I work for a carpet cleaning company. A landlord called us because his previous tenants had left one of his properties in a sorry state, and he wanted us to clean all the carpets.

He was not wrong. The carpets were absolutely caked in years’ worth of dirt, grime, grease, and worst of all, urine. It smelled horrific. It was so bad that our boss told the customer he would be better off replacing the carpets. Many of the stains were so ingrained that no amount of cleaning would shift them. But the customer insisted that they be cleaned because it was cheaper than replacing them, so we gave him a quote.

We charge based on the area of the carpet and how heavy the soiling is, not by hours spent or how much/what cleaning product we use, etc. However, the customer kept trying to cut corners to get a cheaper quote.

First, he told us we didn’t need to vacuum the carpet. He claimed he had already gone over the whole house with an industrial-grade vacuum and demanded that we lower the quote to reflect that. This was clearly not true; when we inspected the carpet there was clearly dirt and lint everywhere.

Then, he told us to use a cheaper cleaning agent and only send one person so he wouldn’t be paying for the labour of two people (even though an entire house was definitely a two-man job). On and on he went trying to cut corners to save money. 

Vacuuming the carpet is not only important to protect our machines — clumps of lint and dirt can clog or even damage our carpet cleaners — but it also means we can clean carpets more efficiently. Spending a few minutes removing as much dirt as possible beforehand means less work for the carpet cleaners and fewer rinses are required. Additionally, the cheaper cleaning fluids were not going to cut it. As a bare minimum, the carpets needed a cleaner with enzymes to break down the urine, or all we’d do was spread urine around rather than shift it.

This was all explained to the customer, but he was having none of it. Ultimately, we had to refuse his business because what the customer was asking for meant we would not be able to complete the job properly.

The customer demanded to speak to our boss, the owner, who repeated what we had told him. The customer blustered for a while longer and then left us alone.

A few months rolled by, and the customer called us back. He told us he had hired a different company, but they had made a mess of everything. He begged us to come and clean the carpets. My boss told him we would only do it if he accepted our quote with no substitutes or amendments, and he would pay us in full before we did the job. The customer begrudgingly agreed.

Our boss made sure to detail the fact that we would not be able to get all the stains out in the contract and that the customer was going ahead with the cleaning against our advice. He also made sure that the customer initialled and signed those parts of the contract.

My colleague and I went to the property again to assess the damage. The carpets were horrifically streaked, and we could smell damp in the air mixed with the stench of urine, meaning the carpets didn’t get rinsed, drained, or dried properly, and they certainly didn’t use an appropriate pre-treatment or cleaning agent. It really was a shoddy job that actually made some areas of the carpet worse than they had been before. Whoever the customer had hired before must’ve been real cowboys.

We gave the customer our quote, and he accepted and paid. We got to work, making sure to take meticulous before and after photos.

As we suspected, we didn’t get all the stains out, but we got more than we initially thought we would. The carpets looked a whole lot better, and best of all, they now smelled like a spring meadow rather than a truck stop bathroom.

The landlord tried to complain that we didn’t get all the stains out and demanded a partial refund, but we quickly reminded him of the contract — a contract he had signed and initialled. We had done exactly the job we told him we would do.

When we left, the landlord complained incessantly about how much it had cost him — not only paying for the job once but having to pay to get it done again — and that the carpet still was still stained. My colleague and I left without saying a word.

A few weeks later, we received a letter from a solicitor acting on behalf of the customer, demanding a full refund because we failed to clean his carpet correctly. Obviously, our customer had not been entirely honest with his legal representative, so we enlightened the solicitor about what happened and sent him a copy of the signed and initialled contract, email communications, and phone call recordings, as well as the before and after photos. We never heard a word from the customer or his solicitor again.

After the fees for the botched job, our invoice, and solicitor fees, it would probably have been cheaper for the customer to replace the carpets.

Years ago, I was trying to find a small flat on the outskirts of London. I saw this place advertised, so I went to check it out. The landlord showed me round, but it was in a really bad state of repair, and it was drab and depressing.

Landlord: “We’ve been renovating.”

Me: “It’ll be nice when it’s finished.”

Landlord: “It is finished.”

I rent a room in a house during college. I live in the house with several other guys. I’m known for being the most self-reliant. The family of one guy owns the house as a second property, so their son, [Roommate #1], handles all the day-to-day stuff but his dad is the actual landlord. Like most college students, we aren’t really the cleanest, so we get our occasional bout with ants.

One day, I’m studying in my room when I get a knock on the door, and [Roommate #1] is there.

Roommate #1: “Hey, man, just curious… Have you seen any ants in your room lately?”

Me: “Oh, yeah, I had a colony in my room last week.”

Roommate #1: *Nervously* “So, what did you do about it?”

