For some time, probably about two weeks at least, one of the lights outside my apartment was out. You see my front door leads directly outside into a little alcove. Across from me is my next door neighbor, an older woman, and a set of steps leading upstairs. You can see this more clearly in my pictures from the ice storm we had two weeks ago. Well there is a light on the inside, facing my door and at some point the bulb burnt out. While each of our doors have a small lamp next to them it isn’t the same.
My first reaction was to call the landlord. Then procrastination set in. While he fixes what needs to be fixed, sometimes it takes a few tries before he will come out. For example when I first moved in, the air conditioner did not work properly. It wasn’t blowing cold enough air and my dad told me it needed to be recharged with coolant. However my landlord’s maintenance guy insisted we wait a day or two to see if it started working again. That didn’t quite happen and the unit did indeed need more coolant. Of course the air conditioner is located on the roof so being that this happened around Memorial Day the delay is understandable.
A similar thing happened with the light. My assumption was that a call to the landlord would not produce results. Indeed my next door neighbor called him and nothing happened. In fact about a week went by before she approached me one day as I was coming home for lunch. At her request I called our landlord myself. The thing was fixed by the time I got home. Apparently it is so high they needed a bucket truck to get to it.
By itself such a story would not be terribly blog worthy. But one thing my next door neighbor said struck me. She said that it might help if a man called. It certainly seemed to. Now I am not accusing anybody of anything. It might have been that getting a second complaint was enough to warrant a trip over here. However the difference in response time is a bit noteworthy.
Unfortunately my experience with such things is limited. In Albany, my landlord was very good about coming over to fix things. And of course, being a man I only have a single perspective on which to draw. But it certainly seems that my landlord was willing to listen to me more than my neighbor. It could have been that I phrased the complaint differently or used a different tone. Either way it goes to show you that one should never assume things without asking questions first.
