My aunt and uncle manage a rental property with several different lots and houses on them. They report to the actual owners, but most of the tenants go to them with any problems they have. My aunt also suffers from anxiety that’s ramping up, so I tend to hang out when her husband isn’t home under the guise of babysitting my cousins. Her anxiety knows they’re safe under my watch while she works, and I get paid and fed. It’s a pretty sweet gig.

One day, one of the tenants calls, upset. Someone has broken into the shed in her backyard and emptied it. My uncle goes to investigate, and my aunt calls the owners, as well as security. By the time my uncle gets back, the owners and the cops have arrived at the tenant’s house.

Uncle: “Yeah, it’s cleaned out. There was a lock on the front of it, but they used bolt cutters. We found the lock tossed aside.”

Aunt: “What? Why?”

Uncle: “She had some tools and stuff in there. There have been other break-ins in the area, but this is the first on our property. She was giving a statement to the cops when I left. Security left to get the tapes from last night.”

Me: “What did they take?”

Uncle: “She didn’t go in too far, but from what she could tell, she’s definitely missing some tools, her mower, and a bunch of supplies from her woodworking.”

Me: “That’s awful.”

Aunt: “But I don’t understand. Why would they do that?”

Uncle: “Who knows? But she was definitely robbed.”

Aunt: “But… why?“

Me: “Tools can be pretty valuable, and she’s kind of the handyman for her neighbors. I bet she had some high-end ones that will fetch a good price when sold. That sucks.”

Aunt: “But… I just don’t understand! Why? Why would someone do that?”

Uncle: “For money. For the thrill. Who knows? Remember when we had taggers? It was a bunch of kids doing it for laughs.”

Aunt: *Frustrated, nearly yelling* “But why would they do that? I don’t understand!“

Me: “They probably took them to sell them. Maybe they’ll be caught and we can ask them. Were the tools insured?”

Uncle: “She said some were, but some belonged to her late husband and were more sentimental than anything. She’s really upset about those.”

Me: “That’s awful.”

Aunt: *Yelling* “BUT WHY WOULD SOMEONE DO THAT?”

Uncle: “We don’t know yet, hon—”

Aunt: *Still yelling* “IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE!”

Uncle: “Honey, breathe. Here, drink some water. The cops and security are there with her, and no one was hurt.”

Aunt: *Angrily crying* “BUT WHY? WHY WOULD SOMEONE DO THAT?”

Me: “For money, probably. Here, let’s sit down—”

She swats at me and screams.

Aunt: “I don’t UNDERSTAND!”

Me: *Yells* “YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO!”

My aunt falls silent.

Me: “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. Here, drink this water, and take some deep breaths.”

Aunt: *Drinks* “I just don’t understand. I don’t understand. Why would someone do that? It doesn’t make any sense. Why would someone do that? Why?!“

Me: *Calmly* “Are you a thief?”

Aunt: “What? No! What?!”

Me: “Do you break into people’s homes to steal things?”

Aunt: “No!”

Me: “Then you wouldn’t understand why someone would break into a place to steal things, would you?”

Aunt: *Long pause* “Oh. I guess not.”

And she went back to work, much more calm and collected. I apologized again for yelling at her, but she waved me off and said her anxiety clearly needed to hear that.

Later, she told me she was embarrassed by her reaction; they’ve been managing that property for over fifteen years, and that wasn’t the first time they’d had to deal with a break-in, but it was the first time she’d reacted like that. The tenant, unfortunately, never got her items back, but my aunt swapped to a higher dose of anti-anxiety medication and is doing much better.

Every year, my condo association sends people out to test that the units’ fire alarms are working. I had forgotten what day they were coming to my building, so I was startled when my door buzzer went off and poked my head out to see that it was the alarm people. At the same time, my lookalike ten-year-old daughter, who is quickly approaching my height, came out to see what was going on.

Service Man: *To me* “Are your parents home?”

