Ranting about crappy landlords

I have finally recovered from the pure sheer hell of what is now becoming last week. What with trying to share a small apartment with two deranged cats, seeing my David graduate, trying to move, dealing with the breathtaking and all-encompassing stupidity of my new landlords, and pulling 9-10 hour days at the office frantically looking for some document that I am quite sure does not exsit, I'm not sure where to start the my ranting.

I think I'll start with my wonderful landlords: UCH. If you live in Philadelphia and have thought about renting from these people; run for the hills, gnaw off your own arm and throw it behind you to avoid pursuit, but run, and don't ever look back. It's not that they are the worst out there, it's just that they think you the tenant are stupid because you are 1) still in college, and don't care that you are being cheated or treated like a retarded farm animal because your rich daddy is paying for everything, or 2) wimpy enough to be pushed around. These 30-something hipster freaks have taken the attitude that they were doing me a favor by cleaning and priming my apartment before I moved in.

So here's what happened; I call ahead and schedule a time for them to clean and paint my apartment. They promise me that it would be done by a certain date. When I try to move in the next day, Friday of last week, I find a couple of dead cockroaches on a dirty, plaster strewn floor, holes in the walls, and exposed plumbing. I patiently call them and ask why my apartment is in a way that makes me feel that they didn't do their jobs. Their response is that they don't know what happened and that I should stop being so outraged because the cleaning and painting crew could have very well have painted my aparment. My response---that in my experience cleaning crews and painters do not leave holes in walls, dust and plaster on the floors and exposed plumbing---was met with patronizing comments that alluded to the fact that I was a bitch.

Later in the day, the head of the place, lets call him Jay, glorious I'm-doing-you-a-favor-when-you-rent-from-me Jay told me that I had to be at my aparment the next day at 1:30 to let in the cleaning lady. He tells me that I better not tell the cleaner what to do because it was a general cleanup and that it wasn't my place. Never mind its also not my place to be letting cleaners into unihabitable apartments, or that I may have plans on the weekend of my boyfriend's graduation other than sitting in a empty apartment because my landlord f*cked up. I let it go. They promise me that they will put a crew in on Monday morning to paint as well. I tell them to please make sure they do because we had to move David out of his place by that night. Monday morning is graduation for David, so I call early to UCH and leave a message begging them to leave me a message if anything goes wrong and they can't get their work done by the afternoon. I didn't get a call, so right after commencement, we begin to move David's stuff in.

We find the apartment exactly as we had left it, no paint on the walls, oh and the plumbing in the bathroom is now missing with broken tile lying around. So I call Jay again. I tell him that I may be loosing my patience with him. He tells me that he may also be loosing his patience with me, since he was doing me a favor by trying to get the crew in on short notice. I mentioned that the reason the crew was in on short notice was due to his own incomptency, and he avoids the issue by asserting that he thought all I needed done was the cleaning and not the priming. Never mind that I had in the past week on 3 seperate occasions held conversations with the guy where I listed painting as something they needed to get done before I moved in. I asked him, what about my message telling him to call me if anything went wrong, he tells me what message?

I gave up on the patience and honey will get your more bees crap, and told him that I would now record all the conversations between UCH and me, take pictures of everything that was wrong with the apartment, and if I had to, make them sign statements as to when they would do work on the apartment. The apartment was painted the very next day.

Of course they took out my commode to exact revenge, but the moral of the story is that if you are in or just out of college, know your rights. And if things don't get done the way you want it, threaten legal repercussions because liability is the only thing that these lazy idiots understand. And document everything: from the way your landlord's jeans are too tight, to how pathetic it is for him to be on a power trip because he rents out to kids.