… and this is what I get.
I came home last night and I was welcomed home by Rupert, only I wasn’t. Normally I am, but I couldn’t find him. He didn’t answer when I called.
Then I spotted something weird: the doors to my bathroom closet, which are normally where they should be, were in the dining room, leaning up against some crates filled with books. The crates were in the right spot, but I wasn’t sure how the doors moved.
I thought that there was some kind of strange conspiracy involving the cat and the doors, as Rupert continued not responding to my calls. Normally he runs to me the second I start talking, even if I’m not calling him. Perhaps who ever was in my apartment let him out…
Nope, he was sleeping behind the television. This still didn’t solve the question of the closet doors, so I called the management office. After announcing my name and apartment number, the woman knew exactly what happened. Maintenance received a call about a broken water heater from my apartment number… but it wasn’t for my apartment. It was for an apartment in a different complex with the same number. Maintenance entered my apartment because of incorrect information. They realized this when, after inspecting my water heater, they determined it was working perfectly. So they left.
There are still the unanswered questions: Why didn’t they put the doors back on when they were done? Why didn’t someone leave me a note or call me to tell me what happened so I didn’t have to be wondering what the hell was going on when I got home? What did they do to scare Rupert into almost-permanent hiding?
The woman from the apartment management company apologized profusely. She tried to get maintenance to visit last night to put the doors back on, but apparently they were otherwise occupied with dealing with some sort of emergency, which I wouldn’t dout that they caused in the first place.
That sucks, but I can kinda see where they’re coming from. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a catastrophe dealing with water, but it can be a panicky situation considering how devastating water can be when it’s not contained. Especially when you’re dealing with apartments where the people on the bottom floor are often helpless victims to water problems in the apartment above them, condsiderably more so when there’s no one home upstairs to address the situation.
I can imagine the plumbers or maintenance guys were immediately dispatched once the management company found out about the problem and, once they realized they were in the wrong place, they needed to get quickly to the correct place to try to contain the damage.
My father owned apartments in Chambersburg, so I’ve seen a lot of nightmare situations, including once when I was listing to my police scanner and heard the fire apartment being dispatched to one of his properties. Lets just say I’ve seen enough to convince him to sell the apartments so that I would never inherit them.
My expectations for the rent I pay is that maintenance will not come in uninvited (this is why when you call for maintenance they specifically ask, “Do they have permission to enter your apartment if you are not there?”) and make a mess, and if they do, the management will take care of it. I’m sure maintenance was too busy do clean up what they did, but someone has to take proactive responsibility.
I freaked out there for a second about Rupert, but I’m glad he’s OK. Has he ventured out much since then? When maintenance came and replaced our kitchen, Colin didn’t come out from under the bed for a loooong time.
Yeah, he’s kind of a wuss. When we moved from CT to Princeton, he hid in the basement for at least a week.
Did anyone ever come back to clean up? (and further terroize Rupert)
Yes, they did come back the next morning after I left for work to clean up. Rupert was okay and not in hiding, but it’s possible they broke his Littermaid litter box. It still works, but a piece of the “ramp” part has broken off. Eh, it’s not a big deal.