Honestly, it doesn’t surprise me anymore when tenants fight over the service elevator. Even when it comes to violence, I’m still not surprised.

Still, this incident last Thursday evening was a memorable one!

We just went through another turnover, but luckily December turnovers are usually the mildest. I only had six moves across all buildings, so it wasn’t bad at all. (and yes, I did manage to rent that one-bedroom at the last minute. Go Tracy!)

So this happened Thursday evening; one of the young female tenants from building C, Kirsty, is sadly moving out (I really liked that girl). She had most of her stuff out already, and told me she’d planned to go back to her apartment on Thursday night (last day of the month) to get her last loadful of boxes and be on her way.

Now, please note: I wasn’t present for some of the following, only heard about it from the people involved, and later Dwayne.

In building C, there lives a somewhat grumpy gentleman, Mr. Zweig. He’s younger than me (he’s about forty, if I recall) and yet acts crustier than an eighty-year-old grandpa. He hates everyone. He hates his neighbours (who avoid him like the plague) he hate the staff, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t care much for me, even though I’ve always been kind and polite to him. Luckily, I don’t deal with him much as he pays his rent on time and mostly stays out of trouble with the neighbours. I say mostly, since he does have a few incidents in his file in which he’s gotten into pretty bad verbal arguments with other tenants. He’s not a nice guy.

So it seems that on Thursday night, Kirsty had loaded up a stack of boxes into the elevator (not the service elevator, but the regular one, since it was only one load). When she got to the ground floor, she struggled a bit to carry her boxes out of the elevator, while holding it up a bit. Mr. Zweig was waiting for the elevator, and according to both of them, was not willing to wait for Kirsty to finish unloading.

So an argument breaks out (I know Kirsty can be a bit of a firecracker). Mr. Zweig decided to make his point by knocking over and kicking the boxes Kirsty had piled up– and what comes next is a bit hazy. According to Kirsty, Mr. Zweig tried to push her, so she punched him. Apparently hard enough to break the glasses right off his face.

So Mr. Zweig then goes over to Dwayne’s apartment to complain that he got attacked. Poor flustered Dwayne has no idea what to do, so he tries to get Mr. Zweig to calm down and return to his apartment. He then pages me.

And this is where I came in. By the time I got to the building, Kirsty was still there, a little rattled, telling me her side of the story. Before I can go up and speak with Mr. Zweig, I see a police car pulling up to the front of the building.

Great. He called the cops. The fun ain’t over yet.

Kirsty gives them her statement, and they let her go– and I’m kinda happy this whole incident gave me a chance to say goodbye to her in person! We trotted up to Mr. Zweig’s apartment next, where I just sat back and watched the cops talk to him. Actually, once he admitted he may have pushed Kirsty, they chewed him out for attacking a twenty-two year old girl. Even if the girl did kick his butt!

Honestly, I had nothing to say in his defense. The guy’s a troublemaker, so it was nice to see him taken down a peg or two. He apologized to the cops and was pretty much shaking by the time Dwayne and I left him.

I haven’t heard from him since Thursday, so I figure he’s still sitting at home licking his wounds. I know I shouldn’t gloat over someone else’s misery, but come on. You don’t try to touch a girl half your age!

Even if she does have a mean right hook.

Posted by Tracy on Monday, December 4th, 2006 at 2:07 pm.