At that moment, my brain shorted out, and I just blanked. While I do look young for my age, being mistaken for roughly thirty years younger than I am made me blue screen. After an awkwardly long time just mutely looking around, trying to think of a response, I finally sputtered out:

Me: “I’m… forty-seven years old…”

The service man went deer-in-headlights and apologized, and I just reassured him that it was fine. I wasn’t mad, just totally confused. I guess he just looked at my pre-teen daughter and assumed I was her sister rather than her mom.

My smoke detectors aced the tests.

My mom works in property management, and she maintains that her stupidest homeowner was a guy who looked at the payment coupons, which say “coupon for payment” and then, right below, “pay [x] amount if before [date] or [y] amount if after” and “attach this coupon with payment and send to [address]”.

The homeowner didn’t pay for three months and finally got a late notice, so he called my mom.

Homeowner: “Why have I got a late notice?”

My Mom: “Because you haven’t been making any of your payments.

Homeowner: “But I sent in the coupons!”

My Mom: “Those are mortgage payment coupons. They’re designed for when you mail the check, or call to make a payment, as it has the loan number on it so we can apply it to the correct loan.”

Homeowner: “But it’s a coupon. Doesn’t it like… pay my mortgage?”

Yup. He just saw the word ‘coupon’, read none of the other information on it, and assumed that he was getting ‘coupons’ to waive his mortgage for his first year of ownership. The man was older and this was not his first home.

My mom actually got in a lot of trouble for this because she asked him before she could stop herself:

My Mom: “Are you actually that f****** stupid?”

My wife and I have lived in our current apartment for almost five years. When we first moved in, we contacted maintenance about a few things that needed to be fixed: no hot water for two days, the heat stayed on and it reached 85 Fahrenheit (29.4 C) inside, there was some sort of basket wedged into our sink drain that we couldn’t get out, and we couldn’t turn the deadbolt fully. They fixed a few things, but the rest…

Maintenance Worker #1: “Wow, okay. Yeah, it’s hot in here. I can see why you have the windows open in the winter.”

Me: “Yeah, once it got over eighty in here, we had to. We were overheating.”

Maintenance Worker #1: “We’ve got someone looking at the boiler right now, but I’d be careful about the windows. They’ll fine you.”

Me: “They’ll fine us? For what?!”

Maintenance Worker #1: “Having the windows open past October. If the building owner hears about it, he’ll fine you $100.”

Me: “Then maybe he should let the tenants control the heat in their apartments. I’m not going to pay a fine to open my own windows when it’s this hot inside.”

Maintenance Worker #1: “Fair, but just be careful. Now what’s this about a basket in the sink?”

Me: “In the drain. I think it’s supposed to be one of those things that catches stray food and then you dump it out, but it’s really wedged in there, and we can’t get it out even to clean it. So it just collects food, and then we have to use our hands to clean it. Neither of us can really get in there very well, and it’s getting pretty gross.”

Maintenance Worker #1: “Eh. It’s supposed to be in there. It’s to catch food.”

Me: “Yeah, but like I said, we can’t get it out to clean it, so it’s just holding on to all the food it catches, which then gets really gross. I can’t fit my hand in there to get it all, can you? We would just like it removed, but we can’t get it out ourselves.”

Maintenance Worker #1: “No, this is supposed to be there. It’s for catching food.”

Me: “None of our neighbors have this, and we can’t get it out. It’s stuck. If we’re supposed to have it, can you replace it?”

Maintenance Worker #1: *Shrugs* “Now what’s this about the door?”

I showed him how the door stuck, the deadbolt wouldn’t fully engage, and then it often didn’t unlock. Even he struggled to lock and unlock it, swearing under his breath and muttering as he tried. Eventually, he did manage to get it unlocked, and then he turned to me.

Maintenance Worker #1: “There, see! Just needs some elbow grease. It’s fine.”

And he left it, not fixing anything. The temperature finally got turned down in our apartment. In fact, it got turned OFF ENTIRELY. We woke up two days later to a 40-degree (4.4 C) apartment and ice inside of the windows. That got fixed within two hours, but we learned to just live with the issues the apartment came with.

