Sunday, May 30, 2010

Apartment Apparition - Part 1

It's not that I'm feeling especially pessimistic this evening, but an entry about my distaste of apartment living has been long overdue. So here it is.

Ryan and I have been living together for about 4 years or so now, and while we've always inhabited apartments, they've all been of the triplex variety. In December we moved into our first actual apartment building - and I had high hopes that things would run a little smoother here (referring to building management) than they have in other places we've lived.

So...without further adieu: The top 4+ things I hate about this apartment.

1. The people...or rather, the dirty people. On each floor of our building (as with most buildings I would imagine) there's a garbage chute so that us lazy inhabitants do not need to concern ourselves with going outdoors to dispose of our waste. On our floor (and possibly others), people have taken lazy to all new levels. On more than one occasion I have gone into the garbage chute 'room' to find several garbage bags on the floor as opposed to in/down the chute. It's apparently not enough that all one has to do to dispose of their garbage is to walk down the hall, open up a door and throw your bag in the chute...my neighbours seem to feel that they are above actually touching the garbage chute and that someone else should dispose of their bags for them. Wait - there is one neighbour who is the exception to this rule. Words can not describe, but a picture says a thousand words:


Okay, so this picture says 42 words...you know what I meant.

Needless to say, this behaviour has resulted in the posting of a few letters - initiated by yours truly (naturally), but followed up by other tenants who share my disgust.

2. The parking lot. A couple years back I was convinced that our neighbours were going to kill us with the giant compressed gas cylinder they were storing on their front lawn for use in their drug lab. Since our SWAT team equivalent came and evicted all their asses before it came down to that, this theory was conveniently (and thankfully) proven wrong. In our new home however, there are two potentially lethal sources: the elevators and the parking lot - more specifically, the blind spot coming into our parking lot where I almost got slammed into head-on by a guy driving a pest control vehicle. I couldn't help but think of all the unfortunate puns that would be used if I died from being hit by an exterminator's truck (ie: "Well, I always said she was a pest - it's only fitting!" or "She did have a way of bugging me. I guess I won't have to deal with that anymore"). There was also that incident involving the douche-canoe in the truck who was later discovered to have handcuffs. I'm tempted to call in (or write in!) a work order for the installation of some convex mirrors at this blind spot. Stay tuned for progress on that front...

**On a side note, two other things I hate about this parking lot is that there's not enough spots for all the cars in the building, and the number of available spots is dramatically reduced in heavy ran when about half of the lot floods so you step out of your car into 3 inches of rainwater. It's called a drain. Look into it.

3. The late night calls. More specifically the knock on the door at 2:30am Saturday night (or rather, Sunday morning) by one of the Superintendents and a couple police escorts. Since I was not decent to answer the door (and honestly, what woman is going to answer a knock at the door at 2:30 in the morning?) Ryan went to see who was there. I guess they were looking for some guy who had an altercation with a cabbie earlier in the evening and they guessed the wrong apartment based on the cabbie's story (ie: the guy must have been a floor above, below or apartment to the left or right of us). I'm thinking however that whatever happened must've been something to see though because they wouldn't go knocking on random doors at 2:30 in the morning just over a yelling match. I'm kinda bummed I missed it...

4. The laundry room. Oh how I loathe the laundry room. Let us count the reasons why, shall we? (wait - aren't we already in a list? Hmmm...)
First and foremost the fact that we're having to use the laundry room at all, given the fact that we have a brand new washer/dryer set in my dad's basement - just no hook up in our apartment. So the knowledge that we're (somewhat) needlessly paying about $4 per load of laundry is frustrating.
Even more frustrating is the fact that we're paying into machines that don't always work. Sadly, I seem to be the only person who will leave a note on the machine (to caution other tenants) when we take it out of the washer dry or the dryer wet. My neighbours seem to think that the note is a good idea because they'll take it off one broken unit and put it on another broken unit leaving the next unsuspecting neighbour to lose their money in a broken machine. Awesome.
There's a strong theme of laziness running through this entry (and my building) as we end our tales of the laundry terrors with the discovery of 'the unknown'. This of course means the mysterious articles of laundry that don't belong to us, yet somehow find their way in with our own. At first it was a random sock, followed by another the following week (interestingly enough I believe they were a matching set...just not a set belonging to Ryan or myself). More recently however I was about to start heavily teasing Ryan for finding a plain white t-shirt that either fit a very petite woman or an 8 year old boy...that was until the next article of clothing I pulled from the hamper was a pair of BOXERS that were not belonging to my husband. I figured his case would be stronger than mine. I mean a shirt is one thing, but a strange pair of underwear is an all new level - one that evokes more power when one is trying to tease another about their boyfriend/girlfriend leaving articles of clothing behind. At first I thought someone was just being cheap and instead of paying for their own dryer had started throwing their clothes in random dryers (a la "The Blindside" - only he did that out of necessity, not out of frugality)....but then Ryan pointed out that maybe they just got caught in that little niche under the dryer lint catcher thing. Touche Ryan....

To be continued.....

1 comment:

Miss C. said...

that chute thing makes me gag ! Some people are real piggies