In light of Tragic-beauty's nightmare thread on the lovely benefits of apartment living, what is your worst experience?
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In light of Tragic-beauty's nightmare thread on the lovely benefits of apartment living, what is your worst experience?
I have plenty, one which I'll summarize. Gotta love those crooked landlords
Here's mine:
In my senior year of college, I was living by myself for a summer while I attended school and worked an hour away. Typical day - wake up at 5:30, shower/get ready, drive to work, arrive at 7, and leave at 5. Then work on some research until 11.
Anyways, during the night we had a big thunderstorm. It was early May, so the leaves were really starting to come out (It's Ohio people ;) ), and consequently the bugs also. I lived on the bottom floor, which was about 6 feet under ground - meaning my windows were level with the ground.
After a night of poor sleep due to the thunderstorm, I woke up sluggishly to my alarm at 5:30 sharp. I quickly hit the snooze bar, and rested my head back on the pillow. "this sucks" I thought. noooo... actually it sucked much worse. As I was laying there half asleep, I reached down to my knee to scratch it... I had an itch, you know?
Just as I scratched my knee I felt and HEARD "crunch, crruuuunch" and felt some juices squirt on my fingers. WTF????? I quickly threw off my covers to find my bed covered in FLYING ANTS!!! FLYING FUCKING ANTS!!! They were crawling all over my bed. Instantly my skin started crawling and I was out of the bed doing the "I'm crazy and hopped up on crack" dance. As I was brushing these little demons off of me, I couldn't help to wonder what orifices they violated while I was sleeping. Glancing at my bed, writhing with ants, I smack my hand against my forehead. "Where the hell did these little bastards come from?"
Disgusted, I walked to the bathroom to wash the insect guts off my fingers. On my way through the short hallway, I noticed that I had just walked into a veritable hell....... It was like something out of the movies... Standing there at the opening to my living room and kitchen were millions upon millions of these little creatures. The walls, the ceiling and my carpet were covered with insects! Literally... and I'm not embellishing here AT ALL, they covered nearly every surface! It was almost as if they were one being.. On the ceiling there were streams of bugs moving towards my bedroom. I followed there track to the corner of the window and saw where they were all coming from. Over the course of the night, a crack developed at the edge of the window and extended nearly to the floor. The ants (or what I thought were ants) were all fighting to make there way through and into my room..... fabulous. I could see chunks of drywall pealing away as the crack was bursting with insect pressure.
I was in my boxers... that's it. and I was surrounded by flying bugs of some sort. It was a nightmare...
ohhhhhh yeah... and I also spotted a huge wolf spider that was crawling over this pile of insects. I was in hell. I throw on a non-insect infested pair of shorts, a t-shirt and ran out the door to my car. I needed an industrial supply of insecticide, STAT!!!
The problem is, nothing is open at 5:30 in the morning. Especially in this small town. Soooo, I drove to Walmart and waited in the parking lot for 30 minutes, still swatting my legs and trying to get the non-existent bugs out of my ears.
When they finally opened, I purchased what must have been 5 gallons of insectide. I thought they were flying ants, so I got one designed for them.
So, I roll back into my apartment around 6:30, and tenuously walked to my apartment. I slowly turned the door knob, and flung open the door and jumped back about 3 feet.
hmmmmmm... nothing was flying around... ok
hmmmmmm... nothing is moving - my carpet is no longer alive.
hmmmmmm... my walls and ceiling were bug free.
WTF?
I glance around the room inspecting the place, thinking I had some form of hysteria/hallucination and realize that all of the bugs had died!! Most of them had crawled into the corners and just.... well, died. I had 1 foot piles of insects in nearly every corner of my apartment, and they all were dead. After only 1 hour of life, they had perished. My God.
I spoke with the landlady, and she said "Huh, that's weird. Did you get some insecticide?"
Yeah, I got some insecticide, bitch. Do you want to drink it???
After about 30 minutes of yelling, mostly by me ;), she sent over someone to inspect the apartment.
"seems fine to me", he said.
"They're all dead", fucker, "I had to clean up because I LIVE HERE!!!". I politely proclaimed.
Later they sent over someone else, and he inspected the walls.
