Obviously, being a Building Manager of a reasonably large apartment building - 96 units over eight stories - you can absolutely be assured that there will certainly be some very special moments, not to mention a stereotypically odd assortment of characters residing within these eight floors. Some days are definitely easier than others, as are some tenants. Regardless of the individual, I always attempt to conduct myself with professionalism when it comes to their concerns, no matter how trivial or annoying. For the most part, I rarely find them irritating or annoying, but like everything else in life, there will always be an exception to the rule! Case in point would be the new tenant who recently moved into a unit on the second floor. Hmmm, for convenience, let us call him Kevin shall we.
Not the tiniest bit of exaggeration, but I have never met someone this annoying in my entire life. This dude has honestly gotten me beyond upset but which is something I rarely allow happen in respect to my job. Work is work is work, and most of the time, it doesn't come home with me - so to speak. Obviously, when you work where you live and live where you work, it tends to be a little bit more difficult to keep the two separate, but certainly not impossible. You just need to ensure that your create very specific boundaries with the tenants and then make sure that they are very much aware of what these boundaries are. Normally when someone new moves into the building, they are each subjected to my standard lecture concerning our work hours and what would be considered appropriate times to contact us. I also remind them that my apartment is also my family's home which means that it is a private residence. What this means then is that you just can't come knocking on my front door whenever the mood strikes you, no matter how important you might think it is to do this. This normally takes a bit of time to sink in for some of them but usually after much reminding, it sinks in.
Lucky me though, Kevin just can't seem to comprehend this particular detail, or simply doesn't care, which I feel is more to the point. It is this that has got me so utterly worked up. His lease was dated for April 1, 2008 which generally translates into the day that you would be taking possession of your unit at which time you would then be able to start to move into it. Now, as this year this fell on a Tuesday, and he was moving from a city which is a two and a half hour drive away on a good day, I allowed him into his unit a few days earlier. Once again, I find whenever you do something nice for a tenant, they inevitably end up taking advantage of this, making me resent my generosity. Surprise, Kevin turned out to be no exception. I had told him that he could move in on the Saturday but midweek of the week he was to move in, he mentions to me that he had reserved his truck for the Friday. WTF? I told him that I suppose that would be fine seeing how he h ad already gone and reserved the vehicle.
Upon him moving in, there were a couple of minor concerns he had that he wanted addressed. Now, not a single one of them would be considered critical or serious or immediate - wanted door stoppers installed, items we actually happen to have in our storage room, but something that our company does not provide as standard as well as wanting all of the plates for his light switches and electrical outlets to be the same colour even though they were all the same colour in each separate room. He wanted additional caulking around his bathtub and kitchen counter but there was already caulking there and in all honesty, there was nothing wrong with it. There was also a satellite on the balcony adjoining his that he wanted to be able to access as he had some sort of way of hacking into it to get it for free. Excuse me but I am not about to give you keys to another unit regardless of whether or not it just happens to be empty at the moment. Whatever. I could literally go on and on and on but I'm actually starting to get bored.
Anyway, the weekend that he moved in just also happened to be the weekend that we were on duty, otherwise we rotate weekends with two other Building Managers - one on, then two off. He bothered us the entire weekend looking for one thing or another - shopping carts to help him move stuff or one of Jim's dollies or whatever. I put up with this for the weekend even though he thought nothing of knocking on our door on the Sunday night after 10pm for one favour or another. Even Monday when he was calling my phone and knocking on our door at 9pm, I managed to keep my mouth shut. Tuesday still kept my trap shut but by Wednesday when he did this, I literally had to contain myself with every fiber so that I didn't end up losing it on him. I lectured him as politely and firmly as I could letting him know that I worked from 9am until 5pm Monday to Friday if he needed to ask something. Fell on deaf ears apparently as he called me five times in a row tonight starting at 8:02pm. I ignored the phone, refusing to pick up as I had already spent a half an hour earlier this morning listening to go on about something.
Still trying to get into that empty unit but not going to happen. Also wants me to do something regarding the fact that there are no working jacks for his telephone in his unit. Five days in a row he has called regarding this one issue and each time I have responded exactly the same. The Regional Manager, my boss, informed me that we do not own the telephone lines in this building so there is nothing that we could do regarding this matter. That would be up to him and his telephone provider to work something out. Even right now, Jim is up there helping him move something and it is 9:30pm. Me, I've had more than enough of this clown for quite some time that's for bloody sure.
P.S. I have just spent a panicked fifteen minutes searching for this entry. I was using one of those desktop blog editors to enter the content and for some reason when I went to publish it, the program deleted it for some reason. Duh! Could also have been operator error, it doesn't really matter. Either way, I was near screwed as it takes me a near eternity to type something of this length cause I am a crap typist - took me almost an hour and a half to type the above so...NOW YOU HAD BETTER READ EACH AND EVERY WORD!!!
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