1) My previous massage therapist moved to California.

It is ALWAYS California and it is always the male clients saying this to me! It would seem that California might be over-run with massage therapists by now based on all the ones who keep mysteriously migrating to that state specifically. At this point, I am going to guess that "my therapist moved to California" is a secret code for "my massage therapist fired me because I behaved badly in the massage room". These therapists never seem to move somewhere unexpected like Wisconsion or Texas. Maybe business is booming on the West Coast and I should move to California too.

2) The monthly rent for using our spare office space on a part time, shared, no key given and access only when we are here and no one else is using that office is $500. ($700 if I am offering you an unused storage room that you don't have to share but won't be big enough to allow you to move around the table without putting it on wheels to slide 2 inches in any direction so you can get around it)

The $700 storage closet barely big enough for my massage table and me to move around it is true. Everyone else consistently pulls a randomly determined $500 for their shared space.

3) Me: $500? That's too much. I could rent an entire office for myself alone and have 24 hour access. I am looking for an office share because I don't want to work alone in an office so people are less tempted to misbehave.

Them: Well, you'll never be alone here. And we are including use of the washer and dryer, you can use the bathroom and you are going to need to wash your hands. We are basically giving you free water.

..... I have no words for this except you literally can't make these conversations up.

In this situation, the wife has a salon and wants me there as a massage therapist but the husband needs to be included in the decision making process. They have also contacted the landlord to make sure they can sublet and the wife has indicated that the landlord has made it a point to warm them of sex trafficking and that they don't want be known as "that kind of place". Of note, the owners of this salon are Asian (not Chinese) and I am clearly not White or Black which makes one of the targeted profile groups of the racist profiling of Polaris Project since its inception. You wouldn't believe what a hardship this has caused and how many White women I have known that have flown under the radar with impunity because of this.

Husband of wife who operates salon: You will have to bring your own table. You can probably fit it over here. Tell me about your clients.

Me: I don't understand. What do you want to know? They are usually middle class?

Him: Are they men? Women?

Me: They are mostly women.

Him: So, some of them are men.

Me: Yes, of course.

Him: (silent pause) I will think about it. We will let you know in a few hours.

And that entire meeting with the husband lasted 5-7 minutes and this was the bulk of the conversation.

4 hours later....

Wife on phone: We can rent you the space for $500.

He either didn't want me in the office at all and randomly pulled that number out of the air to dissuade me and I am sure their commercial rent is not equal to $500 for that single room I was limited to AND where I have to bring my own table, linens, supplies and do my own laundry AND I had to work around their lash technician schedule for the room? It was this, or he was doing some kind of weird pimp math that has him believing every male client I had while working in a shared office with other people present was going to be a payday appointment that would make a $500 rent seem like lunch money.

(sarcasm warning) 

Because OF COURSE I would be asking for an office SHARE where people are LITERALLY outside my massage room door at every moment I am working when my intentions are bad. For my next bright idea, perhaps I will just go ask the police office to watch my car while I leave it running to go rob a bank....

Its not the willingness of other people to believe racist or misogynist nonsense that hurts as much as the insult to my intelligence that always seems to accompany it.