This is a story my mom told me that happened when she was in college and lived in a trailer park. Just to head off the comments, I don’t want to get into a discussion about whether what she said was RIGHT. (She clearly thought so, but we don’t always agree.) I just thought this was FUNNY.

On a Sunday morning in winter, Mom woke up to discover that the heating in her trailer wasn’t working and the trailer was already uncomfortably cold. Her landlord did his own maintenance, so she called his number and got his wife, the landlady.

Mom: “My heater’s gone out and I’m freezing. Can [Landlord] please come fix it?”

Landlady: “He’ll come out Monday afternoon. He doesn’t work on Sundays.”

Mom: “I wouldn’t ask him to, normally, but this is an emergency.”

Landlady: *Snottily* “You’ll just have to wait. My husband doesn’t work on the Lord’s day.”

Mom: “It’s below freezing outside and my heater doesn’t work. You tell your husband that if he isn’t here fixing it in the next hour, I’m going to start a fire to keep warm. And remind him that this trailer doesn’t have a fireplace.”

He was there within an hour.

I was screwed out of my inheritance on my dad’s side. His sister’s husband got my grandfather to rewrite his will, writing me out of it on the assumption that I would inherit a lot of land from my mom’s side. A few years later, my mom’s side tried the same thing under the assumption I had gotten land from my dad’s side. When my dad died, my stepmother took everything, only giving me the part of his life insurance that was legally designated as mine.

In order to combat anyone trying this with me again, my mother put my name on every last bit of property she wanted me to inherit as soon as she could rather than waiting until the last minute, just in case of sudden death. As such, anything my mother owns, I also own.

Most of this land has rental properties on it and Mom is… not the best landlord. She’s not a slumlord, but that’s about the kindest thing I can say about her on it.

Mom: “The renter over on [property] is moving in a couple of months when their lease is up.”

Me: “Cool. How’s the house look?”

Mom: “We did a walk-through a few months back and it looks good. It’s very clean.”

Me: “Awesome. Will you have enough to give them back their cleaning deposit? I can chip in a little if you don’t.”

Mom: “Don’t worry about it. I’ll find a reason to keep it.”

Me: “…what?”

Mom: “I’m not giving it back. Why would I do that? I’ll just make up an excuse to keep it.”

Me: “Weren’t you wondering why you only get bad renters just last week? If they leave the place spotless, but you say, ‘Oh, look, a tiny smudge on this window. I’m keeping everything, you slobs,’ no decent person will want to rent from you!”

Mom: “Well, they need to clean it to my standards!”

I let it go, but I kept a mental note of when the renter would move out. They did, and the house sat empty for a while.

One night, I went onto the property and proceeded to randomly spray paint the front door, the back door, and one of the windows. There was no design, just a few lines — just enough to make Mom blow through that entire cleaning deposit she had decided she needed to keep.

She didn’t once think it was a former renter, just some a**hole teens somewhere on the street.

Related:
(Stray) Painting All Landlords In A Bad Light

I rent a small house with my family. There is a stray cat in the neighborhood.

My landlord recently took pictures of the stray cat sitting in our yard and started using it as an excuse to charge us a $350 pet fee and to up our rent by $35 a month as a “pet monthly rental charge”.

Despite our efforts to prove that the feline was not ours, including affidavits from our neighbors who were actually feeding the stray, the landlord continued to insist that we pay this additional fee.

We took it to court, and we won… only for the landlord to send us a letter saying he was forced to increase rent across all of his properties due to an increase in expenses related to unexpected court costs.

We’ve had it. We’re moving out.

During college, I rented a room in a small town about half an hour from campus. When I say “small”, I mean that it was the kind of town where a new stop sign makes headlines. My landlady’s son graduated from the local school — not high school, school — and his graduating class was him and a set of twins. It was a SMALL town.

The day I moved in, my landlady was going over the house rules and telling me about what was available in town: a general store/gas station and a really small restaurant.

Landlady: “Oh, if Mrs. [Woman] comes up to you, just play along and let me know what she said to you.”

Me: “Who’s Mrs. [Woman]?”

