Pardon my French, but....

..."Does my ass look like the damn K-Mart?"

That is actually what I said after hanging up the phone this afternoon. Honestly...some of our residents at work are insane with their demands. They seem to mistake the Leasing Office at The Crazy Farm with the Concierge Desk at the Ritz Carlton New York.

For instance, one of our particularly high maintenance residents called in one weekend with an "emergency" maintenance request and asked me to call in the on-call maintenance tech (who lives a half hour away) to fix the problem. What was so urgent that it couldn't wait until Monday? His icemaker didn't work and he said "This is very important. We use a lot of ice." hahaha...apparently the 3/4 mile drive to the gas station to buy a bag of ice for the weekend was out of the question.

In another instance a couple weeks ago I had this phone conversation with a resident:

Me: Thank you for calling The Crazy Farm. this is Mark. How can I help you?
Caller: Hi, I'm a resident here and I was just wondering...when does daylight savings time change?
Me: ........... What?
Caller: Daylight savings time. Does that change this weekend?
Me: No.
Caller: Oh, I thought that was in October sometime. When is that?
Me: Ummmm....I don't know. They moved it back this year........Hang on, lemme ask.
Me: (randomly shouting out to the entire office) When is the time change?
Random person yelling back: (Mama Bear I think) Halloween weekend.
Me: (on the phone) Halloween weekend.
Caller: Oh, okay. I thought it was sooner. Thanks!
Me: (after hanging up) Do these people not have Google?

Sometimes I don't understand what goes through people's heads when calling us. As though we just sit there waiting to do everything for them. And that leads me to the reason for today's outburst. Here's how the call went:

Me: Thank you for calling The Crazy Farm. This is Mark. How can I help you?
Caller: Hi. I'm a resident there and I was wondering if you had any AA batteries up in the office I could come get from you.
Me:..................
Me: Forrrrrrrrrrrrr?? (thinking perhaps his smoke detector or other necessary item might need batteries for which we'd be responsible...despite the fact that I think all of our smoke detectors are hard-wired)
Caller: Oh, I just have a remote for a device that needs batteries and didn't know if you might have some I could get.
Me:.......... Uh, no. We don't have any.
Caller: Oh, okay. Thank you.
Me: ( Hanging up the phone and announcing to the office staff around me) Does my ass look like the damn K-Mart?

Now, keep in mind when I tell you this...it's not exactly like our community is out in the boondocks miles away from modern conveniences for our residents. No, quite the contrary. In about 3.4 miles this resident could have driven his behind to Target, Wal-Mart, Publix, Lowe's, or Kroger. And In fewer than 2 miles he had his choice of a CVS, Walgreens, and any of 3 gas stations, among other stores. But no...he calls the leasing office to see if we have any for him. Seriously???!!! You can tell it was a full moon!

I work at the Crazy Farm!

I don't think I've mentioned it on the blog yet, but about 3-4 months ago I got a new job in property management. I do on-site leasing for one of those big apartment communities that you probably lived at in college or just afterward. I love my job- I really do -but I definitely refer to it as the Crazy Farm (as it shall henceforth be called on this blog). You see...we have some crazy residents on a crazy property. And all of us on staff are a little bit off too, haha. Any job in property management is a least a little bit crazy...it's always fast paced, every day is different, you never know what you're gonna encounter, and you always have some special people who live on your property. But our community, is a whole unique breed. We're not really sure why, but it is leaps and bounds above all others in craziness. Several members of our staff who have worked at other properties before have all commented on separate occasions "I thought we were [crazy/hectic/busy/insert adjective here] at 'X' property, but we had NOTHING on this place!"

My joke since almost week one has been that we need a reality show around that place! Everyone agrees. I've mentioned before...I need to make a call to Bravo because America would be glued to their TV sets watching us run in circles around that place! The hard part would be editing it all down to only one hour per week!

