is it just me or are grocery stores everywhere cutting corners to try and get by?
I’ve noticed since the start of the pandemic milk sours days before the date on the carton. Produce isnt nearly as fresh as it once was - particularly yellow onions they nearly always have a soft mushy section. I never encountered that before. Sometimes the deli section is shutdown in the middle of the day because they cant keep it staffed. The grocery stores pharmacies drive through window being open is now an anomaly.
Maybe these aren’t pet peeves, but there are things that always bewilder me about human behavior whenever the wife and I, as small time landlords, need to turn over an apartment:
Why on earth, as a renter, do some people have so much excess stuff that they can’t take with them to the next place? We just gave away or hauled to to DI decent furniture that was at least $2000 new and could have fetched a few hundred dollars in a yard sale that was stored in the garage for two years because they didn’t need it in the apartment. A few months ago this tenant had trouble paying the rent when they’d changed jobs. Huh?
Speaking of garages: Why do they fill the garages with stuff so that they can’t actually park their car in there? We built a three car, off-street garage on the property 10 years ago. I think only one person has ever used it to park their car in. It’s too full of stuff they don’t use.
Is it really that hard to run the self-cleaning cycle on the oven once every three months or so? My wife just had an oven so bad it couldn’t be cleaned so she had to buy a new range for the unit, and we just dodged that again this week on a different unit.
Money’s tight for renters as a general rule. So why don’t they actually put in some time to fully clean the place and get their deposits back? My wife had to hire a cleaning crew for a full day, plus her time, plus costs to haul abandoned stuff to DI, SL Bike Collective, etc. (five bikes in disrepair in a small storage shed), and the dump. When it was all done these guys forfeited nearly $1400 they could clearly use. Oh, and the one we turned this week needed 20 hours of cleaning work and the tenant abandoned over $100 of cleaning supplies when they left.
Suffice it to say it’s baffling the costly choices these people who often can ill afford it make. I have high hopes the two young assistant professors at the U that are moving into the one we worked this week, and who told us if someone tried to offer us more rent than we asked for the place they’d beat any offer - it’s a good deal and apartment, will not be this way.
Which is why I never considered the idea of purchasing and managing rental properties.
For the record, after I rented a couple of places in Brigham city when I lived there, the property owner decided to move into the units as we left them. Both were thrilled with how clean and well maintained those units were. Both owners wrote glowing references, but I never got to use them.
I think there’s a general belief out there that it’s practically free money for the landlord. It’s not. It’s a good investment potentially, but you earn it.
We dont own rental property, but the best tenents are medival residents whom aren’t home much, dont party like biker gangs, tend to “pass on” decent apartments to underclassmen who are contractually obliged from 3-7 years (depending on the specialty).
We also dont understand why people don’t use the garage as a garage. We never scrape our windows, and the wear and tear on a vehicle in the sun and weather alone is a long term investment saver
Mixed lyrics, though. “Before the dawn of ancient history,” is from Stonehenge, while the picture is from the performance of Rock & Roll Creation. “And he looked and he saw that he was gooooood! Bwahahaha!”
Today’s pet peeve is me wearing out doing yard work and cleaning up my smoker after today’s use. Before getting sepsis, I could go all day. Now the light duty tasks get me after about an hour.
On the positive side, the front yard looks good now and the ribs and roast were smoked to perfection.
Three business-related pet peeves that happened today:
When we’re trying to schedule meetings with multiple people in multiple countries, give me actual windows of time when you’re available. Something like “between 2:00-4:00 ET” or “After 9:00 Mountain”. Telling me you’re available “in the morning” or “late afternoon” or “mid day” doesn’t help when I don’t know what time zone you’re in or what you consider to be too early or too late in the day. Coordinating everyone’s schedules for a 7am MT meeting when you said you’re available “in the morning” only to have you back out and cause everyone to reschedule because that’s “too early” is frustrating.
If you request a meeting a 6:00am - and you know full well that I’m waking up early to do that meeting - please have the decency to show up. Or at least let me know if you need to reschedule.
If you’re going to bother including a phone number in your work e-mail signature, maybe consider actually setting up the voice mail box for it?
Mrs. CCU does too, especially with clients from Europe. It used to be Asia, but now its the Europeans. Occasionally folks from the West Coast forget that she’s on the East Coast.
My Pet Peeve today is a social/governmental/business change that has been growing worse for a longtime, but the Pandemic hastened it to the point of being ridiculous:
It feels like no one ANSWERS their phone or calls anyone back who leaves a message! Some of these same organizations do respond eventually to email, but the response rarely addresses the actual question or problem.
Your experiences exactly match mine - only one I’ve ever heard from is Romney as well. And I’ll actually pass on a complement to his office - the responses are thorough, thoughtful, and intelligent. I’m certain he’s not actually personally replying, but he has a competent, professional staff.
I’ve heard from Senator Tillis here in NC. Richard Burr, gave me a canned response, but he might as well have not had a staffer even reply for how canned it was. I never hear back from my representatives (Federal or local). Senators do ok, but that’s about as big a stretch as I can give them.