Landlady: “You shouldn’t run into her if you don’t spend a lot of time walking around town. Don’t worry; she’s harmless and really a sweetheart. She’s just confused is all.”

Fast forward a few weeks. One Saturday, I decided to check out the restaurant, and there was no reason to drive when I could just walk.

I had just passed the general store when I heard an older woman call out:

Woman: “[Not My Name]! So wonderful to see you again, darling. How have you been?”

The next thing I knew, a little old lady was giving me a quick hug while I stood like a deer in headlights.

Woman: “It really is wonderful to see you. Can you give me a hand with the groceries if it’s not too much trouble?”

She held out a single shopping bag. Being a Boy Scout, my first response was to take the bag and offer her my arm.

During the half-a-block walk from the general store to her home, Mrs. [Woman] continued to refer to me as [Not My Name]. She asked me about my mother and if she was doing well, she asked if “our James” had written recently from the war. She wanted to know if I had heard about how the [Family] girl had just had twins and what I thought of the names she had picked. She also said that if my little brother wasn’t otherwise employed this weekend, she would like to have her lawn mowed. We got to her door, I said I would ask him, and I bid her farewell.

That night, I told my landlady about our conversation.

Landlady: “Oh, the [Family] twins and the war… She’s in the 1970s again. That’s not bad. I’ll call the preacher after dinner.”

Me: “Okay, so who is she, and what exactly is going on?”

Landlady: “Mrs. [Woman] had a very tragic life. She lost just about everyone in her life — six siblings, her parents, and her husband — and had at least three stillbirths, all before she was twenty-five. That sort of broke the poor thing. She isn’t sure what year it is, and she knows everyone by name but never calls anybody by the same name twice. Her family used to own most of the town, so she was well-known before her break. In the beginning, I think they thought she might come back to her senses someday, but now we don’t have much hope for that.”

Me: “Why isn’t she in a care facility?”

Landlady: “Why should she be? She can take care of herself, and she’s in good health. If she needs something, she asks for it, like today with the lawn care. I’ll let the preacher know, and tomorrow, he’ll ask if anyone wants to go round her place with a mower. She has a cousin in the city managing her trust fund, so all her bills get paid on time. She’s ours. We can take care of her ourselves.”

I think about Mrs. [Woman] a lot now and wonder how she’s doing these days. I’m sure her town still takes care of her if she needs it.

This story is part of our Even-More-Highest-Voted-Stories-Of-2023-(so far!) roundup!

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When I am in college, I eventually move from the dorms to my own apartment. About six months into the year, the fire alarm over the wall AC unit starts chirping. (I have two fire alarms: one in the kitchen and one in the bedroom over the wall AC unit.)

I email the landlord. He says to replace the batteries, so I do.

It keeps chirping. I email the landlord again.

Me: “I’ve replaced the batteries, but it’s still chirping. Can I get maintenance over here?”

He doesn’t reply, initially, and I wind up sleeping in the IMU (The Iowa Memorial Union) because the chirping is too loud for me to sleep through.

The next day, the landlord replies:

Landlord: “I’m not your dad. Figure it out yourself.”

I shrug and take the batteries out entirely. It continues to chirp. I go online and look for solutions. The recommended solution is to replace the fire alarm.

I go to the hardware store, pick out a fire alarm, and take the current one off of the wall. It’s wired into the electrical system. I’m not an electrician, and that’s a bridge too far for me.

I email the landlord with my findings and request a maintenance person to fix the fire alarm.

Landlord: “Just take the batteries out.”

Me: “No, I already tried that, and it didn’t work.”

Landlord: “Leave it. I’ll deal with it during break.”

Me: “That’s months away, and I literally cannot sleep in the room with it.”

Landlord: “Just solve it yourself. I don’t care how.”

So, I called the fire marshall. They sent someone over to do an inspection and said that it was, indeed, not livable and that the fire alarm unit was expired. I also showed them my email chain.

A couple of days later, a maintenance guy came by and replaced the fire alarm.

The landlord was all, “You didn’t have to get the fire marshall involved,” and, “Just so you know, I’m going to take your deposit for this,” and, “Couldn’t we have worked this out like adults?”

We did work it out like adults. And part of working it out like adults is going to the authorities when necessary.