Sunday Morning Hot Tea - No. 24

My Resignations Throughout the Years and TOO SQUAT TO HANDLE

Welcome to Sunday Morning Hot Tea where I write about a little something up top then answer a legal question for you down below. This week, you never know what the future holds! Also, are squatters’ rights a thing? 

In this edition:

• Topic of the Week – Getting Yelled at for Minimum Wage

• Legal Question – That’s My Land, I Don’t Know You!

Thanks, Heather

Watching Buffy, my 60-pound dog, lying in the sun on the back porch earlier today, I got an idea. I would head outside and do yoga on the patio. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t actually do it. It was sort of muggy outside, and I had just eaten some leftover pizza, and anyway the blankets on the sofa were so cozy.

The last time I did yoga outside was a virtual class during summer 2020 for my friend Elyse’s birthday. I am not great at yoga anymore as I’m out of serious practice. I’ll do Yoga with Adrienne videos on YouTube after I go for a run, but I can’t genuinely say I am a practitioner.

I used to do tons of yoga in college in my movement class as a theater major. The moves were the same as the virtual yoga class last year, but they sure felt easier back in college. Probably in part because I had more limber joints but also probably because I was forced to participate back then in order to earn a grade. At this point in my life, I would not have otherwise been interested in a virtual yoga class, except for the fact that Elyse invited me. I will do almost anything she asks me to.

Elyse started out as my boss at Seadog, a tourist boat company located on Navy Pier in Chicago. No matter how much time we spend together as equals and friends, my brain is still faintly wired to say “yes ma’am” when she asks me to do something. When I first met her, I was fully intimidated by her. Knowing her as well as I do now, her tyrannical management style back then was one-part joke and one-part reality.

She had to maintain a certain demeanor in order to manage a team of her peers while still being friends with some of us. That’s never an easy line to walk. Being new and not in on the joke when started working there, I mostly avoided her. I had two reasons for this: (1) I thought she was way too cool to ever want to be my friend, and (2) I assumed she did not know my name since I didn’t exactly interview for the job.

As we worked together over the next few years, we got closer. She tells me now that she liked me from the very start, but I had no idea because of her buffer of aloofness. The day I knew she actually liked me was when she showed up to the ticket booth back office with a brown package stuffed under her arm. It was a small parcel, no bigger than a clutch purse, with foreign writing on the front. It was 2009, and the news was in full swing warning us about the impending pandemic – the Swine Flu.

“It’s Tamiflu,” she said, clutching the package to her chest. “The city is rationing it, and it will run out. It’s what the doctors are prescribing to fight the Swine Flu.” She kneeled down in front of the company safe in the corner of the office and spun the dial.

“I am putting this in the safe,” she said. “Now only you and I know it’s in here, so if it goes missing, I know it was you.”

This sounds harsh, but everything she said kind of was. It was also really funny.

“I don’t want your Swine Flu medicine,” I said.

“You’ll want it if you get Swine Flu!”

“If I get Swine Flu, are going to let me die or will you share your illegal flu drugs?” I asked.

“If you get Swine Flu and I don’t,” she said solemnly, “I will think about possibly sharing some of it with you.”

I asked why the front of the package looked so strange. I could read her name and address scribbled on with a pencil, but the return address was in a language I didn’t recognize.

“It’s from a Turkish online pharmacy,” she said. “It’s the only place that is still selling it.”

“How do you know it’s really Tamiflu?” I asked. She considered this for a moment before shutting the safe and locking it.

Like most great things in life, I stumbled into the job at Seadog. I showed up on July 4th weekend, one of the company’s busiest times. My intention was to pick up an application and take it home to complete it. Knowing the ticket booth always needed sales agents, my friend, Chris, one of the tour guides, suggested I come by and apply. Instead, I ended up ringing up tickets that very day.

I was in need of work after having quit my previous job at a fancy restaurant in Chicago’s West Loop/Fulton Market area called Carnivale. I was a hostess there and absolutely hated it. My prior restaurant experience was at the Magic Time Machine in Dallas, where the standards were low and nobody took themselves too seriously. How could we? The servers dressed in Party City costumes that reeked of barbecue sauce. This was the real mystery – not the costumes but their smell. Barbecue sauce was only one condiment of many in the place, but somehow its sweet smoky scent wove its way into the polyester fibers of every character’s suit.

That prior experience as a hostess at a high-volume restaurant got me in the door at Carnivale, though the experience was not actually relevant. Were they both restaurants? Yes, sure. Were they both busy? Undoubtedly. That was where the similarities ended.

