Page 4 of Welcome Home

Her hands grabbed mine. “Let me tell you what we are going to do. We are going to take a few days to get all your FMLA paperwork in order to take a mental health leave. Thank God you hired an assistant and an intern,” she said with a wink.

I wanted to fight back on the leave, but God knew I needed it. This time, I wouldn’t fight. Hell, I was too exhausted to fight. “What am I going to do on a mental health leave?”

When the corners of her mouth pointed upward, I knew we were about to be on a plane somewhere. Lula Ann’s other coping mechanism was to travel. It was fitting for her since she was the owner of Passport Society, one of the top travel agencies in the region.

“What we are going to do on your mental health leave is take a few trips. The world is our oyster. Where do you want to start?” she asked.

I thought about all the places I’d been and where I still wanted to go. There was a major perk when you had a best friend who worked in the travel industry. I’d been places that I never dreamed of going. There was one place we recently talked about. “Bali, let’s go there.”

“Bali it is.” She picked up the plate of food from the coffee table. “Now eat.”

I knew that this trip was a temporary moment to get my mind off things. I also knew that we wouldn’t go until the doctor cleared us to go, because I had no idea what I had to do next. Would I be stuck here and not able to travel because of this thing called lupus?

Lula Ann knew me well. She knew that I needed a moment to regroup so that I could start this journey with the right mindset. Bali was a great place to regroup.

3 Years Later

More Than a Garbage Man . . .

I wanted to be annoyed, but I was too blessed to be that. There was a time when I first started my business that I had to service an entire property alone because of worker callouts. Now with almost two hundred employees throughout the Rock Hill, South Carolina, and Charlotte, North Carolina, areas, it was far and between if I had to work on a property. Even in those times, I didn’t have to, because I had access to contract workers through a temp agency that I worked with. Sometimes, it was just easier for me to cover a shift myself than pay for a head.

Yeah, I was the founder and chief executive officer of St. Claire Property Solutions, but that didn’t mean I was scared to get into the trenches. Hell, I started in the trenches with this property solutions thing at the age of sixteen years old. I was hired part-time as a grounds and maintenance assistant at a local apartment community in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

At sixteen, that job busted my ass. I picked up trash, emptied outdoor trash cans, pressure washed sidewalks, replaced lightbulbs, assisted with apartment clean outs, delivered notices and packages, moved discarded furniture, and a host of other things. While my homeboys worked at grocery stores, the mall, and fast-food restaurants, I worked in all kinds of weather conditions. The weather conditions in the Carolinas were nothing to play with, especially the heat.

My father, Franklin Joseph St. Claire, taught me at a very young age about work ethic and how important it was. He worked hard at a manufacturing plant that he’d worked at for as long as I could remember. Before I started my job at the apartment community, I learned my work ethic around my house. I took out the trash, carried in groceries for my mother, Lauren Coral St. Claire, when she went to the store, did the yard work, and helped my father with small repairs or did them myself.

That initial job grew my love for the industry. I loved the reaction when the property manager saw how well I did the job I was responsible for. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was promoted to the groundskeeper and turnover assistant. That position taught me how the units were prepared between move-out and move-in. I assisted with carpet removals, appliance cleaning, painting preparation, move-out inspections, and final walk-throughs.

One of the most useful and eye-opening things that I had access to in that role was the vendors. Something that caught my complete interest was the coordination that it took to turn over an apartment quickly. It was a fact that vacant apartments generated no income, so every minute cost. My mother taught me if I had a question, to ask it, and that was what I did. From those questions, I was taught practical skills from the maintenance supervisor and the business side from the property manager.

By the time I was a freshman in college at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC), I knew I wanted to start a company that tied into dealing with properties. I didn’t want to necessarily be involved with property management, but property solutions was more the avenue. I chose my college strategically for that reason so that I could gain access to the growing real-estate market in Charlotte. I also wanted to stay close to my mother who lived with lupus.

“Aye, Falcon, that lady we told you about in apartment 520 is up there acting stupid.” Jeremy walked up to my pickup truck where I stood. Frustration had his light skin reddened. She must have been a lot if she had him frustrated, because he was not one to be easily moved.

Tonight I was in the field on the environmental services division of my business. Under this division, we handled valet trash, bulk-item removal, compactor monitoring, recycling collection, waste-area sanitation, and sustainability reporting. There were twenty properties between Rock Hill, South Carolina, and Charlotte, North Carolina, that were contracted with my company for various services. Valet trash was one of our biggest services as a lot of properties started to offer the service years ago as a part of their luxury upgrade.

We charged twenty-five dollars a door a month for valet trash services and an additional ten dollars for recycling services. It was a pass-through fee that the residential community added into the rent, and it came directly to us. The communities that offered the service did not make it an optional amenity. It made it easier for them to manage as well as us.

The community that we were in tonight had a total of eight hundred units of which 682 were occupied. That was a cool $17,050 a month from that one community for just the valet trash service. They opted not to add on the recycling services. For a property this size, it took five to six workers to work it. My valet attendant position started at eighteen dollars an hour.

I shook my head. It was ironic that this was the property that needed the extra hand tonight. She was probably the reason that we needed it. “What she talking about?”

“Man, we’ve left notice after notice about why we don’t take her trash. She acts like she can’t damn read. Tonight, it was like she was waiting for our ass. I’m not going back up there with that fuckin’ lady, man,” he ranted.

The resident in the unit that he spoke about had just moved in a few weeks ago. When new residents moved in, they were given a pamphlet on what we required in order to pick their trash up. They also signed an addendum that said that they would follow those rules.

Each apartment had a trash can that was provided. That was the only trash can that we took trash out of. We only took up to three bags at a time, provided they were in the trash can and each tied closed. If it was sitting beside it, we wouldn’t take it. Since the apartment did not add on the recycling service, we still took up to three flattened boxes, which was also in the pamphlet and addendum.

I huffed because I was not in the mood to be tempted off my square. Patience was a virtue that I had a lot of when it came to certain people and situations. A bitch that just chose to not listen was not one of the situations that I wanted to waste my patience on.

“Alright, I got it. Did you finish the rest of the floor?” I asked. Once he told me that he did, I made sure I had everything I needed before I headed to the fifth floor.

I was dressed in the normal attire for the valet attendants. They were required to wear our logo T-shirt, safety vest, and gloves. I didn’t care what bottoms were worn. From what I saw, most wore sweatpants or basketball shorts. Trash pickup didn’t start until eight p.m. from Monday through Thursday.

This community was a nine-story indoor complex. Apartments were on the first through the eighth floor. On the ninth floor was a pool, game room, and a rooftop bar. On the first floor was a gym, laundry room, mail room, coffee shop, community room, and the leasing office. Every floor had what they called working rooms where residents could use to work virtually. To use them, they had to reserve them through their online reservation system. Once the room was reserved, they received a code to enter the space.

The community and the building were massive with a parking garage attached. With all the amenities, the rent was well worth it. Plus, they took care of the property exceptionally well.