The Unprofessionals

I'm upset with my rental agents. They will remain unnamed of course, otherwise I may get myself into trouble. The title of this post is merely an indication as to how I feel they have conducted their business in the past (although with regards to professionalism they are slowly improving). That is all it is. A title. Make of it what you will.

I honestly have never known such a fussy house to live in. We have inspections every six months and it feels like much much more, to the extent that we've started looking for evidence as to whether they are in fact occuring more often. The house is slightly more difficult to keep clean on account of the fact that it's large and has many residents, most of whom don't clean up after themselves and are so disgusting that they leave their droppings everywhere. I hasten to add that most of them are spiders and ants. We have the occasional gecko lodging with us and now and again a cockroach visits to steal food. Toby and I put our droppings in the toilet or the bin (depending on the kind of droppings) and we are quite good at cleaning up after ourselves. The insects, on the other hand, take a lot of looking after. The spiders in particular like to make webs so they can gather dust. I don't know why they like dust so much. Perhaps they read my weird dust post and they're saving it up for when it becomes important international currency.

The lady that used to deal with our property has given us a few headaches in the past, mainly due to her Jekyll and Hyde personality. One moment she'd be quite normal and the next she'd be snarling at us and jumping to her own defence at everything we said no matter how innocent. Before inspections I'd run around cleaning and tidying until the house was spotless and sparkly. And then she'd leave a note saying "Window sills need dusting" and it would turn out there was some dark hidden corner of the house that I never ventured into with one dusty little window.

Besides all this I am working quite hard at becoming a good housekeeper, mainly thanks to the friendly advice the agent leaves after the inspections ("Clean mould from windows." Mould? What mould? "Tend to gardens." We've got a garden? So we do, would you look at that!).

I've even been known to voluntarily take down all the net curtains and wash them and a few weeks ago I took to cleaning the windows. This was no mean feat and despite spending an afternoon two weekends in a row doing it I didn't quite get it finished, especially those pesky windows that are behind security/fly screens because you have to remove the screen to get to the outside of the window and it's the kind of palava you leave until you have the time for it really.

After the run-ins we had with our previous agent (which I won't go into in detail mainly because I can't remember them) I was rather pleased to hear that we had a new agent assigned to our property. I found this out when I called them up regarding another inspection that was imminent. They chose a really inconvenient time to call round. I'd been sick the previous week (with 6WMV) and had only managed rudimentary cleaning that weekend. They gave us slightly less than a week's notice and chose to come around the following Monday, the weekend after the wedding.

Frankly, I was far too busy to care about the whole running around making the house sparkly and clean. We live in a clean house and we take good care of it so I decided the agent could take us as she found us. Which was just as well really as we didn't get home until 10pm on Sunday night anyway. We'd brought Toby's cousin back with us so I called the agent to warn her there may be a young man sleeping in the house and could she give him a call to let him know when she'd be there.

Turns out it was two days before she actually made it to our house. I think that might be illegal because the written notice was for the Monday, not the Wednesday but I'll let it slide (for now).

The other day we received a notice from the agency asking us to tend to the garden (damn irritating in itself as Toby spends almost every weekend we're at home cutting the grass but I'm not going into this right now). The thing that got me was that there was a little note attached to the back of the notice. Guess what it said. Go on, have a guess.

"Windows need cleaning"

Ah! Well! There are no words. I was dumbfounded. "What does she mean 'windows need cleaning'?" was about all I can manage. The *&^$&$(#$ windows are (*$#%*#$& clean!!! I cleaned them! I spent hours cleaning them. Just a few weeks ago. Without anyone having to ask me to do it. I just did it. All by myself. It was my idea. They look great. (Except for a couple of the bedrooms which I didn't get around to and maybe the dining room window and the pesky windows that are behind security/fly screens but it's a work in progress and I was going to do it just as soon as I had a weekend at home and got a goddarned chance to do it!!!!).

I am incredibly hurt by this and am seeking comfort in the thought that the windows I did clean may have made the ones I didn't clean especially noticeable. But really, there's nothing worse than working hard on something and feeling all proud of yourself just to have someone to not only not notice, but actually ask you to do the job you have already done!

Come back Mrs Hyde, all is forgiven. And I promise I'll deliberately leave something unseen to so that you have something to comment on at the next inspection.

Sorry for the long ranting post. I really needed to get that off my chest. 'Preciate your time. Thanks for listening er.. reading.