Category: House & Home

Yikes. You can tell I’m not used to anyone coming to my apartment. I practically jumped out of my skin when the door buzzed a few moments ago. I hesitated, as I am known for ignoring it if I’m not expecting someone. Luckily I answered, because it was FedEx delivering my brother’s replacement motherboard (the first one we ordered didn’t work). Looks like he’ll finally be getting his computer. I think we’re going to be busy again this weekend.

In other news, I’m almost finished with the work I was doing from home. That’s one less thing I have to worry about when I get back to work. Oh, and I’m listening to this Erasure cd right now. It’s not bad. Every song has the typical Erasure sound to it, of course. I borrowed the cd from the library. Our library is awesome – they get new release cds and movies pretty quickly. When I lived in Chicago, everything they had cd-wise was over four years old. It was pathetic.

Well since I cannot sleep, I shall work. I had two coworkers email me some stuff so I can get it done. What kind of loser am I?

Anyway, the reason I can’t sleep is someone is having fun with a hammer and power drill. In fact, I think they went back upstairs and redid my neighbor’s living room floor. Seems kinda sneaky to me. You know, so when everyone comes over later, they can say, “See? We don’t hear anything. It’s not louder than before.” Too bad they’ll be caught in a lie if they try that approach. I heard everything, unfortunately.

Now they seem to be working on the front door to the building. It’s about time. If I had to call them one more time about it not closing, I was going to buy a new one myself. It’s pointless having a secure building if the front door is off it’s frame and won’t close, now isn’t it? This comes after two different incidents where someone was trying to get into a secured building across the parking lot by posing first as a plumber, and then as an exterminator. Scary shit. Luckily, they were unsuccessful. What is this world coming to?

Oh yea, and I just heard someone walking upstairs. Still lots of creaking. *sigh*

I have been in the worst mood today. I wore my angry shirt to mark the occasion. I tend to wear the only red shirt I own on days I’m not in the mood to deal with any shit. Let that be a warning to those of you who may know me in person.

So guess who I have coming over tomorrow? The area manager of our apartment complex, along with the property manager and maintenance guy who is involved in our issue. Yea, I called her (same woman I emailed the letter to last weekend) again today to “tattle”. I’m tired of being strung along. I explained to her how aggravated I am getting with the whole thing. It shouldn’t be that complicated. The ceiling didn’t creak over a year ago when we moved in, so I shouldn’t have to hear it now. She agreed, and said she was going to bring the others over to experience the noise for themselves since no one seems to be taking me seriously.
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I could have said for fuck’s sake, but I didn’t. Well, I guess I just did. But let me get to the point of me saying anything at all …

Since I hadn’t heard anything back from our apartment management, I gave them a call yesterday, inquiring when they’d be fixing our neighbors’ noisy floors. The girl tells me they did it on Friday. I said, “You’re kidding me, right?” She responded with, “Why? Is there a problem?” I said, “Oh yes, there is. First of all, I was told we’d be warned before they did the repairs and more importantly, there’s been no decrease in noise, so apparently they didn’t do a very good job.” So she told me she’d talk to the maintenance guy on Monday and have him call me. Later that same day, she left a voicemail on my cellphone (which I’m notorious for not carrying on me unless I’m alone), stating that she talked to the maintenance guy and found out that they did the living room and hallway on Friday and will be doing the bedroom on Monday.

Ok, I have a bunch of problems with this, the first being that they did not let us know like they promised. I swear, they do that all the time! I’m really getting tired of the office manager because she tells me one thing, but doesn’t communicate it back to the maintenance team. Second of all, if the bedroom was the source of most of our complaints, why couldn’t they have fixed that first? No, instead we have to endure another weekend of sleeping according to their schedules. Such bullshit. And the most annoying thing? The living room creaking is even louder than before! WTF?! How does one make the situation worse??? You know, I have a bad feeling that this issue is only going to resolve itself by us moving out. And right now we just can’t afford to do that, not to mention the fact that our lease isn’t up until March 2004.

I bet they didn’t even follow my suggestions. I told them they had permission to come into our apartment so that one guy could listen down here while the other guy walked around to see if the noise had ceased. It’s called common sense, but there’s no way they could have possibly done that if they hadn’t warned us first (as our lease states) and the noise got worse. I’m going to have to prepare myself for battle mode, because I’m not letting this go. I’m sick of listening to every step they make up there. And before anyone dares tell me that’s apartment living, that’s bull. Besides, the company who owns our complex owns several others, and the woman I sent my letter to even said that our complex is the only one with the creaking floorboards problem.

I just keep thinking about what my upstairs neighbor said to me once when I ran up there to let her know her toilet was leaking into our ceiling, “Our downstairs neighbors have always seemed to have lots of problems.” Little did I know at the time – she was the problem!

Lest you think I only complain to hear myself “talk”, there are times when it’s absolutely imperative to voice one’s grievances. There are rewards to that, as well. Case in point – our upstairs neighbors and the issue with the squeaky floorboards. Well, after getting no resolution to the matter through local management, I went above their heads, so to speak, and emailed a letter to the property manager, as well as copied the regional director, neither of which work on the premise. After not being able to sleep past 8 am on Saturday due to the noise, I had enough.

This morning I got a call from the property manager who completely agreed with all my points. She apologized for the problems we’ve been having, and assured me that maintenance will be fixing the floorboards within the next seven days, whether the neighbors like it or not. As she pointed out, they do not own the building and cannot refuse the work to be done. Furthermore, although she did not provide me with a figure, she did say that they will be refunding a portion of our rent due to the inconvenience. Shortly thereafter, the on-premise manager called me and stated that even though we’d be happy with them fixing just the hallway and bedroom floors, they are going to do the entire apartment so we shouldn’t hear any squeaking at all. I am so happy! I may actually get to sleep when I want to from now on.

In case you’re curious, I’ve pasted the actual letter I sent here …
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