Moving tales from the dark side: Part 2
#3) Remain calm
After all the ridiculousness regarding the state of the house at move in and the melee with the utilities, there was only one reasonable remedy to the situation. (Which, in my eyes, was extremely generous and solely based on the fact I didn’t want to move all of my stuff again.) I left a voicemail with my landlord telling him I wanted half off my second month’s rent in order to steam clean the carpets and compensate for my time spot-painting the walls and cleaning the entire rest of the house. Oh yeah, and I get the mailbox.
My landlord countered with an offer of “$200 off the last month’s rent.” Which made about zero sense since that would barely cover the carpet cleaning.
#4) When not calm, keep your cell phone in plain site
“Let me call you back,” I said, then promptly slid my phone shut and blew a gasket. “Are you f--ing kidding me?”
The people in my company were aware of the situation, and I proceeded to tell them very colorfully what my landlord countered with.
“That’s insane!” someone remarked. “Has he never rented to someone before? Your whole agreement was under false pretenses. And that house was trashed! It’s like the ol’ bait and switch.”
“I know, it’s freaking ridiculous but apparently he’s too stupid to understand that, so there’s NOTHING I can do about it. He takes NO responsibility for anything and apparently has no knowledge of how renting works. He’s a freaking idiot and it’s making my life very difficult!”
The good Lord let me and my company (mostly me) go on for about five minutes and 55 seconds before I pulled my hand out of my pocket and realized my phone was still on. How, I have no idea. If you’ve ever had a slider phone, the call ends when you shut it. That’s HOW you END the CALL. But it didn’t end. It malfunctioned. And apparently my landlord was still on the other side of it. So, now, on top of all the shit I’ve had to shovel, I now have to feel bad about it. Awesome.
#5) Detach, detach, detach
(A common rule of mine, you’ll find.)
I have to admit I only feel partially bad for what happened with my cell phone. My landlord was a nice guy, but he did just not understand how things “should” be in a rental situation and I really didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. But there is a big difference between what I say behind closed doors and what I say when people can hear it. And I accept that; anyone that tells you they don’t get angry at times is lying to you. If you want to reverse the roles I, personally, hold fast to the belief that what other people think about me is none of my business. However, I did apologize to my landlord and I think he understood. In fact, I actually believe me flying off the handle was the only reason he finally started seeing things my way. He, too, apologized, and I got him to refund my first month’s rent since I had not yet stayed one night in the house.
It was a lot of fun moving all my stuff out of a cold dark house using flashlights … especially since I’d only moved it in the day before. But hey, I’ve had worse. I think.
All in (a few) days’ work.
Precocious entrepreneur, workaholic and a rabid perfectionist Crystal Starlight knows a thing or two about getting ahead at a young age. Email her at [email protected]