(It is a particularly cold Canadian winter, on a Saturday night at around nine pm, and I am taking a shower. The water is not very hot, and within a few minutes, it goes completely cold, even when using only the hot water tap. I still have shampoo in my hair and a bit of soap all over but the water is way too cold for me to handle. I am used to rinsing my hair with cold water because it’s good for the hair, but with the water barely above freezing, I cannot do it! I wrap myself in a towel and call my landlady to inform her of the problem. She tells me to wait until Monday morning because her maintenance man does not work on the weekends. I tell her the water is too cold to rinse off the shampoo and soap without risking hypothermia and it can’t wait until Monday.)

Landlady: “What do you want me to do?”

Me: “I will call a plumber and a locksmith to access the water heater and deduct the bills from my rent.”

(She tells me she is coming with her husband to have a look at the problem. While waiting for her to come, I rinse my hair with a bottle of water from the fridge that is less cold than water from the tap, and water from the kettle that is room temperature. Shortly after that, I hear a knock on the door and it is my landlady. My lips are bluish and I am still shivering a lot.)

Landlady: *seeing that I had rinsed my hair* “It was not urgent; you were able to finish your shower. I came here for nothing!”

(The door to the maintenance room where the water heater is for the whole building is right next to my apartment door and I see water beginning to leak from under it. I point to it and my landlady looks at it and goes pale. She unlocks the door and hurries to shut down the water valve.)

Landlady: “I don’t know what to do with all this water all over! Give me some towels to absorb it.”

Me: “I only have a few, and I need to keep the clean one for after I am able to rinse myself off.”

(I close the door, leaving her to deal with her problem since I already have my own. Less than an hour later, after I wash most of the soap away with a washcloth and warm water from my kettle, there is another knock on the door. This time, it’s my landlady’s husband.)

Landlady’s Husband: “We fixed my problem and the water is probably already hot. It’s a good thing my wife insisted on having a look at the problem instead of waiting until Monday; otherwise, the water could have risen to reach the electrical outlets and it could have caused a much worse problem!”

Me: “You mean it’s a good thing I insisted and threatened to call a locksmith and a plumber?”

Landlady’s Husband: “…”

(I slammed the door and went to take a much-needed, long, hot shower!)

(I get my first apartment when I am 22 and am pretty naïve about how the world works. I expect that my landlord will be a nice, honest guy that will do his job. This turns out to be untrue. For example, after we have a massive blizzard — Google “Winnipeg Snowstorm 1986” for more details — he keeps making excuses about digging out the parking lot, which means that my car is unusable for more than a week. He doesn’t live in the building himself, so he doesn’t care. After a few more experiences like that, I finally have enough and decide to move. I contact the landlord to conduct the apartment inspection so that I can get my damage deposit back. He calls me a few days later.)

Landlord: “I did the inspection, and you’re not getting your deposit back.”

Me: “What? Why not?”

Landlord: “You left a lot of damage in that place.”

Me: “Like what?”

Landlord: “Well, for starters, you stole the plastic hallway runner.”

Me: “That runner was mine. My parents bought it for me.”

Landlord: “No, it was mine!”

Me: “They have the receipt. Want to see it?”

Landlord: “Okay, never mind. You left a huge mess in the oven.”

Me: “That’s not possible.”

Landlord: “What do you mean?”

Me: “I never used the oven.”

Landlord: “What are you talking about? You lived there for a year.”

Me: “Yes, and I never cooked in the oven. I either used my microwave or got takeout.”

Landlord: “Well, regardless, that place was pristine when you moved in!”

Me: “Is that so? I found mushrooms growing on the bathroom carpet, and the shower curtain was covered in slimy mildew.”

Landlord: “You spilled something sticky on the living room carpet!”

Me: “Yes. I did do that, and I’m more than willing to pay for the carpet to be cleaned.”

Landlord: “You’re not getting your damage deposit back.” *click*

(I ended up having to contact the Better Business Bureau, who ordered him to give me my damage deposit, less the amount that it would cost to clean the living room carpet. He very reluctantly agreed to do so but he insisted that I come over to his house to get my cheque. When I got there at the agreed-upon time, he was wearing nothing but a bathrobe. Yuck. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.)

I’m moving out of my studio apartment. The landlord has promised me he would come by on my last day there to inspect the place after it’s been emptied, but despite calling and texting him repeatedly, he never shows and never picks up or replies. The only message I get from him says I should leave the place unlocked for the team of workers he’s hired, who’ll be in first thing next morning to fix up the place to be rented out again. So, when leaving, I shut the door but leave it unlocked. It seems reasonable enough; in over two years of living there, I haven’t had any attempted break-ins or anyone even trying my door at night.

One of the few things I was provided was a small cheap microwave, which I am supposed to leave there and do so.

After waiting for three months for my security deposit check, never receiving it, having to involve the city’s tenant-landlord dispute resolution department, and being told my ex-landlord claims the check he “sent” — as he was strictly, legally obligated to within 30 days — got “lost in the mail,” it turns out the ex-landlord has decided to also deduct $50 from my deposit money for the microwave, which according to him wasn’t left in the apartment. This is the apartment that I left unlocked overnight on his instructions, which he refused to come to inspect, and which would have been swarmed and turned over by some unknown-to-me crew of workers first thing next morning; unsupervised, they could have done absolutely anything to the place and its contents.

I’m 24 and have just bought a new car. My apartment building’s manager lives onsite. She mentions that a new resident is looking for a car and saw my old car with a “For Sale” sign in the window. Through her, I connect with the guy who might want to buy my car. Our negotiations are a little rocky, but I really want to sell my car, so I accept his offer, even though he needs to wait a week to get the money.

In the meantime, I have a trip planned, so I clean out my car, remove the license plates, and tell the building manager about it and leave the car key with her; I trust her. She offers to hold the check payment for me until I’m back.

When I get back from my trip, my mailbox and door are both full of warnings about my “unregistered car,” alerting me that it’ll be towed within a week if I don’t register it. I go see the manager immediately and ask what it’s all about. She tells me residents are not allowed to keep unregistered cars in our building’s parking lot. I tell her I took the plates off because the other guy was going to buy it and it should be his problem by now. I also ask her if she has my check. She says she has no idea what I’m talking about.

I go over and knock on the guy’s door, and he says he changed his mind. I go back to the manager to get my car keys, and she gives them to me and says I’d better get that car registered.

I immediately put the plates back on, and nothing more is ever said. Maybe it’s for the best that she didn’t act as the middleman for my car sale.

I was looking for a new place to live. I saw a flat close to the city centre and right next door to my college, within my budget, so I arranged a viewing. The viewing went well, so I put in an application.

A week or two later I got a phone call to say I had been accepted and arranged a date to sign the tenancy. The woman I spoke to on the phone told me I would need to pay a deposit equal to one month’s rent and a month’s rent up front.

I arrived the day of the signing and had actually signed all of the paperwork when they informed me it was actually three lots of the rent amount I needed to pay, not two. They seemed convinced that they told me this on the phone. No big deal. It was a communication error. I told them I would be able to pay that in two week’s time, as that’s when I’d get paid. They said they’d have to run that past the landlord.

They phoned me a day or two later to tell me the landlord didn’t want to let to me anymore. I was irritated as the tenancy on my old place was about to run out and I had no more time to find a new place. I ended up staying with friends until I could find another place.

The real kicker is that the place ended up being up for let for around six months. All because the landlord didn’t want to wait two weeks.