Nope, this one I’m going to dub the saga of Condiment Revenge Lady. Granted, I don’t know 100% if the lady I have in mind is responsible, but it’s a sure bet.

Here’s the story: we have, in building C, another contender for Mrs. LeCrankyPants, should the current Mrs. LeCrankyPants be unable to fulfill her duties; her name is Mrs. Grahame, and she is easily at least 15 years younger than Mrs. leCrankyPants. The only complaint Mrs. Grahame has is about her upstairs neighbours; we’re not talking about a complaint about a specific neighbour, but rather, EVERY single neighbour who’s ever lived above her.

Mrs. Grahame has been resident for as long as I can remember; and for as long as I can remember, I have fielded complaints from Mrs. Grahame concerning her upstairs neighbours. She’s had at least eight different people live above her. And yet…

They either talk too loud, walk too loud, run their appliance too loud, flush their toilets too loud… god forbid a young child might be living up there, because then she WILL be delivering multiple written complaints to the office about how the noise level is “simply unbearable” and she feels like a prisoner in her own home because of all the noise. If the neighbours upstairs are cooking, she can smell it and it bothers her. If they’re bathing, she somehow claims their water flow is interfering with her own.

(Once, believe it or not, she even complained that the neighbours were NOT loud enough… she felt she thought they were trying to listen in on what she was going in her own apartment! For the love of….)

Having determined that the noise and smell are nothing but reasonable, I’ve taken to ignoring her letters and complaints. I suspect she might be going a little batty, even though she seems a little young for that. It would certainly explain the paranoia, though. (Don’t ask me why she hasn’t moved– I often wonder that myself)

Currently, two lovely young female roommates live on top of Mrs. Grahame; I’ve had absolutely no problem with those girls, who are clean, polite, and pay their rent on time. I did have to inform them that Mrs. Grahame complained about them (didn’t take her long– she claimed the girls were “banging dishes”, just to upset her.) but also assured them that I didn’t take her seriously.

All seemed well until this weekend, when the girls ran into Serge on the grounds and told him their apartment door had been vandalized.

He got a hold of me and we checked it out; there was bright yellow stuff all around the doorframe, and a big brownish stain right in the centre of the door. Serge, ever the connoisseur, sniffed at the door and remarked, “Mustard. And barbecue sauce. Did you girls have a barbecue that didn’t end well?”

No, they said, but they did have a small get-together on Saturday night. There we have it, I thought. Certainly we can’t prove it, but there’s hardly any doubt that Mrs. Grahame took offense to their party and decided to exact her own bit of condiment revenge.

Of course, no proof, no conviction. We can’t claim beyond any doubt that Mrs. Grahame is responsible, but I plan to keep an eye on our little condiment vigilante.

(And for good reason. Those creatures are not natural.)

When I say house centipede, I mean these fantastic little critters: (be warned, these images are large and alarming for anyone with a phobia of centipedes!)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c8/House_Centipede.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/House_centipede.jpg

Now first of all, if you live in an apartment, you probably shouldn’t be too worried about an infestation. Centipedes like cool, dark places like basements, and don’t really enjoy hanging out in high-rise buildings. In fact, I’ve never seen an infestation in an apartment.

Nope, this one happened in a townhouse. Years ago, before we sold them to the neighbouring property, this complex used to own a row of townhouses. Those are a whole different set of headaches, not the least of which is due to constantly having to badger tenants about keeping their yards tidy.

One particular tenant had an overgrown backyard and a pile of rotting firelogs in his yard; it was the lesser of many evils at the time so I pretty well ignored it, until the tenant came to see me about “weird little crawlers” all over his house.

It was quite the experience to follow him into the basement, watch him kick at a pile of cardboard boxes, and then watch a three-inch centipede skittering away in all its glory. Followed by another. And another.

When he told me about the one centipede he’d observed crawling on his bedroom ceiling, then losing its grip and falling to the floor, I shuddered in disgust. There is just something about centipedes that evokes a deep-seated instinct of revulsion among humans.

