BUS STORY # 344 (The Entrepreneurial Spirit, Part One)

Easy Money, a photo by busboy4 on Flickr.

I find David the painter waiting for the downtown-bound Rapid this morning. He’s wearing jeans and a black hoodie, with the hood pulled up over an Atlanta Falcons baseball cap.

I tell him he doesn’t look dressed for work.

He tells me he’s hustling this morning.

He explains he currently has no painting jobs scheduled, but he has a lot of friends who give him leads.  He has a list of leads he’s planning to visit face-to-face this morning.

I ask how often this gets him work.

You never know, he says.  Better than sitting at home, though.  You can’t make money sitting at home.

He goes on to tell me about guys who’ve told him they’d rather make money by selling drugs.  He tells them they’re crazy.  They’re either gonna get caught or else ratted out, and then they’ll go to prison and ruin the rest of their lives.

I’m reminded of an article I read a couple of weeks earlier about a Detroit kid from “the hood” who told the reporter he learned early if you dealt drugs, you ended up one of two things: in jail or dead.

What do they say to that, I ask.

They don’t care.  They just want to make money.  I tell them why don’t you get a real job, flip burgers or something, instead of messing up your life?  They tell me “We don’t do that.” So they buy scratchers, you know? To try and get a stake.  They tell me, man, if they had a thousand dollars right now, they could turn it around for two.  That’s all they care about.

The bus comes, and we board. He takes a seat up front. I wish him good luck with his rounds today, then head for the back. I’m on my way to work.

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Thanks to JM in Brooklyn for this week’s featured link: Last Month In: NYC