I'm THAT Jorge...

Tara and I have been living (sort of) at the same apartment complex for two years now. The first year had not been entirely thrilling, but decent enough for us to accept a second year when they offered a month without rent in order to have us renew. The second year served as a vivid reminder that it is not always best to follow the savings. Our A/C repeatedly broke more often than it worked, and the property managers were obnoxiously uncaring and slow to send help. Our dishwasher and washing machine both started flooding within 24 hours of each other, and then a few days later, stopped working altogether. It wasn’t much longer after that when my wife and I arrived at home to one of the most horrendous smells. That was how we learned the refrigerator had broken. It was almost as if our apartment was begging us to get out, but we knew we needed to finish out our lease, which ran out at the end of August 2011. We couldn’t afford any other option.

So when Becky Hennesy asked us of we had any interest in sharing a home with Ryan while he was in Dallas for summer for practically no rent, we jumped on the opportunity. Determining it would be cheaper to simply keep paying our monthly rent over the last three months of the lease than it would be to break it, we decided to use the apartment as a really expensive summer storage unit.

But then the apartment property managers left me a voicemail on Friday, asking me to call them back to discuss the notice to vacate, I was a little bit worried that they had discovered we no longer lived there and that was somehow a violation of our lease and they were gonna tell us we had to get our stuff out in 48 hours. I mean, I wasn’t ACTUALLY worried about that, because it didn’t make sense, but I couldn’t think of any other reason why they would have issued us a notice to vacate. But whatever worry I felt, Tara felt doubly worse. She’s like that a lot. Even when she has done no wrong, if she thinks someone else THINKS she has done something wrong, she stresses herself out into a complete and total panic.

I called them back over the weekend and they told me I would need to speak to the manager on Monday. No big surprise to me, even more stress for Tara. Why did we HAVE to speak to the manager? Why couldn’t any of the other employees tell is what the problem was?

Well that’s how we got to today. With both of us working quite busily on Monday, I never had a chance to call the complex. So today was the dreaded day. I called and spoke with the manager for several minutes, hung up and then called my wife at work to let her know the issue.

She’d been stressing about it all day….

Her: “So what do they want?”

Me: “They want us out. We have 48 hours to get all of our stuff out or else a police officer will be posted in front of the complex while they throw all of our stuff out in front for anyone to take”

There was a silence on the other end of the line, which I knew meant she was already starting to panic. When she finally responded, I could hear her voice breaking. I knew it was going to be cruel to draw out the joke any longer.

Her: “Oookay. What was the problem?”

Me: “I’m just messing with you babe. She wanted to know what she could do to keep us there for another year. Apparently, it’s very rare for her to get tenants who pay their rent on time every month for two straight years. starts laughing Babe? Babe? Hello?”

When I called her back, she refused to forgive me and I could tell she was still fighting to hold back tears. I felt a little bit badly after that.

But still, I’m chalking this one up as the property manager’s fault. Seriously? You only use the term “notice to vacate” when you’re kicking a tenant out, not when referencing their own intent to move out. I know the definition is accurate, but it’s still a negative term to someone that has been renting for 7 years. So using that term in our message was what caused my wife to panic, which then in turn made my joke rather cruel instead of charming and witty.

Pretty greedy, property manager.