Screw the past, let's focus on NOW

I was going to refrain from sending my friends and family a link to the blog until I had put together a concise history of the job up to this point - from about mid-March 2007 to today.

Then, today, in the middle of 7 people in my 12' x 17' office all yelling about the old property manager cheating them out of money, I decided, "Fuck It." This job is too crazy and I don't really want to relive the past. I want to move forward to the disasters of today and tomorrow.

I can sum up the job transition in 2 main points:

1. Crazy mis-handling of HR. I was supposed to begin this job on March 1, but was delayed 2 weeks by the old property manager taking a week to move her copious amounts of crap out of the office, and then the woman who was supposed to train me how to do this job went to Florida for a week and they wanted me to hold office hours anyway, which I refused to do until I had been trained.

Because they gave the old property manager no deadline as to when she had to have all her stuff off the premises, I would show up to the office and random things would be missing, like toner and stamps and the plastic base the computer monitor used to sit on. We changed the locks so she couldn't get into the office, but the maintenance lady would let her in. Also, there is STILL a vacant apartment full of her stuff.

• SUB-POINT: I didn't know about the vacant apartment full of her stuff until I was showing a prospective tenant vacant apartments and opened the door to find: A) the place reeks of rotten meat because she had stored meat in the freezer, then unplugged the fridge/freezer causing the meat to begin defrosting, removed the meat but left blood in the freezer which rotted because it isn't plugged in. And, B) One of the bedrooms stacked floor to ceiling with her junk.

2. Money Madness

As soon as the old property manager left and I arrived, tenants stopped paying their rent. This was a "how much can we get away with?" maneuver, sort of like a 5-year-old does with a new babysitter. Soon enough, as I began issuing eviction notices, people stopped pushing the limits of non-payment. However, one particularly wily tenant who was about $1700 in debt and about to get evicted came up with a plan: she decided to accuse the old property manager of stealing her rent payments.

Now she's buzzing around telling all the other tenants the company is stealing her money and all hell has broken loose. Everyday I show up to the office there's a new resident at my door claiming they made payments that aren't on their account ledger. Everyday I tell them to bring in all the receipts they have so I can make copies and pass the info along to the company who does our bookkeeping. Of course in this community, no one has a bank account or check book, so everyone pays their rent via money order, and no one has any money management skills or receipts. Or the money came from some church. Or they made the payment in cash, etc, etc.
Hmm, the old property manager leaves, you owe 3 months' rent, but claim you made $900 worth of payments to her that don't show up on your account and you don't have receipts because you paid in cash...
I have long ago stopped trying to decipher the levels of true or false.

Then, after the 7 shouting people leave my office and the Latino family I've been trying to get approved for an apartment for a month can piece together enough of my gringo Spanish to understand I can let them move in by June 1, I look around for the hidden camera that I'm sure must be mounted on top of the computer, or on the ceiling, or in the phone, SOMEWHERE, documenting me like the Truman Show... I just know it's here... reality TV bastards...