"Well, son, it appears as though you have an infestation of termites."
"Termites?? But they had wings!"
"Well, son, them are the females. You probably have a nest behind them walls. They breed, reproduce, give birth, and then leave to die"
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat
Later that day, he punched a hole in the wall to get rid of the nest. It turns out, though, that the nest was the largest he has ever seen in his 20 year career. He ended up ripping down the WHOLE wall to reveal a 20 foot termite nest...
my gf was not too happy, considering we were... umm... fooling around on the couch the previous day, one foot from this nest.
It took him 3 days to exterminate all the bugs, replace all the wood, and then put back my damn wall.
Three weeks later I woke up with a 4 inch spider in my mouth...:crazy:
I hated that place.
My worst experience was living in this duplex in the VERY old part of New Orleans where the houses are at least 120 years old.We had a HUGE mice and roach problem,not to mention,we had to SHARE a water heater with our neighbors and we NEVER had any hot water.The place didn't have AC or heat neither and the floorboards were all coming up off the floor.New Orleans sucks,but the suburbs are nice.That's where I live now.;D
OMFG!!!!!!!!:faint::faint::gasp::gasp::gasp::ill:: ill::scared::yikes::yuck:
That gives me the Heebeegeebees just thinking about it all!!!!!!
Thats one of the worst apt. stories Ive heard....my skin crawls after that!!
Mines not 1/2 as good but here goes:
I was SUPER drunk coming home to my new apt. where I just moved in a week earlier. It was raining all the way home from what I remember. I go into my room all stumbley...and my window is BROKEN .,..glass and rain all over my bed!!
I was pissed and drunk which made me more mad. So, I call the police to make a report as Im waiting and crying cuz it ruined my night. I make my report and clean up the glass and water a bit. I had to sleep on the couch that night and several nights after.....they didnt come fix the damn window untill 3 days later. Mind you it was still raining. They fix the window...OOOOHH BUT GUESS WHAT??? The window leaks when it rains now!!! Oh $^%## ^%# great!!!!!!
So, everyday from tha point on I call them to fix the window. Oh yea the bed is damaged too. They come 1.5 weeks later to have it fixed. "Fix" the window but they have to wait again till it rains to see if it works. My room was cold and freezing than the rest of the house. There was mold all around the edges. I tried to clean it with some bleach but it came back. So, I ask them to give me a cut on the rent..since I have to sleep on the couch b/c my room is soo cold and that Im paying for a room I cant sleep in. They give us a whopping $80 off rent...wooopie fucking dooo!!
I finally moved here and got outtta there.....
oh yea...they "have 24hr security in the parking lot"...if so ..I wonder why no one saw my car get broken into a week before I moved here!!??
No problems here except at my first apartment when I heard a toilet flush one night...and then heard water dripping onto my pillow a few minutes later. I turned on the light to find a nice big wet spot on the ceiling.
Seems that one of the pipes for the toilet busted a leak and came through my ceiling. It didn't take long for the landlord to fix it...and he was nice and bought me new pillows, cases, sheets and mattress cover. Needless to say that I moved my bed to the other wall in my room. ;)
Ick...and A_Guy...your happening is my worst nightmare...eeeewwwwww...
OMG to A_Guy's story!!!! My skin is itching just thinking about it. THAT IS SOOO GROSS. ugh.
My story had to do with renting a room from a fifty year old anal-retentive guy. It was on a ranch, and I'd do some field work in return for "reduced rent." The problem was that he had this timer on the water-heater, so that the water heater would be turned off until 5 (around the time he'd be off of work) and so if he'd take a shower an hour or two after that there'd be hot water.
Soo... I'd have to wake up, walk out to the garage, flip the timer off, and then wait to take a shower.
And THEN, even when I'd time it just right and get the most hot water in the heater, I'd only get 7 minutes of hot water, and then another 2 minutes of lukewarm water before it'd turn FREEZING!!!
I actually got a skin infection during the month I'd lived there, which would not have occured if I'd had reliable access to hot water. I moved out after a month.