(Well, except for the tenant in question. He seemed to be taking his “crawler” infestation in stride.)

Now for the big question: how do you get rid of them? First, you can get rid of anything creating a nice attractive little home for them, such as a pile of rotting wood in your backyard (jerk!). Since they like it humid, sticking a de-humidifier in the basement can help a lot too. Basically, just keeping your basement clean of anything that would attract them (like wet or damp wood, piled-up cardboard, or other types of insects– they eat bugs) should prevent a serious infestation. It’s not abnormal to see one or two occasional centipedes in a normal basement. While they do sometimes bite humans when scared or threatened, they’re not poisonous.

As for getting rid of a present infestation, unfortunately your best solution is to get an exterminator. Fumigation is what they used at this particular tenant’s house, but they might have less harsh alternatives for smaller infestation.

But remember: keeping your house/apartment clean will pretty much keep any kind of infestation away. Prevention is key, kids.

First, the required information: most tenants have air conditioners installed in their apartments (it is summer, after all!) The units are usually placed inside a little window specifically designed for them, and so stick out quite a bit on the outside of the building so the outside air can be sucked in through the vents, cooled, and blasted into the apartment.

Now, tenants are also known to have parties. During these parties, it is common to drink perhaps a little bit more alcohol than would be recommended.

You’ll see where this is going in a moment.

Early Sunday morning, I’m out just for a simple walk around the grounds (not on official business, just getting a little exercise). I ran into a tenant, Lynn, who is still in her nightclothes and perusing the grounds, looking concerned. Apparently she’d been looking for a super; she comes to me right away.

“Tracy, something’s wrong in my apartment.”

Fire? Flood? Something that would make her evacuate without changing clothes? I start to lead her towards the office where I can call for whatever help is needed. “What’s wrong?”

“I woke up this morning and there was a really, really bad smell. It’s not coming from the kitchen or anything, I don’t know what it is, but it’s horrible. I couldn’t stay inside.”

I stopped walking her to the office and instead lead her back to her apartment. “It smells bad? What does it smell like?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know, like puke or something.”

Well, she’s right about that, it certainly does smell quite strongly like vomit the minute we step in. She insists she hasn’t been sick in a long time so it’s certainly not her (although she looks like she’s about to be sick herself now!)

So I go through my routine– smell kitchen, smell fridge, smell bathroom, smell hallway. It’s only when I pass through her living room, and when the running air conditioner blasts a wave of cold, rank air on me, that I realize where the problem comes from.

I step out on Lynn’s balcony to check out the air conditioner; there’s a neat little puddle of vomit sitting on top of it. I look up, and see that it’s perfectly lined up for someone leaning off the side of the balcony and throwing up.

Needless to say, we shut off the air conditioner right away. I volunteered to help poor Lynn clean it off.

And I would like to take this opportunity to remind all you tenants out there that vomiting off your balcony is never, EVER recommended. Nor is drinking yourself silly, but what can we do.

Luckily, it didn’t belong to me for turnovers this month. I did run myself ragged with all the move-ins (and I’m sorry I haven’t had the energy to update in a while!) but for the most part, it was a good turnover. Those are always so precious to me.

I was helping Serge pull up some carpet in an empty unit (the carpet had a very alarming orange stain on it that we chose not to touch or dwell on too much). We got into a discussion about the worst units we’ve seen left behind; previously-unknown bug infestations are a pretty bad thing to deal with after the tenants have moved out, although my personal worst might be the time a vindictive tenant plugged the toilet and sinks and left them running as he skipped out (the water damage was long and expensive to fix)

I don’t quite know if Serge’s example is the true worst of the worst, but it’s pretty bad, and incredibly mean-spirited on the part of the angry tenants in question.

Serge recounted me the story of a building he worked in many moons ago, around the beginning of his career as a super. Evictions happen as they may, and this one left the soon-to-be-former tenants, a man and a woman, very bitter and aggressive with the office. The manager didn’t care much about their threats and shouts, until they moved out in the middle of the night. The next day, Serge and the other supers were called in to do damage control on the unit.

Oh, it was trashed all right. A “trashed” unit is everything from a shredded carpet and holes in the wall to a plugged toilet and garbage everywhere. This unit was all that… long strips had been cut out of the carpet, someone had taken a hammer to the walls, parts of the toilet were disassembled and the fridge and stove were both hit with the hammer and broken. All courtesy of some very pissed off deadbeat tenants.

But what was the cherry on this awful sundae?

Paint. 

Evidently these darling tenants had gotten their hands on some very thick, very black paint, and created a masterpiece of rage all over the unit. The stuff had been splashed everywhere- walls, ceiling, carpet, tile floor– and the appliances, already smashed and broken, had been painted all over. The inside of the fridge had been painted. The tub and sunks were all painted. They’re even dumped some in the toilet.

Serge couldn’t remember how long it took to clean everything, but he was thinking in terms of weeks and not days. Personally, I always wonder, was it really worth the time and effort to so thoroughly trash the unit? I love how these particular people had not paid rent in months and yet could afford to waste ten gallons of paint.

I felt quite happy about the innocent little stain on the carpet after hearing that tale!

I’ve had another entertaining visit by Mrs. Lamontagne today, who is commonly known on this blog as Mrs. LeCrankyPants.

Lately, her MO seems to be to burst into the office, and bark a single word representive of her current complaint. I’ve really been feeling like barking a single word back at her to see who wins, but I’m too polite.

So today, Mrs. LeCrankyPants comes down and announces, “Singing!”

Is this word association? Should I be screaming back “karaoke!” or “David Bowie!” Because I will!

We stare each other down for a good minute; I’m waiting to see if she’s going to elaborate, she seems to be waiting to see what I’m going to do about the problem. Whatever it is.

I finally break the silence. “Singing, yes?”

“Someone is singing on my floor! This is ridiculous! Don’t people have any respect for others?”

“You mean they’ve got their music turned up?”

“No!” she barks. “They’re singing!  They don’t care! It’s ridiculous!”

Well that’s a new one on me. “Er, is it offensive singing?”

“No! Come up, you’ll see what I mean!”

Why not, it’s a slow morning. She keeps mumbling and grumbling the whole elevator ride up about it being “ridiculous” that people have no respect for their neighbours. Who knew singing offended her so much? I’d better stop belting out Kenny Rogers songs in the office.

When we get to her floor, I strain but don’t hear anything. She sternly points towards offending apartment, whom I note is completely at the other end of the hallway from her own unit.

But then I hear it; sweet, dulcet tones, singing something Andrea Bocelli might perform. Quite beautifully, too. I think I know the tenant who lives there, and he’s a very proper, older gentleman, who apparently enjoys singing arias in the privacy of his own home.

“See??” Mrs. LeCrankyPants says. She seems really agitated by this.

“It just sounds like opera to me,” I say. It’s actually really pleasant to listen to. And considering that it’s 10:30 in the morning, it’s not like he’s creating much of a disturbance. I was expecting to hear profanity-ridden gangsta rap, to be honest, not sweet Italian words.

“But everyone can hear him!” she insists, not understanding why I’m not as outraged as she is. “This is not respect for your neighbours!”

“Mrs. Lamontagne, can you actually hear him from your apartment?”

“Well no! But I can hear him from the elevator every time I get on and off! Don’t you think that’s ridiculous?”

Sometimes, you just don’t have the energy to argue. “I’ll write him a warning letter.”

“Good!” she says, smugly, apparently thinking she made a difference.

No, I am most certainly not writing him a letter. Unless it’s to ask if he’s practicing for a performance, which I’d love to see.

Three cheers for the weekend. I’m taking the kids to see Transformers on Sunday.

