Malicious Compliance? (Fiction)

“Come in” Phil said to his younger brother, Braden.

Braden let himself in. The back door opened into a very short landing and then into the kitchen of the old house in Lansing’s Gier Park Neighborhood.

Phil was making breakfast for the kids while Jenny slept in. It was the weekend. On Sunday, Jenny let Phil sleep in. Such is the life of parents.

Braden didn’t have kids. He didn’t even have a girl-friend. His last one had kicked him out because he was either working or sleeping. She suspected that he was cheating, although that was not the case.

Braden was deeply embroiled in the start-up of the new factory. The new factory was in the vanguard of the re-industrialization of the United States. To say it was going poorly would be a huge understatement. The talent pool with experience in such things had died-off or were deeply into retirement and the young Turks were relearning the art-and-science by making every mistake in the book.

“They are putting me on seven days a week” Braden said as he went to the corner cupboard and pulled down the bottle of vodka.

Braden worked night-shift and Saturday morning was his Friday-night happy-hour. Braden splashed a couple of inches into a water tumbler and stole one of the kids’ glasses of orange juice and dumped it into his vodka.

Phil poured another glass of orange juice to calm the squawking kid. It was an old game between them.

“They already have you working 6-12s and now they want you to work seven days a week” Phil asked.

“Actually, it is 6-13s” Braden said. “Too many issues were falling between the cracks with no overlap between the two shifts, so they mandated 13 hour shifts. But yes, they are putting me on 7-13s starting tonight.”

“How is the new apartment?” Phil asked.

“Totally sucks. Thanks for asking” Braden said.

“What is wrong with it?” Phil asked.

“Black mold, leaks, filthy when I moved in, the microwave is not level, the refrigerator will not stay cold...want to hear the entire list?” Braden said.

“I don’t get it. Why did you rent it if it was so bad?” Phil asked.

Braden rolled his eyes. “Like, when did I have time to inspect it, working 6-13s? You know how housing is in the parts of town where you can park your car on the street and not have it broken-into.”

“I would have bailed. The contract gave me seven days to back out but the complex manager ghosted me for that week. It is like she knew my work and sleep hours” Braden said.

“Now, every time I file a complaint...by email with pictures, mind you...I get the stock answer ‘Unless it is specifically mentioned in the Contract, you are responsible for all issues and problems…” Braden said.

Braden looked morose. He was sitting on the counter and swinging his feet. He knew he shouldn’t be sleeping in a place with black-mold. He knew young men with COPD.

“Can you go over her head?” Phil asked as he sliced up hotdogs and mixed them into the eggs he was scrambling for the kids.

Braden shook his head “Negative. The papers list the number of an automated call center. I have a choice of getting trapped in an infinite loop of automation or waiting on hold for hours before talking to somebody in Asia.”

“Well, there must be SOMETHING positive about the apartment” Phil insisted. He believed in looking for the positive and exploiting it, if possible.

Phil had taken a few classes in Law School before the twins came. Bowing to reality, he realized he needed a steady pay-check and dropped out of Law School. He now worked as a run-and-fetchit at a large, Lansing law-firm.

“The utilities are included...and they damned well ought to be for what I am paying every month” Braden said.

“If it were me, I think I would grow some weed” Phil said.

“I thought about that but wouldn’t know where to start” Braden said. “Besides, it is probably against the contract…”

“Tell you what” Phil said. “Email me a PDF of the contract and I will see if there is any wiggle room in it. That, and I have a friend I want you to meet.”

Three hours later, Braden was leaving Grow Generation with $1000 worth of grow equipment, twenty “clones” and Jason DeWaters’ business card. Jason promised that he would take the equipment back and would only charge a modest restocking fee if Phil could not find any wiggle-room in the contract.

Braden was particularly pleased with the industrial quality HEPA air filter and fans. He could sleep with his head in the outwash of the filter and not have to worry about the black-mold.

“You do know that there is no way you can ripen 20 plants in a five-foot tent” DeWaters had cautioned Braden.

“Yah, but I got a lot of friends and I don’t need a bigger tent YET” Braden said. “I wanna dip my toe in the water and see how much work this is.”

 

Braden was counting on the fact that some of his friends were pretty slick at automation and wiring. Hell, he would never use his stove and microwave or dishwasher. There ought to be a LOT of amperage he could tap into. 

"I don't want to offer too much advice, but if you are going to grow that many plants they will start to smell as you get closer to harvest. You probably ought to touch base with your next-door neighbors and let them know. It never hurts to give them a gift of little bit of 'product' ahead of harvest time to make them allies" DeWaters volunteered.

***

“I found the wiggle-room” Phil announced over the phone.

“Yeah, what did you find?” Braden asked.

“Says you can’t run a business out of your apartment. Says you cannot smoke in it. But growing ain’t smoking and if you are running it as “a favor” to your friends and you do everything with a handshake then you are golden with regard to running a business” Phil said.

“Thanks bro. I owe you a big one” Braden said.

Braden was a weekly visitor to Grow Generation. Due to the number of hours he was working, he had plenty of money in the bank and his friends were more than willing to front him some cash...on a handshake...for future considerations.

***

Three days before Braden had scheduled his first harvest he came home to find his apartment ransacked and his grow equipment totally destroyed. All of the weed had been harvested.

He called 9-1-1. Growing weed is legal in Michigan as long as you follow the rules. With DeWaters and Phil as his mentors he was scrupulously within the letter and spirit of the law.