The contrast between the two was stark. Carnivale had an on-staff sommelier. Magic Time Machine served trash-can punch dyed with food color in Mason jars poured over a hunk of dry ice. On our first day at Carnivale, they had us taste several menu items and pair them with wine. At Magic Time Machine we’d eat day-old fried shrimp from a giant metal bowl between serving tables.

During orientation, the Carnivale managers asked me to pair wines with foods. At this point in my drinking career, I was only an expert at discerning the differences in various flavors of Smirnoff Ice. That was about it. I couldn’t tell you a Kim Crawford from a Kim Basinger. Still, they asked. I somehow remembered red with beef, white with fish from a TV show and got the job. As a reminder, I was applying to be a hostess where all I did was walk folks to their tables.

The work wasn’t too bad, and the pay was ok. Our direct manager for the host stand was a compact and neatly groomed man named Randy. He was originally from Tennessee, a fact we bonded over as my dad was as well. Randy was efficient but patient and chose to solve problems rather than dwell in them.

Another manager who I’ll call Antonio had the opposite attitude. Dressed like a night club manager in a made-for-TV movie, Antonio would pick a problem to death, wasting time repeating how a wine shipment was misordered or how someone got sick and called off. Rather than remedy the situation and move on, Antonio constantly complained and looked like a huge douche while doing it.

I did my best to avoid him, but when Randy took off two weeks for a vacation, that left us at the host stand with Antonio. At the beginning of a shift one night, I stood poised beside the host stand ready to walk people to their tables in a J.Crew dress. Antonio approached, eyed me up and down, and addressed me.

“Why do you always appear so…” he paused, looking up to search his brain. “What’s that word? Oh yeah, disheveled. Why do you always look so disheveled?”

I didn’t think I looked disheveled. I thought my dress was nice, even though I had gotten it at a thrift store. It was a soft yellow cotton fabric with a floral pattern and hit me just below my knees. He walked off before I could answer. This led me to believe his question was indeed a statement masquerading as a question and warranted no response.

Another time, I stood beside my fellow hostess, Bianca, a wide-hipped single mother of two who always wore the same plain black slacks with a different floral blouse each shift. She was friendly and soft-spoken. The two of us would chat between helping guests. This day, Antonio walked toward us, eyeing us up and down. Rather than speak to either of us, he directed his question to Mackenzie, the lithe, bleach-blonde head hostess. Mackenzie was pleasant enough but rarely addressed us underlings except to say something like “Four to table 54.”

“When did we stop hiring cute girls for hostess?” Antonio asked. Bianca and I exchanged a glance between one another. Mackenzie shrugged.

“Randy has been doing the hiring,” she told him, while looking down and marking tables on a clip board.

“Ah,” Antonio said with a tone of understanding. “Yeah, makes sense. He’s so gay.” This was not a statement of fact, as in Randy is a gay man. It was a comment that Randy was so gay, so gay, in fact, that he hired – what? Non-cute girls? The exchange happened so fast. As quickly as he had approached, Antonio was gone. Bianca and I stood in silence, waiting for the next guests to arrive.

When did we stop hiring cute girls? I wanted to think it was right after me, but based on the stink eye, that probably wasn’t what he meant. He had to know we heard him. He just didn’t care. This man was well over 40, with black wires of chest hair springing out from his lavender wide-collar shirt buttoned a hole or two too low. Who made him the arbiter of cuteness?

When the July 4th weekend schedule came around, I noted they had scheduled me for July 3rd, after I’d specifically told them I was not available. I had requested the day off so I could go to Six Flags Great America with my boyfriend and a couple of our pals. If I was going by the Carnivale schedule, I would not be riding rollercoasters that weekend, but would instead be insulted and forced to walk guests to tables.

I decided to be an adult and address the problem head on. As soon as the schedule was released, I went to the restaurant before my shift and approached Antonio in the downstairs manager’s office. I told him I could not work on the 3rd.

“Yes, you can. You’ve got to,” he replied.

“I actually cannot be here, though,” I said. I was surprised he didn’t press me for a why or ask me to explain where I’d be instead. He probably imagined I’d be rifling through a dumpster for clothes or attending a meet up for West Loop Uggos.

“If you’re not gonna be here on that day then you cannot work here,” he said.

“So you’re firing me?” I asked.

“No, no,” he said. “You can work here, but if so, you’ve gotta be here on the 3rd.”

“But I can’t. It is impossible for me to be here on that day,” I said, as if going to Six Flags was a surgery or a funeral.

“Well then you gotta quit,” he said.

“Ok,” I said and turned to walk out.

“No wait,” he said. You smug bastard, I thought. Bet you never thought I’d call your bluff.

