way before I started working there. She was a very nice woman, very independent, went “svimming” twice a week well into her early 90’s and went to her house in Florida every winter. She was always elegantly dressed, wore gold and pearls and did all her own shopping until a newer young mother with small children mowed her down with her $1,000 baby bug-aboo at the CVS on the corner.

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This happened when she was 92, and the three years after that were spent in and out of hospitals and rehabs until she couldn’t fight off the inevitable anymore last May. The management was happy to get a rent-controlled apartment back.

The shortest stay was a couple that moved in just before Christmas in 2011. It was a young couple; they were both in their early 30’s; she a pretty blond lawyer and he a dark handsome guy who did something for the NY Yankees. They were unmarried and moving in together for the first time.

She moved in first and I spent a whole day one day making a little platform for her stack of clear plastic shoe boxes so they would sit properly on the uneven concrete floor of her closet. She was finally satisfied the boxes did not tilt so badly.

When he moved in he brought with him four seats from the old Yankee stadium that sat in the dinning room.

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Two weeks after he moved in he came down to the lobby, and I happened to be there talking to the doorman and he asked “Who do I talk to about moving out?”

She moved out a month later. The previous tenant, old Mr. Post had lived there for 50 years before he passed away.

My personal best for a short stay was one month in 1983 when I moved in with my then girlfriend and future wife. A friend had given us the keys to the apartment she was vacating on East 7th Street just a few yards west of Tompkins Square Park.

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It was on the top floor of a 6-story tenement with a bathtub in the kitchen. The tub had one of those rubber hose showerheads and the bathtub was too small to really stretch out in. We only lasted a month because the landlords (they were a divorced couple) started harassing us right away, refused our rent check and called the cops, who told them to take us to housing court. We found another place on Houston Street, with a bigger bathtub and one floor less to climb. We were there for 5 years, and when Kathy got pregnant we needed a bigger place we moved to Greenpoint.

Kathy and I were together for 20 years, 16 of them married, and we lived in 10 different apartments. She never could get along with any of our neighbors.

As some of you know, the lovely Danusia and I are looking to buy a house, and we’ve lived in our present apartment now for 6 years, so I’ve already broken the record of 5 years in one place. Wish us luck on the house.

 

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The Season Of The Tip

Posted on December 14, 2013 by xaviertrevino

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To all of those who live in doorman buildings, or who use service workers regularly all year, as most of us do, it is the season of the tip again. Most New Yorkers are very familiar with the experience, and know what to do, but there are a lot of people who are conflicted an the correct etiquette or protocol about who to tip, how much to tip, and whether one should tip at all.

As a service worker myself, I am a doorman in an Upper West side high rise; I know all about it from the inside, I’ve been at the same building for almost 17 years and have seen my share of tipping. In 2005, if I remember correctly, one of the tenants asked if a friend of hers could interview me for New York magazine for an article about tipping. I said yes, of course. It was a pretty young lady in her 20’s, I can’t for the life of me remember her name, but if you want to see the article click on the link here:http://nymag.com/nymetro/realestate/columns/realestate/15285/

She asked me about the most unusual tip I ever got, you know, a vacation, a car, tickets to a ball game, and the best I could come up with was a woman in our building who baked an individual cake for each of us, it was more of a banana bread sort of loaf, but always delicious and always welcome. I had gotten tickets to a ball game once, when I worked as a shoemaker in Queens. A grateful client gave me a pair of Mets tickets after I’d made some orthotics for him and fit him in a nice pair of shoes. I took my four year old and my wife and we watched Jesse Orosco pitch and Darryl Strawberry hit a home run. The Mets won.

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But as a doorman, the loaf was the most unusual thing, and she gave cash as well.

One guy, the building ogre, once gave me a fruitcake that he’d taken a slice out of. I guess he didn’t like it. He was the meanest man in the building and never tipped anyone, that I got the fruitcake meant he must have sort of liked me.

The first year I was there, in 1997, I got a total of $1,500 and was ecstatic. I hadn’t had that much cash all at once since my father gave me $1,500 after he’d won a lawsuit when I was 24.

I didn’t know it at the time, but since I was the night man, and most people did not see me or even know who I was, I got the least amount of tips of anyone on the staff.

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There was one old woman who lived on the 14th floor that insisted I come and knock on her door even though it was almost 11PM.

“Which one are you?” She would ask, and after I told her she’d give me an envelope with $10 in it.

