(Or The Devil, as pictured)
I just had a meeting with my former landlady, her apartment “manager”, the new tenant, and her daughter, who used to be a friend of mine, where I was told I was the most unreasonable person she had ever dealt with in her life. This was because I wanted my security deposit back. In response, I thought I’d make this post about why living in that apartment was awful, and why she was such a bitch.
1. There was a dead grandmother’s (RIP 2005) stuff all over the place – I barely had any storage space. They kept saying they would move it all. But then they never did. They would also make these little comments if they were in the place and noticed I had moved some of her things. Granted they were throw-away comments, but that’s really just the thing to make you feel at home. Every time you go to pee you’re wondering if you’ve desecrated some holy object, and maybe now the woman’s soul is trapped in limbo. If only I had left all her coats hanging near the front door!
2. They thought that living in 14 C (57 F) was an acceptable apartment temperature. They even had me pay them when the apartment was 9 C (48 F). They suggested (apparently in all seriousness) that I buy five space heaters. And maybe it would have gotten up to 15.5. Which actually wasn’t very likely – the ceilings were quite high. Maybe I should have checked into the dozen-pack?
3. They decided to change my rent (upping it by almost 50%) with only ten days’ notice – when I told them I didn’t think I should pay the increase that first month, they conceded, and then upheld it as the most benevolent thing anyone could ever do for another human being. Though they never deigned to tell me themselves – I had to go into a meeting with the hysterical “manager” not sure whether she would demand another few hundred dollars or not.
4. When they upped the rent, they mentioned a few times how much more they could be getting for the apartment. Which made me feel very welcome and very comfortable about raising the problems I had with it.
5. They installed new windows last summer like it was a personal gift for me – like there were absolutely no other advantages for them in having windows in their property that weren’t about to fall out of their frames. The result was – have you even put in new windows into a crumbling Soviet antique building? – this giant ordeal last summer where we had to leave the apartment for a few days and then return to clean up the rubble and rocks and inch-thick dust. The place actually kind of looked like it had been bombed.
6. Then they wanted me to pay them an extra 200 dollars for those windows. (Which I didn't).
7. They had these awfully disgusting plants that I was in charge of watering. Like I was their caretaker (see: comment above on the coats). And if they ever looked a little on the weak side, I would get a lecture. I found myself fantasizing about ways they could meet unfortunate accidents…
8. They hired this old woman to “manage” the apartment, ostensibly for my benefit, whose only real addition to my life was a constant source of stress when she would tour the entire apartments and inspect my belongings and the cleanliness (and the goddamn plants). She was such a nervous old hysteric that there were many moments when I was sure she was going to have a heart attack. Especially when we were putting the new windows in. And then I’d have to feel even more guilty. The old woman’s brain would almost pop if she wanted to reach me while my phone was switched off (you know, like if I was asleep or teaching a class). So she would call five times within the span of five minutes and then just turn to panicking.
Funny manager story: right before the guys came to pop out the old windows (amazing it only took a few little pulls from a crowbar), she started giving me a lecture on how dirty the old ones were. The very same windows that were to be removed and then taken straight to the dump (if only they could have taken the plants, as well). So she lectures and lectures, and then starts cleaning them, right there and then.
9. And then the landlady emailed me to say the old woman had called me “uncooperative.” After I paid rent on time every single time. When I wrote back to ask how I had been uncooperative, she never responded. It’s like the throw-away comments up in 1; I couldn’t tell if I as their tenant, their guest, or their caretaker.
10. They had this really old table that was made in East Germany in the 60’s that shook and squeaked and you couldn’t even use one half of it. It finally broke, which was an event that was in the cards for the better part of the last decade, and I was held responsible for it. Historians will later puzzle on how this table managed to last longer than the Wall.
11. They didn’t listen to me about the fact that the radiators don't work once the temperature drops below -20 C. It just switches off or freezes up or something. This is what I told them numerous times and what, later on, a handyman would tell me as well. And that they couldn’t be fixed until next summer.
12. Last December they asked me if I could leave the apartment by the 7th for my trip back to the States instead of the 16th, like I had planned. No financial compensation was offered, no reduction in rent, they just wanted me to pay for December and then let them have the run of the place. Again, it made me feel very at home. I guess I should be paying all that money just for the pleasure of knowing that, somewhere out there, there are new windows in the apartment.
13. The roof was leaking so badly at one point I had to move out of the place for a week. When I contacted them, they tried to handle it as dismissively as possible, as usual. In fact, they tried as hard as possible not to address any of the problems I brought up while living there. When I told her it was cold, she told me to address all of those problems to the hysterical old manager. Then, after that proved to be ineffectual when I complained again about the 14 degrees directly to her, she asked me why I hadn’t told her anything about the cold before. Sorry, I just got dizzy right there.
14. Which all might make you wonder why I still lived there, and for so long. Sometimes I wonder, too. One reason is because I was living there right after the grandmother died, and at first I thought it was just her recent death that was making them unresponsive. And so I tried not to bother them as much as I could right after that, which must have given them, in their madness, the flawed picture that everything there was perfect. At 9 degrees, with a leaky ceiling, no storage space, a hysterical apartment manager, and that warm feeling that they were doing me a huge favor by allowing me to pay them money. The second reason is that I knew if I tried to get out of my “contract”, they would make a massive scene, as actually happened on Sunday. Did I mention there were four of them there? But that’s an entirely different blog post.
