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Who, me? Don't Blame Him, He Only Runs the PlaceBy Rick Horowitz
Me and Rita, we do OK. Not great, but OK -- better than some, not so good as others. The way I figure it, nobody's sick and we're both working steady and there's always food on the table, so how bad can it be? We're even putting a little money away for a place of our own -- we definitely want to buy. For now, though, we still rent. That's where the problem is -- with our landlord. His name is George, and he's letting the place run down. Me and Rita, we've been renting this apartment for a while now -- six units, we're on the second floor, in the back. When we moved in -- this must've been in '93, '94, somewhere around there -- they'd just remodeled, and the whole thing was looking pretty good. They kept the stairways clean, and they mowed the grass out front, and they kept putting in little improvements here and there. You ever had a problem, you called the landlord and he sent somebody right over to fix it. Sometimes even before you called. That was the first landlord, though, not this one -- his name was Bill Something-or-Other, and as long as had the place, things were going fine. But then a couple of years ago, this other guy buys him out, so now Bill's gone and this George is in charge. He seems nice enough, so me and Rita, we figure it'll be the same as before, only it's not. Nothing sudden -- more like a gradual thing. The buzzer near the front door stops working, we can't tell if anybody's coming to visit. Then the motor on the disposal goes bad. Then the AC -- some days it works, some days, nothing. And the pipes start leaking -- we get these dark spots all over the carpet. Instead of little improvements like we used to have, it feels like the building is little by little getting worse. I'm pretty patient, more than Rita is, she's telling me to call him up and complain, and I'm saying he just took over, give him some time. But after a while, this stuff really starts to pile up and we still haven't seen anybody come by to do anything about it, so I get him on the phone and I tell him everything that's gone wrong, like a checklist. And he says, "Don't forget the second light in the laundry room." Which I totally forgot about, so I add that to my list, and meanwhile I'm waiting for him to say he'll get right on it, the second light in the laundry room and everything else. But he doesn't say it, not even close. What he says is, "It's Bill's fault." So I say right back, "Bill's fault? How's it Bill's fault?" And he goes through this whole song and dance about how the problems with the building started before he ever bought the place, while Bill was still the landlord, so I shouldn't be blaming George for it. "I remember very distinctly," he says, "we did the inspection before we signed the papers, and Dick told everyone how the light in the laundry room was already flickering." Dick's the superintendent -- he runs things when George isn't around. (And sometimes even when he is.) I remember George and Dick doing their inspection, and I even remember Dick saying something about the light in the laundry room, but what's that got to do with anything? "If the light was flickering while Bill was the landlord," George says to me, "then the place was already going bad before I ever got here. So whatever happens after that is Bill's fault, too." "Then you don't have to fix any of it?" "Of course not." "Even if it happened after you took over?" "Bill's fault." "Even if it happens two years from now?" "Bill's fault." Me and Rita, we're packing boxes. Posted 10/15/02.
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Rick Horowitz