The least I ever got, and this was for a few years, was $5 from a retired talent agent who lives in one of the penthouses. Just a $5 bill pressed into my palm with a “hearty handshake,” just like the one W.C. Fields got in The Bank Dick. He’s raised me to $25 now.

The most I ever got was $350 from a tenant, and that was last year, when I worked as the handyman. I’d done some work for her in her apartment, and I think she stiffed the super and gave me the extra cash.

There was a woman who moved out years ago, a very unpleasant lady who each year would pick out an employee and have a fight with him and say: “No Christmas for you this year!” She was a close contender for the title of building ogre.

The first year I was there she did not tip me at Christmas. Then one June evening, as I was doing the garbage around 10:30, she came out of her apartment and asked if I could help her move a big marble topped table and the carpet beneath.

After I did so, she said: “Oh, I don’t think I tipped you at Christmas! Here, take this.” And she gave me $25.

Just before she moved out was the year she picked me to fight with and say “No Christmas for you!” I wanted to say I could not have cared less, but that would have gotten me fired.

I usually give thank you cards, I think I missed one or two years, but the tenants always appreciate it. I write different things on the cards, depending on my relationship with the tenant and how generous they were.

I write, “Thank you for your kind gift this holiday season” or “Thank you for your kind and generous gift this holiday season.”

The average tip for me is $50. Some tenants give everybody the same thing, some go by seniority, the longer you’ve been there, the more you get. Some stiff the doormen and staff they feel haven’t been very helpful. Some don’t tip at all. The super gets the most money.

One of the supers I’ve had, I’m on my fourth super, mind you; a body-builder type who ran the building for 18 months a few years ago was really happy when a Frenchwoman moved in the first summer he was there. She worked for Louis Vuitton and he was envisioning a new set of luggage for Christmas.

I was sitting in his office with him when he opened his envelope form her, I used to call her big Val; and there was a $20 bill in his envelope, the same as everyone else got. The look of shock on his face was priceless.

            “$20! Don’t she know I’m the super?” Ah, those French…

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Sunday afternoon a little over an hour into my shift one of the tenant’s kids, a lovely 13 year old named Laura came into the building holding a big zip-loc bag of cookies.

“Would you like a gingerbread cookie?” She asked.

“Only if you baked it yourself.”

“Actually I did, me and my friends made them.”

“OK, thanks,” I said, accepting one of the cookies from the bag. I took the cookie and stashed it in the front desk; I didn’t want to eat it right away.

Eating while working as a doorman in the lobby is a tricky thing, actually the rules say you can’t, but since I don’t get a lunch break, or any kind of break at all in the 8 hours I have to stand in the lobby, I’ve learned to make do.

I learned that the thing to do is to have dry food that can be easily eaten and put down safely at a second’s notice, in case someone comes in and you have to pay attention to them. That’s the main complaint among the tenants, that a doorman doesn’t look up from his newspaper or continues to eat whatever he’s eating rather than run over for a quick chat (even though some of them don’t talk to you unless they want something) or just to stand there subserviently as they wait for the elevator. I try and keep the elevator in the lobby so they don’t have to wait; this earns brownie points from the tenants.

Usually I bring a sandwich to work, one I make myself; refried beans with jalepeño jack cheese and tomato slices on whole-wheat sourdough. I eat the sandwich at 9.

I bring a banana as well, a good solid banana that’s still a little green. Too yellow and it gets bruised on the way to work, and tastes awful. I eat the banana at 6.

To fill in the rest of the time, I have to have a snack, just in case; and lately I bring those Ryvita crackers, good texture and pleasant enough taste, though not so enticing that I would eat a whole box of them in one shift. Also very convenient; dry and easy to put down.

Going to the bathroom is a chore as well, but I’ll save that for another blogpost.

Sometimes people give me things, like the young Laura, and that’s always nice, and sometimes they ask if I want anything when they are going to the store. Not many ask, but when they do, even if I say, “no thanks, I’m fine,” I really appreciate the thought. Makes me feel cared for. I don’t usually accept unless I’m really hungry or thirsty.

Some people insist, “You must want something…”

That’s true, but what I want people can’t really give me; so to appease them I usually say “Get me a bagel or a soda,” I don’t actually have to eat it or drink it, I can always save it for later or give it to the next guy, which is what I do with the sodas.

Someone moved out last week and we raided the apartment to take whatever she left. In the pantry I found unopened packages of something called Scandinavian Bran Crispbread, and the package boasts that it is the “appetite control cracker” and has “LOW GI.”

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I won’t have to buy the Ryvita crackers for a while.

So Sunday these were my backups.