“You gotta do it in writing,” he said. “Gotta give me a writing that says what day is gonna be your last day.”

The only other job I had quit on non-mutual terms was a now-defunct bookstore called Bookstop in my hometown of Mesquite. My high school buddy, Jeff, a hard worker who graduated as our class’s valedictorian, had recommended me for the position. I like books, so I thought it would be a good fit.

What I failed to consider was I don’t like organizing – books or anything else. A bookstore is nothing more than a constant organizational project. When people pick stuff up, they never put it back where it goes. I know I sure don’t, and I didn’t back then, either.

Our manager at Bookstop was a guy in his mid-30s named Matt, who spoke so fondly of his X-Box that I came to believe the two were in love. Matt was only liked two things – his X-Box and the acronym that summed up his managerial philosophy.

“KYS!” he spat at me on my first day. “Know what that means? Know-Your-Store.” KYS, in Matt’s mind, meant memorizing where every book went. Nahhh, my dude. That was not going to happen. The magic of working in a bookstore is that you can put the books anywhere you want, and nobody will figure it out until someone comes looking for them.

Bookstop had an unusually high standard for dress code, which I found strange for a place that also sold pornographic magazines. Is it less embarrassing to buy a titty mag from a teenage girl if she’s in business casual dress rather than just casual? Is there something particularly shameful about forking over your dollars for a nudie book if the junior in high schooler behind the register doesn’t have on leather shoes? Either way, I think those customers were too preoccupied with their purchases to give a shit if I was wearing jeans or not.

During my short tenure in the stacks, I was a terrible bookstore worker. I guess “terrible” is a relative term. Bookstop’s parent company, Barnes & Noble, probably wouldn’t have liked me much. I, on the other hand, thought I was doing a public service.

When kids would come in with a $10 bill to buy Of Mice and Men or The Scarlet Letter, I assumed it was for mandatory school reading and not for funsies. When the total rang up $10.83 with tax, the kids would hang their heads ashamed. In response, I would hit the Teacher Discount button and knock 10% off, bringing the total to just under $10. I figured teachers wouldn’t mind if I extended their discount to students in need. I also felt comfortable giving the discount as it made me a teacher to these kids, with the lesson being “never pay retail.”

A woman called in one day and asked if we had a study guide for a nursing exam. We did. It was something like $69.99. She asked if we’d put it on hold for her so she could come in later and get it. I put a post-it note on the front with her name on it and set it beside the other pick-up orders. All she had to do was walk in later and pay. A few hours later, a little boy no older than eight-years-old came through the door.

“My mom said you have a book for her,” he said. “Her name is Penny.”

“Where is your mom?” I asked. He gestured out the glass doors to a beat-up minivan double parked with the engine running.

“She’s with my baby sister,” he said.

I reached on the shelf and handed him the enormous tome, bigger than a phone book and nearly twice the size of his head.

“Is this it?” I asked, expecting a third-grader to confirm that it was indeed the most recent edition of the nursing licensure exam book. He nodded and walked toward the door without paying. I didn’t stop him. Right before he exited the store, he stopped in his tracks, realizing he had forgotten something.

“Thank you,” he squeaked then passed through the double doors.

I didn’t get fired for letting that kid walk out with the nursing book. Nor was I fired for all the times I inappropriately discounted books based on a strict moral code I developed within my own mind, though I did it all the time.

“Are you a teacher?” I’d ask the polite customers. It was the only discount button that didn’t trigger a manager’s approval or require a coupon.

“No, I work in construction,” someone may say.

“No, I work at JC Penny in the mall across the street.”

“No, I am only 10 years old.”

Well, you guys all taught me something today: this place fucking sucks, so you get a discount, and you get a discount, and you get a discount.

I held Bookstop the entity accountable for Matt the persons’ behavior and felt I was punishing the entity appropriately with my discount train. Matt once reprimanded me because my lace-up suede shoes were not “business casual” in his opinion. I pointed out that my feet were not visible behind the counter. He did not care. In what I can only assume was a power move caused by his small penis, he had me clock-out, make a 40-minute round trip drive home, change shoes, and return. I don’t think I need to say this, I just want to: I did not respect Matt.

When I quit Bookstop, it was for much for the same reason I would later quit Carnivale. Matt scheduled me to work the night of the homecoming game when I had specifically asked off. I had just come into my own in high school and finally started participating in social activities. Now this jabroni who got his kicks from exerting authority over teenagers was going to try and power play me over the one night I asked off? I don’t think so.

