the bug life

[marcicat]

Found out yesterday that the landlord will be in my apartment next Thursday with an exterminator. (They’re making the rounds, it sounds like. I guess now’s the time to let him know that the white powder all along the top of my cabinets is diatomaceous earth.)

Of course when I got back yesterday evening, I looked around and thought, ‘is any of this stuff going to get me in trouble?’ I don’t think so, though — I’m a pretty boring tenant. No contraband Christmas trees or — I’m trying to think what else isn’t allowed — ferrets? None of those either. And I’m not going to win any white glove dust tests, but I figure I’m pretty solidly in the bell curve of apartment cleanliness.

What a crazy job it must be to be a landlord — I can’t quite imagine it. It seems like it would be sort of like being a manager at an office, but a million times harder.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Comments

[bluemeridian]

Speaking as someone who used to work in a rental office where most of the tenants were college students, the flying squirrel incident was memorable.

[marcicat]

Sounds like a good story! I'd love to hear it if you are so inclined :)

[bluemeridian]

I don't really remember enough details to make it a proper story, to be honest. It was a situation where a tenant's ex-girlfriend's mother called the office to raise hell and attempt to get him into any trouble she could. There were numerous calls from all 3 parties involved, a whole chain of events I would have preferred to remain unaware of, and how at one point the tenant had ostensibly kept a flying squirrel in his apartment kept coming up as third hand information. I mean, it's a super weird thing to make up, so there was probably some element of truth, but there didn't really seem to be an innocent party here and facts were definitely being stretched all around. There were a LOT of phone calls, that my merciless co-workers kept foisting off onto me even if I wasn't requested directly, until everyone finally settled the hell down. But the whole thread of FLYING SQUIRREL running through the whole damn thing made it memorable. (Tenant was inspected. Apartment was lower end of college student cleanliness, but no sign of animals. Did the flying squirrel ever exist? Who knows??)

[marcicat]

MYSTERY SQUIRREL! It sounds like one of those things that was nothing but trouble while it was going on, but persists long after as a fantastic story. I keep imagining wacky clickbait article titles for it -- "His Ex-Girlfriend's Mother Called the Landlord -- You Won't BELIEVE What They Found In His Apartment!" Or the classic "Is That a Rat, or Does Your Neighbor Have a Flying Squirrel? 10 Simple Tips To Tell the Difference!"