Of Mice and Maintenance Men

If the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, what chance do the really stupid ones have?

I’ve bitched about the property management company that owns my apartment before. They never seem to fix anything and when they do, they do a bad job. Even Schneider from “One Day at a Time” would be disgusted.

They’re never supposed to shut off the water in the building without at least 24 hours notice. Unless of course it’s an emergency. See, the trouble is that it’s always an emergency. Why? Well, neglect for one. And the other reason is because if they call it an “emergency” then they won’t have to give notice. Giving notice requires forethought. Forethought requires thought. Not to mention the fact that someone will have to post notices flyers on our doors and that takes at least ½ hour.

So two days ago they shut off the water. In lieu of any real notice, they just went door to door telling any tenant who answered that their water was going to be shut off in a minute or two. They’ve done this to me before. It always makes me angry.

But two days ago I didn’t get mad when they knocked on the door to tell me that they were shutting off my water. Not because I’d gotten my anger issues under control, no. See, I didn’t hear them when they tried to tell me that they were going to leave me high and dry.

I was in the goddamned shower!

I hate renting.


Fun Fact: I’m one of the millions of American men who shave in the shower. When the water went off, I was half shaved. I took care of that little problem (I should feel lucky that my head wasn’t covered in shampoo, I would have had to finish my shower in the kitchen using the Brita pitcher), got dried off and dressed and went downstairs to find a maintenance man to yell at (unless they were huge or looked like a crazy ex-con or something).

When I got downstairs, I found two guys in the driveway. I asked why they didn’t give notice and they told me that they knocked on our doors to tell us. It was an emergency.

Yeah, it was such an emergency that when I caught them in the driveway, they were digging for enough change to be able to buy something from the “roach coach” that had pulled up to the construction site next door. The proximity of the truck to the port-a-potty makes their food all the more appealing! Yum!

They had to shut off my water before they ate? I guess that three day old carnitas breakfast burrito just couldn’t wait.

Jerkasses.