I told him I wouldn’t be there that day. In response, he asked for my formal resignation. MY FORMAL RESIGNATION. From a retail job. Not having my typewriter handy, I took a post-it from his desk. On the post-it, I wrote:

I quit.

Thanks,
Heather

“You know, Jeff really vouched for you,” Matt said, trailing off. Ok yeah, I felt bad for making Jeff look bad (still do, sorry bud!), but Matt sucked. Also, I was 16 and wanted to eat nachos and not-watch a football game with my friends in a stadium on a Friday night which was my constitutional right as a teenager in Texas.

I left the post-it on his desk, walked out, and never went back. The store closed for good later. It was several years after I worked there, so I don’t think it was my fault. Even I did somehow cause the closure, the building has since been turned into a Genghis Grill, so you’re welcome, Mesquite.

Years later, at 21, I wasn’t intimidated to do at Carnivale in Chicago what I had done at Bookstop in Mesquite. When Antonio told me he required a written notice with a firm end date for me to quit, I took a cocktail napkin from a nearby counter and wrote:

I quit. My last day was last Tuesday.

Thanks,
Heather

“It has to be posted on that bulletin board for two weeks,” Antonio said as I was still writing. I walked across the room and pinned my wrinkled napkin to the corkboard with other announcements. A disheveled note from a disheveled girl.

“Take it down whenever you like,” I said.

I didn’t leave Carnivale because they wouldn’t let me go to Six Flags just like I didn’t leave Bookstop because they tried to keep me from attending the homecoming game. I left both places because nobody should have to be abused for $5.15 an hour, or $7.25 an hour, or any amount of dollars per hour.

I never knew how my life would change after pinning up that wrinkled napkin in Carnivale’s basement.

When I ambled up to Seadog on my first day, I couldn’t guess how the raven-haired, chain-smoking, fast-talking manager would become one of my closest lifelong friends. I couldn’t know that she would never call me disheveled, but she would absolutely tell me when jeans looked terrible on me. She would never chastise me for not knowing where books went but would threaten me not to reveal to anyone the hidden Turkish flu medicine she panic-bought from the internet. She would never make me work when I needed to be somewhere else, but her presence would make me want to come to work, just so I could hang out with her.    

I couldn’t know that I would keep working there until she left, and even after that, too. I couldn’t know how important she would become to me.

When I first met her, Elyse was just a woman in a white tank top, skinny jeans, and high heels, who hired me in five sentences: “You’re Chris’s friend, right? What’s your name? Heather? Can you start today? Why are you wearing that?”

I never guessed how that would lead me, thirteen years later, to doing yoga on a video-chat during a global pandemic. Neither Elyse nor I could have known that the world would look like this. Still, when COVID first hit and the world shut down, there was something so comforting about sitting scared on a video chat with her, laughing about past times, and wishing we remembered the combination to that old safe.

QUESTIONS FROM YOU – Too Squat to Handle

This week’s question is from Madeline Ramirez via the form. Madeline asks:

I recently watched an episode of Fresh Off the Boat in which the mom, Jessica, had to deal with renters/squatters on her rental property. The squatters referenced Squatters Rights to keep her from calling the police/evicting them. If you own property and find someone living there illegally/without your knowledge/without paying rent, at what point can’t you kick them out? How accurate are the squatter-scenarios we see in the media, and what is the extent of squatter’s rights in reality?

Thanks for asking, Madeline!

What are Squtters Rights?

This is a great question, and one that comes up in first-year Property Law classes in law school. Squatters’ rights are legally known as Adverse Possession. The laws vary by state, but for the most part, there are similar requirements across states. In Texas, the law governing adverse possession can be found in the Civil Practices and Remedies Code at Section 16.021 et. seq.

In order for a non-owner to claim ownership over a piece of land, there must be “an actual and visible appropriation of real property, commenced and continued under a claim of right that is inconsistent with and is hostile to the claim of another person.”

Let’s break that down.

1.     Actual and Visible Appropriation of Real Property: This means that the “squatters” would have to actually be on the land they’re claiming in a visible way. This means the squatter can’t be hidden from view and must be visibly on the land so that the owner would have a chance to notice them there.

2.     Commenced and Continued Under a Claim of Right that is Inconsistent with and Hostile to the Claim of Another Person: This means that when the possession of the property began and as it continued, the squatter claimed ownership over property that was legally owned by someone else.

Case law in Texas has added a few more requirements on top of that. The requirements are as follows with a little explanation next to each.

1.     Actual possession of the disputed property - The squatter has to “actually” possess it – the squatter can’t just want to claim the land. He or she must actually be on the land. Additionally, they can’t just be there for a day or two (see below for time requirement).

