Short answer: When you're dealing with presumptive maintenance persons who are too stupid to ask the important questions or investigate things up close!
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| What maintenance calls "AN OBVIOUS NON-OUTDOOR CHAIR!" |
See that chair on the left? Most people would look at it and think, "Hey, that's a patio chair!", and they'd think that because they have an IQ over 65.[1] People who don't bother to look closely at the chair probably would still think it's an outdoor chair, to be honest, since it is, in fact, OUTDOORS.
Before I explain who could possibly get this wrong, here is some back story:
So I'm just chillin' out, maxin', relaxin', actin' all cool doing some work at my computer desk on my day off when some old guy who was up to... I don't know what he was up to, but he was taking pictures of decks and patios in my neighborhood... Well, okay, he was specifically taking pictures of my deck. This seemed weird to me, so I stood up and made my way to the deck to ask him what he was doing. He saw me stand up, I guess, and turned around and walked back to his truck - a maintenance truck belonging the management company - and drove away. Perplexed, I figured I oughta go find out what was going on! Knowing full-well that reaching somebody on the phone in the maintenance office was harder than fitting a camel through the eye of a needle (or getting someone from PETA to shut up for five seconds), I chose to simply arrive at said office in person. And this is where my troubles began, friends...
So, there was a chair - the specific chair shown above and to the left in a picture. The chair I speak of is obviously an outdoor chair, and I think we can all agree on that. However, the maintenance people at my apartment complex, including the PROPERTY MANAGER, do not agree with that. Oh, they could find out for themselves, but instead they just take shitty photos with 6 megapixel point and shoot cameras from 30 feet away and say things like "LOOK, WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WAY YOUR DECK LOOKS? THERE IS A COOLER ON THERE! YOU CAN ONLY HAVE OUTDOOR ITEMS ON THE DECK! And what is this? Some sort of obvious non-outdoor chair! It looks like a dining room chair - why would you even have that out there?"
Of course, being that the man in question IS the property manager, he could've easily entered my apartment, went onto the deck and looked at it with his own two eyes (well, through his coke-bottle thick glasses, anyway) and clearly saw that it was PATIO FURNITURE (no shit: I bought it and the tag on the set said "PATIO FURNITURE $50"). Apparently, just assuming somebody is in violation of their lease is good enough for these idiots.
Oh, and the cooler - ha! The COOLER! It's not considered an outdoor item to them and it needs to be placed in the storage area of the building. I explained to them that I've spent a year trying to get a key to the storage area because mine doesn't work. They nicely offered to get me a new key, so they cut a key and gave it to me - but only after rudely questioning me as to whether or not I'm even a lease holder or if I'm illegally subletting because OMG if I don't have a functional key, I must be doing something wrong!
So, feeling triumphant, having explained to these people that the furniture is clearly outdoor furniture, and finally getting a working key for the storage area, I left! When I got home, I pulled out that key, shoved it into the lock and... Nothing happened. It works as good as my old key, which is to say "Not at all".
Fail!
1. To be fair, even someone with an IQ of 65 would get it.
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