Well, isn’t this just perfect?
I got a call this morning from my landlord asking me when they could expect my rent for the month of October. I think that’s pretty doggon hilarious, because I sent it to them late last month just to make sure that they would get it on time. Since I was online at the time of their call, I immediately surfed over to my bank and checked my account info. Sure enough, a check had been sent to them and cashed as of October 4th.
I pounced like a feral kitten.
They continued to insist that it had never arrived, so I told them I would make the huge investment of time and effort to call my bank and see if something had happened on their end. Momentarily appeased, my landlord asked me to call back as soon as I could. I agreed, hung up and promptly forgot the entire conversation.
Hey, it’s not easy pretending to have a life when, for all intents and purposes your just an out of work bum sitting on the Comfy-Couch of Super-Sleep watching Automan reruns on Sci-fi while eating bean-paste-and-lard sandwiches.
About twenty minutes ago, I remembered that I had something important to do and called the bank. After going through the expected, “Please hold, your call is important to us.” hell, I finally reached a live person. Yes, the check was sent. Yes, it was cashed as of the 4th. No, it didn’t bounce. Yes, your account shows the withdrawal for the proper amount. Yes, your account was credited with the proper deposit amount. Can I help you with anything else, sir?
No, you see I was just a little worried… waitasec. Did you just say that my rent check was deposited into my own account?
After a few rounds of “Please hold, I’m going to need to talk to my supervisor.” shuffling, it was discovered that the check was returned to the bank due to an invalid address. I don’t understand how this could be true because I’ve been using the automatic internet payment feature from my bank and my landlords address hasn’t changed in over four years. We also checked the address on the envelope, and it was correct so this entire mess-up is completely unfathomable to me.
What, did the building decide to play hide and seek with the mailman?
So now I’m forced to call the landlord back and apologize on behalf of myself, my bank, the US postal service, the deforestation of the Amazonian jungle, and the generally poor state of the worldwide economy. Since I’ve been here over four years with absolutely no problems in the past, and the rent is half a month overdue, I guess that a representative of the landlord will want to come to my apartment and pick up the check in person. That’s no big deal except that it makes me feel like I’m not trustworthy. I mean, none of this was my fault, but it must not look good from my landlords perspective since my rent was due to increase this month. Substantially.
If you’re not from NY let me give you the proper NY-to-the-rest-of-the-world rental equation. Let’s say that ‘R’ represents your rent/mortgage and ‘L’ represents your current square footage of living space. Take whatever you pay in rent/mortgage each month and triple it. Then, take whatever the square footage of your apartment/house is and divide that by 3. That will give you a pretty good approximation of what the rent is like in NY. This can be represented by the following mathematical equation;
(R*3)+(L/3)=Are you on crack?
So now I’m sitting here wondering if I should clean the apartment in anticipation of their arrival, or just let them come in and revel in my personal Pit of Despair. Maybe, just maybe, I should dust and vacuum.
If they’re real lucky, I might even shower.
