A Lefty Writes

I spoke with Bob last night and he was surprisingly gracious, agreeing to refund a large portion of the money... HA!

Just kidding. In fact, I started the conversation rather calm, hoping to understand why our charges were so severe in comparison to Matthew's. After I questioned him on a few specifics he got suddenly defensive and irate and asked me "who do you think you are, you son of a bitch?"

The problem with talking to Bob is that you can't ever get him to stay on topic. He rambles from one thing to the next and it's impossible to respond to anything because by the time you can get a word in he's already three topics ahead of you. I didn't initially rise to the bait of his name-calling, and I asked him to do me the courtesy of not insulting me while I was asking him for justification. But things went downhill from there.

He basically told me that Afsheen and I had "trashed" the apartment, called me an "arrogant, self-centered slob" and said I could take him to small-claims court if I wanted to. I responded that no, I knew that we had no legal recourse and that it wasn't worth my time. I said that in the end I was only sorry for having been gracious and complimentary when he was parading potential tenants through the building while I was still there. Then after a few more expletives from him I said that he was just petty, vindictive, and bitter and that I had nothing more to say. Then I hung up the phone.

So in the end nothing has changed as far as the finances are concerned, but I sure do feel better about it all. I was surprised by how quickly he got defensive, and it gave me a nice sense of satisfaction that by simply questioning him I was able to get him to go off the handle like that. I'm still looking into organizations with whom I can lodge a formal complaint, if only to save someone else the hassle of having to deal with him.