I’ve worked with many people over the years and the one guy that stands out for me is bad boy Alex B. He was a great landscaper who battled many demons outside of work.
He worked on my crew at two different companies and I witnessed his skills and confidence rise. He was a fast mower and he could fly with his line trimmer. He pruned well and his clean-up blows were good. At his last job he was the go-to man for his boss.
Wheels come off
Then, on one epic Friday he didn’t show up; and didn’t call until after lunch. We knew about Alex’s alcohol and drug issues. He would wear cologne on the days he was hung-over. Stuff also went missing frequently.
His no-show left me at a two-phase site with one part-timer; and very angry. The mow took until lunch. Line edging was another 2.5 hours. Then we had to blow the site.
Advice for Vas
What really killed the day was a visit from a realtor who owned units in the complex. Seeing me all sweaty he told me it was OK to work hard like me, but wasn’t it better to work smart like him? I was ready to install him under my annuals… He was right, of course. His house flipping is common in BC.
Back to Alex. Once I moved from the North Shore, where he was known to police, we would exchange phone calls. As I had less face-to-face contact with him, the funny and crazy antics stood out more and more.
Pranks
One of our crew members would arrive at home only to discover a pair of women’s undergarments obscuring his car plate. Another would drive all the way home with a dead bird attached to his back bumper.
Then one day Alex invested his after-tax dollars into a big naked doll. With it we pulled off the biggest prank in landscaping! We put the doll into the mower bag and waited for our mowing dude to fill up his bag. He would then remove his mower bag and, standing over a tarp, he would empty it. Never in his life would he expect a huge naked baby to fall out. His frightened look was priceless.
Bad girls for bad boys
Once Alex came to work with a huge smile. The night before he had obtained certain services from a shady woman on Kingsway in Vancouver. She was beautiful, he said; and she was in a wheelchair!
Allegedly, he obtained similar services once for $5 and an ice-cream cone.
.Alex lost his mother in 2014. Then just before Thanksgiving in 2015, his father suffered a stroke and was hospitalized. Alex called me on a Wednesday and to this day, I regret not being more positive and supportive on the phone. I had no idea he was so fragile. At 30+ years of age he wasn’t really grown up.
By Friday he overdosed. They found him on Monday. Rest in peace Alex.
