I should have said something sooner...

Hello everyone, Quesada (as most of you knew me)- Madison Dodger, Class of ‘97 coming to you live from a homeless shelter in Cedar Creek, TX. Yup, not a typo.I’m in the sticks, about 30 miles outside of Austin. I apologize in advance for the less than cheerful story you're about to read. Bear with me here, as I attempt, to gather my thoughts and make sense of the horrendous situation I currently find myself in.

Ok, so I have been here since April. It all started when I was abruptly let go from a job that included housing, on a 5 acre property down the road in Del Valle. But, before I go into detail on how I was wronged by my previous employer and his brother in law, there is one thing I need to address and make clear. As much as I would like to play the victim card and place all the blame on the two individuals previously mentioned. Fact is, I must, have , and will put the majority of the blame on myself. For those of you that are and have been super close to my situation, but haven’t wanted to dive deep into the conversation of how I ended up homeless for fear of maybe I was in denial or sensed that I was dead set on playing the victim card against my former employer. Fact of the matter is, I did it to myself. Here’s how it went down.

If you know me, I’m always cautioning folks, sometimes in jest, to not get “comfortable” with whatever it is they’re doing in life cause it can all be taken away from you at any given time. Stay humble, focus on your work, and work hard, and things will come together for you. And, what did I do? Like a shmuck, I got comfortable. Not only did I get comfortable, but I'm pretty sure I walked on water. I could do no wrong. Walking on water for me was living in the “now”. A complete and total failure of managing or even, totally disregarding my financial situation. I became a teenager again, not planning for the future or emergencies. Like any other grown ass man would do. On a side note, what made this more difficult for me to accept was, yeah ok, I fudged up. But the only factor that lead me to mess things up so badly for myself was own stupidity. I'm sure there's a few of you out there that are thinking, "what about the drugs and alcohol". Well, all that kind of fazed out when my fiancee took off. I mean, unless Phish is in town, then its game on! But other than that, soda is my only real weakness. Truth be told, I kind of wish that drugs, alcohol, and a reckless lifestyle were to blame for my shortcomings. It would certainly lessen the blow of my being a stupid head.

Like I touched up on before, I managed a 5 acre/5 unit Airbnb property for an "entrepreneur" who lived overseas. It was a one man operation, so I did EVERYTHING, I was the housekeeper, groundskeeper, handyman, and guest experience facilitator, 7 days a week. I loved my job. I was good at my job. And, most importantly, the GUESTS respected and appreciated the effort I put in to making sure they had a positive experience. Which led to an influx of 5 star reviews. I mean, once you get that taste of a 5 star review, you’ll start doing things you never thought you’d see yourself doing. Did I just go next level on my succulent arrangement? YUP!! So, you're probably wondering, how does a guy who seemed to be doing everything right, get fired out of the blue? I’ll get to that.

The day the axe fell came out of nowhere. No warning, no nothing. Blindsided. The only other time in my life that I felt so blindsided was when my fiancee upped and left me for a 60yr old dance instructor some years ago. Old news. Meh. Not only did it come out of nowhere, the manner of how it was done struck me as odd. Instead of being a man and having a hard conversation with another man, "Mr Entrepreneur" had his brother-in-law fire me, followed by a voice message on Whatsapp. In that message he laid out the following as the reasons for my dismissal.

Reason #1- Back in February one of our units received a 1 star review. One of our guests decided to dissect one of our units from floor to ceiling and pointed out every tiny flaw. My employer responded by giving him the business while totally discrediting his one star review. But then six weeks later he turns around and throws that review in my face?! One of the fatal flaws in the unit was the interior of the mini fridge not being wiped down good enough. Instead of getting defensive I took accountability and owned up to it. The bad review ended up being “my fault”. On top of that, my boss decided to expand on my housekeeping abilities. How they are not up to par and not up to the standard we were trying to set at the property. But wait boss, didn’t we clean all of the units together, so that you can show me “the standard” and how you wanted the units cleaned? Didn’t we do walkthroughs after each cleaning to go over all of the little details? Didn’t you give me a thumbs up in the end after it was all said and done? And all I did since then was to make sure I executed my housekeeping duties like you showed me. Like, are we being serious here? I know this all sounds like disgruntled banter on my part, but he actually recorded himself spewing this jargon on Whatsapp. I knew early on that I wasn’t working for the sharpest tool in the shed, but this is some special shit.

