Apartment life is fine until you live in one
October 16, 1991
“Disco, disco duck.” Do you know how bad your Friday night can be when that is blasting from your neighbor’s apartment? Having an apartment is not as wonderful as people think.
It’s bad enough living in the dorms, but then you move into an apartment and you feel nothing has changed, and the apartment becomes a close approximation of hell.
People really should think about how close they are to others. Most of the time, a six-inch wall is the only thing that separates you from your neighbors.
That’s a scary thought. Just think about what your neighbors could be doing next door. It’s likely Jeffrey Dahmer’s neighbors wondered. They probably thought he was the rudest neighbor, sawing at all hours of the night.
It’s pretty sad when your neighbors try to charge you $3 to get in the hallway for their party. You end up screaming “Excuse me, I —-ing live here!”
Then there’s the inevitable fight that always happens at a party. Of course, you live next to someone who thinks the fight is cool and they spread the blood all over the wall for people to see.
Sometimes the neighbors aren’t the biggest problem. Landlords can be as close to Satan as you can get without entering the earth’s core.
You pay $10 to park in the building’s designated lot and then there are 8,000 other cars there on weekends with no stickers. You call the towing company and they tell you “we’re not authorized to tow anyone.” Pardon moi for thinking a towing company would actually tow.
What to do? Call your landlord, who probably unplugs his phone on the weekends to miss all the calls he’s bound to get? If you’re going to be a landlord, take the heat.
When you look at an apartment, it might seem like a condo overlooking the garden of Eden—NOT. When you live there, you find yourself swamped in “technical difficulties” that your landlord promises to fix but never gets around to it.
But if you complain often enough, the landlord might eventually respond. Then, one of many different types of repair people might show up at your door.
There’s Stoveboy. He shows up to fix the hell burner that you think is going to explode one day. When he finally gets there, he tells you he can’t fix it until the end of the year.
Cableboy. He charges you $20 to hook up your cable when you could have done it yourself with a twist tie.
Exterminatorboy. “Excuse me ma’am, don’t be alarmed. There are no bugs here, we’re just spraying in case.” In case of what? In case the previous tenants call to warn you that one of their roommates is on an I-SEARCH poster and was last seen just before Exterminatorboy made it there?
Heaterboy. He checks the furnace that your roommate swears makes noises and then writes it off as the work of poltergeists. Then you find out there was a stupid bird stuck in the heating duct.
Maybe if all the people on campus are a little nicer and more considerate of their neighbors, they could rally together, kill the landlords and both apartment problems would be solved.
The logical solution to all these problems? Write a column that you hope your neighbors and landlord will read.