The cast of characters:

• A former coworker (who would have just left the show, but she still appears from time to time): the blonde hair, the fake boobs, the fake tan...the girl had enough personal drama to earn her own spin off when she left. Oh, and she was a single mom too. Well call her Barbie. I've already briefly introduced you to her here.
• Coworker 1: the black lesbian single mom. She's off the chain for real! She started out really shy and ditzy...saying things like "what's legal paper?" and "I don't know how to make coffee." and, my personal favorite "I don't know how to use a paper cutter." She's come out of her shell quite a bit and just acts crazy. Still our source of entertainment, we call her a blonde stuck in a black girl's body. We'll call her Lipstick (b/c she's a lipstick lesbian).
• Assitant Manager: the 50 year old woman who's also the office veteran having been there for over 3 years now. She spent almost 10 years working at a biker bar before and is still a bit rough around the edges. She tends to over react to most everything and also can jump into hyper-mom mode, trying to take care of everything. But at the same time, we NEVER EVER EVER know what's gonna come out of her mouth. She's missing that certain filter you're supposed to have between what runs through your mind and what comes out of your mouth (probably because of all the drugs she has done/does...seriously). Usually it's something dirty and inappropriate, but always entertaining. She'll be Mama Bear.
• Manager: the overly energetic ringleader of us all who is incredibly random and full of quirks. She's half white and half Thai and runs around the office laughing and screaming about whatever. She has no boundaries whatsoever with us and keeps a healthy dose of crazy around the place. I don't really have a nickname for her, so I'll just call her HNIC for now. If you don't know what that means, ask somebody...preferably somebody black (but make sure it's someone you know well, haha).
• Head Maintenance Guy: the crazy Puerto Rican man that runs around the property supposedly keeping everything running smoothly. In true Puerto Rican fashion, anything you ask him to do, you're going to get an argument back from him. But...he usually goes ahead and does what you want anyway, after the argument. The residents love him for some reason, but he just tells them exactly like it is. He's been on the property for like 8 years and they all know him. His name will be Papa Bear (no relation to Mama Bear...that's just what people call him in the office).
• The New Coworker: Barbie's replacement. This is only her second week working with us, but she seems to fit in well with our crowd. Although she'd been working at another property before us, she's really young (19 I think). She's still in school too, despite working full time with us. Since she's so new, I don't have a ton of stories about her yet (although she did manage to drive into our entrance gate this afternoon because she didn't even realize we had one...right in front of Mama Bear and our courtesy officer), but I'm sure some will come. For now, I'll call her The Young One (subject to change).

By the way, I've been told my character would be that of the slick salesman who comes in all suited up in the shades and all and can sell to anyone and close a deal regardless, haha. Kinda true...which is helpful since part of my pay is from commissions, lol. There's also a couple other maintenance and corporate people who are around. They're typically more minor characters, but I'll introduce them as stories arise.

Add to this mix all of our crazy residents...many may earn nicknames as I share stories. We seriously have some that come into the office or call us at least 3 or 4 times a week for something and they're all crazy! haha Some are a good kind of crazy that just entertain us, others are a high maintenance kind of crazy that annoy us, and others are just a rude and demanding kind of crazy that actually piss us off.

So yeah...since I'm sure I'll be blogging plenty about this place, I figured I needed to set the stage and introduce the characters to you. Stay tuned for outrageous insanity, haha!

Fall has....fallen?

Ahh, it's finally fall around SC. The weather has a certain crispness to it (which is an actual tangible crispness...unlike the "fall" we had in Florida, where anyone who's not lived there for at least 10 years and hardly knows any better would even realize the season changed). Temperatures are consistently in the 70's during the day, 50's at night (great sleeping weather, btw), the skies are consistently bright blue with just a few wispy white clouds. Tailgating and football entertains all Saturday every week (and give us something to talk about during the rest of the week). Actually...this is the South...football does more than entertain once a week, football is the basis of our entire schedules. Work functions, social outings, even weddings are planned around the football schedule. (Seriously...try to get married on game day and people will very truthfully be mad at you and will likely not come...great way to keep the reception budget limited though, haha).

Oh...and another real sign that fall is in the air in SC...the State Fair has come to town! Okay okay...anyone who really knows me just scratched their head in confusion. I do not, in fact, like the fair. I've really only attended once or twice before. All of my friends will confirm that I don't in any way care for large gatherings of loud dirty rednecks or country/ghetto people. And everyone knows that a fair is the breeding ground of such people (seriously...they go there to find dates...ugh). No one likes to people watch more than me, but even I have my limits. Of course, on top of the people there...there's really little else to draw me to the fair. The food is grossly unhealthy (I believe I've blogged about the various fried products available...bread, pickles, ice cream, oreos, Pepsi...yes, even fried Pepsi), the country music acts usually are people I've never even heard of or simply don't care about, the rides...well, if portable roller coasters were really a viable option, Disney World is grossly overspending. Be that as it may, the coming of the Fair certainly does mark the onset of fall better than most other ways.

These are the days I live in SC. The weather, the fun, the relaxing! Yay fall!!