Thursday, October 26, 2006

Peee-you

[Verbatim email just sent to JW.]

Heyhey,

Semi-bad news: I can't leave here till 6:30. Life is crazy at the moment--not so much work-wise, but personally. I mentioned 'family stuff,' but another pressing concern has been the fact that we have a carcass (rat?) festering somewhere behind our wall. It started smelling up a (violent) storm two days ago, and it's only getting worse. I've put in repeated calls (7!) to management, and all talk on their end appears to be empty. They keep saying an exterminator will be in touch w/ us, but we have yet to hear a word. I told them it absolutely NEEDS to be taken care of TODAY, as we're experiencing some serious nausea. Their response: You'll have to wait your turn in the (exterminator's) queue.

So the last time I called them, I got their answering service--turns out they'd left for the day! I was stuttering and hiccuping into the phone, physically shaking, and said that if we didn't hear anything from either the exterminator or from management by 3:00, I would be booking a hotel rez and taking it out of our upcoming rent check. Well, sure enough, no call, so in a mad frenzy, I tracked down, amazingly, a $120/night condo rental near Lincoln Center (15-minute walk to work) and went for it. In the meantime, I've drawn up a detailed spreadsheet accounting for each and every pleading call I've put in, including how they responded, and this I will mail, along w/ hotel receipt, a formal memo, and our (adjusted) rent check, come November 1.

Gah! So that's the long version of why I can't leave here till 6:30. Got to get some "work" work done now. :)

But I'll see you & yours there at 7?

xo,
k

Nice, huh? Ah, well at least our timely guest had a robust cold when he showed up on our doorstep two days ago. Smell? What smell? But unfortunately, all signs point to imminent recovery, which is why tonight's "vacation" bodes well for him, too.

Here's another thing: I never did blog about it, because, well, you'll understand why when I tell--er, insinuate. In August 2005, as we were moving out of the South Williamsburg sublet en route to Bed-Stuy, a certain smell was wafting about the building. It was not a welcome smell, like freshly baked sugar cookies, but a smell that made leaving for a two-week, slapdash sublet a tad more bearable. Anything to get away from it, basically. Well, a few days later Pea got an email from our talented subletter, an email letting him know that one of the tenants who'd shared a floor w/ her/us--incidentally, someone she'd befriended over the course of her time there, and whom we were familiar w/ as the kind & eccentric resident "IT guy" who'd happily shared his wifi connection w/ us--was no longer in the land of the living.

I mentioned this little tale to our current management, for reasons clear (smell not so different), and while it seemed to light a fire under their sorely unprofessional ass--we'll find the contact info for your downstairs neighbor and try and get a hold of them, just to make sure everything's okay--the fact remains that we still haven't heard a damn thing. Oh, Pea went down and knocked on their door the other day, but no response. Of course, it was the middle of the (week)day, and there's that thing called "work"... Anyway, I know I'm paranoid.

And tired of smelling dead rat!

Posted by princess kanomanom @ 3:53 PM