Mr. Roper, Mr. Roper!

I think my landlord hates me.

Admittedly, he may have reasons to, but at the same time, if he had been a good landlord in the first place, none of our run-ins would have happened.

On first glance, everything seemed peachy, we looked at the place and loved it - loved the space, loved the rent, loved the perceived landlord/tenant relationship. The guy who lived here before us seemed to have a male crush on our landlord. And it was definitely a mutual relationship. Great, I might not know anyone in this new city, but at least the landlord would be a cool guy.

Fast forward to the day of moving in. The landlord knew what day we were moving in, he had told us the back stairs might be too thin for us to move bigger furniture in and he, in fact, had even suggested we use the front stairs, as they were much more amicable to furniture moving. So what do we find in the front stairs on the day we moved in? A bunch of crap including boxes of books and a filing cabinet. After moving the crap out of the way as unobtrusively as possible, we commenced moving the bigger furniture into the house. Everything went pretty well until the couch. (In the future, I think we'll be buying all of our couches from people who deliver them. All my old couches will be destroyed with a pick axe in my livingroom and thrown out the window closest to the garbarge pick-up area.) Back to the couch. While bringing it up the stairs and trying to finagle my way around the filing cabinet, I had to do a little limbo maneuver with my feet out under the couch and in front of the filing cabinet. Momentarily, my ass was pressed against the top of the filing cabinet and it gave way a bit. The filing cabinet was now warped enough so that the top drawer didn't close flush with the sides. I tried to fix it, failed, and forgot about it in my moving-in exhaustion/euphoria. The next day, our landlord came up and seemed depressed about something. He made sure everything was OK and then asked if I remembered anything falling on the filing cabinet in the front stairs. I explained to him what had happened. He got all passive agressivey and was like, "Nah, it's OK, I'll have to get a new one, this one's busted." That's the first reason my landlord hates me.

Fast forward a couple uneventful landlord/tenant months until 3 weeks ago. He had asked if I was going to be home on Thursday to show the place to a lead inspector and I said I wouldn't be home Thursday, but I could do it all day Friday. I was actually excited to do him a favor. But then he flipped the switch on me and came home from work to show the lead inspector around on Thursday instead of Friday. Watch out! Upon leaving the apartment, he locked the door as any good landlord would do. Here comes reason number two my landlord hates me. When we moved in, the doorknob only allowed one key to work (I can only presume the original), regardless of how many copies we made. We told the landlord and he told us he'd take care of it. Days went by, weeks went by and nothing ever happened. Eventually, a doorknob set appeared by his door, an obvious reminder to him, which he ignored every time he went in or out of his house. One day, I took home improvement matters into my own hands and installed the doorknob myself. It's possible that I installed it incorrectly, but it's possible the doorknob was from the same cheap piece of crap doorknob set from whence our original doorknob came. Within days, we realized had the same problem as before (no copied keys could unlock the door). So what were we to do with 2 people and one key? Leave the door unlocked of course. Seems like a foolproof plan, but there was just one hitch. With a door permanently unlocked, we couldn't leave our landlord a key. After locking the door behind he and the lead inspector, we came home to find ourselves on the wrong side of a cheap doorknob set doing the only thing it knew how to do, which was stay locked. The landlord didn't think the predicament was too funny and had to knock the doorknob off with a hammer, which I had never thought of as a break-in technique, but it did the trick. Anyway, he was helpful and all, but not without a helping of that same passive agressivey attitude again.

The third reason my landlord hates me happened just last night. The pressure of the hot water in our bathroom sink is terrible. Remember the broken water fountain in school? Try to imagine washing your face with it and you'll get an idea of what our bathroom is like. Anyway, I finally got frustrated enough to do something about it 2 nights ago. But instead of doing the RIGHT thing and calling my landlord angrily, I tried to solve the problem myself. I went underneath the sink, twisted the nozzle all the way in one direction, turned the faucet on to no change, twisted the nozzle all the way back to way it was, turned the faucet on to still no change and went to bed upset and forlorn at the thought of many more months of cold face splashes. The next morning, yesterday, I looked under the sink to try a little harder and noticed that the nozzle seemed to have leaked a bit during the night. For good measure, I gave the nozzle a few extra twists back into it's original position and gave it not a second thought. Unfortunately, my plumbing destruction prowess is nonparalelled and the nozzle continued to leak drip by drip, hour by hour, until my landlord noticed it through HIS bathroom ceiling. Well, we came home last night to an unhappy voicemail and even less hot water pressure. Our landlord had fixed the problem. And made a notch on his belt for yet another reason why he hates me.

My point is that if he had moved the filing cabinet out of the only area suitable for bringing couches upstairs, had installed a good doorknob which accepted copied keys, and had fixed the bathroom sink which he had no doubt used in the course of his ownership of the house, none of the stuff I did to him would have happened. I'm not without blame in this relationship, that's clear, but I'm not above casting stones at him as well.

P.S. Our apartment isn't really as nice as we thought it was when we looked at it the first time. They're isn't enough light in the bathroom or living room, the front room seems to have dryer lint for insulation, the colapsed ceiling is colapsing in multiple locations, and front gate is hard to open. I feel so petty and relieved!