Apartment Living
October 14, 2010 by cloften
Filed under General Insanity, Silliness and Rants
I am not a snob. I am not too cool, rich, awesome, etc. to live in an apartment. By that, I mean that I don’t want you to think that I am.
It has been quite an experience over the last couple of months. We’ve had a lot of fun/difficulty with the maintenance department especially. Department might be strong of a word, 3-Stoogian Group perhaps. When we first moved in, we told them that the fan in our room was broken. It makes a whack-whack-whack sound. Someone came by and said, “That’s not good. That would make it hard to sleep.” “Yes, thank you.” “We need to replace that.” “Thanks, again.”
2 1/2 months and many promises later, I come home with the girls after school and we hear someone in the apartment (scared us just a little bit). I walk around and there is a maintenance guy replacing the fan…in the girls’ room. That fan was not broken, had no problems, but it was now being replaced.
I try to tell him that it was the wrong fan, but it is clear that he doesn’t speak English. That’s cool though. While I don’t know enough Spanish to say, “We need you to fix the fan in the other room,” I am convinced that I will be to explain to him well enough in Spanish the situation when he is done.
As he is leaving, I try to get his attention, this time in Spanish. It doesn’t work; he is out the door. I ask him to wait in English and in Spanish, no good. I finally just get his attention and bring him to our room and turn on the fan. It starts making the noise, which I imitate in the international language of onomatopoeia. He gets the message, gets his stuff and tightens up the fan. It no longer makes that noise. Victory. It was hard work, but we got there. (Seriously though, I really do wonder what language that dude spoke)
Oh, btw, did I mention that we discovered last night, when going to bed, that the new fan (You know the one that replaced the fan that worked fine), doesn’t work?
Moral of the Story: Someone please by our house.
Editorial Disclaimer: We are not mad at anyone. We believe that the people that run the apartment complex and the maintenance crew are good-hearted people doing their best. While the facts of this story are not exaggerated, the snarky tone is added for comedic effect and do not reflect the heart of the author or his family.
