The Lesser Evil

As you know, we submitted our paperwork to the corporate office of our (hopeful) new apartment complex for early approval with the intent to move in over the weekend before May 1st (that being this past weekend). Naturally, we had all of our plans laid out nicely; lease signing here, move-in here, happily ever after here. Just as naturally, the new complex went out of their way to satisfy our expectations that this would not happen.

Morgan, my fiancee, called the apartment complex last Tuesday to ask them if we had been approved yet. Monica (presumed spelling), the woman in charge of overseeing our application process, was not in the office. At all. All day. Perhaps she had pressing business. Do women in middle management play golf? The outcome was similar on Wednesday; maybe it was just a long game? Who knows.

Morgan called them on Thursday and finally got hold of Monica (flustered because she had got too much of a tan golfing) and asked her what was going on with the apartment. "Everything's fine," she said. "We're still waiting for approval from the complex." So Morgan said her goodbyes and hung up.

Now, before I go on, there is something you ought to know about Morgan and I. We have both worked retail positions for several years, and we're both quite familiar with what it's like to be caught in the crossfire by a customer who is irate with your company's poor management skills and directs that anger at us, the undeserving lackeys. Anyone who has worked retail knows what I'm talking about. However, the difference between Morgan and I is that this experience gives Morgan more patience and temperance in dealing with people, whereas I meaningfully seek out the cause of the botch and apply severe amounts of displeasure.

This is not to say that I call people up and yell at them; quite the contrary. You could say that I'm more like...assertively nice. I'm sticking to that story, no matter what Morgan tells you.

So when Morgan called me and told me what Monica told her, I decided to give them my own call and give them a piece of my mind. A very courteous piece of my mind. So I called them, spoke with Monica, and asked her what was going on. "Everything is fine," she said. "We're still waiting for approval from the complex."

"Okay," I said, and hung up, only to realize that I had gotten the same response Morgan had gotten. The next thing I said was simply, "D'oh!"

So, Morgan called on Friday and asked them what was going on. Now comes the fun part: "We're sorry," Monica said, "but we can't approve you until you fax us a copy of your son's birth certificate." Wait, what? Birth certificate? They already had his social security number. And why didn't they tell us this sooner? We've had his birth certificate in storage for weeks; in fact, it's one of the only documents we have yet to lose.

To make a long story short (too late), we were not given keys so we could move in over the weekend. We spent the weekend in a mad scramble moving almost all of our belongings into our two storage units, and only found out today (Monday, hurray) that we had been approved. Morgan quite literally just got off the phone with Monica, who told us that there were electrical problems in the apartment that needed to be repaired. We talked her into giving us our key, but she said we could sign our lease after the repairs were done. Our friends assure us that this is a good move on both our parts, but I am skeptical; I'm waiting for them to say the repairs are too big, that we don't have a lease protecting our right to be there, and that we have to leave.

Joy. Expect the worst, hope for the best, my motto goes on.