I’m not sure what’s relevant or not to this story, but in case it’s relevant, I am a big guy; I am about 6’6″ and rather muscular. I work outside all day, so while I am white, I’m pretty darkly tanned, so sometimes people mistake me for different ethnicities. 

My wife and I recently moved into a new apartment. One Saturday morning, she leaves to go run some errands for a few hours, so I am home alone doing some odds-and-ends chores. I leave my apartment to go downstairs and collect our mail only to find it hasn’t been delivered yet, and when I return, I realize I have locked myself out. I guess the coffee hasn’t kicked in because I didn’t grab my keys, and because I was just going to the mailbox, I have no wallet, phone, or anything else.

I decide to sit down in the hallway and wait for my wife to come back. While I’m sitting there, after about fifteen minutes, the apartment manager from the new management company comes by. I have never met him before. 

Manager: “Hey, uh, can I help you?” 

Me: “Not really. I locked myself out, so I’m just waiting for my wife to get back.”

Manager: “Well, you sitting in the hallway is making some people uncomfortable.”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that, but I’m not bothering anyone, and I don’t have any way to contact my wife to meet somewhere, so I’m just waiting here quietly.” 

Manager: “Look. We’ve gotten a number of complaints, and I really need you out of the hallway. How about this?” 

He goes to unlock the apartment door. 

Me: “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Are you going to unlock the apartment?” 

Manager: “Well, yeah. You said you were locked out. This way, you get out of the hallway, and people stop complaining.”

Me: “I haven’t shown you any ID or any records of any kind. Heck, I don’t even have a piece of mail with the address on it. Would you really let anyone into the apartment just because they said they lived there?”

Manager: “…”

After that, he just left. Once my wife got home, she let me in, and between the overly-trusting apartment manager and the under-trusting neighbors, I think we will be starting the apartment hunt again.

Warning: this story will likely make you itch — BAD.

I once had an insane experience with a scumbag landlord, hereafter known as Mr. Scumlord. I moved into a ten-story complex only to discover bedbugs! Mr. Scumlord feigned ignorance and refused to take care of it.

Me: “The apartment has bedbugs in it!”

Mr. Scumlord: “That’s funny; I haven’t received any complaints.”

Me: *Showing him pictures* “They’re literally crawling over each other along the baseboards!”

Mr. Scumlord: *Blank-faced* “That’s funny; I haven’t received any complaints.”

Me: “I’m complaining now! You need to call an exterminator!”

Mr. Scumlord: “I’ve run this apartment complex for years and I. Haven’t. Received. Any. Complaints. Pay the rent on time. I’m not giving you a discount, and I’m certainly not shelling out any money for a non-existent problem.”

Then, Mr. Scumlord shut the door in my face. I stared for just a moment, and then I went nuclear.

I immediately went to talk to my neighbors in my hallway, and of course, they were all dealing with bedbugs and had been for months. They’d been fighting with their own treatments, but since the entire building was infested, cleaning one apartment just made room for them to migrate back in later. Mr. Scumlord would simply stone-face at them and reply that there wasn’t a problem, refuse to accept or acknowledge a complaint, and tell the tenants to use their own treatments if they wanted to be hypochondriacs.

We all cussed and discussed (pun intended) before organizing to submit multiple complaints to License and Inspections. Word spread through the complex, and I got to talk to a LOT of neighbors from other floors. I learned that there was a leak in a wall that had been slowly growing worse, and the tenant was terrified that their bathtub was going to crash through the floor into the apartment below. (They had already warned the tenant below, and both had tried to complain.) I learned that if you touched the hanging lamp in one apartment’s dining room while the light was on, you’d get a shock. 

The stories just piled up, and people got excited when I told them where to lodge their complaints.

I’m sure you can imagine how very, very, VERY interested the city became in the absolute flood of complaints from the entire building, complete with photographic evidence of the bedbugs from all of them. The floors were literally crawling with the little bloodsuckers, and the edges of the room were black with droppings of digested blood.

The city quickly sent an inspector, and I gave her the door code to come and go as she pleased. Mysteriously, no matter how busy many tenants were, there was nearly always someone home during her visits to let her in to discuss concerns and take photographs. She inspected that ten-story building from top to bottom and found tons of other violations.

She insisted on a very expensive remediation process. Mr. Scumlord was told that if he didn’t follow the process, the city would immediately condemn the entire complex, as well as slam him with an a**-puckering set of fees. She was already dragging him over some very hot coals about tenants’ rights and how he was personally responsible for providing every tenant in the building accommodation while the complex was brought up to code.

Mr. Scumlord was soon eyebrows deep in renovations and treatments. I heard he eventually just ripped out the flooring and replaced it because the infestation was so bad that it couldn’t be cleaned.

I had to bag up all of my clothing and wash them. I had to throw out my mattress and nearly everything I owned because within days of moving in, they were all stained with bedbug fecal matter. I got out of the lease and moved; luckily, a friend of mine had a spare room I could stay in. 

Many tenants couldn’t do the same, so on top of the renovations, Mr. Scumlord had to find them places to live and ensure that no bedbugs migrated with the families. He’s not bankrupt yet, but some other properties he owns are apparently under scrutiny, as well, so fingers are crossed.

