My Life as a Debt Consultant

As all stories start: There I was, on a Monday morning, at our corporate offices in the basement of the Rickards building, sitting at my desk, speaking on the telephone, when my partner, Bill, rushes in, bellowing:

“Gonzo, you’re about to get a parking ticket. Move your car”

“What do you mean? It says I have an hour parking; and my name is Gonzalo”

“Today is Monday and parking is restricted in the morning for street cleaning.”

I dropped the telephone and a possible client, and I rushed out of our corporate offices in order to avoid an $18 parking ticket. Just in time. The unsympathetic motorized parking control officer had already written a parking ticket to the silver Chevy Caprice and I was next. I rushed to the car in the nick of time and managed to move to another place. I walked back to the office.

“Thanks Bill, you saved me.”

“No problem. Let’s have a cigarette.”

We go outside and our sanitation engineer, Shorty the wino, rushes up.

“Permission to address you sir.”

Shorty has delusions that he was in the Marine Corps; too much cheap vodka. That or he’s trying to garner sympathy. Every now and then he tells us that his name is Larry King.

“Request granted. Go ahead.”

“I don’t want to appear like a bum but could you guys spare me $3.60?”

“What do you want to do with it, Shorty?”

“Well, I ain’t going to lie about it. I’m going to get a bottle of vodka for me and the missus.”

“I’ll tell you what. Here is $5.00 but you have to sweep the corporate pathway for us.”

“Bless you. I will sweep it all up. MARINE CORPS… HOOH AHH.”


Puff, puff, puff… planning… puff, puff, puff… clients… puff, puff, puff

Bill: "But Dan is the one that grabbed me and I have not been goofing off…"

Bill, first turn on the power to the computer before you begin to work…

Bill’s idea of business: “Oh come on, we can’t charge this poor lady…”

“I want $100, Bill”


Later that afternoon, here we are, on Aisle 5 of the Office Depot…

“Bill we ain’t going in your trashy car”

“What’s wrong with my car?”

“It looks like someone dropped an atomic bomb inside of it; it’s nuked!”

Back at the office, as he stood up to greet our client, my partner’s pants fell down…


Our first client lost the winning ticket to a $25 million California Lottery. He told us the whole sad story. He bought the ticket at a small Mom and Pop store. Later when he saw that he had won, he went in to cash the ticket. They took the ticket from him but gave him a photocopy of it. Later, no one knew anything about the ticket. The California Lottery Commission attempted to have our client indicted for fraud. Luckily the client ran away …