Trying to Wear the Old Man Out.

AKA: Bob's cubicle scam.

First of all, I should say it's unfair to call my cousin Bob's sale of some office cubes a "scam", but it sounds good.

About seven years ago my cousin Bob found out about a whole office building in Dayton that was closing and they were selling off all their furnishings cheap. With some research, he quickly found somebody in Indianapolis that needed as many office cube walls as they could buy. If I remember correctly, Bob purchased 140 sets of cube walls for around 25 dollars a set. The buyer in Indianapolis was paying $90 a set. Even after you rent a truck and pay your poor cousin and brother-in-law $10 an hour to haul cubes, that's about 8 grand profit.

My dad (Ed) told Bob that he would help because there was no way we were going to get all the cubes loaded up, driven to Indy and unloaded in one day with just 5 guys. Ed counts as about 3 or 4 regular laborers, so we were good.

I rode with Bob early in the morning to pick up the rental truck. He told me he was going to try to wear Ed out. Bob was about 34 or so at the time and my dad was 60. I should note that Bob is a stickler for his health and is a fit and strong fella. My family has worked on rental properties, cars and other projects together in the past and my dad's endurance is legendary. Granted, my family drinks more beer in the first day of a project than said project warrants, but by any measure, he has John Henry-like stamina. Bob said he was going to exhaust the old man, he knew this would be the job to do it. I was sworn to secrecy.

It took us about 10 hours or so to disassemble and load all the cubes into the truck. We had a couple hand carts, but no forklift or anything like that. I want to say there were five or six of us for the first part of the job. A couple of us had to drop out for work and other reasons, which left three people to drive to Indy and unload the cubes.

We had started the whole project about 7 in the morning on a Sunday. I found out they got back with the empty truck about 3:30 in the morning. I waited until I thought Bob would be up and gave him a call to see what happened.

Me: So what happened? Did you wear him out?

Bob: (laughs) Not exactly.

Me: Soo.....

Bob: My buddy got in the back of the truck to rest around midnight and fell asleep. I managed to stay awake until we'd unloaded everything, but I could barely keep my eyes open. Ed had to drive the truck back and I fell asleep 15 minutes into the ride home.

Me: That's about right.

Bob: He's not human.