Can't have that in my university, worse than *students*...!
Lord above and gods below, I do get to a point where I hate tenants.
Let me clarify. My mother owns the building, I am household minion, and we have an inspection tomorrow. We're also living hand to mouth and the mortgage sucks up the rest, not an uncommon story these days- so we do our best to address complaints as they come and deal with things in appropriate order of priority.
"A little water in the basement" does not equate to three inches of raw sewage. You would think, when said situation does not rectify on its own, that a person might raise an almighty stink about it rather than just let it stand and linger. Until two days before the inspection, and 'oh, by the way, the water's still in my basement.' Because letting us know about that beforehand, in appropriately forceful terms, wouldn't have been polite, oh no.
Also, we had gone about twenty-three years without a cockroach infestation. This lady moves in. She uses our laundry room, like all our tenants do.
Suddenly, I start seeing cute little flat brown beetles trundling around in our basement. With long fucking antennae. And she mentions offhand that the back building she's in has a roach problem.
I start with the screaming heebie-jeebies, and proceed from there.
We clean, we hire an exterminator, we bomb. We politely forbid her from using our laundry room until things are taken care of, and she's nice enough to agree. We commit to the purge and manage to eradicate our problem in the main building before it becomes a plague (my dad has some Issues with cockroaches stemming from apartments he stayed in as a kid. I had never seen one before this point. I don't blame him one bit for being phobic.) Roach-Prufe is the miracle-cure we went with, and according to the research I did when this was all going down, the real, genuine options if you want to get rid of roaches is this stuff- and arson.
Pyrotechnics being out of our budget, we went with the more discreet solution.
So we get a couple of cans, and give one to the lady with gloves, use and safety instructions, and even our own turkey-baster with which to spread the stuff in corners and along walls and the backs of cupboards and such. It's a real big priority to kill these things, we says, because there's two kids in this dinky little apartment and we know roaches are bad business for them.
She didn't use the fuckin' Roach-Prufe. We know this, because the roaches are still there, as she has dutifully reported to us. The last time he was here, the inspector even took her aside and told her that she had to wipe up spills and the old bug-corpses, because otherwise they had a source of food and could move right back in again.
But she's having a baby, so of course she can't handle it. Not at any point during these last four, six months. And on bedrest, so cleaning up the place is not going to happen. And these additional setbacks were of course not worth bothering us with.
(I must clarify at this point that I do not begrudge her her children nor whatever she need do to preserve her health- but I for damn sure do resent it placing further obstacles in the path of making the place livable for human beings. It's a two-headed quarter-toss of heads you win, tails I lose, and I hate to lose what little standards I have. You can be any creed, color or category but thou shalt not suffer a fucking roach to live.)
So- in the end, what Hopper said is always true- "First rule of leadership, princess; everything is your fault." We try to take our responsibilities as landlords seriously, and we have responsibilities and obligations to fulfill no matter what the cost because at the end of the day no matter who started it, it is financial, legally, ethically- our fault .
But the cheerful, beaming obtuseness of some people does not help.
...I'm gonna go get me one of those chocolate lava-cakes I found in the frozen section today. I deserve it after the work I put in today.
Let me clarify. My mother owns the building, I am household minion, and we have an inspection tomorrow. We're also living hand to mouth and the mortgage sucks up the rest, not an uncommon story these days- so we do our best to address complaints as they come and deal with things in appropriate order of priority.
"A little water in the basement" does not equate to three inches of raw sewage. You would think, when said situation does not rectify on its own, that a person might raise an almighty stink about it rather than just let it stand and linger. Until two days before the inspection, and 'oh, by the way, the water's still in my basement.' Because letting us know about that beforehand, in appropriately forceful terms, wouldn't have been polite, oh no.
Also, we had gone about twenty-three years without a cockroach infestation. This lady moves in. She uses our laundry room, like all our tenants do.
Suddenly, I start seeing cute little flat brown beetles trundling around in our basement. With long fucking antennae. And she mentions offhand that the back building she's in has a roach problem.
I start with the screaming heebie-jeebies, and proceed from there.
We clean, we hire an exterminator, we bomb. We politely forbid her from using our laundry room until things are taken care of, and she's nice enough to agree. We commit to the purge and manage to eradicate our problem in the main building before it becomes a plague (my dad has some Issues with cockroaches stemming from apartments he stayed in as a kid. I had never seen one before this point. I don't blame him one bit for being phobic.) Roach-Prufe is the miracle-cure we went with, and according to the research I did when this was all going down, the real, genuine options if you want to get rid of roaches is this stuff- and arson.
Pyrotechnics being out of our budget, we went with the more discreet solution.
So we get a couple of cans, and give one to the lady with gloves, use and safety instructions, and even our own turkey-baster with which to spread the stuff in corners and along walls and the backs of cupboards and such. It's a real big priority to kill these things, we says, because there's two kids in this dinky little apartment and we know roaches are bad business for them.
She didn't use the fuckin' Roach-Prufe. We know this, because the roaches are still there, as she has dutifully reported to us. The last time he was here, the inspector even took her aside and told her that she had to wipe up spills and the old bug-corpses, because otherwise they had a source of food and could move right back in again.
But she's having a baby, so of course she can't handle it. Not at any point during these last four, six months. And on bedrest, so cleaning up the place is not going to happen. And these additional setbacks were of course not worth bothering us with.
(I must clarify at this point that I do not begrudge her her children nor whatever she need do to preserve her health- but I for damn sure do resent it placing further obstacles in the path of making the place livable for human beings. It's a two-headed quarter-toss of heads you win, tails I lose, and I hate to lose what little standards I have. You can be any creed, color or category but thou shalt not suffer a fucking roach to live.)
So- in the end, what Hopper said is always true- "First rule of leadership, princess; everything is your fault." We try to take our responsibilities as landlords seriously, and we have responsibilities and obligations to fulfill no matter what the cost because at the end of the day no matter who started it, it is financial, legally, ethically- our fault .
But the cheerful, beaming obtuseness of some people does not help.
...I'm gonna go get me one of those chocolate lava-cakes I found in the frozen section today. I deserve it after the work I put in today.