Tuesday, August 03, 2010

A BAT!

We have an especially needy tenant at work. She calls nearly every day for any thing she can think of, whether it is real or imaginary. She is the type who can't figure out how to screw in her own light bulbs.

On Saturday, she started calling the emergency maintenance line at 6:48 a.m. She needed someone to come over immediately to take care of her emergency. Turns out there was a bat in her house.

Granted, it's no fun to have a bat in your house, but I don't think it qualifies as an emergency for your landlord rush over either.

After dealing with this frantic tenant on the phone on and off all weekend, we did send a maintenance person over to try to locate the bat on Monday morning. Of course, it isn't easy to locate a bat during the day. You can't just call for it to come out and expect it to appear, you know? After looking for it without any luck, the maintenance man was ready to go on to his next appointment. But NO, this lady would not let him leave until he found the bat.

At this point, the other maintenance man calls to check on the progress. After hearing that Ms. Crazy won't let our guy leave until the bat is found, he heads over to "help".

Ms. Crazy insists the bat is behind the fridge where they have already looked to no avail. So they go ahead and pull the fridge out again to look. Guy 1 takes out his wallet and tosses it on the floor without her noticing. Guy 2 dives on the floor with a bag and captures the wallet. "I got it!" he announces. They put the fridge back and quickly exit with the "bat" in the bag, and Ms. Crazy is happy.

Sometimes, you just gotta do what you gotta do...LOL.

4 comments:

Liz Nyenhuis said...

Except that having a bat in the apartment can be dangerous. We've had numerous bats in our house and I've talked to our vet and my dr. about it. They can bite you in your sleep and you don't even know it...and if it has rabies, you can get it too.

Word for anyone who has to deal with bats in their house: catch them alive and take them to animal control so they can be checked for rabies so you don't get it.

Liz Nyenhuis said...

But don't get me wrong...I understand dealing with crazy tenants because we've had our fair share of them, but a bat is not something I'd make a tenant wait an entire weekend over.

Anonymous said...

A bat isn't something that is automatically a landlords responsibility. Sure, if there is an ongoing problem where they are getting in, then a landlord would need to seal that up. But to think that a landlord is supposed to come find the bat and get it out of there is right up there with tenants that don't think they are up for the task of changing their own light bulbs.

Smitty said...

Daresay that wallet trick is a bit of emotional intelligence.. as long as the real bat is gone too!