Dirtlease recently called an all-hands meeting to discuss issues of diversity, equity and inclusion in our company. The meeting was precipitated by the delivery of a report by a team of outside consultants which said that dumbasses are over-represented on our staff. It is not that dumbasses don’t suffer or have their stories to tell, the consultants explained. It is just that other voices need to be heard.
After a few opening remarks, the Founder broke the ice by throwing out a question. Is there a Patient Zero of the manufactured housing industry, he asked. If so, who is he or she, and why? The Chief Operating Officer and the Chief Strategy Officer continued a discussion of their fantasy football teams. The Head of Marketing raised her hand:
Marketing: ‘I take exception to the question itself. It is predicated on patriarchial, neocolonialist dumbassian assumptions. Merely asking the question is an aggression.’
The Chief Operating Officer and the Chief of Strategy exchanged looks. The COO rolled his eyes. The Founder, knowing that these meetings were videotaped, blinked.
Marketing: ‘The term ‘Patient Zero’ comes from the Randy Shilts book And the Band Played On. Shilts put the blame for bringing HIV/AIDS from Africa to the United States on a gay Quebecois flight attendant named Gaetan Dugas. Dugas was born in 1953 in Quebec City and died in 1984, of AIDS-related symptoms, in the same town.’
Upon mention of the word ‘Quebec’, Operations and Strategy made a hand gesture indicating a coarse term for Canadian, looked at each other and dissolved in giggles. The Founder glared at them. Marketing continued, undisturbed.
Marketing: ‘Pictures of Dugas show a very handsome young blond man with longish hair and a moustache (today, the kids would call him a ‘twink’). According to Shilts, Dugas was a sociopath. He was a sexual athlete with access to gay clubs in San Francisco, New York and beyond. Although he was aware of his condition, he refused to inform his partners of that fact and recklessly infected other men with HIV.’
Founder: ‘That is interesting, Marianne, but the question is, ‘Who is the Patient Zero of the manufactured housing industry’.’
Marketing: ‘I am getting to that. The problem with Shilts’ narrative is – it was wrong. Dugas was one promiscuous gay man of many who were active during the early years of the HIV epidemic. He was an early vector, but not unique. Journalists have been trying to clear his name since, but once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is hard to put it back. When people think ‘Gaetan Dugas’ now, they think ‘Patient Zero’. That is why your question is misplaced. There was no patient zero. Any use of the term is an aggression against an innocent man from a marginalized community in a marginalized country.’
Founder: ‘I think you should answer the question.’
Marketing: ‘I think you should check your privilege.’
Operations looked at Strategy and then looked at Marketing.
Operations: ‘Is there any, like evidence for what you say?’
Marketing: ‘Rehabilitation attempts have come in two flavors. LGBTQ advocacy publications defend Dugas’ behavior. Within the context of the time, they argue, what he did was not sociopathic. In the very early eighties, nobody knew what HIV/AIDS was. Dugas knew that he was sick, and he knew that what he had was linked to the ‘gay cancer’ that people were talking about, but he did not know that it was contagious. He had plenty of sexual partners, but that just meant that he was lucky. His behavior was reasonable, for someone knowing what he did when he did what he did. In fact, there is a video clip of a town-hall meeting at a gay men’s health clinic in Vancouver in the early eighties, in which a blond man with a French accent raises his hand and asks if there is a test that doctors can perform to screen for the gay cancer. That man was Dugas. A concern about finding a test for the gay cancer is not consistent with a reckless lack of caution about same.’
Upon mention of the term ‘Vancouver’, an explosive, snarfing sound came from where Operations and Strategy sat. Marketing ignored it.
Marketing: ‘Scientific journals, by contrast, refute the Patient Zero hypothesis by showing that HIV/AIDS was in existence well before the early eighties. Several strains of Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) exist in different species of moneys and apes. The strain of SIV in chimpanzees is closer to HIV than those in monkeys. It is most likely that SIV was transmitted to humans through human contact with Chimpanzee blood. By reverse-engineering the evolutionary process, scientists have estimated that transmission most likely occurred around 1920. A blood sample taken from a man in the Belgian Congo in 1959 recently tested positive for presence of HIV.’
Founder: ‘Randy Shilts was a responsible journalist. If this was so wrong, why did he do it?’
Marketing: ‘He thought that having a villain would sell more books. In the original book proposal, the villain was the epidemic. An editor told Shilts that the story would move better if there were a human bad guy. Casting Dugas as the Typhoid Mary of AIDS was good for the narrative, but bad for Dugas and his family.’