But, I guess it evened out: My internet had been using a number of the closest town, but his internet access provider was farther away (he hadn't told me, and I hadn't asked). He calls me a couple months later and says that I owe him $300. I call the phone company and they say that the bill is actually only around $220 for the phone number I'd been using. I get mad at my old landlord, but eventually leave a message giving him a family relative's address (so he couldn't track me down for a lawsuit). I never got the photocopy of the bill, but then again, maybe he just didn't get the message? I never called back, but I figure he and I are even since I had to go to the doctor's for the infection and was too sick to work for a week.
OMFG.......A_Guy......I can't even imagine what that must have been like. I would have lost my mind.
Well, I HAD a bad apartment story, but after reading that my little problems just pale in comparison. So sorry that happened to you, dude. That just sucks.
I lived next door to three Asian College Students who would blare their music (all foreign heavy metal mind you) at all hours of the day, night, what have you.
At the time, I was living in Southern California, so my room mate and I would take our shoes and pound on the wall to get them to turn it down.. we'd go over and knock on their door only to have them try to tell us that they didn't understand English. Later, much later, we were at the pool and these three guys were all talking in ENGLISH!!!!!
At the same apartment, we had a cockroach infestation- we came home to our kitchen floor COVERED in roaches.. the floor was black thats how many there were (and the tile was white) it looked like someone had painted our floor, counter tops etc, black. We were removed from our apartment for a week while they sprayed.. turned out that the lady next door had kept all her moving boxes (roaches lay their eggs in cardboard) so not only was our apartment affected but three others as well as they submereged everywhere...
When I lived in Seattle, I worked part time as an apartment manager and one of the tenants died. she was an older lady and her kids called me to ask if I had seen her around. Her rent was late... so, we had to call the Seattle Police Department to do a Safety check because you can't just enter into an apartment by yourself. We opened the door and the smell alone just about knocked us over. She had only been dead about a day or so but still! I had the great task of hiring lots of cleaning people to go in there after her children took out her belongings and the smell still wasn't 100% out. They had such a hard time renting that place. To this day, I have never forgotten that smell.
But the best one yet, is when my first husband and I moved to Boise, and we shared a bedroom wall... of course, I didn't know we shared a bedroom wall with anyone, but about a week after we moved in, the neighbor ( a single guy) was VERY interested in talking to me at the mail boxes! Turns out, he could hear EVERYTHING going on in our bedroom.. and I'm far from quiet! We found this out, when one night we woke up to his headboard slamming up against the wall and a female voice saying, " Harder, Harder... oh yessssss" I about died from laughter but my ex husband said to me, "you know, if we can hear him, he can hear you"... LOL... We ended up moving our bed across to the other wall..
well...living around a bunch of door slamming...loud music playing...banging on the door and running...ugly asses trying to talk to you...gang banging...dope dealing...ASSHOLES...
watching the complex you live in go down hill so fast that a snow ball melts slower in hell...
is about all of the horror a sista can stand... >:(
and THAT...my dear friends...is why i'm moving...can i get a AMEN!!!
;D
In one apartment that my SO and I were renting about 6 years ago there was a terrible smell that you could smell faintly in the other rooms but it was strong in the bedroom especially against the wall. My SO was so sure that it was a dead rat or something in the wall. As the week went on the smell got worse and worse. So the manager came once and thought it was a mouse or something too but said that the apartment next to us had the same issue with the smell but it wasn't as strong as the smell in our apartment. The pest guy came and said that he didn't find any pests or any thing that would point to pest but he would have to go into the aparment that we shared that wall with just to make sure there's nothing on that side. Well long story short, the older lady (like late 40's) killed her husband next door tried to cut him up to get rid of him, but never did get rid of him, just left the body there to decompose while she went and stayed at a friends. It was terrible especially the smell and I was pregnant at the time, so the smell was like 20x worse to me. The smell lingered for weeks even after they cleaned out that apartment.
HEEBEEGEEBEES!!! :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:Quote:
Originally Posted by TigersMilk
That was the word I was looking for!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Muyaha
:gasp::scared::yuck::yikes::yikes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Gynger
those easily top mine... that's just repulsive
yeah... it's mine now too. To this day, every once and awhile I'll wake up in the middle of the night with the feeling of bugs crawling on me.Quote:
Originally Posted by VenusGoddess
You know that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?? When the girl was walking through the tunnel filled with bugs, crawling all over here and through her hair? I have nightmares about that shit now.