2.     That is open and notorious – Like we said above, they have to be obviously on the land, not hiding out and sneaking around.

3.     Peaceable – The squatters can’t threaten physical violence to keep the owners out.

4.     Under a claim of right – The squatters must intend to claim the land for themselves.

5.     That is consistently and continuously adverse or hostile to the claim of another person – This means the land land legally belongs to another person, for instance, based on deed records. Squatters must also be on the land “continuously” for the statutory time. If they leave and come back, the clock resets. They also can’t try to claim land they abandoned.

6.     For the duration of the relevant statutory period – There are various time frames and what a squatter can do based on how much time has passed. The timing goes up to ten years, but the squatter can attempt to assert some rights after just three years in Texas.

If the squatter has a document - like an old deed - that purports to give them land, they can try getting ownership in just three years. If the squatter has paid property taxes, has some kind of documentation, and has cultivated the land, they can try getting ownership in 5 years. Otherwise, the default timeline is 10 years. In cases where the owner is disabled, the law makes the squatter wait 25 years.

If you own property and find someone living there illegally/without your knowledge/without paying rent, at what point CAN’T you kick them out?

You usually would NOT be able to kick out a squatter if they have a successful claim of adverse possession. The time frame would depend on the rules above (or whatever rules apply in your state).

If it’s been less than three years, you can try to get them off your land. You can’t use force to remove anyone, but you can file an eviction lawsuit.

In Texas, you’d have to deliver a notice-to-vacate to the squatters, giving them a three-day notice that they need to leave. If they refuse to leave after three days, then you can head to your local Justice of the Peace court and file an eviction suit. Usually your case will be heard within a month or less. Because the squatters have no legal right to be there, absent a successful claim of adverse possession, the court would likely rule in the landowner’s favor and kick the squatters out.

How accurate are the squatter-scenarios we see in the media, and what is the extent of squatter’s rights in reality?

In 2020, a formerly homeless man in Oakland, California named Steve DeCaprio successful petitioned a court to become the legal owner of an abandoned house. He began squatting there three years before going to court, during which time he spent time and resources in fixing the place up.

The prior owner had died, and none of the heirs had attempted to claim the home. As such, after the required time period under the law, DeCaprio was able to petition the court and claim the house for himself. He is now the legal owner of the property.

On the flipside, Heidi Russell, a woman in New York City, found herself in a nightmare scenario when the roommate she let stay with her for a few months refused to leave. The Cut covered the strange case where the temporary roommate who Russell tried to boot after 2 months stayed for more than a year. The owner of the apartment couldn’t get rid of the woman due to strict renters’ rights under New York law and the CDC’s eviction moratorium, according to the New York Post. Though Russell secured a warrant of eviction, it remains on hold due to the pandemic.

Something similar happened recently to a California couple. Tracie and Myles Albert closed on a home worth over $500,000 in Riverside, California in January 2020. Sounds like a dream, right? It would be, except the previous owner refused to leave for FIFTEEN months, during which time the new owners had to pay the taxes and fees. The Alberts had purchased the home for cash with their entire life savings, so for over a year, the previous owner had the cash in his account and continued to live in the sprawling 4-bedroom home with a view rent-free. It wasn’t until a news story broke on the situation that the squatters finally left on their own.

In the case of Russell and the Alberts, the squatters were able to stay, not because of squatters’ rights, but because of the CDC’s eviction moratorium. An attorney interviewed by The Sun said he handled several cases similar to the Alberts’ where previous owners – not renters – were being allowed to stay in homes they no longer owned.

The CDC moratorium is different from squatters’ rights. So far, it has helped millions of renters avoid eviction and homelessness during the pandemic. According to the nonpartisan research and policy institute Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), “An estimated 10.9 million adults living in rental housing — 15 percent of adult renters — were not caught up on rent, according to data collected April 28–May 10.” The moratorium, which expires on June 30 in Texas, is the only thing standing between those people and eviction.

While squatters’ rights require more than what you sometimes see on TV, you can see how they bend both ways. If a home would be otherwise abandoned as in the case of Steve DeCaprio in Oakland, it may be a good thing to have a squatter come in, improve it, and in the process, avoid homelessness. In other cases, they can cause a real-life nightmare where homeowners are denied enjoyment of their own property like the cases of Heidi Russell in New York or the Alberts in California.

Thanks again for asking, Madeline!

Got a question? Submit it here. They can be legal what-if questions, questions on current events, or questions about the legality of actions in TV shows or movies you’ve seen. I never ever want to answer your personal legal questions, so don't send those. Love you, but I don’t do that.

Until next week, that’s the tea, and don’t let anyone move in with thee.

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