Now it’s time to own what’s yours.
My Story began many years ago when my hubby and I started working in the Property Management industry in Ontario. Over the years, I learned many things about the work and saw even more. I learned about people as Tenants too!
Providing Tenants with a safe and clean place to live involves many parts and it wasn’t an easy job. There were no set hours and some days went long, but it was rewarding work.
Over the years, hubby and I became known as the “fixers” as we were very good at getting a property up to standards. If you had a problem with Tenants or the property itself needed an overhaul, we did it. I did a lot of good work over the 18 years in the industry!
I’ve done a lot of training over the years in the Residential Tenancies Act, Property Standards, Fire Safety, as well as Health and Safety, and even CPR! I’ve completed computer courses, and Office Software, and even trained in Yardi, the Property Management Software. I’ve worked with Quickbooks too! I also had extensive training in Customer Service.
In 2004 I completed a Computer Repair Program from home, where I learned to build my own computers. It was a hobby of mine after, repairing desktops and laptops, printers and other hardware. I saved a lot of money for people, including my employers, over the years as I would fix their systems for free! I became the in-house IT person at many places I also lived and worked in over the years. The skill became handy over time!
I gave a lot to my career and I don’t have many regrets, as I loved what I did and I became very good at it. What got to me over time, was the lack of respect we would get from some Tenants, even some companies. There were quite a few good ones, but the bad apples tend to take over and make your life miserable.
I am talking about the entitled people who thought my job was to cater to their every whim. The ones who demanded and expected, everything to be brand new, and to their standards, not the City’s. The people who think nothing about calling you at 3:00 a.m. after a night on the town to let them into their apartment as they can’t find their keys and expect you to jump to their bidding…
Then there are the Bullies. When I still worked at this building, I didn’t get into shouting matches with Tenants, I would stand there and let them vent, then ask them to leave the office. It wasn’t worth it for me to get into an argument! If they refused, I left. I didn’t make the rules, I just enforced the ones already in place and that was my safety. Even that didn’t work with these Tenants!
Over the years, I have been yelled at many times, pushed a few even and they were charged for doing so with the Police. The worst was in 2011 when I was shot at. We didn’t find that person. Thankfully I dropped my keys at the same time so it missed my head when I bent over to get my keys. On the same property, I had my car’s windshield smashed, lug nuts removed from the car tires, and it was even stolen one night, but with the help of YouTube, I got it back 3 days later. That was one of the worst properties we lived in, which is why it lasted only 3 months! We got out of there fast!
Bullies are a different breed… Especially the ones I had in my last property. They knew they needed repairs done in the unit, but whenever arrangements were made to fix them, the timing was always “inconvenient” for them and they said no to entry, in writing at that. They knew they needed repairs you would think they would jump at the chance of getting them fixed. Unfortunately, even when I gave them more than 24 hours notice, it was still denied, all because I didn’t proceed as they wanted!
I appreciate that I was making a lot of changes in how the property was managed at the time but these changes were needed in order to follow Property Standards. With the RentSafeTO program coming out in July 2017, a lot of work was required in order to pass it.
Replacing the elevator there was a major change that was required, including updating the office there. The TV on the wall for the camera system, the glass L-shaped desk there, with other little office supplies, all came from my own home. Even the portable A/C unit in the elevator room was ours! It was needed and as it was winter, we couldn’t find any in stock anywhere so we were nice enough to give them ours to use.
We were very good to the Property Owners there and they know it. They turned around and abused my trust by breaking a promise they made to me, that of taking these Tenants to Civil Court over the domains they made filled with libel and defamation of all involved. Yes, that hurt after all I endured there! Anyway, I digress…
Tenants who bully are a different breed, as they truly believed that my job was to cater to them and their needs. It wasn’t. It wasn’t my job to “hand deliver” notices nor to worry about “inconveniencing” the tenants with entry for repairs, especially contractors. I had no need to become personally invested in any Tenant.
I forgive myself for some of my emotional outbursts during this mess. While it is understandable, some were pretty extreme. I became very angry over what they did. Even with all the Legal losses they experienced, they still kept going with their propaganda against me and others in the content of their many domains. I had to learn to let that go, which is hard for me and took longer than I thought, but I had to do that for my own sanity.
I own my own actions in this mess, even my own site. As long as those sites remain registered and online, my site will be there to be found as well. When they are gone, this content will change and I have no problem with that. I look forward to it actually!
As the poster below says, toxic people enjoyed my endless, desperate, futile attempts to explain things to them, as they already understood what their actions meant. The more frustrated I became the more encouraged they were to continue. It isn’t my job to make grown adults understand simple concepts.
So it was time for me to stop and leave them in their misery and do all I can to protect myself and my family… By exposing the Adult Tenant’s Bullies’ actions, not the individuals.
In the end, I have exposed the Toxic Tenant’s outright lies of being familiar with my personal life as they try to claim in their comments. They don’t know me, how could they? They were just Tenants from my job.
Once you know that, you will see their comments in a whole new light!