This one is about mold. Not the fuzzy green stuff that grows on your bread, but the annoying black stuff that likes to grow in apartment buildings.

Mold can be a bit of a problem; obviously, it’s gross and nobody wants it growing in their home. It smells funny, and some people are allergic to it. When we get a report of mold growing in someone’s unit, the guys will usually dehydrate it with a blow-dryer, spray some kind of mold killer on it, and thenpaint over the area. This works pretty well on the occasional mold outbreak.

Most mold outbreaks will be found in the bathroom, thanks to the high count of warm moisture. Usually advising people to turn on their bathroom fan during showers helps curb the problem a bit. In this part of the province though, it can get humid during the summer, so it’s not unusual for mold to start growing around the edges of windows and ceilings.

If a unit seems to be a problem spot, we’ll usually lend them a de-humidifier once we’ve treated the mold spot, to help curb more mold production. Keep it on, and it’ll help suck most of the moisture out of the air. Pretty simple, right?

So we had a tenant who happened to live in one of the mold hotspots this summer; his living room window kept getting outbreaks of the black stuff. After the second treatment, Serge got him a de-humidifier, and advised him to keep that window closed for a while to avoid the outside humidity. The tenant readily agreed.

Only it didn’t seem to help. Twice more, the tenant would come down and complaint, quite loudly and grumpily, about the mold that kept growing back. Serge returned, treated the window, and couldn’t understand why our efforts weren’t working.

“This is very annoying,” the tenant grumbled to him one day, as Serge was blow-drying his window again. I had followed him in to check out the unit for myself. ”I should be able to live in a mold-free house, you know?”

“Sure,” Serge mumbled.

“Maybe we should you get you a second de-humidifier, if the problem’s this bad.” I said.

“Oh no, please don’t!” the tenant says. “I never turn that thing on anyway, it’s too loud.”

Serge stopped drying. I could tell he probably had a few choice words that were dying to get out.

“You don’t turn your de-humidifier on?” I asked.

“Nope, it makes too much noise. Kind of annoying, really.”

“And… you wonder why the mold keeps coming back?”

“Well that’s not really my responsability, now is it?”

If I was a cartoon character, I probably would have slapped my forehead and said “D’oh!”. As it was, I really felt like slapping HIM.

This has been another episode of “Common sense? What common sense?”

I’m only down to a few one-bedroom units to rent for August, so I tend to rotate which unit I show during appointements. Earlier today I had someone booked to come in and see a one-bedroom, and so I had picked one on Friday and sent notice. I’d shown that unit a few times already, and the tenant usually wasn’t home, so I wasn’t really expecting anything out of the ordinary.

My appointment was a thirty-ish man, nice guy. I took him up to the apartment, and knocked on the door.

“It’s Tracy, I’m here to show the unit. Is anyone home?”

“Yeah!” I hear the tenant inside say. “Just a sec.”

There’s a bit of shuffling inside, and then we hear him say, “You know what, just come in.”

I had the key, so we did. I’m used to opening apartment doors and being greeted with messes, rowdy tenants, or excited pets, but I don’t exactly get to open a door and come face-to-face with a pair of buttocks all that often.

My visitor snorted and took a step back, out of the apartment. The tenant, however, seemed oblivious to us, bending over to root through a back pack on his couch. Absolutely butt-naked.

“Oh! I think we caught you at a bad time!” I said, wondering why he let us in.

“No, it’s good.”

“Should we give you a minute to get some pants or something?”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not really fine, you’re a bit on the naked side there buddy.”

He actually has to gall to turn to face us, and shrugs. “I don’t really care. Does it matter?”

“It kind of does,” I say, not-too-subtly averting my gaze. ”Why don’t we come back when you’re decent?”

I stepped back into the hallway to join my visitor, who was red-faced but laughing. We had a good chuckle about the situation until the tenant in question opened his apartment door; thankfully he was wearing a bathrobe, and he apologized to us, saying it was early in the morning still and he didn’t have all his wits about him.

