Re: Chasing money...and then waiting

Steve-
IMHO getting paid for a day is simply not worth the effort on this one. When this guy gets out he's going to have more on his mind than dealing with you and it's simply not worth your time to pursue him.

As to Tim's posting, when I was VERY young I agreed to build the sound system for a dance club. (These guys wanted a radio booth so they could play records rather than pay a band every night -- a couple of years later it was everywhere and called 'disco.') So anyway, midway through the job I ran into unexpected expenses and the club owner and his "friend" said 'no problem' and just pealed several hundreds of dollars off a wad from his pocket. After this happening a couple of times, my pay coming in a similar manner, and noticing that there was a fairly frequent card game going on in a back room, and noticing that people were always coming around to either pay or be paid for their part in the pre-lottery street numbers game, I realized that I had taken a job from mildly organized crime.

Here's how I dealt with it. I did exactly what I had promised up front and provided a solid working system. Then I found them someone who could perform on-going maintenance on the system (because he was located so much closer than me went the logic) and I slowly removed myself from the situation. It was a business deal. They got what they had asked for and I got paid. Years later they were busted for running numbers and a few other things and I had not been around their business in quite some time. I got lucky because once I saw what was going on I knew that I had to deliver what was promised and I knew to get the hell out of their once it seemed that I had.