Operations began to snore. Strategy thumbed porn on his phone.
Founder: ‘Can you answer the question?’
Marketing: “Whose ancestral lands are we currently occupying?’
Founder: ‘Haudenosaunee and Akwasane. Answer the question, please.’
Marketing: ‘My point is that I object to use of the term.’
Founder: ‘Answer the damn question.’
Marketing: ‘If we must use the procrustean neocolonialist semantic rubric denoted by the term ‘patient zero’, the patient zero of the manufactured housing industry is Frank Rolfe.’
At the mention of Frank Rolfe, Operations woke up and Strategy closed the porn app on his phone.
Founder: ‘Why is that?’
Marketing: ‘He is not the first person to buy a mobile home park, but he got in early and often. Most of the people who are now in the business learned about it through his educational programs. People who know of only one big mobile home park investor know of Frank. When civilians want to bash the industry, they bash Frank. A better case can be made that Frank is the Patient Zero of the manufactured housing industry than that Gaetan Dugas was patient zero of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.’
Operations and Strategy looked at the Founder. The Founder looked at them.
Founder: ‘OK, you Sweathogs. What is Frank known for?’
Operations: ‘He said that owning a manufactured housing community is like owning a Waffle House where the customers are chained to their seats?’
Founder: ‘When did Frank say that?’
Operations: ‘A long time ago. He doesn’t say it anymore.’
Founder: ‘What did he mean by it?’
Operations: ‘He meant that, since most park residents own their homes, and since the cost of moving a home is high, tenancy is sticky.’
Founder: ‘Why doesn’t he say it anymore?’
Operations: ‘The media have jumped down his throat for it. They say that he is squeezing helpless residents.’
Founder: ‘What has he done to put the toothpaste back in the tube?’
Operations: ‘He has back-pedaled. Now, he says that residents who want to move can sell their homes and move to Missouri or find a large operator who will move their homes to the large operator’s park in what Frank calls an ‘organic move’, where the new park pays transportation costs.’
Founder: ‘Is that true?’
Operations: ‘To a degree. His assertions make sense in economics class. There is no friction in a perfect world inhabited by rational Homines economici. In the real world, it is more difficult for land-lease residents to vote with their feet than it is for apartment residents. That’s what makes a mobile home park a growing annuity with a balloon payment at the end. It is also what makes the business fertile ground for bad actors.’
Founder: ‘Are we bad actors at Dirt Lease?
Operations, Legal, Accounting, Strategy, Marketing, Mail Room: ‘No!’
Founder: ‘Are we slumlords?’
Operations, Legal, Accounting, Strategy, Marketing, Mail Room: ‘No!’
Founder: What else is Frank known for?
Operations: ‘He recommends service providers.’
Founder: ‘Who has he recommended?’
Operations: ‘The water submetering company Metron-Farnier, or Metron, comes to mind. They suck.’
Founder: ‘Elaborate.’
Operations: ‘I over-stated that. Where they are good, they are very good. Where they suck, they really suck.’
Founder: ‘Continue.’
Operations: ‘Their meters can be read remotely and data can be accessed through a Web portal. Data can be sliced and diced, almost in real time. If you install a master meter, it is possible to detect hidden leaks by comparing water used with water consumed. They have an integration with Rent Manager, which means that water bills are fed automatically into residents’ invoices.’
Founder: ‘That sounds good.’
Operations: ‘It is good. The bad part is that their meters are flimsy. The paddles gunk up. Customer service is run by North Koreans. It takes a month for replacement meters to be sent. One hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. Emails get lost. The accounting department does not speak with the operations department. They say that meters that are bought are leased. They blame the customer when meters break. They charge monitoring fees for meters that are on the shelf, or in the landfill. They get slick with pricing.’
At the mention of money, the Founder’s nostrils flared, his eyes dilated and his ears cocked forward, like a German Shephard’s. A thin line of drool fell from the corner of his mouth onto the podium.
Founder: ‘Tell me about the pricing.’
Operations: ‘When we signed on with Metron five years ago, they gave us two options. We could pay $50 per meter up-front and then $5 per meter per month, or we could pay $325 up front and $3 per meter per month after a five-year period lapsed. We chose Option Two. Our contract had a five-year term, with the option to renew for another five years. Either party could terminate the contract with or without cause with thirty days’ notice. The contract came up for renewal recently.
