I make appointments for tenants who have technical issues in their house — any kind of issue. If it’s something that falls under our responsibility, I make an appointment for you.

Tenant: “The banister of my stairs is loose. I need someone to fix it.”

Me: “Of course. Let me look into this.”

I quickly get everything ready for an appointment with our carpenter. On the schedule, I see a few options that might be too far away if the tenant is dependent on the banister for safety. She does sound old, and the date of birth does scream “old”, as well, so I may need to call a different department to get an earlier date. But since I know which questions they will ask, I decide to ask those first.

Me: “May I ask how long this banister has been loose?”

Tenant: “For about three months now.”

Me: “Oh… May I ask why you didn’t call back then?”

Tenant: “It didn’t bother me, but you see, we started redecorating and we pulled off the wallpaper. It would be nice if it could be fixed tomorrow since we plan on finishing the wall the day after tomorrow.”

In the background, I hear:

Voice: “They’d better be coming tomorrow! I can’t finish if they aren’t here tomorrow!”

I don’t really like “back-seat callers”, but I try not to let it get to me. However, I really do not like people demanding an appointment the next day (or even the same day) when they’ve had the opportunity to call for three months. How do people always say it? Bad planning on your side does not mean urgency on my side?

Me: “I understand that you want to continue on your wall, but I’m afraid we don’t have any openings tomorrow. I do have one two weeks from now.”

Tenant: “What?! That long?! You can’t be serious!”

Me: “I’m afraid that really is the first option we have.”

Tenant: “But… but… what if I fall?!”

Me: “Well, you did say you’ve had this situation for three months already. How did you handle things in that time?”

Tenant: “But my wall! You can’t expect me to look at that awful wall for two weeks, now, can you?”

Me: “I understand this is an inconvenience for you, but—”

Tenant: “You can say that again!”

The voice in the background speaks up again.

Voice: “I’m not going to wait two weeks! I want them to come tomorrow!”

Tenant: “You need to come tomorrow!”

Me: “I have no one available tomorrow, but—”

Tenant: “You have to!”

Me: “I’m sorry, but I can’t help this. You said this banister has been loose for three months now. You could have called anywhere in those three months. The fact that you planned a wall redecoration now and did not take the banister into account does not mean that it’s an emergency. A lot of people made appointments earlier and have been waiting; I can’t cancel them so I can have a spot for you.”

Tenant: “But… I…”

Voice: “What?! But…”

Me: “I can offer this date for our carpenter, or you can look for someone yourselves at your own cost. Shall I put you in for this slot? And does the gentleman next to you have any other questions?”

The man in the background is suddenly very silent.

Tenant: “No… No, thank you. Please put us in for that slot.”

Me: “I will, and it’s already taken care of. Can I write down your phone number in case someone else’s appointment gets cancelled and our carpenter is in the neighborhood?”

Tenant: “Yes, please, thank you.”

The rest of the conversation was uneventful. The conversation didn’t come up in a review, either. But I really wished the “Bad planning…” line could be translated into Dutch without sounding like garbled Dutch.

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.

We rent out houses.

Me: “This is [My Name]; how can I help you?”

Caller: “I have a complaint — a very serious one!”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that. What can I do for you?”

Caller: “I have a complaint about our mayor.”

Me: “Eh, the mayor?”

Caller: “Yes!”

She starts explaining what the mayor all did wrong the past year.

Me: “I understand you are upset, miss, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. This is something for City Hall.”

Caller: “What?! No! You must fix this!”

Me: “Miss, if you have a problem with the mayor, you can file a complaint with City Hall.”

Caller: “No! I rent my house from you guys, so you guys must fix this!”

I politely declined again and gave her the number of City Hall. If you have an issue with your home, we can help you. If you have an issue because the baker isn’t open when you are there… sorry. And yes, that complaint was received by a coworker.

We rent out houses. It sometimes happens that mail gets delivered wrongly or people get mail from the previous tenant. This can be annoying but is not our fault. We can send the previous tenant a letter with the request to change his address, but that is pretty much all we can do. If we have the time for it, people can bring in wrongly delivered mail and we’ll write “return to sender” on it. Since we are usually busy, this rarely happens and is reserved for those “escalation cases”.

A woman comes in with a crate filled with mail. It is really a lot, and I see why my coworkers offered for her to bring it to us to help her. She seems irate.

Woman: “I can’t believe you let this happen!”

Me: “I’m sorry this happened, miss. Were there any letters from us, as well?”

Woman: “No, none from you. Just from all these other companies.”

Me: “We always tell tenants they should change their address when they move, but sometimes people forget it, don’t take the mail forwarding service of the post services, or they were too late for that one letter. But let me check the letters for you.”

Woman: “Check them? Why?”

Me: “Just to make sure these are all for the previous tenants.”

Woman: “Of course! Why would you check that?! Why are you holding me up like this?”

At that moment, I spot a tax letter for the woman in front of me. I say nothing but just place it in front of her while I continue sorting.

Woman: “Oh, eh… well, I missed that one.”

I put another letter for her in front of her.

Woman: “Oh… well…”

And another one. In total, I find fourteen letters addressed to her including three from our national IRS — those envelopes are always a certain kind of blue, so you can recognise them instantly. The woman is silent.

Me: “I’ll bring the rest to my coworker, so she can send them back. Feel free to do so yourself if you receive another one. Can I help you with anything else?”

Woman: “Eh… no…” *Mutters. “Thank you.”

Me: “Most welcome!”

I worked in the leasing office of an apartment complex. A man came in and spoke with my coworker.

Man: “I’ll give you $100 if you can get me into an apartment today.”

Coworker: “Sir, I can’t do that. There’s a waiting list several names long.”

When he didn’t get what he wanted, the man called the realty company which owned the place and accused us of discrimination.