I’ll say! I don’t think I ever showed an apartment so fast. We were out of there in five minutes. Nothing like a little surprise nudity first thing in the morning!

This one happened to Diego a long time ago when he was super for a low-income building (I think I may have mentioned this building before?) Anyway, a tenant was complaining of a severe roach infestation and a very strong, very bad smell coming from one of the bedrooms which, upon inspection by Diego, didn’t seem to have anything in it to cause the smell.

Diego thought the smell wasn’t really consistent with rot or typical garbage. Before tearing open the walls, the office wisely decided to inspect the unit next door, to see if the source may have been there.

That particular unit hadn’t been inspected since the tenants moved in; the tenants in question were a mother with three young children who had stayed pretty much quiet and out of trouble for their tenancy so far.

Diego was in charge of the inspection. Despite having sent a 24-hour notice, the mother was still very reluctant to let Diego in, arguing and yelling until she finally caved and let him in.

“I don’t know what you expect to find here!” she screamed at him.

Obviously, she was a tad wrong. According to Diego, the smell was unbelievable, and he saw the source of it right away:

The lady’s living room wall, adjacent to the other tenant’s bedroom wall, was literally covered with used diapers.

The carpet beneath the pile had a damp stain and the wall around the edge of the diaper fortress was yellow and rotten. Diego said that every diaper changed since the family moved in must have been thrown against that wall.

He didn’t argue; he closed the door without speaking to the lady (who insisted there was nothing there…!) and ran back to report to the landlord, who had a few choice words about the situation.

An eviction notice was promptly filed and as soon as the lady and her children were out (Diego is pretty sure the landlord also called child services, which I sincerely hope… yuck! Those poor kids!), the landlord had to call one of those hazmat teams. Apparently the air bacteria levels in the unit were frighteningly high.

They dug through the pile of diapers, some of which were close to a year old. The bottom area of the pile was black with rotten diaper material and human waste, which had sunk into the carpet so deeply they had to rip up the carpet, the underpadding, and actually replace the floor structure (the tenant underneath had noticed a yellow stain on his ceiling but thought it was just water damage)

The wall was just as bad; rotten almost through-and-through, black and moldy with diaper goo. The entire wall had to be torn down and rebuilt. It was months before they could rent that unit again.

All I have to say about that is… eww gross! I’m quite thankful my own tenants don’t use their living rooms as diaper pails!

The office answering machine, when switched on after-hours, has several different lines on it. One is to leave a message with the office, one is to page the supers, and one is to register a vehicle in the visitor’s parking lot. This is done because we have a nighttime security guard who, among other things, checks to make sure that the cars parked in our lot belong there and aren’t squatters from another building.

The tenants are mostly good about registering and pretty much all parking messages sound the same.

“Hi, it’s unit 217, registering a blue Pontiac, license plate XXX.”

Nice and simple.

Now I listen to these messages every morning in the office and take notes, just in case someone disputes a parking ticket. So there I was sitting at my desk with my coffee this morning, zapping through the weekend messages, and here’s the winner for best parking registeration while under the influence of some manner of drug or alcohol:

“(extended silence) Uuuuh, yeah! It’s a car, right? A black car. It’s in visitors, a black car. License, uh plate… four two… well, it’s a car. It’s… it’s going to be parked there, and it’s black, so don’t freak out or anything, because the car’s parked. It’s a black Nissan. Yeah. It’s parked out there, a black car, Nissan. It’s for apartment…. uh… License plate four two seven… (extended silence) It’s just gonna be parked. Let me know if it’s a problem. It’s a black Nissan.” *click*

Picture a slurred male voice, but with genuine concern in his tone about us freaking out over a black Nissan in the lot.

I kid you not, I listened to it so many times I could recite it in my sleep. The guys and I were in stitches!

Too bad they weren’t able to leave the apartment number! I would have had a very interesting conversation with those tenants.