Working in the hood

[karacolleen]

Hi there. So we live in St. Louis, MO and run an asphalt maintenance and seal coating business. This summer we landed a great opportunity to work on multiple locations for an out of state “non-profit” company. Basically they own a bunch of affordable housing buildings and single family homes. Not really sure what they do after they buy them other then make them look a little better than they did. Well the lots we’re at right now are in what looks like a compound in a part of the city I didn’t even realize was THAT bad. I grew up like a mile away from there and had no idea!

The owners have no clue what goes on, or at least they act like they don’t but we all know they do cuz there’s cameras all over the place. And they’re actually trying to micro manage us and tell us when and where and how we’re going to do these lots. It’s hilarious because their schedule is like 2 weeks now because of all the things that happened and continue to happen.

Well the first issue that happened, my husband was almost killed by a stray bullet from a shoot out that he just randomly happened to be 30 ft from. This caused him to obviously leave the job early, which led to his work getting destroyed by the o-so-classy tenants. The next day we worked there led to being very politely told by the older tenants to leave because it just got dark, which was actually genuine and nice of them, we were very grateful. The next day we almost got robbed or God only knows what would have happened, luckily we were practically packed up and I had keys in hand. I could go on and on.

Are we stupid for continuing this job? Yes. But we have 6 days left and our season is over, and we’re relying on the money from these jobs to get us through the winter (hopefully).

I guess I’m only posting so I can share this with someone, because if I shared it with anyone I know they’d freak out and just tell me to stop.

Has anyone worked in a not-so-safe area and what did u do?

 

[mathias36]

@karacolleen Yup, I've worked in a not so safe area very much like you describe, and was in a similar situation.

I knew going into those situations what I was dealing with, and rationalized it because I needed the money, and said I wouldn't do it forever, just until I had a foothold in a relatively tough to break into business (ever more difficult with minimal cash).

Then, in a relatively short period of time, I met with a detective to help pull security cam footage from a murder, avoided a shootout/hostage situation that was on national news, and had a box cutter pulled on me by a homeless guy.

At that point, I made a serious decision to get out, but still needed the money to keep going. So I did, and every shitty situation I had to deal with from then on was fuel to work harder on getting out of those types of areas.

It'd be easy to say just don't go back, but if you're depending on that money to live the best advice is probably to be careful, and see if you can ask some of the friendlier locals what to look out for and what time/when is the best to get the work done. Not everyone who's living in those areas is wild and getting into trouble, so if you catch the right person they'll understand and try to be helpful.

Then once it's done, I'd say spend every single moment of your spare time figuring out a way to never go back to those areas again. If you have all winter, that's enough time to figure it out, so 6 days from now could be your last in working those types of spots.

 

[ugotowned]

@karacolleen dang, I know a bit about stl and some bad places there.

(one area had lawn signs "Let's stop killing each other". )

 

[karacolleen]

@ugotowned Honestly it’s not as bad as everyone says it is, just the north side and a few pockets in south city. Oh and of course the east side (but that’s Illinois so I don’t consider it part of St. Louis)It’s like in south city the closer you get to downtown one block is really nice, but then the next block is bad, and then the next block would be full of hipster bars and shit like that. So random.

 

[613jono]

@karacolleen "It's not as bad as everyone says it is.... except the north side, south side and east side..."

Sounds fairly bad.

 

[karacolleen]

@613jono Yea ur right it’s pretty bad, can’t wait to move to the country!

 

[bellemem]

@karacolleen I was on a job site in East St. Louis and the DOT had interstate ramps closed for storm drain maintenance. People would drive up to our site and ask how to get out of East St Louis. I would ask which direction they were trying to go and all they would say is"Out of East St. Louis!".

 

[ugotowned]

@karacolleen overall great place true that

 

[613jono]

@karacolleen We got set up one time while working on some Strom drains in a strip mall. There was a wing place that our truck was parked in front of. We have a piece of equipment running in the truck so the doors were open while we were working about 20 yards from it. The shop owner called his buddy to come grab our stuff from the truck. Luckily we caught him and ran him off. This was the 2nd time we got robbed at that place. Never went back.