Several weeks ago, no, wait, it was a couple of months ago, I discovered a leaky pipe underneath my sink. The reason I discovered it is because after it had been leaking for quite some time, it rotted out the wood in the cabinet and grew a mold that smelled like something crawled into the pipes and died. But I couldn’t pin down the damned smell for days. I cleaned everything that could possibly make that smell, and finally, one day, thought to check underneath the sink and was overpowered by the source of the odor. So I call it in to Maintenance, schedule a day, and tell them I will stay home for Maintenance Guy so can I be first on the list for that day? No problem, they tell me. Of course I had to call them again that morning, because the people who run maintenance at my complex are not the brightest bulbs on the tree, and of course, they had forgotten to tell their guy I was first on the list.
Anyway, Maintenance Guy turns out to be Contractor Guy, which means he’s about six times as smart and ten times as good as anyone who works for my apartments. He fixes the leak, rips up the wood, puts in a new bottom, and then goes to Home Depot to buy more wood so he can fix the rotted wood framing my picture window because maintenance is too cheap to clean the gutters regularly, and a heavy rain causes an overflow onto my apartment wall (and into my apartment, sometimes). Contractor Guy also cleaned the gutter. I knew him from a previous maintenance call, I forget what for. But it was a hot summer day, so I made sure he had plenty to drink, and we chatted the whole time he was working, which is probably why he decided to replace the wood instead of just seal the windows for me. He did everything but paint the wood beneath the sink.
Which brings us to this week.
On Wednesday, I got home to find the overpowering odor of something like shellac, which grew stronger when I got in the kitchen. The cabinet doors under the sink were open, as were a couple of drawers. I shut one of the drawers with my foot, not yet understanding that that shellac smell was, well, some kind of shellac on my kitchen cabinets and drawers. There is now a dusty footprint on the large drawer where I keep my roasting pans. The downstairs reeked of this shellac smell for the rest of the night, and into the next day.
Greatly displeased, I called the maintenance department the next morning, and asked them why my cabinets had been painted when I had not asked them to paint them, and also why I hadn’t been notified. Turns out that Stupid Painter Guy read the work order wrong. He was supposed to paint the wood underneath the kitchen sink, not the entire kitchen cabinet set. They apologized profusely and said, “He must have read the work order wrong.”
Ya think?
They said they would send him over later that day. I told them please don’t, but they insisted. So yesterday, I got home from work to find: The cabinets all open as if they were drying. The drawers open. The cabinet doors beneath the sink wide open and yet all of the under-sink contents untouched, unless Stupid Painter Guy had a photographic memory and replaced everything exactly as it was. The shellac smell was overpowering again. The cats had obviously been hiding upstairs; as soon as I came home they made a beeline for the food dishes and started gorging.
But I had not yet discovered Stupid Painter Guy’s worst offense.
Sonofabitch left the toilet seat up.
In a woman’s apartment.
He left the toilet seat up. I’m sorry, but this is a cardinal sin in my apartment because I live alone, and to have a stranger who is too effing stupid to read a work order yet is selfish enough to leave a stranger’s toilet seat up is beyond annoying.
Sarah got to hear me bitch about it. Big-time. Something like, “Stupid effing moron can’t read the work order TWO DAYS IN A ROW, but he can leave the damned toilet seat up IN A WOMAN’S APARTMENT!!!”
It was louder than that, though.
I was really annoyed.
I suppose I should get this anger about toilet seats under control, or Mr. Meryl Yourish may have a difficult time of it.
By the way, I will not be calling maintenance back to have him paint the unpainted wood. If I can possibly help it, Stupid Painter Guy has seen the last of my apartment.
You know what I’m wondering? Whether they WROTE the work order wrong.
Hey, it happens. Sometimes apartment office folk aren’t any brighter than the maintenance staff they hire, on whom it’s too easy to pin the blame when they goof up.
Then again, maybe he is just stupid. I had one at my last place who struggled and struggled with the water source pipe in the bathroom, convinced there was a leak from my apartment into the unit below (there wasn’t). Unfortunately, what he struggled and struggled to do was turn the source valve the wrong direction.
Why can’t people just remember “righty-tighty, lefty-loosey?”
Anyway, this chap couldn’t, so he wound up breaking off the handle.
I later had to replace the 20-year-old toilet tank innards. I did this myself because maintenance, I figured, had broken enough. I ended up having to use needle-nose pliers to maneuver a leeeeeetle tiny plastic nubbin to shut off the water. It didn’t work perfectly, so I got soaked.
Yeah, I retract my earlier supposition. He could very well be stupid. And if nothing else, he is rude as all hell for leaving that seat up. Yeesh.