#2 - Early March I was 5 minutes late for a last minute check in. Guests arrived early while I was at the gas station. No problem, I went into “go-mode” and guided the guest to the new fire pit/patio/sitting area, which I had recently installed, while I made sure the unit was spotless in record time. Feedback from my employer- having the guest wait was completely unacceptable. I should have made sure the unit was ready before I went for gas. Could have cost us a good review. In the end the guest had a great time and was super appreciative of my friendly and prompt nature. 5 star review for Jeffrey!

#3 - The wrath of Karen. Kind of like the guest back in February, this lady just wanted to complain about everything. Throwing around the term “my son this, my son that” Like what a shame that we had exposed her son to horrible conditions as if he were a toddler. Homeboy was a 6’2 grown ass man. Anyways, what made matters worse was that she didn’t feel like talking to the help, so she was complaining to my boss the entire time. So when she requested a comforter at 1am, it was my boss who relayed the message to me. I went and grabbed a fresh comforter from the clean laundry and dropped it off. And of course, Karen found a blemish on the comforter and raised hell. The damn thing was still laundry fresh! Reeking of Tide! She ended up cutting her trip short, but left no review.

#4 - Last but not least was the usage of the owner's vehicle. My boss had left his vehicle on the property after his last visit. Asked me to watch it and run it from time to time. Sure thing, no problem! No one bothered to tell me that the tags were expired. I mean, he was just in town for two weeks and drove his car everywhere. I ended up having some car trouble,my transmission sprung a huge leak so I was without a vehicle for a while. Living on the property, The ONLY item that I needed on the regular, that I couldn't get delivered, was gas. So when I needed gas, I hopped in my boss’s car and drove to the gas station 1 1/2mile away and got gas. In my employer's voice message, he concluded with how he was just made aware that I was driving his car and made a huge deal of it. What I found curious was, his brother in law had known for months that I had been using the car. But he waited till he found out I was being let go and decided to add fuel to the fire? The most hilarious part to me was how they raised such a fuss over this car issue, you would have thought I was taking a Maserati out for a joy ride and picking up chicks. No, we were talking about a first generation ugly ass Prius. Again, before he left, all he had to say was to make sure the car stays on the property because of the tags.

Now, I don't know if I’m just over confident/borderline arrogant, but those are 4, pretty lame duck excuses to get rid of your most loyal and committed employee. It just felt like a reach to me. On top of that, if you go back and check the data, which I did, the 5 star reviews far outnumbered the negative ones. Which is the name of the game, if i'm not mistaken. And, while I'm thinking about it, allow me to toot my own horn here, but a week before I was let go a guest left a 5 star review mentioning that “Jeffrey and Pepper were the best part of our stay” HOW does that guy get fired? I have a pretty solid theory.

With my boss living overseas and us having opposite schedules, the bulk of our communication was conducted via Whatsapp and email. In today's climate, there's always that unintentional danger lurking within each text sent, waiting to be taken completely out of context. Especially when you're dealing with a superior who has absolutely NO sense of humor. With that in mind I always tried my best to make sure all of my texts were worded delicately so as to avoid any confusion. And if I was trying to be funny, I made sure there were at least three laughing emojis at the end of the message.

