Who You Gonna Call? Hick Fixer.

Hick seems to be on-call 24/7/365. It's not part of his just-over-$300 a month "job" with the senior apartments. The other guy was never on call like that. He basically just collected the rent every month, for the four apartments that were occupied at the time. For the same money Hick started at, and worked the first year. Nobody would have thought to call HIM for the most recent problem.

"My friend who runs the kitchen called and said there was water dripping from the ceiling. I went by, and found out it was a water heater leaking up in one of the apartments. So we had to get a new water heater. I took out the ceiling tiles in the kitchen. Now I have to get new ones and put them up. 

I told my friend, 'Maybe I should just leave it like it is. Because of that guy with the city, who complained that I shouldn't be doing any work on this building, because I'm not a licensed contractor.' She said, 'Now let's not be too strict about this. Maybe you should go ahead and fix it, and see if he complains. Then you can say you are sorry.' I told her, 'I can say that since it was OUR water heater that caused the problem for HIS kitchen, I thought I was the one responsible for fixing it.' She said that sounded like a good plan."

"You'll get paid for doing all that work, right? Other than just your salary?"

"Oh, yeah. I'll get my contractor's fee."

Heh, heh. Even though he's not a licensed contractor. Hick is paid by the board of the nonprofit organization running the apartments, not by the city, which technically owns the building, but leases it to the nonprofit for a dollar.