Last week another tenant’s daughter, an 18 year old, also lovely, said she was baking cookies with her sister and asked if I wanted some. I never refuse homemade cookies, so I said yes. She brought me down three peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies, and thoughtfully asked if I had a nut allergy, which I fortunately don’t. I ate one every day until they were gone.

I asked myself when I should have the gingerbread cookie, after the banana? After my sandwich? At 8?

8 sounded good, sort of an appetizer for the sandwich at 9. In the meantime I had those bran crackers, and at 5 I opened the package and broke off a piece of one of the crackers.

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It had the texture of crushed seed hulls, and tasted like sand. No wonder they are called “appetite control crackers,” one bite of these and you can lose your appetite forever. I immediately thought of the gingerbread cookie, but waited.

I read the paper, the Sunday News. I read all about Colin Ferguson, the LIRR mass murderer. Then it started snowing, and I put down the runners.

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Then two families with luggage arrived simultaneously, one from L.I. and one from Australia. We have only one luggage cart so the Long Islanders got that, since they arrived seconds before the Australians. I didn’t have time to think about cookies or crackers.

Then food deliveries started arriving, I usually get 2 rushes, just before 6 and just before 9. Everything settled down around 8, perfect timing, and I sat down on my stool to enjoy my gingerbread cookie. It had a funny shape, I can’t decide if it’s a bear or an elephant with no trunk seen from above. But it sure tasted like heaven.

Posted on December 10, 2013 by xaviertrevino | 1 Comment

How To Walk The Dog

Posted on December 7, 2013 by xaviertrevino

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This week I agreed to walk a dog at the building every Thursday before I start my shift. I walked this dog once before, it was an emergency sort of thing and the tenant was sort of hesitant about asking me, but I said what the hell, it’s always a good idea to have someone on your side so I said yes, and know she wants me to do it every week. That’s the dog in the picture above. I won’t say his name, as a condition of anonymity, but let’s just say I call him Bonkers. I think that’s from a Salinger story or something, I can’t remember where I got it.

The Rolling Stones Do Walking The Dog…

I also have a cat-feeding contract, for another tenant. I’ve done this for a number of years, and I’m supposed to pet the cat as well as feed her but she always runs away when I try. I’m not chasing after her.

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My wife’s cat, not the cat I feed.

Years ago there was a very unpopular dog walker that came to the building, a large rather unattractive woman with a really sullen demeanor. One day a home health care aide asked me

            “What’s wrong with that woman?” I said:

            “You’d be unhappy too if you looked like her and picked up dog shit for a

            living.”

I don’t do it for a living, but I do find myself picking up dog shit now, at least once a week.

The first time I walked Bonkers he didn’t do it, he just squatted down like he was doing it and then walked off, and I had my plastic bag already. I was kind of disappointed and more than a little worried that he would wait till he got back upstairs to do it for real, but we ran out of time and I took him home. I thought, “what kind of dog is this, he makes believe he’s taking a shit?”

That night the woman said, “Oh, I think he’s a little stopped up today.”

To change the subject, and I know a lot of you are waiting with baited breath to find out what’s going on with our house purchase, well, we’re “in contract” now, except we’re the ones paying for all the fixing. I know it’s risky, but if you don’t take risks you never get lucky.

One of the things we discovered was that the bottom plate of the water meter was cracked, the water had been turned off by the owner so that the “pipes wouldn’t freeze and burst.”

What I found out was that the pipes had already frozen and burst, so the water couldn’t be turned on. I looked on line for one of these things,

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and found one for $6.98 plus shipping.

I also found a place on 13th Street on the Lower East side and the woman on the phone said she had it in stock. I told her I’d be right over and hopped on the L train. When I got there, some greasy, dusty hole in the wall with bins full of used water meters the woman said “That’s $40, please. I hesitated, I was about to tell her I saw it online for less than a quarter of that, but then I thought about the shipping costs and the waiting for it and decided to give her the money.

            “Will that be cash or charge?”

            “Cash.”

            “OK, I won’t charge you tax.” Gee, thanks, I thought.

So I walked Bonkers for the second time this Thursday, after I paid the $40 for the water meter cap. This time Bonkers went for real, and I was so happy I didn’t have to go around the block I started off back to the building at a trot. Suddenly he stopped short and wouldn’t budge, and when I gave him some slack he did it again. I hoped that was it, as the woman had only given me two plastic bags. We made it back to the building without another urge.

Anyway, at least my dog walking and cat feeding money is going for a good cause, our new house.

 

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