Tales from the
Trenches.

I got a call from a young mom living in one of our apartments. She said, "The CO detector keeps going off."

I asked her if she had called the fire department or the power company to have them check it out. She said, "No. It keeps quitting after a minute or two."

I was in the neighborhood, so I told her I would be right over.

I found her on the porch with her two young children, and she was holding the CO detector. I asked why she had it outside.

She replied, "The instructions say, 'if alarm sounds, move outdoors."

I got a call from the fire department. They had just put out a kitchen fire in one of our apartment units.

The tenant had started some water boiling on the stove and promptly went out to "steal" some hotdogs. He was arrested and never made it back to the apartment.

The next day, a Saturday, he called from jail and asked me to tell the police that he should be sent to the psych ward at the local hospital because he didn't like how he was being treated in the jail.

I told him I was sorry, I believed he should get some help, but I didn't have that much influence.

"I think I have a ghost in my house," said the woman as she paid her monthly rent.

I told her to set out some Decon, and the ghosts will go away.

"Does that really work?" she asked.

"It's always worked in my experience." I said.

I never heard any more about it.

In screening a tenant, an arrest for prostitution came up in the background. Wanting to be certain that it was all in the distant past, I asked her about it.

She said rather nonchalantly, "Oh yeah, all the girls was doin' it, so I thought I'd give it a try. I didn't care for it much though."

I had no reply.

I got a call from a tenant who had just moved in. She complained that her electric heaters weren't working.

I sent a handy man to check it out. He reached out and turned the control knob on the heater.

"What are you doing?" the tenant asked.

"I'm turning up the heat." he said.

With wide eyes, the tenant replied, "Oh, I never touch that."

The rent check bounced from the tenant's newly established checking account. So I called the tenant to let them know their check was bad, and that they needed to bring in cash to cover it.

The tenant said, "That's impossible. I still have checks in my checkbook."