So I've been having this problem with Con-Ed. So far, ignoring it and waiting for it to go away has been an effective solution - but now I'm taking another step in the problem-solving direction and blogging about it. Take that, reality!
Everything was all fine and dandy with the utilities situation (following that awkward heat-not-actually-being-free thing) until the following events took place this spring:
1) For two months, our Con-Ed bill was $0.
2) Simultaneously, there were notices posted all over the building informing us that the management had failed to pay their Con-Ed bill, and that all the common spaces in the building would had their electricity turned off (the management must have eventually paid their bill, because the electricity was never actually turned off).
3) Our May Con-Ed bill was for $621.60.
So our monthly electricity bill went from the usual $60-$80 to more than $600, with a weird clusterfuck of not being billed/the building fucking up their own electricity in between. I called Con-Ed to say "what the fuck," and they agreed that it was a "what the fuck" situation and sent someone to check the meter. This person then confirmed that the meter was working fine and that we were, somehow, suddenly generating $621.60 worth of electricity.
So I decided to take matters into my own hands.
Having decided that, somewhere along the line, another apartment's electricity had gotten hooked up to our meter, I decided to investigate. I went down to the meter room, found our meter, and memorized the number it was currently reading (I also got my key stuck in the lock, forcing me to take it off the keychain and just leave it in the door, where it's been for the past few weeks). Then I came back upstairs and flicked off every single switch on our circuit breaker and waited for half an hour (I won't elaborate on how pathetically incapacitated I felt with absolutely no electricity for a whole half hour - but this brainwashed technology addict was rendered pretty helpless). I went back downstairs to check the meter again ... and it was reading the same number. Which meant that it was still hooked up to something that was generating electricity. Which meant that my theory was correct.
I called the super and told him about my masterful detective work, and then he said "um" a lot and told me he'd call me back. He called a little while later offering to provide an electrician to further investigate the situation. Of course, there was a catch - if the electrician found that the building had, in fact, hooked up our meter incorrectly, the management would pay for the electrician; if the electrician didn't find a problem, then everything is actually my fault and Sarah and I have to pay for the visit. In addition to the unpaid Con-Ed balance that is now probably upwards of $1,000.
I have yet to decide what the fuck I'm supposed to do about this ... but that seems ok, since the super has yet to provide the name of this supposed electrician and Con-Ed has yet to threaten to turn off our electricity (they've been unexpectedly nice every time I repeatedly call them asking for some sort of explanation). So, for now, I'm just ignoring the whole ordeal. Maybe if we can ignore it until we move, we can just flee the situation forever. Or maybe a cloud full of free money and electrician unicorns will descent upon Brooklyn and fix everything for me. And maybe none of this will damage my credit score forever.
We'll see.
6/25/10
6/9/10
Also.
I still don't have a job.
Could all the unpaid summer interns please stop applying for the jobs that I desperately need in order to survive? I have approximately one month's rent left in my bank account and all I do all day is sit in front of my laptop and watch Animal Planet.
Could all the unpaid summer interns please stop applying for the jobs that I desperately need in order to survive? I have approximately one month's rent left in my bank account and all I do all day is sit in front of my laptop and watch Animal Planet.
5/12/10
End-of-semester recap.
Ok. Big apologies to my hundreds of loyal readers (hi, Mom!) for the major hiatus in blogging. Apparently when tornadoes of disaster prance across my daily life, it's more effective to address them than to blog about them. But, now that my semester is over and I can take 30 seconds to breathe, here's what's been up since the last time I complained to the interwebz:
1) I got fired again.
I actually prefer to refer to this episode as being laid off. Basically, my boss decided that he didn't want to budget for a designer anymore and sent all my work to some randos in Nepal instead. It totally sucked, but at least I got a severance check.
I've been looking around for a new gig (it's more constructive than sitting in my house and trying to figure out why I can't hold down a fucking job), and so far I've had a couple interviews and a handful of leads. So we'll see where that goes. Every once and a while I freelance for an undergrad professor at Pratt who runs a branding design studio out of his cat-filled apartment ... but that's not exactly a pay-my-rent sort of arrangement.
2) My apartment is for sale.
This one sort of came out of nowhere. Basically, whoever it is who owns our apartment (I know nothing about him aside from the fact that his name is Steve) decided that he wants to put it on the market in hopes of selling it by the time our lease runs out in August. This mystery man has claimed that he'll allow us to renew our lease in the event that the apartment doesn't sell by August ... but he refuses to put this anywhere in writing or make any sort of legitimate agreement. He also only communicates via text message and is usually an enormous douchebag. So that totally sucks.
But aside from the fact that we're dealing with a loser text-sender (what professional adult does that?) who might boot us out in a few months but might decide not to and isn't going to let us know in advance either way ... there's also the incredible annoyance of having brokers show the apartment to potential buyers. This is where the situation gets tricky.
If we can create an undesirable domestic environment for potential buyers, we have a better chance of keeping our apartment. But if the powers that be catch on to our attempts to sabotage them, they'll refuse to renew our lease regardless of whether the apartment actually sells. So we're walking a fine line, but so far no one has seemed that interested in buying the place. So maybe it's working.
3) I finished my first year of grad school.
This item doesn't really belong on a bitch list, but it's worth noting.
