In my previous blog, I wrote that there was a special release imminent titled “What do I do when my toilet is erupting main line sewage into my kitchen and my property manager is apathetic?” and that it would be followed by “Help, the fourth floor is flooded and the building next-door is on fire!” Since then, I’ve reconsidered calling this a “special release.” In the short time we’ve been here, we’ve evacuated our unit enough times to piece together an emergency plan without deliberately sitting down and making an emergency plan. The pieces came together organically. I’m all for learning from life’s lessons, but if there’s anything I would prefer to be created artificially, an emergency plan is one I’d put near the top of my list.
After writing this post, I realized that there’s too much here to simply call it a special release, and instead it will be what all the cool content creators are doing nowadays: A Limited Series.
Toilet Talk
A toilet is like San Francisco’s Lombard St. They’re both twisty one-ways that flow with gravity, and it’s a public hazard when something is forcing its way up. Despite more than a quarter-century of experience in toilet usage, I’m not going to pretend I’m a toilet expert. However, I know that the forces responsible for getting rid of shit are supposed to punch exclusively one-way tickets. No return addresses here. It’s a hole in the floor, not a trampoline.
As I’m sure you can imagine, when the toilet begins to break it’s code, we have issues.
Evel Knievel Would be Proud
Now, if the toilet was just given the wrong address and the package we tried to send was returned to us, there wouldn’t be much here to talk about. These things happen. However, the toilet was providing us with a rate of return that would make Wall Street traders jump for joy. It made us jump too – for the high ground, and for our phones.
You see the problem here, right? Right? We’re not crazy? Right? There’s a major problem. This requires immediate resolution. Our management company did not have the same urgency:
“I see this 3-4 times every day.”
No follow up, no plans to resolve it. No compensation. We weren’t expecting widespread reform, but they responded like we were supposed to have sympathy for them. If you’re seeing this 3-4 times per day, you need to change something in your system. Ultimately, we didn’t care how often they saw it. Actually we did, but the rate of this issues wasn’t particularly high on our current list of concerns. I’m going to use a direct quote from Billy Beane/Brad Pitt to describe our priorities:
“There’s the volcano toilet, there’s the professionally illiterate management company, then there’s 50 feet of crap (AKA our bathroom). Then there’s the rate at which our management company sees issues like this.”
-I don’t know who to credit this to. Let’s just credit Moneyball
Regardless, were optimistic that their extensive experience in these kinds of situations would lead to a swift resolution. Sometimes it’s best to be a cynic.
Nothing describes ineptness quite like apathy toward sewage in the kitchen of someone paying you. For a minute, their attitude toward the situation made me question whether I was right to be irate. I was and am right, of course. (Even if I’m not, it’s my blog and therefore, my story.)
Premier Booty Care
It took them a week to clear the main line. Someone had been flushing mass amounts of baby wipes.
This brings up are three situations that need to be discussed, and I can’t tell which is the most irritating. First, someone is flushing baby wipes. They need to tell the butler which raised them that in fact, they are not prepared for the outside world. Second, there are no babies in this complex. Or, if there are, I haven’t met them yet. Unacceptable. Third, we were never informed that our toilet was the outlet for main line backup. There’s no release valve, no redirect. Somewhere during the planning process, the contractors must have just decided: “Yeah if everything gets blocked, screw that unit in particular.”
A Stink Competition
It took me 17 hours to convince them they needed to send cleaners to our apartment. They relented because apparently, I had caused a bigger stink than the rest of the tenant’s waste had. I was the problem they had to deal with, and the only way to alleviate themselves of me was by cleaning my apartment. At 11 PM on a Thursday night, a cleaning crew and Scrooge McBuilding-Manager showed up at our door. Score one for Stinky.
It was a surreal experience staying up for cleaners. I waited the whole time staring at blank white walls. It’s written into our lease that we aren’t allowed to hang anything. Yeah, we read the lease. All of it. It’s also written that they are “obligated to provide a safe, secure environment.” The irony of this whole scenario isn’t lost on me. The management company of a brand new building was content in letting us sleep with our neighbor’s leftovers seeping into the baseboards and carpets, but refused to let us hang pictures on the walls.
All this said, we really like the building and the people here, so we probably won’t move.
Up Next
I know I haven’t gotten to the flooding and the fires here yet, and I promise I will. Before that, however, we have another issue of Unsolicited Commentary from a Future Physician’s Husband. In it: Calculus and other treats.