Related:
This Is Why People Have Big Feelings About Landlords, Part 2
This Is Why People Have Big Feelings About Landlords

My complex has assigned parking and visitor parking. The parking blocks at each assigned space are labeled with the building number and apartment number (and they’re regularly repainted and perfectly readable). The visitor parking ones are labeled. There are THREE signs up front that say parking is ONLY for residents and their guests, violators will be towed, and the guest LOT is the one in the back with the unassigned spaces.

Every June, the school across the street holds a weekend carnival… and people decide they are entitled to our parking spots. So, when I got home from a frustrating day at work, I found someone in my spot. I waited for twenty minutes, and there was no sign of them.

I called the towing property that’s right on the big sign at the front of the property.

Towing Company: “The property manager has to be the one to call.”

So, I called the property manager.

Property Manager: “We don’t work the weekends, but per our email, the city police told us they’d be the enforcers on this.”

So, I called the city police.

City Police: “We don’t enforce private parking, and anyway, we need the property manager to call.”

I lit into my property manager that Monday about the runaround I’d received, and about how it’s ridiculous that my assigned parking (built into my rent) is unavailable to me and that the towing isn’t even enforceable by us, only them during their working office hours.

I live in an apartment complex. The tenants all have assigned parking spots, and there are a few free spots and several guest parking spots. Sounds good, right? But people park in others’ spots anyway.

Sometimes, I get home around midnight. Once, I got home to find that not only was my spot occupied, but so were all the free spots and guest spots. I don’t remember how I handled that, but the next morning, I asked the apartment’s manager how I should handle that in the future.

Apartment Manager: “We can have the car towed.”

Me: “But the towing company is closed at night.”

Apartment Manager: “Right.”

Me: “So, what do I do if it’s night and all the spots I’m allowed to take are occupied?”

Apartment Manager: “You can’t do anything.”

Me: “This is an actual situation that happens. What do I do?”

Apartment Manager: “You can’t do anything.”

Me: “I guess I could take someone else’s parking spot and move in the morning.”

Apartment Manager: “You can’t do that.”

Me: “But other people can?”

Apartment Manager: “You can’t park in other people’s spots.”

Presumably, I was supposed to circle the parking lot all night. Instead, I parked in the manager’s spot if my spot and all the free spots were taken and moved before she or the towing company got to work.

I was born and raised in Canada, but ethnically, I am Chinese, and I definitely look it. A Caucasian customer approaches me and asks nervously:

Customer: “Excuse me, are you Chinese?”

Me: “Canadian Chinese, yes.”

Customer: “Can you read this?”

He hands me a piece of paper with Chinese writing on it.

Me: “Sorry, I only speak it. I can’t read it.”

Customer: “I see. Sorry to bother you.”

He starts to walk away, shoulders dropped.

Me: “Wait, I can call over ‘Auntie’.”

Customer: “Auntie?”

Me: “Sorry, force of habit. One of our cashiers is an old Chinese lady. She looks after all the other cashiers and brings us food sometimes. We all call her ‘Auntie.'”

The customer is appreciative, and I bring him over to “Auntie”. She’s serving a customer, but I grab her attention before she moves on to the next one.

Me: *To the next customer* “Apologies, I just need to ask your cashier a question.”

I hand Auntie the paper.

Auntie: “This is a shopping list.”

Customer: “Yes! That’s right.”

Auntie: “Where did you get this?”

Customer: “I have a tenant in the ground floor apartment of the house I just bought. She can’t speak any English, but she’s great! Her daughter usually comes by to help her out, but she’s sick, and she asked me to get her some groceries. She forgot to tell me that the list is… well… you can read for yourself.”

Auntie: “That’s so sweet of you! By the looks of this list, I think your tenant is making some [Chinese dish].”

We both look at her confused.

Auntie: “It’s like chicken soup for when you’re sick… but Chinese.”

Auntie then asks me to take over her cashier desk while she helps this customer with his Chinese shopping list. I gladly do so, and while I serve the next few customers, I see Auntie and the customer wandering the aisles selecting a wide range of ingredients.

After twenty minutes, they’re both back and in line at Auntie’s original checkout line. Auntie takes over and resumes her cashier duties.

Auntie: “That should be everything. The list specifically said fresh ginseng, but we don’t have that, so I hope the dry version is okay. I’ve written down some of the modifications I made on the list in Chinese, so please hand the list back to your tenant when you bring her the groceries.”

Customer: “Seriously, thank you so much!”

The customer pays and leaves, and I check in with Auntie.

Auntie: “What a nice young man! He paid for those groceries himself, with his own money!”

Me: “That’s amazing!”

Auntie: “Yeah, he said that the old Chinese lady is the best tenant he’s ever had; she tends to the garden at the front of his house as her hobby and keeps her place spotless, apparently. He said he’d buy her all the tea in China if it meant she’d keep renting from him!”

Two weeks later, the old Chinese lady came in herself, with her now-recovered daughter, looking for the cashier who had helped her landlord translate her shopping list. They gave Auntie a hug and chatted in old-lady Chinese for forty minutes. (Don’t worry; it was her lunch break.)

These days, we often see the landlord and the old Chinese lady actually shopping together — with their own shopping lists in their own languages but definitely together. When we say hello, he tells us:

Customer: “Yeah, I drive her here, and she makes me the best noodles I’ve ever had. I’m winning in this bargain!”

My new favourite customers!

This story is part of the Best-Feel-Good-Stories Of-2023 roundup!

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