Can You Manage?

Changing light bulbs, sweeping the hallway and laundry room, repairing the toilet. These are things that the maintenance man of an apartment building would do, right? Sure it is, those were the type of duties that we did when we (the hubby and I) held that title here. We did that plus we were typically the middle man for complaints, which wasn't always a walk in the park.

Until one day a few months ago, the landlord sprung it on us that he was planning on handing the building over to a management company due to his failing health, also he plans on raising the rent. (By the way, the lack of corporate influence was one of the perks of this place.) Basically we were fired in the maintenance/management capacity and in turn lost our discounted rent, not fun. Alone that gives me something to complain about, but that's not the reason for my rant today.

Mr. Landlord (who still is yet to bring in this previously mentioned management company) continues to ask us to do those maintenance orientated tasks. No longer do we get the perks but we are still expected to do the work. Not that we are expected to do it free of cost, he slips us a five or a ten every now and then telling us to go get a burger or something, but no discounted rent, no title, and no respect from the other tenants. I can't say I feel very motivated.

Want to know how it all started? The hubby and I had been living here for about five years when a herd of wild teenage boys (I am sure there is a Latin term for the species) moved in down the hall, adding to the already large number of teenagers that occupied this building. By this point we already did all of our own repairs (this is a hundred year old building remember, there is a lot of repairs) as well as took responsibility for keeping the shared deck clean, which included sweeping more then once a week and emptying ash trays daily because it never even occurred to anyone else to do so. All those teenage boys were rowdy and their friends, who were always here, were worse. It soon became clear that some policing of their actions needed to be done and since the landlord didn't live on site, we volunteered for that coveted position of manager.

We had to post rules on the deck to try and keep order, post an "emergencies only" sign on the fire escape because it was a lawsuit waiting to happen, we nearly had to ban smoking on the deck because people decided it would be a good idea to put their cigarettes out on the old wood, smart eh? You can't even imagine how many cigarette butts and pieces of chewed gum we have had to clean up out of the parking lot, because even though people were told not to, and given an alternative such as multiple ash trays or a garbage can, off the deck seemed the logical place to throw things. We numerously had to be the bad guys and say "shut the hell up" or "you need to tell your friend to leave" or "don't climb on that." (Again, teenagers, fresh from mommy's care.)

Parties were always another issue. Droves of underage drinkers, some of which enjoy getting into fights when liquored up. We'd police the parties, and I'd typically have to be a bitch, which as I may have stated in a previous post, I don't necessisarily mind. I once had to tell a couple to leave the property. The guy was dancing with his girlfriend's sister, a fight followed of course, including a slap that could be heard from a decent distance away. They decided to move the yelling match from inside, to the deck outside, at 1:30 in the morning. Yeah, that wasn't going to fly, just what we need with a bunch of underage drinking going on, a yelling match for the neighbors to call the cops about. So I made them leave the property and I got to say I felt damn good after words.

We have a rule here, if you are going to have a party, then you let the other residences know ahead of time so they can voice an objection or at least be warned of it. This rule is only rarely followed. Just before Christmas, the year before last, a neighbor had thrown a party. (By this time, the herd of teenage boys had moved back home to their mom's, however there were still several other teenagers who still resided here.) A drunk as a skunk party, that some time after midnight was getting louder and louder. So, still holding that manager title, we had to go see if we could get things to quiet down. There was about a dozen people out on the deck, all quite loud, their voices echoing off the neighboring houses, mixed with the blaring music coming out of their open front door. I approached the girl who's party it was and said that she either needed to get her guests to quiet down or take them inside and close the door, because it was way to loud to continue as was. (In a post a while back, I mentioned a friend flipping out on me with a string of rude names and whatnot for no reason, this is it.) She went from happy drunk to mean drunk in two seconds flat. I was a bitch and my hubby a tool, we have parties all the time, why should this be any different? Apparently the rule about letting people know about parties didn't apply here, and neither did the long standing rule about being real loud on the deck, or the one about being responsible for your friends behavior when they are here. While she stands there continuing to yell, more party guests arrive in the parking lot, one deciding to not even try to make it up the stairs to the apartment, unzips, and pees on our dumpster. I remind her (by this point I am not doing well remaining calm, pretty close to tears actually) that she is responsible for her guests, and she shirks it off saying she didn't invite the guy even though he was her friend and a guest at her party, it has nothing to do with her. There was absolutely no reason for her or her friends to be quiet or to respect the other tenants and neighbors trying to sleep, or even to respect the building she calls home.

After about twenty minutes of her drunken insults (most of which having nothing to do with the situation) and my hurt feelings, which as you can tell I am still not over, she and her friends made their way inside and finally closed the door. The next day she and her friends stole our chairs off the deck, as well as ripped down the "no loitering" sign, took pictures with it and posted them on MySpace. It was six months before she said a word to me again, after she had gotten knocked up and started complaining about other people in the building (her once best friend in fact) having loud parties. I couldn't help but feel some satisfaction that she finally was on the other side of things.

So yeah, back from that little side trip, our management position in this building was about preserving the place and having respect for our home. Keeping it looking decent and not going to shit because of careless people. Back to my original complaint, we are no longer are managers here, the landlord took that away from us not because we weren't doing our job but because he is basically changing the whole format of everything. Just not yet apparently, and in the meantime, he wants us to continue doing as we have, just without any benefits. Is my irritation justified or am I just looking for a reason to be unhappy?