The very last email I wrote to him was nothing out of the ordinary. We were experiencing a recurring issue in one of the units. And, I’ll never forget it, I kicked off the email with a “I don’t know if I made myself clear before, but yadda yadda yadda” i went on to describe the issue and asked how we should proceed. For the next week and a half, I got crickets! My boss straight ghosted me. ME, his right hand man running his property. Whom he checked in with on a daily basis. It got to the point where I was concerned for his well being and let him know about it. Anyways, he glossed over my concern and the main issue at hand with a vague email. A couple days later, I was fired. I wasn’t even trying to be an asshole, although I get how that could have sounded like I was trying to be one. I genuinely wasn’t sure if I had explained the situation clearly in regards to what was happening in that one particular unit.

I was then asked to pack up all of my belongings and vacate the property by the end of the day. He couldn’t have caught me at a worse time. I had tools spread out across the property, and with Pepper and I living the bachelor life I had my things spread out in an organized but chaotic fashion. So it was a pretty daunting task gathering and packing all my things along with managing a tsunami of emotions. While I was packing it dawned on me that I was going to be truly f**ked. You know, the whole not managing my finances thing. Here I am, loading all of my personal belongings into my suv that was going to have to be towed to the mechanic shop to get fixed. I also have to leave the property, and go where? Either way, I was going to be short on something. Hyperventilating, desperation kicked in. I’m not proud of this, but this is a story I only plan on telling once in my lifetime. So, I hopped back on Whatsapp and BEGGED not only for my job, but at the very least to work another pay period to help train and finish some projects with his brother in law, who was just so eager to take over for me. I mean, I would think that my helping train and finish some pretty involved projects with someone with zero landscaping experience would both benefit him AND the property. But what do I know. No dice. At the end of the day I loaded up my ride with 95% of my belongings and the rest was stuffed in my back pack. Decision time, I wasn’t about to hit the streets with my dog and one eyed cat, so I started with finding the cheapest Airbnb/Hotel I could find and go from there. My car was picked up a day later. The clock is really ticking now. A week and a half and two hotels later, the mechanic hits me up. Car is ready, that will be $1300 which if not paid in 30 days will end up in me forfeiting my car. At this point I only have enough cash for two more nights of having a roof over our heads. If reaching out to friends and family for some help were an option, now would have been the time to ask. I remained silent, determined to get myself out of the mess I made. With 30 days to figure out the car situation, I focused all my energy on finding any type of living situation for me and my homies. And with a little luck, one of the directors of the homeless shelter caught wind of my predicament on a local platform and made arrangements for me to be picked up on my check out day and taken to Camp Haven. I was able to get lucky once, unfortunately I wasn’t able to get lucky twice. In the end, the 30 days came and went and I ended up losing my vehicle with everything in it. Funny thing, looking back, the total value of all of my things, tools, TV, self cleaning litter box, etc easily topped $1300.

So that was my story of how I got to where I am today.

Let’s talk about this GoFundMe business and why I'm doing it. I’ve spent the entire summer working my but off trying to raise enough funds to get myself another vehicle. I should clarify, everyday there was work available, I worked my butt off. Downside of it all, if I keep up with this current pace, we’ll be well into 2026 before I have enough dinero for a vehicle. Its tough living out in the country, without a car. There's just nothing close. Just ranches and farms.

I just spent my 46th birthday here. Alone with my dog and cat, mostly in silence. My goal when I got here was to be long gone by the time my birthday came around. I kicked myself for not asking for help earlier. Now, well, now I'm just desperate. Desperate to get my old life back. Desperate to get back into the swing of things. And the only way that happens is if I find myself behind the wheel of a large automobile. Then I’ll really be able to dig my heels in and focus on the long road back to normalcy. I’m not asking for much. I just need a little help. Hell, I’ll take anything you can throw my way. Words of encouragement will certainly keep my spirits up. A couple bucks here and there. Shoooot, I’ll call that a bonus.

Alrighty, not quite sure how to end this, so if you're still reading these words before you, know that I appreciate your time. And Thank you.

Wish me luck!

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