re: #1 Achilles Tang

Ya’ know, Achilles, I’ve railed against Lubbock’s “upper crust” quite a bit here. I will not take back any of it. There are two things I respect them for not tolerating though: payroll chiselers and slumlords. If you can’t make payroll, you are the scum of the Earth to them. If you habitually mistreat and exploit tenants, you are likely to be run out of town on a figurative rail and forced to move your business to, say, Arkansas. There is a lot of rental property here, mainly because of Texas Tech and the large turnover of short term employees at the big medical centers. This means a new crop of tenants every year, tenants who will not come here at all if the place develops a reputation for nasty, arrogant, callous landlords and overpriced slum property.

FYI, not strictly on topic:
The attitude about payroll is related the Texas Payday law. The latter is one of the strictest in the country, believe it or not. Among other things, it is a criminal rather than a civil law. If you don’t pay your employees on time or don’t pay them at all, it will not be a process server responding to take you to small claims court. It will be a Texas Ranger coming to throw you in jail. This is not some kind of inexplicable concession to liberalism but, rather, a tradition that dates to the 19th century. In those days, employees who were stiffed on payday would often try to collect at gunpoint. This could lead to all sorts of chaos and unpleasantness. It became a tradition for ethical businesses to band together to pressure the local offenders, with the state intervening to keep the peace.