1) I got fired again.
I actually prefer to refer to this episode as being laid off. Basically, my boss decided that he didn't want to budget for a designer anymore and sent all my work to some randos in Nepal instead. It totally sucked, but at least I got a severance check.
I've been looking around for a new gig (it's more constructive than sitting in my house and trying to figure out why I can't hold down a fucking job), and so far I've had a couple interviews and a handful of leads. So we'll see where that goes. Every once and a while I freelance for an undergrad professor at Pratt who runs a branding design studio out of his cat-filled apartment ... but that's not exactly a pay-my-rent sort of arrangement.
2) My apartment is for sale.
This one sort of came out of nowhere. Basically, whoever it is who owns our apartment (I know nothing about him aside from the fact that his name is Steve) decided that he wants to put it on the market in hopes of selling it by the time our lease runs out in August. This mystery man has claimed that he'll allow us to renew our lease in the event that the apartment doesn't sell by August ... but he refuses to put this anywhere in writing or make any sort of legitimate agreement. He also only communicates via text message and is usually an enormous douchebag. So that totally sucks.
But aside from the fact that we're dealing with a loser text-sender (what professional adult does that?) who might boot us out in a few months but might decide not to and isn't going to let us know in advance either way ... there's also the incredible annoyance of having brokers show the apartment to potential buyers. This is where the situation gets tricky.
If we can create an undesirable domestic environment for potential buyers, we have a better chance of keeping our apartment. But if the powers that be catch on to our attempts to sabotage them, they'll refuse to renew our lease regardless of whether the apartment actually sells. So we're walking a fine line, but so far no one has seemed that interested in buying the place. So maybe it's working.
3) I finished my first year of grad school.
This item doesn't really belong on a bitch list, but it's worth noting.
3/3/10
Stupid shit: a synopsis.
Lately I've been noticing that I make a lot of stupid mistakes. This wouldn't bother me so much if they didn't tend to cost me a lot of money/dignity. There have been a bunch over the past few months, so I'm just going to summarize them here.
1) Not realizing that heat wasn't actually included in our rent.
Apparently, despite the fact that our broker told us that both heat and hot water were included in our rent, that was a total lie. Only hot water is included in our rent. Sarah and I didn't realize this until we received a $266 gas bill. I called our super, who acted like I was going crazy for ever thinking that heat was included in our rent, and I called our broker, who ignored me all four times. So that was a stupid mistake.
2) Locking myself out of my apartment.
This was a really airheaded move that ended up costing me $250 and most of my dignity. In the middle of a recent laundry day, I grabbed my wallet and headed down to the basement. It wasn't until I got back upstairs that I realized I had forgotten my keys. So there I was - locked out of my apartment in the middle of the afternoon wearing scrunchie-bottomed sweatpants and fuzzy slippers armed with nothing but my wallet. Long story short, after a few failed attempts at breaking the lock with my laundry card and a series of phone calls placed from two different neighbors' telephones, I ended up back in front of my door watching a locksmith drill the entire mechanism to tiny pieces. That was an even more stupid mistake.
3) Mailing the rent to the wrong address.
This one wasn't entirely my fault. When our broker wrote the managing agent's mailing addres on our lease, she wrote the wrong zip code. So, every time we mailed in our rent, it ended up getting re-routed all over Brooklyn and arriving three weeks late. This would explain why I kept getting angry phone calls asking where the rent was. It was only after three or four of these mishaps that our super finally decided to let us know that most renters just slipped their checks under his door. So really, I think I can blame our axis-of-evil building management team for this one.
In conclusion, I wish I didn't do as many dumb things, since most of them are very expensive.
1) Not realizing that heat wasn't actually included in our rent.
Apparently, despite the fact that our broker told us that both heat and hot water were included in our rent, that was a total lie. Only hot water is included in our rent. Sarah and I didn't realize this until we received a $266 gas bill. I called our super, who acted like I was going crazy for ever thinking that heat was included in our rent, and I called our broker, who ignored me all four times. So that was a stupid mistake.
2) Locking myself out of my apartment.
This was a really airheaded move that ended up costing me $250 and most of my dignity. In the middle of a recent laundry day, I grabbed my wallet and headed down to the basement. It wasn't until I got back upstairs that I realized I had forgotten my keys. So there I was - locked out of my apartment in the middle of the afternoon wearing scrunchie-bottomed sweatpants and fuzzy slippers armed with nothing but my wallet. Long story short, after a few failed attempts at breaking the lock with my laundry card and a series of phone calls placed from two different neighbors' telephones, I ended up back in front of my door watching a locksmith drill the entire mechanism to tiny pieces. That was an even more stupid mistake.
3) Mailing the rent to the wrong address.
This one wasn't entirely my fault. When our broker wrote the managing agent's mailing addres on our lease, she wrote the wrong zip code. So, every time we mailed in our rent, it ended up getting re-routed all over Brooklyn and arriving three weeks late. This would explain why I kept getting angry phone calls asking where the rent was. It was only after three or four of these mishaps that our super finally decided to let us know that most renters just slipped their checks under his door. So really, I think I can blame our axis-of-evil building management team for this one.
In conclusion, I wish I didn't do as many dumb things, since most of them are very expensive.
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