Me: “I found the spot in my closet where they were getting in from outside, went to [Store], and bought some traps. I set up a couple near the hole and where they were frequenting, and the problem was quickly solved. No big deal.”

I’m not sure what I expected to happen next, but [Roommate #1] gives me a hug.

Roommate #1: “Oh, my God, thank you so much for solving it yourself and not involving me! I was asking because [Roommate #2] and [Roommate #3] were both having big issues with ants, and they both told me it was my house so it was my problem. My dad agreed with them, so I was trying to figure out who needed traps before I went out and bought some. Do you have any extra I can borrow?”

I gave him a couple of unused traps that I had, and then we went to the store to buy more. We had two more roommates who also had ant problems but just ignored them and let them roam free. Sometimes I wonder about these guys.

I hated my old apartment. I desperately needed to get out, and right when I was looking for rentals last year, the health crisis hit, and everyone shut down. With less than a week on my lease, I had to jump at the first available home. I didn’t even get to inspect it. I ended up with equally horrible property managers.

I didn’t have a key on day one, I had to break in to move in, and they didn’t tell me about the German roach infestation (it’s okay, I used to do pest control, so I managed), and so forth. Right when I lost power during Christmas (also okay, I live in the south, so I didn’t get too cold), I tracked down the original property owner and asked her if I could get out of the contract and just pay her directly. We investigated many options, and the best way to get out of the contract was to just pay for the last remaining months and write a thirty-day notice.

Property management then called me.

Property Management: “You must write us a notice, signed, sent, and received on the exact date thirty days from the lease’s end to be accepted, or you will lose your $1,000 security deposit.”

They really stressed that it had to be mailed and definitely on time or they wouldn’t be able to accept it.

Cue my pettiness.

I wrote a template letter, with a generic “This is a [number of days till lease end]-day notice… I’m writing to terminate my contract and to receive my security deposit as stated…” I sent one out on my 103-day notice. Then another one on my eighty-nine-day notice. Then another one on my seventy-three-day notice, and so forth. Basically, whenever I remembered about it, I would change the date around, print it, sign it, and then mail it.

Property management called me again.

Property Management: “This is very unnecessary! We got your message loud and clear!”

But they sounded pretty rude about it, so I sent some more.

I then received some passive-aggressive emails saying they would honor the contract and leave me the $1,000 deposit as I had sent them a thirty-day notice. But they can be tricky, and as I hadn’t technically sent them an exact “thirty days” notice, I had some more letters to send. And again, they sounded pretty rude over email.

Cue the final fifteen-day countdown until my thirty-day notice letter. I upped the ante. I now had one letter per day to send, and I changed the fonts on each letter ranging from Papyrus to Jokerman to Comic Sans. My favorite was the one where it was all bright yellow and barely legible. It just hurt looking at it. Oh, and better yet, I got the last batch sent as certified mail, so I get an email that they received it AND that they had to sign it.

On my thirty-four-day notice letter (now probably the twentieth letter I’d mailed), I received my cashier’s check back. There was no message or anything. Fortunately, I had four more letters to send. It was the best $43 on stamps I’d ever spent.

This happened shortly after I moved into a new apartment building three years ago. The landlady and owner of the building lived right next to my apartment on the first floor. She was a very nice old lady, and we would often sit out on our shared little patio and talk from time to time. She even told me I reminded her of her granddaughter one day.

After I’d lived there for about six months, she approached me one night while I was sitting outside.

Landlady: “So, who is that man that I’ve been seeing come over?” 

Me: “Oh, that’s my friend, [Friend]. We have been friends for a while now.”

Landlady: “Ohhh… When are you going to go steady?”

Being a young person, I assumed she meant dating.

Me: “Oh, we aren’t dating. He’s just my friend.”

After making some food for the two of us and coming back out, she said to me:

Landlady: “You know, you are a very social person. You always have so many girlfriends over. I see all these different girls come over. You must be very popular.”

I was hesitant about telling her this information because I wasn’t sure how she would react. I tried to word everything in the best way possible, but I was freaking out inside. Not only was she my landlord, in charge of whether or not I lived there, but I had grown quite close to her in those past six months and I didn’t want to feel judged. Old ladies tended to have old-fashioned viewpoints. But I took a breath and said:

Me: “Um… Actually, I am interested in women and those women were my partners.”

Despite my held breath, she only looked shocked for a brief second before replying. 

Landlady: “Oh, well, that’s okay, honey. I used to sleep around a lot, too, when I was your age. You will find a nice lady to settle down with someday.”

I was completely worried about the wrong thing. She moved right past the fact that I’m a lesbian to the fact that I had been sleeping around. She proved to me that older people aren’t always stuck in their ways, and I see the older generation differently now.