Thursday 6 December 2012

Mothballs and The Soldering Shop

With every new building comes 'that tenant' and he (or she) usually nominates themselves pretty damn fast. I am not talking about the shit tenant or crackhead tenant or even the dirty tenants....I'm talking about the tenant that bitches about EVERYTHING. Lights are too bright in the hallways. I can hear the toilet flush from the person who lives above me. There was someone smoking on the sidewalk and the wind blew it into my window. It is not hot enough. It is now too hot in my apartment. Can you vacuum my baseboard heaters. The old manager didn't fix this. I pay $600 a month ($250 under-priced) for a premium apartment and I want it to be like Buckingham Palace. Lucky me, this was the first 'new' tenant I met.

This guy has a list of complaints a mile long and feels the need to share it with me the second I meet him. He also feels the need to put me at #1 on his speed dial so he can remind me on a daily basis of things he wants me to deal with.....at lightening speed. Unfortunately for him, these 'issues' that he has are bottom of the barrel random maintenance problems that do not need to be fixed with any urgency. So, my phone is constantly ringing off the hook from this guy and the minute I step foot in the building he comes running. I guess I shouldn't feel too bad as he has the city police on speed dial too and apparently calls them if someone farts too loud to complain about noise.

He lets me know his bathroom fan isn't working at perfection. I humour him, and get the hubby to pull it out and fix it thinking that if I do one thing on his list, he will shut the fuck up for a couple weeks. The problem is you can not buy parts for the old fan so you need to buy new part and modify them. This isn't an easy process and can take a couple hours. We tell him we will give him a call when we find the parts and its ready to go back in...expect a week or so.

So, of course that does not satisfy him and he calls almost daily to ask about his fan. Finally, I have had it. He picks the wrong day when I am in the middle of dealing with five thousand other things to call again. "Hello Dino, this is xxx. I need to talk to you about another problem I have: silverfish". Now, silverfish a like to a housefly or spider. They are everywhere. Every building has them due to age and environment but there is no impact to life. I see them every so often in our bathtub at night, but they don't bite...munch on things like dust or drywall at such a low impact that is not noticeable. I roll my eyes as he goes on and on and on about these damn silverfish. He wants me to spray. Spraying is very expensive and usually doesn't solve the problem and usually you need to do a whole building which is a HUGE impact to the other tenants and the bank.

My solution? I told him to buy mothballs. Do they work? Who knows...and really, who cares. What is my goal? To make his tiny-ass apartment stink of mothballs along with all his belongings. I told him to go to the dollar store and buy a couple boxes and sprinkle them around the place. He continues and asks about his damn fan. I explain to him again that it is being worked on and as the words are coming out of my mouth I am trying to think of some bullshit reason the hubby can't go put it in that second (you need to work yourself up to go work in his place). The fan is at the soldering shop! Yes, it is at the soldering shop to be modified and we will have it back in 2 days for installation. He is blown away by how seriously I have taken this fan-modification. I am brilliant.

So now buddy is tickled pink sitting an apartment that REEKS of moth balls while his bathroom fan is in the soldering shop.

Win for me!

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