Rant

Disclaimer: This is an extremely whiny rant not likely to be of any real interest to anyone else, but I found it therapeutic and figured -- what the hell? -- I'd publish it anyway. So, don't feel compelled to read it or anything. But if you do, don't say I didn't warn you.


So, I walk down the hall to use the bathroom shortly before midnight (and bed), and discover that someone is now living in the (no-longer) vacant bedroom at the end of the hall.

My live-in landlord (as you'll see, he has repeatedly proven unworthy of the appellation "roommate") says hello to me from the open bedroom as I walk into the bathroom. Not even a "I'd like you to meet [insert guy-down-the-hall's name here]." So there's been no formal introduction.

But what makes this a particularly egregious situation is the fact that, as I alluded to above, I was not told that someone would be occupying the empty bedroom before said person actually began (literally) occupying the bedroom. A fine "how do you do" indeed.

Now, I realize that this is an unequal situation from the start. After all, I don't own the house, I only rent my bedroom, so I have no right to say who or what goes on in the rest of the dwelling (this seems to have been taken to its absurd extreme in some cases - see previous descriptions of the trumpet lessons commenced downstairs while I was still sleeping on my three-day weekend). It's not like it's my place to collaborate on the vetting process, or that I hold veto power. I can recognize that and be reasonable.

Which is obviously more than I can say for my landlord. While it's his decision, you'd think common courtesy would dictate that he at least mention in passing that, oh yeah, Joe Blow is moving in next week/Monday/tonight. You know, since Joe Blow is going to be a housemate of mine and will be sharing in the communal spaces and such. But evidently I'm unreasonable to expect such consideration. Either that, or I have an uncommon sense of courtesy.

Oh, and did I mention that this isn't the first time such a thing has occurred. Nope, this makes three times this month. Three. That was quite a weekend earlier this month when first I arrived home after class on a Friday afternoon and didn't see my landlord's Oldsmobuick (not actually) parked out front, so I logically assumed he was gone and I had the house to myself, only to go inside and discover someone else in the kitchen. Then that Saturday morning, when I was cooking breakfast in my pajamas and a boarder for the week arrived. At least my landlord bothered to introduce me to her, though I couldn't tell you her name since she was hardly in the house except to sleep while she stayed here.

What makes this all the more maddening was that when I was fighting an unusually nasty cold a few weeks ago, I went to the drug store on a Saturday to buy lots of drugs and supplies to treat it, including a vaporizer. The following day I had a pretty nasty cough going, and at one point my landlord knocked on my door to offer me some cough medicine and the pills left over for a prescription he had gotten long ago for a chest cold. It was a nice thought, though I was understandably leery about taking expired medication based solely on his highly unprofessional diagnosis. But as he was giving me a galling talk about how he would be happy to do anything if I needed it, he had the audacity to mention that he had the exact same vaporizer in the basement and that he could've helped me with that "if there was better communication."

Let's see, I was obviously sick and bought a vaporizer because it's one of those things that's good to have on hand regardless. So as he's lecturing me on my deficient communication, all I can think of is how he couldn't muster the communication to let me know that someone was going to be moving into the bedroom adjacent to mine. I didn't ask him for the sort of thing I wouldn't necessarily expect everyone to have. He didn't bother to let me know something that seems fairly important and concerns me in a somewhat direct manner. I was feeling too crummy to do much more than go to the drug store and back for stuff I desperately needed. He was able-bodied and had plenty of time to tell me that someone would be moving in (at least, I presume he knew in advance and that she didn't just show up on the doorstep that morning or else I would change my characterization of him from "inconsiderate" to "idiotic"). Sense of proportion, anyone?

Then there are all the other things he does that irk me. Like being hypocritcal, ignorant, condescending and standoffish in automatically blaming me when something doesn't conform to his peculiar prescription. Such as lecturing me on the proper storage for the kitchen sponge, which should be squeezed as dry as possible and then set atop the little dish of soapy water next to the sink, not left in the sink, on the counter, etc., so as to not wear out the sponge prematurely. Nevermind that I use the sponge once in a blue moon (I prefer the handled scrubber). Or the patent absurdity of not wanting to spend the 60 cents on a new sponge more than every six months. But he routinely doesn't abide by his own stupid rule; after he lectured me, I started counting every time I found he had not returned the sponge to its proper state, but I rapidly lost track.

And it's much more substantive. Like one day back in the winter, after I had just returned home and trudged upstairs from the kitchen, he stopped me to ask if I had just used the bathroom. "No," I said. "I just got back and haven't been home since much earlier in the afternoon." He then proceeded to ask me -- more like lecturing, in his passive-aggressive way -- if I knew how to turn off the hot water on the sink, that the handle had to be turned all the way. I assured him that I did, although I didn't point out the obvious fact that the handle didn't work properly and thus the water would often come back on after it had been shut off all the way. He then complained about how he just paid a $300 water bill. Later I asked my other roommate (who moved out months ago, in part because she couldn't stand him either) whether he had said anything to her about it, and, naturally, he hadn't. She observed that it was ridiculous for him to only interrogate me when she could've been to blame just as well, but that would've contradicted his M.O.

Or to take a more recent example: I was stopped en route to my room last week by him, when he mentioned that he had found the front door unlocked three times in the previous two weeks, and that he only leaves the door unlocked on Tuesday evenings when he gives lessons. I found this a bit much and pointed out that I had found the door unlocked that very day when I returned home, yet I had been the first person to leave the house that morning. So he then decided that he should say something to the other housemate. You know, the one who just moved in -- a little more than two weeks ago. But in any event, he urged me to check to make sure the door was locked when I leave -- "You know you have to push the button on the handle to make sure it's locked?" No, because in the seven-plus months I've lived here I've been too stupid to figure out how to operate the door handle and have thus never been able to gain entry to the house.

Anyway, that's just a long, rambling rant about many of the reasons (it's not even an exhaustive list!) I've become thoroughly exasperated by my landlord and living here. Fortunately, I only have 44 more days to endure this before I skip town for the summer, and come the fall I'll be living somewhere else -- anywhere else.