Saturday, September 3, 2011

Building manager, Day 1

So here's a basic play-by-play as to how [Львица]'s and my first day as official building managers of our apartment building went. It's obviously not everything, but it's as close as I can come. Watch out, this fucker is gonna be long.

8 am: I wake up, think about getting out of bed, get out of bed, eat. I think about waking up [Львица]. I will regret this later.

9 am: [Blue-eyed Mr. Fix-it], the assistant to the building's repair man, knocks on our door, looking for [Львица]. I regret not waking her minutes earlier. I wake [Львица], she gets dressed and goes out to tell [blue-eyed Mr. Fix-it] what needs... well, fixed. We give him a list and we're suddenly on the clock.

9:30ish: [Львица] eats breakfast while I go to find the keys to the other apartments. I find them, label them, and discover a bunch of the keys to both the apartments and the lock box are missing. I am concerned.

10:00 am-ish: [Львица]and I make labels for the mailbox, so the new tenants will know which is theirs. In the process, we spell several wrong. Oops. We then tape up signs in the rooms with move-in information for the tenants.

11 am-ish: Our boss's sister and father, who help him run the company arrive to help sort out move-in stuff. I am given a bunch of random tasks by my boss's father, who tells me to change light bulbs in fixtures where it's not the bulb, it's the wiring in the fixture, and to put up a shower curtain in a room which is locked (and without giving me the shower curtain he had in his hand). Somehow, the painter also arrives to fix up some painting issues, though we weren't expecting him. Tenants begin arriving. One finds a hornet's next in her window while trying to put in her A/C unit. I find the previous building manager to kill the hornets while I try NOT to give people the wrong set of keys to their unit. One family finds their apartment not clean enough, even though it was one of the cleanest unit vacated, and spend two hours cleaning before moving in. Another mother complains about ice build-up in the freezer, much to the embarrassment of her son. She later tells us that the apartment is not "move-in ready" and that they came a long way and that they are expecting better. [Львица] and I try not to kill anyone. We cleaned for HOURS in the previous two days, having only four people - the two of us and two friends from school. If we wanted to thoroughly clean each unit, as we did for 103 or 1 or 4. But that took five hours at least per unit. And we have 23 units. So, five times 23 is... 115 hours. We only had 48 between the time people left and people moved in. Maybe a little understanding would have been nice.

1 pm-ish: We begin to notice that people are complaining about windows - A LOT. We decide to make this our project for the year. We let the painter into unit 306 to do some painting over mold damage. He says it's the worse mold he's ever seen. We know our bathroom is far worse so we show him ours. He remarks that it looks like aliens are growing in our shower. Exactly what I want to hear about my new home :(

4 pm: A friend of ours from high school moves in. We help him carry stuff and explain that we spent a hell of a lot of time cleaning his unit and that we tried our best. Oh, and that he also has had water damage to his room and that it's going to have to be looked into. We walk by the laundry room and find that the painter has cleaned out his gear in the sud-saver sink, left paint chips in the hair catcher that's in the sink (why there's one of those in the sud-saver sink, I can't tell you) and that someone has started laundry. We note that the laundry machine disposes of its water into the sink, which is clogged by paint chips, and soapy water is going everywhere. We clean it off, pissed off at this turn of events.

7 pm: We vent about our day. We have worked 10 hours straight. Shit.

8 pm: We go out to get dinner, feel exhausted, return home. We contemplate quitting our job.

11 pm: We go to bed.

That was day one. Day two was less exciting but still rather dramatic. For one, I had to clean unit 4 as the tenants moving in refused to move in until it was cleaner. [Львица] and I, however, have decided NOT to quit our job. It was a terrible first day, but things are going more smoothly now. Knock on wood :P

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