The cops showed up. Braden handed them copies of his security footage. Based on DeWaters’ recommendations, Braden saturated his apartment with high-end video surveillance, including a couple hidden in the cold-air returns of the HVAC. The intruders had smashed the monitors they could see but failed to realize that the actual footage was stored on-the-cloud.

A day later, the cops called Braden and informed him that the thief was his apartment manager. She and the maintenance manager, who just happened to be her boyfriend, had let themselves in with a key and proceeded to harvest Braden’s crop.

“When will you arrest them?” Braden asked. This was just too good.

“We don’t plan to. We interviewed them and they said that you had violated the contract and that they were just cleaning up the mess you made.”

“Bullshit!” Braden exploded. “They made the mess. They destroyed my grow-room and smashed my water system!”

“They claim that they were only doing their jobs” the police spokesman said.

“Can you send me copies of the report and the interview? Braden asked.

“Yep. Gimme a couple of minutes. What is your email address” the spokesperson asked.

After quickly scanning the report, Braden called his brother...something he had never done before during Phil’s work hours.

“Is everything OK?” were the first words out of Phil’s mouth.

“No, not really” Braden said. “Burglars broke into my apartment, stole all of the weed and trashed the place.”

“Call 9-1-1” Phil said.

“I did. This happened yesterday” Braden told him. “The cops told me that it is not a criminal matter but a business issue that needs to be settled in civil-court.”

“WTF! How can that be?” Phil queried.

Braden quickly brought him up-to-date.

“Let me be sure I have this straight: You have video footage of your apartment manager and her boyfriend letting themselves into you apartment and harvesting your weed and the cops let them off because the manager made sworn statements that she was just doing her job as a paid agent of the owners of the apartment?”

“Yeah, well, basically that is what happened” Braden said.

Phil had a gift for condensing events to their barest bones.

“Hang on, I wanna get another person on the line” Phil said.

Forty seconds later another line beeped in...”Braden, I have Ashley Browning on the line. She is one of our attorneys at the firm and she has a light case-load right now. Tell her exactly what you told me…”

Braden repeated his tale of woe.

“I have a few questions” Ashley informed him when he finished.

Ashley’s accent was vaguely reminiscent of Dr Phil’s voice with the flattened vowel sounds and stretched out syllables of Oklahoma or North Texas.

“Did your manager send you ANY kind of notice that they were going to enter your apartment?” Ashley asked.

“No” Braden said.

“Did they send you a cease-and-desist notice regarding your plants before entering your apartment?” Ashley asked.

“No” Braden said.

“Did the apartment manager or the person who was with her check or look at any of the utilities while they were there?” Ashley asked.

“No. Why do you ask?” Braden asked.

“Many contracts have boiler-plate in them that gives management permission to access apartments to service utilities and fire-suppression equipment” Ashley said. “I want to make sure there was no legitimate reason for them to be in your apartment that they can hide behind.”

“Who else have you shared this information with other than the police, your brother or with me?” Ashley asked.

“Nobody else” Braden said. “I don’t have a lot of time to socialize with friends.”

“Here is the deal” Ashley said. “I am willing to take this case on one condition, that you never breath a word of this to a friend and that goes double for not posting a single word on social media. In fact, I would be a lot more comfortable if you deleted all of your social media accounts.”

“Why is that?” Braden asked.

“This is a case of where you can get your satisfaction by getting 15 seconds of fame for being a victim or you can get your satisfaction by being made-whole but you cannot have both” Ashley said.

“I don’t understand” Braden said.

“I make money by NOT going to court. It takes forever to get to court and it ties up huge amounts of time and money on both sides. I make a compelling business-case that shows the other party that settling out-of-court will save them a boat-load of money in the long run” Ashley said.

“Your story, and the video footage you have of it, is a horror case for the management company and the REIT that owns the apartments. It has the potential to bankrupt them. My job is to convince them to buy all rights to the footage and convince them that the story will never get out” Ashley said.

“If your story gets out into-the-wild then it destroys all of our leverage to bargain and you will not get diddly-squat for a settlement” Ashley explained.

“Yeah, I guess I can delete my accounts” Braden agreed. It was not what he had planned for the day but shit happens.

“The other thing I need is to have you come down to the office to sign some paper-work giving us the right to represent you. We need that to get official copies of the police report” Ashley said.

“I also need a copy of all of the video footage. My plan is to have our video source piece together a 60 second sample of what COULD show up on social media if the management company doesn’t produce an acceptable offer” Ashley said.

“And if your video feeds clearly show the manager smashing surveillance cameras and if the police reports clearly state that she swore she was acting as an official agent of the management firm...well, that is a big problem the management firm and they eager to make disappear” Ashley said.

“So start thinking of a place to store the video footage where it will be safe and where you won’t be tempted to look at it. If you cannot think of any other place, we have a safe where we can hang onto it” Ashley said.

“But I am not going to candy-coat this...if you leak a word of this or if you post a single second of this footage on-line I will drop you as a client and I will give you a bill for the hours I invested in the case. It is all-or-nothing. Which do you choose?” Ashley said.

“I want you to represent me. I am 110% in” Braden said.

***

*Jason DeWaters is a real person who I met by mere chance. He generously offered technical advice to make this story more realistic. He is a VERY easy guy to talk with.

I offered to post his business card as payment for his advice and he accepted my offer.

Incidentally, the landscaping containers and bags make good things to store potatoes in. They also offer rooting hormones and other useful materials.