...well, at least *I* thought so. YMMV.

This is straight from an acquaintance of mine, someone I pretty much trust, so I'm quite sure it's true. Ages ago this person went through a rough patch--lost his job, messy divorce, started drinking, all that fun stuff--and he had to sell his house since he could no longer afford to live there. And in the interim some barfly "buddy" of his hooked him up with a couple of white trash tenants who needed a place to live "for a few days" who agreed to rent the place until it sold. And by "white trash" I mean a married couple, with the henpecked guy working all day long and a rather unpleasant woman sitting around in a housecoat and curlers, smoking cigarettes and screaming fishwiferies at her "stories" on the television.

And, as one might expect from white trash tenants with a drunken nothing-left-to-live-for landlord, they decided pretty early on in their tenancy to not bother to pay the agreed-upon rent. As in, um, NEVER. And once they were installed in the house they became even more loudly abusive, if that may be believed. And started doing other charming things, like lock the doors and scream obscenities and insults at the real estate agents and prospective buyers when they would stop by to attempt to view the property. And as the "few days" moved into weeks, it became increasingly obvious, even to my drunken-stupor friend, that they were NOT going to be moving out of their own accord.

Mojo would like to take this time to point out that she has seen such silly fun horror movies as Pacific Heights as well as talked to various friends who have had nightmare tenants, and she has never ever had the SLIGHTEST desire to ever be a landlady. I understand that some people are financially forced into the situation, but now that I am older and hopefully a little more financially secure it is my fervent hope to never reach that nadir. But I digress.

So anyway. My friend has these godawful tenants that he can't legally get rid of without a year or two of expensive legal proceedings. Which he doesn't have the time for. So he talks about it with some more of his useless barfly friends, and Connections Are Made. And eventually someone says, oh, hey, I've got someone you'll want to talk to--and that someone is a cop. So my friend meets this cop for drinks and a talk.

But it's not exactly what you think. Instead the cop turns out to be just an adviser. He tells my friend, you know, there's technically no LEGAL way you can get rid of these people, so here's what ya gotta do. And he tells my friend point by point exactly what needs to be done, and tells him he's gotta stick to the plan NO MATTER WHAT. Under the partial assumption that, unpleasant white trash being what they are, they will play their part like unpleasant little sheep and all will ultimately be well. (And if things DON'T go as planned, ah, well, whatcha gonna do?)

So here's what he did.

Step one: he bought all new locks for every door on the house.

Step two: he cased the joint and waited for the unpleasant woman to leave for a few hours. (The man left every day for work, so no worries there.)

Step three: he changed all the locks.

Step four: he took every possession the couple had in the house and moved them oh so carefully to the car they had parked in the driveway.

And step five: he called the police and said something along the lines of, "Help! Help! There's been this CRAZY LADY who keeps trying to BREAK INTO MY HOUSE!"

It turns out while he was on the phone with the police the unpleasant lady shows up, tries to get in, immediately deduces what's going on and proceeds to start smashing at the door screaming obscenities. By the time the police showed up, she was insane with rage and throwing rocks. She fought with the police, and eventually got herself cuffed and thrown in the back of the car.

And then the police come in to talk to my friend. And of course the first thing they say is, "she claims she lives here." To which my friend insists, yeah, I know, she's nuts, I never saw her before, she just started showing up here a few days ago.

The police looks at him rather askance, and says, "Um, if I were to walk around the house, I wouldn't find any woman's clothing around here, would I?" To which my friend gladly invites him to look around as much as he wants; I don't have ANY of that crazy lady's property; don't know what she's talking about. So the cop looks around carefully, and then says, "Those look like awfully new locks on the doors." To which my friend says, yeah, the crazy lady scared me so much I went out and got new locks installed because I was afraid my old ones would be inadequate to protect me from her insane delusions.

By the end the cop pretty much knew the score, but my friend stuck to his story like grim death. Since the couple didn't have any utilities or phone or anything in their name--to say nothing of a lease or rent check or even a scrawled-upon bar napkin--they were outa luck.

Turns out a few weeks later my friend saw his ex-tenants hanging out at a bar. He was afraid maybe they'd take a swing at him or something, but the man was all happy to see him--no hard feelings there, and even a little impressed by the novelty of the eviction. His darling wife was far less happy, but instead of causing a scene she just glared holes through him. "My wife's not too happy with you" former tenant finally noticed, and my friend shrugged and pointed out, in all truthfulness, that eh, she never much liked him, anyway. To which the man nodded in friendly agreement.

So there ya go. Another valuable life lesson, courtesy of Mojo. Hopefully you will never have bad tenants, but if you do, this is ONE way that got some out on the street, at least a gazillion years ago....

Mojo