Laid off bartender-turned-lawn care-worker Scott Briggs stumbled across a brand-new challenge Thursday. But don’t worry, this story ends like so many others – Memphis answered the call!
For those who didn’t get a chance to read the first feature story in The Daily Memphian about Briggs’ journey earlier this week, the inspiring former BarWare employee was laid off from his job making cocktails due to the coronavirus and unable to collect an unemployment check. In an effort to stay off the couch and pay the bills, he put his neighborhood lawn-of-the-month reputation on the line by starting his own lawn care business titled “Laid Off Lawn Care” with only a borrowed pickup truck, a string trimmer and a Honda push mower.
Quickly Briggs piled up two weeks of work on his own, and received even more intrigue about his new business from the feature story and a call he made for free commercial Friday on 92.9 FM’s Geoff Calkins Show.
One of the calls he received was from Tami Sawyer, District 7 county commissioner. At first, Sawyer hired Briggs to cut grass, weed her flower bed, and take out bushes. She was satisfied with his work, according to a Twitter post, so she hired him again Thursday for regular lawn maintenance.
But this time while Briggs was removing branches in her back yard, he had two major pieces of his equipment stolen from her front yard, including the Weed Eater he had just purchased to get his business up and running.
“It was about $1,200 worth of equipment, give or take $100,” Briggs said. “It was a straight-shaft Weed Eater and a backpack blower.”
After he realized the tools were gone, Briggs said he quickly reported the incident to police and Sawyer and her neighbors checked their doorbell cameras. They couldn’t find the culprit.
“(Sawyer) felt really bad,” Briggs said. “She wanted to take some of the responsibility, but it wasn’t her fault.”
In an effort to help Briggs recoup his losses, Sawyer took to social media asking average Memphians for donations to help the new business owner buy the same equipment again.
Then the kindness of the city took over.
“It’s been about an hour since she posted it, and everything is already paid for,” Briggs said. “Actually, we’re plus $400 right now.”
In total Briggs estimated 50 people donated, and he only personally knew two of them.
It’s a bump that can help Briggs continue to get more necessary tools he wasn’t able get from the beginning because he was short on cash. He plans to have everything shipped to his house as soon as possible, and informed some of his customers he won’t be able to complete certain jobs until they arrive.
“I’m not really huge on social media,” Briggs said. “I don’t have much experience with it, so this has been kind of crazy. Clearly, Tami has a good reach and the city of Memphis is rallying around the cause. That’s really, really cool because I’m just a blue-collar guy in a blue-collar town.”
And to make the story even better, the newest lawn care expert in the city is spreading his success around to others in a similar position.
“Right now I have a couple of other (former bartenders) who are interested in the process of working with me, and we are building the schedule out for the next couple weeks to see which days I need people and they can help,” Briggs said. “Some days I’m just doing estimates, but the days I’m working I will definitely need the help. The jobs just keep coming in, and we would much rather take them all if we can.”