Luke and Jessie owned a beautiful home in Fort Myers, Florida. When Hurricane Ian hit more than a month ago, their entire neighborhood was flooded. For several days, more than two feet of standing water was in their home. Very few of the houses in southwestern Florida were spared in the devastation.
After the water receded, it left behind much destruction in its wake -damaged home appliances, soaked walls, and furniture busted beyond repair. The couple’s lives have been turned upside down but they had no time to mourn. A cleanup of the mess left behind must be done quickly to ensure that whatever can be redeemed in the structure of the house is preserved.
That's when Seth (not his real name) offered his services. He is the boyfriend of Jessie's niece, so he's well-known to the family. He offered to help Luke and Jessie move their damaged furniture and appliances from inside the house to the curb in front of their home.
For a fee of US$5,000.
Yes, you read that right! And I'm not making this up. I heard this from the horse's mouth. Well, from Luke's mouth.
He simply couldn't believe it. Someone he considered a close friend tried to take advantage of their predicament in order to make a quick buck.
In addition, Luke told me that Seth had offered to bring three of his friends and the four of them would work together would tear out and remove all the damaged walls in the house. This applies to the portion of every wall in the house up to four feet high from the floor. He proposed to do the work at the rate of US$100 per hour per person. For the four of them, that comes to US$400 per hour.
I did some math to estimate how much this would have cost.
I was there when everything damaged in the house was torn down and hauled out and it was a lot of work. My estimate is that it took 19 people about 7 hours over a period of two days to get the work done. That's a total of about 133 man-hours. At the rate Seth was asking for, this would have cost US$13,300.
Jessie also told me that an insurance adjuster had earlier approached them and told them that it would cost about US$80,000 to fix everything that had been damaged. The guy also wanted an immediate down payment of US$20,000 before any work would start.
As I listened to what this couple and their three little kids had endured within the span of three weeks, beginning with the devastation by the hurricane, it occurred to me that there are many others like them. And in situations like this, you would always find vultures who are circling overhead to pick apart the vulnerable.
I couldn't help but marvel at how the mind of a depraved human being works. It never ceases to amaze me.
Still, what I find comforting is that in the same space where you come across selfish and self-serving folks such as Seth, you also find people who are completely selfless and willing to do all that they can. There are those eager to serve and lend a helping hand to people in need without demanding any compensation.
Over a nine-day period, I spent time with a team of people who spent their own money, and time, in addition to sacrificing more than a week of their lives to help complete strangers like Luke and Jessie, among others. I'll be writing about the sacrifices some of these made people soon.
For now, it would be good for you and me to do some serious soul-searching. I think it’s easy for us to condemn Seth as a fortune-seeking scoundrel who is trying to take advantage of people in desperate situations.
But I wonder - do we engage in similar practices?
Do I try to exploit others who are in dire straits and who need urgent help? Do you?
Do you raise your prices when there's a high demand for your products and services, especially when those in need of those products and services had been hit with unforeseen calamities they couldn't have prepared for? Some of us choose to hide behind the law of supply and demand, but we know what this truly is - exploitation.
But I think we can be better. I believe there's a reason why we cannot spell humankind without the "kind" at the end of it. It’s time we put kind back into humankind.
It's time for more humankindness.