Building Manager Feud
I can't remember if I wrote on here about it or not, but back in March these moron radiator repair guys came into my apartment at 6:30 pm to change the valves on the radiators. I asked them to come back later because I needed to fix dinner. They refused.
The incident has really soured my relationship with the building manager. She's an old local woman with "hair the color of iced tea," which can't be natural anymore since she's over seventy. When she first took over the building a few years ago she was very impressive - mostly because it was easy to be impressive after a few years of dealing with the slack-ass owner.
When I called to complain about the radiator guys coming into my apartment at night, all she did was say, "Well, I'm sorry," in a very fake trying-to-sound-sincere old-Southern-lady way. She wouldn't or couldn't explain why the crew was there at night.
The whole thing pissed me off. I figure since the building manager won't explain it there was something fishy going on, like they cut a deal with her since they were working "off the clock."
I enclosed a letter with May's rent venting about this, and some other things that had been dragging out too long. The elevator hadn't worked in months. There is water damage to the plaster above my kitchen window I told the building manager about in January which has never been worked on. Also a couple months ago I had a mail problem, and I spoke to the mail carrier and he recommended that the mailboxes be replaced.
About a week or so after I sent that letter I got a call from a plaster repair guy. He wanted me to take time off from work to meet him at my apartment so he could see the damage. I told him he needed to get a key from the building manager because I wasn't leaving work for that (after that trip to Texas I'm low on vacation time). That was the end of that. The building manager, I assume, didn't want to have to go over to the building to meet him either.
Then on Monday when I got home there was an envelope stuck to my doorknob with a rubber band. This is the building manager's preferred method of relaying communication to the tenants. The envelope contained a quite bitchy letter typed in all capitals. It was defensive and evasive - she never directly mentioned the radiator repair crew, but she said "we" (and I really have to wonder who the hell this "we" is) "we strive to avoid inconvenience but sometimes inconvenience is necessary." It closed by inviting me to move out "if you're so unhappy."
I wrote her another letter in response which focused on the mailbox issue. Her letter wondered "why after three years are you concerned about the mailboxes?" She had apparently completely forgotten about the earlier mail problem, which I discussed with her at the time. I have also had a package stolen from my mailbox, and I mentioned this. I also reminded her that I hadn't lived there three years; I've lived there six.
The second letter will probably lead nowhere but I felt I had to something to let her know she couldn't intimidate me. The bitch.