Then, the owner sold the building, and a new management company took over. They came with an entirely new maintenance crew and a new form to fill out for maintenance requests and forms. We decide to try reporting the same issues that hadn’t been fixed, namely the door, the basket in the sink, and a new leak in our bathroom.

Two days later, three maintenance workers we’d never seen before knocked on our door.

Maintenance Worker #2: “Hi, we got your reports. I’m here for the leak in the bathroom.”

Maintenance Worker #3: “I’m gonna take a look at the thing stuck in your sink.”

Maintenance Worker #4: “And I’m here for the deadbolt.”

We let them in and showed them the various issues. The plumber got right to work on the bathroom leak and fixed it within an hour, and then he went to help the front door guy. He stopped on the way to check in with the sink guy, who had given up trying not to curse and was wrestling with the basket in the drain.

Maintenance Worker #3: “Who in the h*** put this thing in here in the first place? Sucker is really wedged in there, and it smells awful.”

Wife: “It was here when we moved in. We reported it, but the last maintenance guy just shrugged and told us it was supposed to be there. We’ve just been dealing with it, but we hate it.”

Maintenance Worker #3: “I hate it, too! Who thought this was a good idea?! This stupid thing is…”

He devolved into swearing.

Maintenance Worker #2: “[Maintenance Worker #4], how’s the door coming?”

Maintenance Worker #4: “I… need to redo this entire thing. The lock and the catch aren’t aligned. I essentially need to recarve the divot and replace everything. How have you been locking this?”

Me: “Just using the lock on the knob and a wedge I bought online. The deadbolt has never worked. We honestly thought the door was crooked or something.”

Maintenance Worker #4: “Or something. I need to go buy a few things. This is a much bigger job than I thought. I can’t believe the last guys shrugged this off; it’s clearly not lining up.”

Then, there was a horrible wrenching sound from the sink.

Maintenance Worker #3: “I F****** GOT IT! HA!” *Pauses* “Eugh, this thing is disgusting. If I ever find out who put this in there, I’m gonna make them eat it.”

Our door now properly locks, our sink no longer collects food, and our bathroom doesn’t leak. We’ve also had no issues out of this crew whatsoever. We were initially worried about the new managers, but so far, we really like the maintenance crew.

Oh, and the new owner was very confused about fining us due to open windows. We’ve been assured that he won’t been keeping that tradition, and we’re allowed to open and close our windows whenever we want.

After a few weeks of apartment hunting, I look at an apartment in a fairly new building. The building is owned by a larger housing company, with only a property manager on site.

We finish the apartment and building tour, and I follow the manager to her office to look at the lease. She sits down at her computer and opens a PDF copy of the lease. After reading through the entire document (because yes, I am one of those people) and asking a few questions that come up, I decide to sign. Instead of printing a copy of the lease or grabbing a pre-printed copy, the manager takes an electronic signature pad and stylus out of her desk drawer, plugs them into the computer, and then opens the lease in a PDF editing program.

Manager: “Great! You can use the stylus and pad here, and it’ll copy your signature onto the PDF.”

Me: “Do you have a paper copy?”

Manager: “No, everything is electronic. [Company] is trying to go all paperless, so we use e-signatures. You’re welcome to print off a copy for yourself, but all of [Company]’s records are kept electronically.”

Me: “In that case, thanks for showing me around, but I think I’ll pass.”

Manager: “Oh, but I thought you liked the place. What’s wrong?”

Me: “I’m not comfortable with only having an electronic copy of the lease. Electronic documents can be edited after they’re signed, and that’s not something I’m comfortable taking a chance on if something goes wrong.”

Manager: “[Company] would never do such a thing! Is there anything I can do to convince you to sign the lease?”

Me: “Print off a paper copy, we can sign it in pen, and you can scan it back into the system for your electronic records?”

Manager: “I can’t do that. I told you, [Company] is all paperless. I don’t even have a printer or scanner here.”

Me: “Okay, then. Thanks, but bye.”

I walked out of her office and never looked at an apartment owned by that company again.