After our wonderful wild night with the fire alarms, Mom endured another TIA.
Her first mini-stroke was five Septembers ago, after she fell in our wet stairwell and pulled something in her neck/head. I have the unpaid ER bill to prove it.
Evil Landlady 1 tossed her blonde hair and laughed at her.
This place has officially killed my mother.
And yet, when I told her I called six different condos this morning, she said she didn’t like any of them.
Because this is SO much better, apparently.
Came home close to midnight last night to find the fire alarms going off in my unit. I had one traumatized kitty so who only knows how long they’d been going off.
I left a message on our “Emergency” line at this dump. And knowing how I’ve had repairs outstanding for five years, I did what I always do. I called the fire department.
I have them on speed-dial.
A cop arrived and then two firemen. Evil Landlady 5 came up with the firemen. She saw me and she said. “YOU!” And proceeded to tell me, “We get charged every time they are called. YOU WILL BE PAYING FOR THIS OUT OF POCKET.”
I said very calmly my alarms are going off and how about we go figure out why.
She said, “It’s going to be FIFTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS!”
I ignored her. Everyone came in, she screamed a bit more, and the fire folks took down my info. They were super-nice and explained to me that they used to be able to help. But now we’ve gone and installed such a wacky system that the fire department has not only been forbidden from fixing it, but they don’t even know how anymore.
Meanwhile the cunt was screaming, “YOU DIDN’T FOLLOW THE RULES!”
I didn’t ask what rules. I love watching her dissolve into a puddle of psychotic goo.
She said I needed to call the emergency line and NOT the FD. Mom said I did. She said no I didn’t because it would have rung her cell phone. And it didn’t ring.
So this is my fault?
Apparently someone else called the fire department out earlier (the nice fire folks told me this). The “good” news was that the earlier call was resolved by tapping into the main unit downstairs whereas my call basically brought them out for nothing.
Let’s pause for a moment. If fire alarms are going off in your house, do you call the most useless maintenance person in all the lands? OR DO YOU CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT?
I’ll let you contemplate that for a moment.
And for the record, I didn’t call 911. I called and said, hey, alarms are going off. Anything going on over here that I need to know about? And what should I do?
In other words, they said hey you may be in danger over there. We should come out. But evacuate if your unit explodes into flames, eh?
So the landlady screamed at me some more that now we have to call the alarm company. And that’s what should have been done in the first place. And I’m like, “And I’m supposed to know this how?”
So everyone leaves. I take my cart downstairs because she has already threatened to fine us fifty bucks if she ever sees a cart outside any of our doors.
Well I get downstairs and there are no lights on outside. At all. And I go sailing and drop my phone and bend my wrist backward. Then I see a sign to not leave carts outside the back door — to go push them to where they belong about 300 yards away — because it’s rude to do to our fellow neighbors because the lights are out.
Here’s an idea. FIX THE FUCKING LIGHTS BITCH. And the goddamned potholes in every inch of this goddamned lot.
So I came back to the front door after returning my stupid cart to the right place and I see a guy, lost. He said, “Do you know the door code?”
I asked who he was. He showed me ID and said, “I’m here for (Goddess). She called the emergency maintenance line.”
So, proof that I called!
I said I’m Goddess and come on up. He’s from one of our more-upscale sister buildings and he was asked to cover this call.
He looked at my alarms (now blaring for 1.5 hours) and said, well OF COURSE you should have called the fire department. MY GOD.
So I said apparently he’s supposed to fix the fire system. He said well that’s nice. He’s never seen it before. And he doesn’t have a key to it anyway.
He examined my apartment to make sure there were no fires. Meanwhile I wandered downstairs to take a photo of the stupid note telling us not to be rude and to return our carts. And who did I see but a resident examining the fire boxes downstairs.
“Hi, I’m Harold. I’m in 202. Do you know how this thing works?” he asked.
“Let me guess. Are your alarms going off?” I asked.
He said, “Yeah! My neighbor just yelled at me to get it taken care of. She can’t sleep. So I called the fire department.”
I just about pissed myself, laughing.
I said, oh boy, you should have called emergency maintenance. He said, “We have emergency maintenance? I just moved in. How am I supposed to know that? How do you find them?”
I said, come on upstairs and meet him.
Now that we knew the whole column of “02” units were affected, the maintenance guy (again, not the regular lazy asshole who steals packages and fixes cars and fucks the maid all day) cut the wires to all our units.
The good news: silence. The bad news: good luck if there’s a fire because the wires are cut.
In the midst of all this, Evil Landlady 5 calls the maintenance guy and said her porch light is out and he should come fix it. He’s like, um, yeah, no. Good luck with that.
So she won’t even call the regular asshole to fix her shit. But she can interrupt urgent fire-related matters to get a goddamned light bulb. PERHAPS we can get some light bulbs from the dark and treacherous parking lot?
And she gets offended when I call this place a dump!