Hot over the Water

So our dumb apartment manager has gotten us a little steamed over our nonfunctioning water heater. Sorry, saying dumb apartment manager is redundant. It sort of goes with the territory. But they aren't always dumb per se. Sometimes they are just lazy, irresponsible, and uncaring.

Oh and scatterbrained. Like our current landlady. She seems nice enough. They always seem nice enough when dangling a contract in front of you. Then once they have that signature (and a load of money in their claws), they vanish for like forever into a noxious cloud, while only a devilish smirk lingers and faint guffaw tingles in your ear. Liking dealing with Beelzebub. So it goes.

Anyway so our hot water stopped coming on Friday. We talked to our upstairs neighbor about it Saturday. He mentioned he was having problems with his and would come by on Sunday to take a look since we both have water heaters in the basement where Rachel and I reside. He came by and prodded and poked a little. Mind you he isn't a plumber so I wouldn't expect much here but he did say he was going to talk to the landlady on Monday and he would let them know ours wasn't working. Good man. He did as promised.

Monday came. No word from landlady. Tuesday came. Nothing. I confirmed with our neighbor that he did indeed tell the apartment manager about our issue. I called first thing Wednesday morning. The lady said, "oh is it still not working after you turned it up?" Yes of course because our neighbor was the one who turned it "up" on Sunday the day before speaking with you. Blagh! So she says she will call the plumber. Great! Is it OK for a maintenance person to enter our home? Uh yes that's why I called.

Thursday came. Rachel has the fortitude to call landlady again to make sure she called someone since no one came yesterday. Maybe they were too busy saving princesses in magical mushroom kingdoms but would be here soon. Landlady says to check to make sure the pilot light is on first. What. The. Frigging. Beep. Are you kidding? Why would you wait for us to call you back before telling us that when we are expecting a professional plumber to come take a gander at the ol water heat making machine?

I checked with neighbor who said he didn't know if it was on but thought it would give off a peculiar smell if it wasn't. I am familiar with this smell and would have noticed if it were emitting gas. Well whatevs. Just to be sure we waited until we got home to double check that the pilot light was lit. Incidentally our heater of air works and is gas powered.

So we checked and called her that night. We couldn't find the pilot. We couldn't follow the instructions to relight it (which I think weren't written with us in mind). She said she would send somebody over first thing to fix it. We came home the next night at 10pm from a long day in SLC. No hot freaking water.

I called that lady, who is something I can't say in front of the kids, and left a lengthy message. Here are some of the things I remember saying, "I don't know if you treat all your tenants this way but, we don't deserve this kind of shabby treatment. This is completely unprofessional. We haven't had hot water for over a week now. This is unacceptable. Twice you said you would send somebody to fix our water heater. We can't be expected to fix it ourselves. I don't care if it's the weekend. We can't shower. We can't wash our dishes. You need to have somebody fix it right away."

What is it about apartment managers that makes them suck so terribly, terribly hard? Every manager I have had was either totally incompetent or unreliable. Oh and greedy. This job must really attract people who can't even manage doing the simplest easiest labor possible. Or maybe the power over the comfort of others corrupts people easily. It must stem from total inhibitionless power-crazed madness. We are talking about a lack of consequences and repercussions here people. If they are managing our apartments who is managing them? That's not a rhetorical question. The answer is nobody. They answer to no one. Did I mention she's the owner's wife?