I have no apartment horror stories. Home ownership, however, has some major drawbacks. Neighbor trees with sap....dying trees....flying termites coming from the wall.... clogged drains that result in flooding the basement...broken washing mashines that flood the basement....toilets that leak and drip through the floor/ceiling below.....
............but nothing like TB's mold issue.
I had six college girls living in the apartment above me (and my roommate). Those dumb bitches would crank the fucking music at night, starting at 12AM and ending around 2AM, sometimes later. I asked politely for them to turn it down, which they did, but it eventually got turned back up again.
DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM
Fucking bass drove me crazy. And they weren't even hot. They were all fat. Thank God I moved into my new house. I might have had to kick in the stereo or something.
That's my horror story. :D
I'm living in one right now.
In one week, my building had 3 hold-ups, 2 fire alarms, one crazy person banging on doors, what else ... I'm sure more happened after I packed up my bags and stayed with my mom for 2 weeks. When my neighbor was hit over the head with a gun, I decided not to come back until the perp was caught.
Holy cow, Lizette. That's insane.
I shared an apartment with my best pal in Puerto Rico- we had cockroaches as big as mice scuttling around the place. She said she saw one bitten in half dragging itself through the kitchen and wondered what the heck had eaten its hind end. Probably a rat.
There was a rumor a woman had killed herself in the shower a couple years before we showed up....and we thought the place was a tad haunted. But honestly, the live people walking around there were scarier than any spook.
Holy shit, everybody! Brrr!!!
Where I live now the heaters weren't working all winter so I sat around with my coat on all the time.... I also have ants try to eat my cats' food so I'm forced to keep their food dish on top of the kitchen counter... My landlord is 87 years old and I have seen him wear a shirt ONCE.. and he's the kind of guy who'll knock on your door to remind you to do your laundry and that garbage day is tomorrow... Now he wants to come inside my apartment "to see how I live" (cleanliness wise, I think)
Oh boy... I keep asking for rent receipts and he keeps saying "don't worry, it's OK"
My co-workers are going to wonder why I'm squirming in my seat now - I HATE insects. Dead people I can handle.
Not my apartment, but I was staying with a mate once and his neighbours were...undesirable...to say the least. He found out a month after he moved in that the cops had a nickname for his particular apartment block - Alcatraz. So called because apparently all of the hard cases from the local maximum security prison end up moving there after they're released.
Imagine this: Three fifteen year old guys, having a relaxing night, VERY stoned and this big, burly, fuck-off hardcase 'invites' himself and his pit bull in, deadlocks the door behind him, starts telling you how he stabbed the previous tenant in the neck with a fork and then pulls a knife on you.
We went out the window on the second storey. Fortunately it was one of those buildings with bricks poking out on the outside, so we climbed down. Tore across the road to the servo and called the cops. Took the bastards half an hour to show up, and the station was only about 2km down the road.
I HATE insects.
The maintenance man came into my apartment one day because there were leaks and they though it might be coming from my apartment. Turns out that it was 2 or 3 floors worth of pipes, including the ones that go through one of my bathroom walls. So they knock a hole in the wall CLEAR THROUGH TO THE KITCHEN to replace the pipes. And they left it like that, a giant hole from bathroom to kitchen. I could have crawled through it if I hadn't been skeeved by the ancient plaster. I had to complain for weeks to get them to fix it, and then they just filled in the wall, no replastering or retiling. I had to complain for another 2 weeks to get it sealed, and then another week or two after that to get them to retile it. And they didn't bother retiling underneath the little radiator, it's still open to the wall and there is constantly dust and crap falling onto the floor from it. And some very interesting looking insect life enters my bathroom through that hole too. And this isn't some slumlord either, it's a decent sized apartment building run by a fairly large management company that has a slew of properties. They're just lazy, greedy motherfuckers.
Edited to add: last summer my AC broke and it took a week for them it fix that. It wasn't until I mentioned that I happened to know that in this state a landlord is legally obligated to provide working AC that anything happened. I threw that bit of trivia out in the morning and by the time I got home from work my apartment was nice and frosty again.