For prisoners with an entrepreneurial spirit, one of the most basic hustles in prison is running a store.

A “store man” takes commissary items like chips, ramen noodles and pouches of mackerel, then loans them out with interest until the next time commissary is delivered, which is every two weeks in Michigan. The normal interest rate is 50%, so a person borrowing a $2 mackerel would be expected to pay back $3 worth of commissary goods within a couple of weeks.

In prison, we don’t have cash, so commissary items are our physical currency. 

In 19 years in prison, I’ve never been on a cellblock that didn’t have at least two men running their own stores, and most have had about five.

Some stores lend out a few dollars’ worth of products each week, which yields a return of a few more dollars’ of commissary goods. Other stores can be quite lucrative. In cellblocks with a lot of drugs available, I’ve seen store men lend out hundreds of dollars’ worth of commissary products each week to users, who trade the goods for drugs to get high. Store men can rake in thousands of dollars’ worth of product in a year.

In my experience, the average patron of prison stores isn’t necessarily a drug user, but someone who has a hankering for a snack and wants it immediately.

This practice comes with some risk because you are not only lending out commissary goods, you are trading on your reputation. Let’s say that someone doesn’t pay you back. Do you write it off as a loss? Do you fight them over a couple of bucks’ worth of goods?

The store man’s dilemma is this: If you let a debt go, others might also think they don’t have to pay you back. But if you fight the person over a debt, you risk other consequences and, if caught by prison administration, you’ll go to solitary confinement and be moved away from the other people who owe you money.

The worst case for a prison store man is when you go to collect a debt and the debtor tells you to “get that” or “get paid.” This means, “Screw you, I’m not paying you, and I think you’re too much of a weakling or a coward to do anything about it.” 

According to the unspoken rules of prison, you are now in a situation that demands violence. To come up short in this moment permanently labels you a punk, a coward and a weakling — possibly for the remainder of your prison sentence.

Just recently, we had an incident in my facility involving a man named Blind Mike, who is completely blind.

Blind Mike is a tough guy. He lost his eyesight when he robbed a drug dealer and was hit by a bullet that was meant to kill him. It struck both of his eyes instead. A few weeks ago, he whacked his aide — another prisoner — with his red and white cane.

Blind Mike had borrowed about $8 in commissary goods from a store man named Trey, a large, fit guy nearing retirement age.

When it came time to pay Trey back, Blind Mike was nowhere to be found. Trey eventually went to Blind Mike’s cell. 

“Hey, do you have that for me?”

“Have what?” Blind Mike asked. He turned with his hands out, and felt his way forward.

“Well, you borrowed $8 from me. Do you have it?”

“Get paid, b—ch!” Blind Mike responded, snarling.

Trey tried to reason with the man.

“Brother, you know you borrowed that money fair and square.”

Blind Mike was having none of it. “I said, ‘Get paid, b—ch!'” Then he threw a haymaker that connected.

Trey and Blind Mike ended up wrestling on the floor after Mike lit him up with three more good punches to the jaw. 

Trey could generally hold his own, but sometimes even someone who knows how to fight can get blindsided. Getting up first, he stood over Blind Mike and paused, as if to ask himself whether he was the kind of guy who wanted to beat up a blind guy.

It’s a difficult situation: In prison, you can be the type of guy who beats up a blind guy or you can be the type of guy who gets beaten up by a blind guy, a fact that Blind Mike exploited.

Knowing that Trey could have retaliated, I respected that he chose to be the bigger man. 
I don’t want to be either one, and that’s why I don’t run a store in prison. I’m entrepreneurial, and I can stand up for myself, but I don’t need this kind of headache. No matter how big and mean you look, no matter who you are, someone will test you at some point. It’s the store man’s hidden employment tax.