Living Here Is Such a Hessel

After such a long stretch of Apartment Living in Austin, this new place is taking some adjustment. I don't hear horns or sirens or trucks on the freeway at night. I have no neighbors screaming in the parking lot or blasting loud Norteño from parked cars. No one seems to have any e-drums. When I walk the dog down my quiet street to the nature trail, I have to endure the cacophony of chirping birds and buzzing chicharras.

I can learn to live with that, but when it comes to maintenance, these bastards have gone too far.

At Summit Creek, you get a wild rush of adrenaline any time you place a maintenance request. Maybe they would come in two days. Maybe two weeks. Maybe never. When the most recent parolee new-hire arrives,  cloud of body odor billowing into your open apartment door, you have a fifty percent chance they will actually fix the issue in a satisfactory manner. You feel like you're living life on the edge.

At this place, the clean cut maintenance crew arrives with two days of placing the maintenance request. They look like they've bathed. They fix the problem. The first time around. Then, later that day, the apartment manager has the gall to give you a follow-up call to see if the issue is addressed to your satisfaction.

Not only that, but you know that move-in checklist they give you? The one where you mark every little ding and loose knob you can find so they don't snatch the deposit from your desperate fingers at move-out time? Most places drop it in the bottom of a drawer and make some benign, placatory remark as they shoo you out the door. Then they never look at it again. At this place, they create a maintenance request to cover everything you mark after discussing it with you in detail.

Then ensues the painful cycle of satisfactory maintenance and follow up calls.

Ainers mentioned she now feels like we are really demanding tenants. We are racked guilt because we have responsive apartment management. We can't live like this.