Tom Herndon - O'Hare Hustle

 

 

All right. Well, I can tell you that nothing shatters a child's innocence more than watching one of their parents get busted. When I was 10, my mom and I went on a trip to visit some relatives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and our flight included a stop in Chicago. It turned out to be a very long stop. And faced with the prospect of six hours at O'Hare airport, we could have gone into the city, maybe caught a Cubs game or gone to the Art Institute. But for my depression-era mother, those things cost money. And what my mom saw as an opportunity at the airport with six hours to kill was a chance to make some money. [audience chuckles]

 

And at the center of this financial bonanza were luggage carts. What my mom noticed was that all the luggage carts in the rack, you had to put a dollar in. You got the luggage cart out, you took it wherever you needed it, and if you brought it back, you got a quarter. But nobody ever brings the cart back. And my mom quickly starts corralling all the carts [audience chuckles] that she can lay her hands on, bringing them back to the rack and getting the quarter. I'm mortally embarrassed by this. I pretend not to know who this woman is, but after an hour of pretty good hustle, she's sporting a pretty hefty pocket of quarters [audience chuckles] and she says, “Hey, come on, let's hustle. I'll split it with you.” [audience chuckles] So, reluctantly, I get drawn into the enterprise [audience chuckles] and I'm just spotting at first, I'm kind of staying on the fringe of this whole thing. But we're doing okay. We're racking up the quarters.

 

And that probably would have been all good and well until my mom is taking one of the carts back to the rack, and a woman stops her and says, “Hey, you finished with that cart? Do you mind if I take it?” And another light bulb goes off in my mom's head, and she says, “Yeah, you can have it for a dollar.” In my mom's mind, she's going to get the same price as if she went to the rack, but she's quadrupled her profit margin. [audience chuckles] Now, if my mom was busy before when she was making a quarter cart, she is now a blur [audience laughter] in one of the busiest airports in the world, she is moving. She's checking the monitors. She's seeing where flights are coming in. [audience laughter] She is looking at people coming from California. They're going to have a lot of luggage. [audience laughter] “We got to get that flight.”

 

She's hanging out of baggage claim. “Whoa, look at all those suitcases you got. You probably could use a cart. Just cost you a dollar.” She's infectious, she's persistent, she's likable, and she is putting away the paper money now. I'm not really keen on this new business direction that our enterprise is taking. Even though I was young, I started to sense that maybe we crossed over into something a little different now. And my suspicion is confirmed when, on the way to another gate to meet potential customers, [audience chuckles] my mom rounds a corner with a cart and runs right into two Chicago area airport police officers. “Ma'am, what are you doing?” “What am I doing?” Answer by repeating the question. That buys you a little time. [audience chuckles] “What does it look like I'm doing?” Answer a question with a question.

 

At this point, my mom had been married to an attorney for 25 years, so her verbal fencing skills are pretty solid. [audience laughter] “Well, ma'am, it looks like you're taking these carts and selling them to other people, and that's illegal.” I can tell this isn't a chance encounter because one of the security officers says into his walkie talkie, “Yeah, 1012, we found her.” [audience laughter] “Ma'am, why don't you have a seat?” Now I'm getting very nervous. These security folks have utility belts and badges, and I think I see handcuffs on the belts, and I'm wondering if those are going to come out. And people are starting to stare. They're starting to look. And he goes back and forth with my mom a little bit. “We're just coming from West Virginia. We don't know about your big city ways. [audience laughter] Just taking the carts back for the quarter.”

 

So, after a while he says, “Look, if you want to take the carts back that's fine. Take the course. But you can't walk around here selling this thing. Okay?” “Oh, yeah, absolutely. Sorry for the misunderstanding.” “No, it’s not really a misunderstanding, but that's okay.” Well, we finish up our low profit margin, end of the work, get on the flight to Minneapolis. And my mom says, “I don't think we need to tell your father about this. [audience laughter] We can just keep this between you and me.” Thanks.