From: donb@igor.tamri.com (Don Baldwin)
Subject: Landlords from hell
Organization: TOSHIBA America MRI, South San Francisco, CA
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 00:14:16 GMT

About a year and a half ago, Gillian and I decided to move to Mountain View
from Daly City, CA.  Now, Daly City is charming, in its own special way
but we were tired of the constant fog.  Plus, the DC apartment didn't allow
cats and we think they were growing suspicious about our claims that the
shaven cat in the terrarium was just another reptile.

So we moved to Mountain View, a decent place with lotsa nice restaurants
and several book stores.  However, we didn't check out our landlord
regarding maintenance, which was a BIG mistake.

You see, Bob barely does maintenance.  He's a big guy about Banta's
size but without a scintilla of Banta's brainpower and terminally lazy
to boot.  Every single time we've asked him to make repairs, he's either
blown us off or made them 2 weeks after we initially asked.  He is
supposed to be about 26 (though the years have been hard on him), his
daddy owns the apartment complex and he's busily pissing away his future
by letting the place slide downhill.

Well, last thanksgiving our oven broke down, just before I was supposed
to make lasagna to take to a friend's Thanksgiving party (an anti-peeve
in itself).  We ended up cooking the lasagna (which we preassembled) at
the Thanksgiving party.  The week before last, Gillian commented on the fact
that it was still broken, so I taped a note to the landlord's door, lying
by saying that we were having a dinner party last Saturday and needed it
fixed before then.  Several days passed and nothing happened.  So early
last week, I knocked on his door and asked if he'd gotten the note.  He
had, he said and was in fact planning to come by the next day.

Guess what?  The bozo didn't show.  So, last Friday night, I went by
again.  He answered the door in some sort of weird, 70s Hawaiian disco
shirt and acted all apologetic, saying that he'd forgotten and would
be over by 8 or 9 on Saturday morning.

It's now Saturday morning...8 o'clock passes, then 9, 10 and 11.  Gill
and I were bothe getting mightily peeved by this point, since we had
planned to finish our Christmas shopping that day.  I ring the doorbell.
Gillian knocks on the door, first moderately and then with increasing
vigor.  I started walking away, thought "No way" and began to pound on
the door in a manner I would normally reserve for a carjacker who fumbled
and dropped his switchblade on my foot.  There was a good deal of anger
and cold Celtic rage in the way I hit that door and I made some of his
neighbors a tad nervous.  Finally, Bob answered the door and muttered,
in a lame imitation of indignation, "Geeze!  You scared my girlfriend
half to death!".  However, at that point Gillian and I verbally ripped
his throat out.  Within another half hour, the comfortably intimidated
dullard had fixed our overn and beat a hasty retreat.

So, anyone need a couple roommates? :)

      don

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I'm a Conservative's worst nightmare:  a Liberal who likes guns and
dreams of seeing Reagan and Bush sharing a cell in Leavenworth!
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Don Baldwin  -  Software Engineer  - e-mail to:  donb@tamri.com