Founder: ‘Nu?’
Operations: ‘Well there were problems before then. When meters broke, we threw them out. They insisted that we had to pay for monitoring for the meters that broke. This was because, they said, we did not buy the meters. We merely rented them. Since we did not return them to Metron, we needed to continue to pay for monitoring until judgment day. Our records indicated that this is, indeed, what their standard contract provides, but when we entered into our contract in 2018, I took that language out.’
Founder: ‘Good boy.’
Operations: ‘Under the contract that we have with Metron, we own the meters, and they are billing us for nonexistent monitoring of meters that we own. And the lady in charge of customer service – man, I don’t know what to say about her. She puts the ‘tz’ in ‘ditz’. They also increased the up-front cost from $325 to $350, plus fittings and shipping.’
Founder: ‘This was before the current contract expired?’
Operations: ‘Correct.’
Founder: ‘What do they want to with the new contract?’
Operations: ‘First of all, they want to change the terms. As I understand it, an option to extend a contact means an option to extend on identical terms unless stated otherwise. They sent me a new contract, with all kinds of new terms. Most were not material. Some were.’
Founder: ‘Why didn’t you exercise the option?’
Operations: ‘I don’t think that that is possible under the terms of the contract. The option has to be exercised prior to expiry of the contract and we did not exercise our option in time.’
Founder: ‘How did that happen?’
Operations: ‘Because I fucked up, OK? I delayed speaking with the customer service lady until it was too late because pushing on a string is bad for my blood pressure. I don’t think that the option had much practical value anyhow, because both parties retained the right to cancel with thirty days’ notice. Although it was notionally a five-month contract, it was, in fact a month-to-month contract.’
Founder: ‘What does the new contract say?’
Operations: ‘We are still negotiating it. The draft they sent kept monitoring fees at $3 per meter for existing meters. It raised the up-front price of new meters to $450 and increased monitoring fees for new meters to $7.50. It was unclear whether monitoring a meter bought to replace an existing meter would be billed at $3 or $7.50 per month. It did not address the issue of title to the meters.’
Founder: ‘Did you push back?’
Operations: ‘Of course. I told them that the contract was an extension, not a new agreement, and because of that material terms should stay the same. The lady I spoke with, a new customer service person who seems much more with it than the last one, told me that the pricing she offered was the new standard. I asked her to run it up the flagpole. We’ll see what her boss says.’
Founder: ‘So – they are hiring new staff?’
Operations: ‘A new CEO came in early this year. From what I can see, she is cleaning house. The new customer service chief is an upgrade. It sounds to me like the old COO has been re-assigned to a role where he can cause less damage.’
Founder: ‘But the new business plan is to screw us on the price?’
Operations: ‘It is like eating in a waffle house where you are chained to the table. Transaction costs are high. If we change submeterers, we need to buy a hundred twenty-five new meters and install them. If they jack up their prices too quickly we will jump, but if they raise them gradually, they can boil the frog slowly.’
Founder: ‘Are you listening, Marianne?’
Marketing: ‘I love hearing you dumbasses speak.’
Founder: ‘What does Metron’s competition charge?’
Operations: ‘A company in Florida offers monitoring for $0.25 a month, with a $25 minimum. Meters cost a couple hundred bucks apiece. There is no integration with Rent Manager, but the meters spit out an excel spreadsheet that can be fed manually into Rent Manager fairly easily. Hocutt and NES both have integrations with Rent Manager. Hocutt charges about $120 to buy a meter and $2.25 a month for metering. NES charges a few hundred to buy meters and then $4 per month for monitoring. Both have online portals.’
Founder: ‘So – it sounds like a no-brainer.’
Operations: ‘If we were starting from scratch, yes. No rational park owner would choose Metron over the competition. The problem is that changing up incurs transaction costs. The prices quoted above don’t include installation. Our managers are very good, but they don’t work for free.’
Founder: ‘Are there any further comments? I understand that this is the only thing standing between you and our cocktail hour’
The head of Strategy looked at Marketing, lowered his voice, batted his eyes and began to speak.
Strategy: ‘I believe that our discourse heretofore has been dumbassnormative. We need to disassemble the foundations of the neocolonial narrative and build it up again centered on the voices of marginalized people whose stories have been ignored.’
Marketing: ‘Dude. If you want to get with me, you will need to try something else. I like men, but I’m not stupid.’