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Jan. 19th, 2009 04:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaIn our big research study (not mine, but my boss's), there's a part of the study where we deliberately make the participants angry. It's a role play, and the instructions go something like this: "Pretend that I'm your landlord, and there's something around your place that needs to be repaired. You've left me messages and nothing has been done. Now you're going to run into me in person and discuss the problem. If this has happened to you in real life, you can use a real example - otherwise, I want you to make something up. But the important thing is to make it sound as real as possible."
Every participant has had this problem in real life. The housing problems they report are detailed and realistic. When we play our instigating role in the dialogue - and we are the most obnoxious landlords ever encountered; favorite lines include "It will get done when it gets done," "You need to watch your attitude - don't take that tone with me," and "Well, I don't know what you expect for the kind of rent you're paying" - they are well prepared to respond. More than half threaten to put their rent in escrow until the problem is fixed. They have been down this route, again and again.
Those role plays are on my mind today because we are having a heating problem. The front of the house has been heating just fine, but not the back; the final straw came yesterday when I went into the kitchen and the bottle of olive oil on the counter was congealed solid. To add insult to injury, the freezing cold in parts of the house comes alongside an outrageous $600 electric and gas bill for December. Michael went down to investigate the boiler and came back reporting that the pressure seemed oddly low.
Michael called the landlord this morning. And fifteen minutes later the landlord's handyman rang our doorbell. He adjusted our radiators and explained to me, at length, how the steam radiators we have now differ from the hot water radiators we had in the old house, and what the theory is behind their operation. (It turns out that steam radiators have a steam regulator as well as the little thingy that opens or closes the coils; we didn't know.) Then he went down to the basement and spent twenty minutes or so tinkering with the boiler, drawing off several buckets of muddy water which he said were preventing it from operating properly (and thereby raising our heating bill). He finished by promising that he would come back in the spring and do a full cleaning and servicing of the boiler.
When he left, I called Michael to report. And as soon as I got off the phone with Michael, our landlord called him to assure him that if the house isn't heating to our satisfaction by tomorrow morning he'll send in a full team.
The olive oil is still congealed, but we're going to wait and see what happens when the house cools off at night and then the heat cycles on in the morning.
Our landlord would totally fail as a role-play landlord. Damn, we're lucky. And privileged.
Every participant has had this problem in real life. The housing problems they report are detailed and realistic. When we play our instigating role in the dialogue - and we are the most obnoxious landlords ever encountered; favorite lines include "It will get done when it gets done," "You need to watch your attitude - don't take that tone with me," and "Well, I don't know what you expect for the kind of rent you're paying" - they are well prepared to respond. More than half threaten to put their rent in escrow until the problem is fixed. They have been down this route, again and again.
Those role plays are on my mind today because we are having a heating problem. The front of the house has been heating just fine, but not the back; the final straw came yesterday when I went into the kitchen and the bottle of olive oil on the counter was congealed solid. To add insult to injury, the freezing cold in parts of the house comes alongside an outrageous $600 electric and gas bill for December. Michael went down to investigate the boiler and came back reporting that the pressure seemed oddly low.
Michael called the landlord this morning. And fifteen minutes later the landlord's handyman rang our doorbell. He adjusted our radiators and explained to me, at length, how the steam radiators we have now differ from the hot water radiators we had in the old house, and what the theory is behind their operation. (It turns out that steam radiators have a steam regulator as well as the little thingy that opens or closes the coils; we didn't know.) Then he went down to the basement and spent twenty minutes or so tinkering with the boiler, drawing off several buckets of muddy water which he said were preventing it from operating properly (and thereby raising our heating bill). He finished by promising that he would come back in the spring and do a full cleaning and servicing of the boiler.
When he left, I called Michael to report. And as soon as I got off the phone with Michael, our landlord called him to assure him that if the house isn't heating to our satisfaction by tomorrow morning he'll send in a full team.
The olive oil is still congealed, but we're going to wait and see what happens when the house cools off at night and then the heat cycles on in the morning.
Our landlord would totally fail as a role-play landlord. Damn, we're lucky. And privileged.
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Date: 2009-01-19 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-19 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-19 10:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-19 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-19 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-19 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-19 11:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-20 12:32 am (UTC)BTW, with energy billed with electricty, gas, etc. on a single bill, I find it useful to keep track of the kilowatt-hours of electricity used. Something under 1000Kwh a month should be plenty. (Don't forget, sometimes an amount gets estimated based on previous useage and then straightened out a month or so later.)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-20 03:16 am (UTC)(And then I had the second renal failure and decided the doctors were right and I needed to retire and I moved out here and bought a condo.)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-20 05:14 am (UTC)Excellent landlord you've got there. That's amazing service.