Dumping Them Out: Last Time I Promise
Welcome back to another episode of Dumping Them Out. I apologize for this being late. I spent my whole day moving myself because last minute my landlord told us we couldn't use the 5-star Task Rabbits we hired (professionals with hundreds of moves under their belt), and it was too late to hire one of his "approved moving companies", so I did the whole damn move between myself, my fiancee who has a slipped disk in her back, her small friend who could help for a couple hours, and one random neighbor friend who could also only help for a couple hours.
Promise this is the last blog I bitch about by now former landlord. But when I was finally done moving out, after three years of pent up frustration, I finally popped off on him. I said all the things I've been biting my tongue and saving for the end of our lease. So many things I wanted to yell at him for in real time, but didn't because it was easier to just deal with the extra money/suffering he caused us than it was to suffer any additional conversations with him.
From renting us an apartment with no A/C, under the impression he would fix the broken ceiling fans, then after we signed the lease telling us he actually wasn't going to fix the ceiling fans because they were "too much work".
The no A/C apartment that he sold us on because it had a private backyard for our dogs, then after we signed the lease told us our dogs can't pee in the backyard.
From scheduling open houses for our apartment while we're living in it without telling us (we literally just opened Zillow one Saturday to see he posted an open house starting in 30 minutes, and another one the next morning).
Forcing us to send him photo copies of our parent's I.D.'s when they visited.
Asking my fiancee and I how much sex we've been having since moving into his apartment because apparently our apartment number lined up with our birthdays and he's super into meanings behind number combinations and I guess our numbers said that we'd been fucking a lot (that was a wild one).
Replacing our commercial sized coin-use washing machine (which broke because it was 100 years old) with a tiny little personal washing machine that had a cracked lid and fit half a load, then having us Zelle him the same amount of money per load every time we used it (he put cameras down there and kept a tally of our washes, I suspect the whole thing was just a ploy to make an extra few hundreds bucks in laundry money from our building).
And so many more little, constant, pestering things. Beyond that, he was the overall most socially uncomfortable, infuriating person I've ever dealt with. So I finally let him have it during our final walk through once all our things were cleared out.
I told him all about how uncomfortable he made us feel the whole time we lived there, how I've never known a more frustrating person in my life, how I pray for whoever rents from him next. It was the most heated conversation I've ever been a part of. I did some yelling. He did some yelling back. He hit me with a good, "Your dogs used the backyard as their own personal toilet". We had a great "MAYBE YOU SHOULD RE-EVALUATE SOME THINGS"-off. And I really thought when it was all said and done that I was going to feel better. I'd been holding it in for so long, so I figured getting it off my chest at the end of our lease would be good closure. But if I'm being honest, it didn't. I ended up just feeling like an asshole. It wasn't worth it at all. I mean, I still think he deserved every bit of it. But now, more than anything, I'm just embarrassed for losing my cool. Like I was really mad. I actually think I might have scared him. I kinda feel bad about that part. But after hauling boxes and stuffing a U-Haul by myself all day long because I couldn't use the movers I had already spent money on, then having to spend more money on a hotel for a night because it was too late to move into my next place and I had to put it off until today (although he did graciously offer after our U-Haul was fully loaded and I'd yelled at him for a while to let us bring sleeping bags back into the empty apartment for a night)… seeing him immediately after all that just set me off.
I should have been the bigger man. I'm too old to be having shouting matches. I didn't even prepare my arguments well. Nothing I did helped anything, or is going to make him think, "Wow, if I made this tenant so angry, maybe I should re-evaluate the way I treat people moving forward." I mean what was I supposed to expect out of an NYC-area landlord? I know there's worse landlords out there than him. But god damn.. I swear, in my entire life nobody has ever managed to get under my skin in the way that guy did. It was impressive really. Because when I type out the things he did, they don't even seem all that terrible. So for him to get me as worked up as I've ever been by just being himself… honestly Barstool should hire him. Give him some sort of office manager role. Give him a copy of all our our contracts to let him comb through every day and find any little reason to enforce something on us, or hit us with some sort of contract violation. He would be in heaven. Bring him on the Unnamed Show every week to go over which employees violated their contracts. He'd illicit some incredible blowout arguments. Would be a content machine.
But the moral of the story is if you ever feeling like blowing your lid at someone (specifically a landlord) take a step back, collect your thoughts, write them down, and present them in a calm manner. It will come across way better. Because when you yell, the landlord can just dismiss you as some crazy asshole. Which in that moment I was. But if I had been really methodical about it, instead of just stewing in anger all day as I moved an entire apartment basically on my own, then yelling nonsense at him once I saw his face, my points would have have hit so much better. I didn't even prepare my arguments. In hindsight I just ramble yelled for about 5-10 minutes. If I'm being honest, I'm embarrassed with my performance. I'm even sitting here as I type questioning if we were the assholes the whole time. Does everybody else just roll over and let their landlords walk all over them? Does everyone else just answer their landlord honestly when he wants to know if you've been having more sex in his apartment? Are dogs not supposed to use backyards as their toilets? Fuck it. Maybe I was in the wrong. Either way, that man got to me like nobody has ever got to me before. So hats off to him. I'll never forget it.
