In every apartment building there’s got to be some idiot who inflicts hardships on everybody else. We thought we’d gotten rid of our idiots over a year ago. They had a laundry fetish, liked to do it every day and every night, two or three items at a time, so no one else could use the washer or the dryer. They had other nasty habits, too, and we were ecstatically glad when they were finally evicted.
Well, that gave someone else the opportunity to take over as top chowderhead. We cannot be 100% sure which tenant is doing this, but somebody, every time he feels just a teensy bit hot and just can’t think of turning off the radiator or opening a window, goes down the cellar and turns off the heating system. Then it gets really cold, so he goes down again and turns it back on.
So today, on the coldest day of the year, our building has no heat at all because the cotton-pickin’ boiler’s busted! Yup–turning it off and on, off and on, over and over again, stressed the metal and broke it. Now the landlord will have to hustle to put in a new boiler, and it’ll cost him plenty. He says he has told this tenant not to turn off the heat, told him more than once, but he stops short of making an open accusation.
Oh, there are so many ways of imposing yourself on your neighbors! Our last batch of idiots knew ’em all. Loud, lousy music for hours on end; car parts strewn all over the place; running a loud air compressor all day, every day; disabling the washing machine so that no one else could use it, so that your two baseball caps could soak all day; picking fights–and when one idiot finally goes, there is always another to take his place.
Father in heaven, give us patience!
I’m surprised that the room with the boiler in it is even accessible to the tenants.
Well, it’s down the cellar where everybody’s storage space is, and the landlord now says he’s got to find a way to lock the boiler so no one else can turn it off or on. It shouldn’t have become a problem for him–but then I know another landlord who went on his honeymoon and came back to find that his tenants had burned down his building.
It simply astounds me that people can be so self-centered.
We see it all the time.
Living in an apartment complex is always an adventure. I remember one time when we lived in a downstairs apartment, the person’s toilet above us overflowed. So of course all the water ran down our walls. I’m glad we live in a house now.
People can be so oblivious or just plain inconsiderate boobs! Patience would be very thin without heat in this frigid weather! And the cost to the landlord would almost surely result in an eviction, I would hope. Doesn’t the guy have windows he could open rather than shutting the heat to the whole building down?
Our furnace went on the fritz last winter – on a holiday weekend. Our landlord brought us a couple of super nice electric heaters – the new type that shuts itself off if there’s a problem. Did the trick until the furnace could be repaired.
This isn’t even the first tenant here that kept turning off the heat until he broke the system! But the other guy who did that was downright crazy. I asked him why he didn’t just open a window if he was too warm, and he said it was because “bugs would come in” if he did. This was in the middle of January, and you couldn’t have found a bug out there if your life depended on it.
Sounds to me like the ‘bugs’ were all inside. Poor soul.
“Patience” AND restraints!
I didn’t pray for strength, for fear I might do someone an injury.
We have just been told we won’t be getting any heat until sometime tomorrow.
Wise. I meant restraints for the bloke who gave you Brrrrr!
Wow, I’m sorry about your heating problem. My first husband and I were rental owners for a number of years, and whee, boy, I could tell you some hum-dingers about tenants but I think probably, you have about enough of that already.
Wow, what an idiot. Stay warm! Pile on those quilts! Too bad I can’t send you some of our weirdly warm weather.