Friday, February 14, 2014

Maintenance

For the past year, I have lived in my current apartment and being an ancient complex with lots of issues stuff breaks a lot. (Seriously, a friend of mine's aunt lived here in the seventies.) Last year it rained in my bathrom not once, not twice, not three times, and after that I stopped counting. When they finally got the bathroom rain to stop, I was left with a giant square shaped hole in my bathroom ceiling that took them nine months to fix. That was my first bout with maintenance and at least then the maintenance guy was polite and respectful, so I could put up with it. While inconvenienced I had not yet reached a level of pissed. That was reserved for today.

So, in the past couple of months the really old garbage disposal has broken at least half a dozen times and maintenance has been called to fix it. The last time was a couple weeks ago when we had just tried to do dishes and after dumping some rice in the drain we realized that the garbage disposal wasn't working. Since there was still some rice stuck in the sink when maintenance showed up the next day, he decided that it had to be the rice that broke the garbage disposal that caused it to not even turn on. While annoyed with his condescending tone and pretty certain that it wasn't the rice because he said himself that it was rusted (Maybe a garbage disposal that hasn't been in use since the early seventies would help), I put up with the lecture and shrugged it off because it was one guy out of several generally respectful maintenance guys I've dealt with.

Then the fridge started to leak water or some other liquid all over the place. Again, since everything in the apartment is old I thought little of it and requested maintenance for it a couple days ago. While, I was away on set when they were working on it my roommate was home. They proceeded to lecture her about how the ice cube trays had leaked water and were what was causing it to leak through the fridge and out onto the floor. I have two ice cube trays, one of which is flower shaped and doesn't even hold enough water to fill half a cup. On top of that I rarely actually use them so they usually just sit there staying frozen without new water being added, so there is no way in hell that they could have generated enough water to mop my kitchen floor. While had I been here, I probably would have called bullshit on this explanation, that's not even the part that pissed me off the most.

When I got back from set, my roommate was out, so I attempted to open the fridge. Of all the useless things that maintenance can possibly do, they switched the side that the door opens on. Yes, most people have refrigerators that have the handle on the left side. Mine, however had it on the right and yes it was actually for a legitimate reason being that there's a wall on that side so if you opened it from the other you couldn't open it all the way. For the past seven hours I have been trying to open the refrigerator door and failing because maintenance is a bunch of dumbasses.

I can and will put up with raining bathrooms, perpetually breaking garbage disposals, cupboard and drawer knobs that like to just fall of every once in awhile, and even the occasional day where they have to shut off the water because some ass didn't have his heat turned up and froze the pipes. I will not however put up with condescending lectures about shit that just breaks because it is old and seriously you're not the one that lives in the apartment, so don't switch my refrigerator door unless you are actually replacing it with a new one.

I may look sixteen, but I am an adult that pays my own rent every month on time and has been doing, so for over a year and a half. Save your condescending bullshit for someone who is actually stupid AKA yourself. So, without further ado, fuck you maintenance!