The Wordsmith&#39;s Forge

Asked for help.

Need to clean apartment AAAAAAAA

From:

Empathy. So. Much.

From:

Asking for help was so hard y'all

The ironic part is cleaning would be ever so much easier if I were significantly less stressed about it, and the stress correlates negatively to the apartment's cleanliness!

From:

pronker

No vermin in apartment? Then cleaning can wait. If there's vermin, oh well … :S

From:

Roaches. Also inspection.

From:

pronker

Ew! Then cleaning it is. One more pile of manure to step over, as my mom would say.

From:

I realised just how abusive previous apartment management were when I discovered that they have to give you a *specific* time to enter, and they were "four day window no special arrangements no exceptions f*** you"... had I the resources I would have sued them *at that point*... Hmmm, I need to find the ways I need to get them back. (Surprise electrical system inspection...)

From:

Any kind of subsidized housing is a zillion times worse. Of course it's abusive. Landlords routinely do illegal things, counting on the fact that few people can afford to sue them, and when it happens it's just the cost of doing business.

Basically what it means is someone else holds your life hostage. The same happens with jobs that won't give you a schedule and health plans that require you to be accessible on demand at any time. You lose your ability to make any plans in advance, to take care of other people reliably, to attend important life events, to make appointments anywhere else -- to make promises at all, really. It's evil. People don't see it.

They do see the effects, but most folks don't realize where those problems are coming from. That their friends are unreliable because it has been taken from them. That they're depressed, anxious, or otherwise unhappy because they are being abused. All of that eats away at both the practical and psychological functionality of society.

From:

Welp, be it known that the Karma Kannon has been fired. (I just sent the city's electrical permit inspection people an email detailing the problem.) I may have a few more rounds before I'm done...

And I don't intend to let my *new* city government - or anyone else around me - get away with that shit if I can help it. Despite the number of zeroes on my paycheque I don't have a hell of a lot more than most people but I do have a few things: Enough to share sometimes, a damn fine community that has my back, and the fact that I pass for a member of the Dominant Paradigm Class.... I intend to use all of those *shamelessly*. All I want in return is a better world for *everyone*... which will include me, of course, but a me that is not just comfortable but *surrounded by happy people*. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish'd.

From:

BANG! The inspector already got back to me. Dunno where it'll go from here, but DAMN I'm gonna miss having good city government. Time to get on building some new soon enough.

From:

One obvious course of action is that, any time people are getting screwed, you have a ready pool of potential activists waiting to be organized. In cases of institutional abuse, the target populations tend to be low in resources including activist skills. But it's like seeding clouds, once you add that information, things can happen.

From:

Ooooers.

From:

You lose your ability to [...] make promises at all

*stares in everything just clicked together*

From:

.... wow, yeah. It's a deliberate attempt to deny us the ability to form community, which gives us our power. Nekulturniy degeneraty (Russki or no). We will be present at their funerals.

From:

I have been harping on this a while because it's one cluster in a wider pattern of social decay. People are forcibly deprived of control over their own lives, and then blamed for that as if it is a personal failing.

Much the same happens with being late or unable to reach an appointment.

* If someone is sick or injured and in need of care, they might move slower and have a harder time getting there.

* If they rely on public transportation, they're at the mercy of a system that isn't obligated to run on time, or at all really.

* If someone else has to drive them and that person flakes (or gets called into work) then no ride.

* If the construction job that was supposed to be done in a week takes two and clogs traffic, *everyone* going that route is now late.

* If someone has kids and the sitter is late, now that parent is late, because you can't leave kids unattended.

And somehow that means you don't deserve health care anymore, or any other type of appointment. I've seen a few exceptions where people had a good policy about appointment mishaps, but most of them are downright abusive now. How is it okay to fine someone $50 and tell them never to return, because the goddamn bus was late? That shoots help-seeking behavior right in the head.

And then they wonder why people "don't want help."

Society is broken, and the broken pieces grind together, and most folks just don't understand why everything sucks so much.

From:

...what

how specific is specific

bc I'm told Jun 5 exterminator sometime between 10a and 4:30p

(and I would like to make it to work by 4p as scheduled)

From:

That's over the line. A four-hour window for services is industry standard. It either gets done in the morning, or it gets done in the afternoon. PICK ONE. Granted, for something where you don't know what you're getting into until you get there, you really can't be *more* precise than that... but still. If his window opens at 10 it closes at 2, or f*** him. (For inspections and such frankly it should be *more* precise.... but it would take looking up caselaw...)

Frankly unless it's something like termites you can probably solve it yourself; boric acid powder is good for getting medieval on most six-leggers (and more-leggers); sweep it into the cracks between floor and wall... and it's safe for four-leggers; it'll just taste sour and make them thirsty, like a seriously strong pickle. They won't generally mess with it more than once.

From:

blagh. all I know about the Jun 1 inspection, time-wise, is "Jun 1".

augh. I need to get to work on cross-country job hunt and whatnot so I can bail the minute my lease is up.

Edited Date: 2018-05-30 07:38 pm (UTC)

From:

Okay. Look up your state landlord-tenant laws and see what they say. I suspect that if you're where I think you are, they're pretty liberal towards the tenant... and use the code section as a club over the landlord's virtual head.

From:

That's abusive, because it forces people to take a day off work -- a day they might not have available.

Compare that to appointments you make to go see someone. They give you a specific time, and nowadays if you're not there on time, they not only close your slot, they fine you and refuse to help you in the future.

It's not about help. It's about power. The powerless are forced to wait on the powerful.

Now if a place actually respects you? I've been in a few where 1) the typical wait time is 5 minutes or less, and 2) if they need paperwork filled out, they say so and stipulate how early to come to allow time for that. I consider 15 minutes of wiggle room to be professionally acceptable and 5 minutes to be impressive.

But few places are that good. They don't have to be, when they have people over a barrel and don't give a shit about their victims. The problems with this include a general erosion of professionalism and social glue, and the cascade effect of one professional's slovenly office organization mangling the schedules of everyone connected with their primary victim.

From:

I have noticed that professional standards are largely a thing of the past. Often people don't even bother to show up and don't call to say why not. Some providers are reliable, but it is increasingly rare. In my experience, if I can't do something myself, it is unlikely to get done right, or at all. This is maddening.

From:

Depends... if the critters are four-legged, that's what cats are for. If six, then it's time for actual cleaning followed by boric acid powder.

From: