I wake up and go to work every day like millions of other Americans. But unlike many of them, I can honestly say I love what I do for a living right now. It’s INSANE.
Here are the bullet points of my job:
- I work with huge apartment communities to increase occupancy.
- I travel to a community anywhere in North America, where I work 35-45 days in a row, then take a 2-week vacation in the Atlanta, Georgia area. (Yes, working 45 days in a row is completely exhausting.)
- I live on the property where I work.
- The properties I work on vary wildly, from A-class (luxury plus) to C-class (almost government housing).
- I talk to everyone who comes into the office looking for an apartment, and I’m first to answer the office phone, so I meet a LOT of people.
Property management is hard work and doesn’t pay well, especially at lower levels… but since I report to a third party company, not the property management company itself, I have it better than most. I do some grass-roots marketing (which is fun and gets me oriented to new cities super-fast), I answer the phone and give tours and help people find apartments. Technically it is a sales job, but housing is something everyone needs, isn’t it?
Working at luxury communities with rooftop grills, tanning beds, lazy river pools, sun decks, laundry service… it’s fun. But I have to admit, it’s also fun working at the other end of the spectrum, because it’s INSANE. On the other end of the spectrum,
trash is always a problem,
stray dogs always poop in obvious places for visitors to see,
you never know when water damage is going to ruin your apartment,
and resident complaints beat everything.
Let’s talk about resident complaints. I’m sympathetic to residents who need work done, and I try to get their requests taken care of as quickly as possible. But for some reason people will come into leasing offices and do things they would NEVER do in a professional establishment.
One resident came into the office and threw a frozen tomato on the floor. From the plastic bag she was holding, she took out salad mix and a can of coke (both frozen) and threw them on the ground too. She yelled about how her refrigerator was too cold. I tried to be professional and de-escalate the sitation, but all I could think of was Andy Samberg in “I Threw it on the Ground”:
(*profanity warning)
Don’t go to your leasing office and throw the contents of your refrigerator on the floor. Just put in a work order, and we’ll do our best.
But at the end of the day, no matter how crazy it was, I find a sense of satisfaction in knowing I did my best helping people fill their basic need for shelter. At an older property with lower qualification standards, some of my clients are one bad financial decision away from homelessness: they need solid advice and guidance. Those who have already made those bad decisions and owe utility bills, hospital bills, or been evicted? They struggle to get find shelter, and it can be an emotional roller coaster as they go through the approval process. When applications are denied on a property with standards as low as they come, I always think, where will they go?
No one stands out in my mind more than Josh and Kita. They were just children, really. At only nineteen years old, they had come upon hard times, dropped out of college, and moved to Indianapolis, where their grandparents were the only family they had. Josh, with his huge dark solemn eyes and greasy hair, asked me all the questions he could think of before he decided to trust me, and then his desperation showed. Kita looked for all the world like Princess Merida from Brave with her spiraling fiery hair, but was on the verge of tears. Josh was working two jobs and Kita walked to her job. They worked over a hundred hours between them weekly but on minimum wage barely made enough money to feed themselves. The apartment was too expensive for them, really, but any other apartment would have been the same story, and they had to have one. They argued, Josh against it and Kita for it. “Are you sure we could pay the electric bills?” he said. “You know we only eat a few packs of Ramen every week, and it’s only twenty cents for each package!” she reminded him. In the end their application was denied: their names were on a previous lease with a roommate who hadn’t paid his share of the rent. Our assistant manager told them the bad news while I was held up on the phone. From my desk, I watched Josh walk away with the weight of the world on his shoulders, trench coat flapping in the Indianapolis winter wind. I never saw them again.
The podcast “Welcome to Nightvale” is about happenings in the bizarre, fictional town of Nightvale. It recently featured “Thursday” on the Community Calendar:
“Thursday is a lost cause. Why even bother with Thursday? We all tried, and tried, and still Thursday is what it is. Let’s all give up hope for Thursday and… just let it do its thing.”
Tomorrow marks my thirtieth day of working in this Nashville leasing office. It’s Thursday. It’s rough work. I’m getting tired. But although Nightvale gave up hope for Thursday, I don’t want to. It’s going to be another day of adventures, of meeting all sorts of people, and of helping people settle the question, “Where will I live?” From where I stand, it’s worth staying on my grind for.
~ The Dauntless Princess ~