Petty Retaliation Could Get You Towed Away
I live in an apartment complex. My apartment is owned by a corporation that owns several apartments in the area, but they’re not, like, a bad corporation. They’ve always responded to complaints and maintenance requests promptly and effectively… until the manager for my complex retired.
They replaced the manager with a young guy, fresh out of college with an MBA (which he loved to remind his tenants of). He looked down on us working tenants, he failed to maintain the grounds, he ignored maintenance requests, and he frequently had loud, drunken, parties, flooded with other youth, at night in his manager’s apartment that could be heard all across the complex. He was a bad manager.
Now, like most contractors, my truck is my life. I have a sticker on my truck that says it’s legal to part in the apartment lot. One day, out of the blue, my truck got towed. The reason on the tow slip was listed as “no sticker”. But the sticker was fully visible in the picture that the manager took to prove that there wasn’t a sticker.
I grumbled, got my truck back, and complained to the property manager. I was not reimbursed for the improper tow. Two weeks later, it happened again. This time, I went over the manager’s head and complained to corporate.
After that, my truck got towed every. Single. Day. Sometimes multiple times in one day. I missed work because of it getting towed, and I started getting very worried about getting a reputation for being a flake.
I didn’t let that go on for very long before I decided to do something about it. With my cellphone, I went into the office and complained to the manager. He said he was doing it on purpose to “teach me a lesson” for complaining to corporate headquarters. I frankly didn’t expect him to be so brazen about it; I was only hoping to get a (probably false) promise that he wouldn’t do it again, so I could prove that he was aware.
I went to the police with this admission. I also sent a copy to corporate, as had been my original plan. About three days later, the police arrived at the complex and arrested the manager.
I don’t know what happened to him after that, but watching him being dragged away in handcuffs wriggling around like he was trying to get loose while being frogmarched by one cop on either side of him made me feel very warm inside.
A few days after the arrest, we had a new manager — a middle-aged woman who smoked like a chimney — and corporate refunded me for all the tow fees I’d had to pay this entire time. The new woman started her tenure by sending repairmen to fix all the issues that the old manager had ignored.