Dealing in Beef
Amy Shirley, Lizard Lick Towing, Wendell, NC
"Can I drive a tow truck? Yes I can. Can I do the financing? Yes I can. I can do it all, right down to taking out the trash, and that goes for the real trash and the human trash."
Your husband always seems to have colorful animal-based sayings. Does he use those on you, or is that just for TV?
"Tight as a frog's butt and that's watertight." That's one of his favorites and he says it 30 times a day. He uses those expressions on everybody; it's not just for TV. He has one of these bubbly personalities, and it just spouts right out of him. Some of him he picks up from other people, and I'll hear him say "Man I gotta say that!" but most of the time he just comes up with it on his own.
What is it like working with your husband?
Oh, he portrays this big dumb guy, but he is actually very intellectual. He got bussed out to school in ninth grade to take advanced math classes, and he writes phenomenal poetry. He'll be writing about say, being on a war field and fighting battles, but then you realize that the battles he's talking about are the battles we encounter on a day-to-day basis. Some days, you've got to be a mind reader to figure out what he's going to do.
Who causes you the most trouble?
Strangely enough it's not big, mean-looking guys. It's the little guys and the women who drive me about crazy. These little men have this small man, big mouth syndrome, as if they have something to prove.
Why are women more difficult?
Any woman in North Carolina believes that it's an assault charge if a man touches her. They will lay on the cars, they'll put their kids in the car, they will lay on top of the boom of the tow truck and they won't care. If a woman wants to stop someone from taking her car, they know that if a man even brushes up against her, she can call the cops and hopefully get him arrested.
Is anybody ever nice and polite with you?
We do have customers who come in who have played the repo game before. They know that screaming at me isn't going to work, especially when they walk in here wearing expensive swatches and bling and I think "why didn't you sell that and make your car payment?"
Do you ever wish you had a job where people didn't swear at you?
I actually used to have a job where people never swore at me. I was a licensed mortician! The customers were always satisfied, never complained and everybody left with a smile on their face.
Tell me one surprising thing about you.
I powerlifted for three and a half years. My last squat was 515 pounds, my last bench was 315 pounds and my last deadlift was 450 pounds.
What's the worst thing anybody has ever called you on the job?
There is just one word that I absolutely hate: "Bitch." I am nobody's female dog. I hate that word with a passion.
