You can sometimes be in for quite a few surprises if you decide to rent office space in a building.

And that’s not always a good thing…

Well, at least that wasn’t the case in this story from Reddit!

The person who wrote it explained that they were sent to do work for their company that was moving into a new building.

Slum lord won’t let the company out of a 5 year lease. I get the building condemned.

“This is about the company I work for and a trip I took because I had to wire a building for a computer network because the building owner wouldn’t.

Backstory:

Our company was moving a remote site to a new building. As the IT guy for the company, I was asked to look at the new building and get network ports marked out. The landlord refused to put in any low voltage lines, and we got quotes, but they were thousands of dollars.

Enter me, my car, and 4 boxes of cat 6 plenum. It’s about an 8 hour drive, and I was doing about 30 drops. Not a ton, but still, a few days work in someplace that’s already built up. and its drop ceiling with insulation on top. Messy, itchy work.

They broke down what happened.

Day 1. We get there Monday morning at the start of the month. It’s actually a cool summer morning, and we’re from further south, so no one notices the AC not working for about an hour. Slowly, the building begins heating up. It gets to 80 by noon, 85 at 3 PM. The rooms with floor to ceiling windows are greenhouses.

And it was not pretty…

It’s absolutely miserable. We’ve been told by the workers still on site that the leasing company was told there was no AC in our building 3 weeks ago. The other thing is there are STILL WORKERS ON SITE. The building isn’t completed. So much for being ready for a handover day 1.

Day 2. We’re getting agitated. Its 80 degrees in the AM when we first walk in. Its sweltering. The other guy that came up with me is the facilities manager. He’s screaming at people over the phone to fix the ******* AC. We’re all exhausted from the heat by 3 PM. I found a 4 foot hole in the ducting when I opened the ceiling tile. The AC was blowing, but there was no cold air. We are told the compressor is broken.

And the hits kept on coming!

Day 3. More of the same. Miserable in the morning, I’m finally getting the last lines punched in on the patch panel. The AC guys arrive about 10 AM. They finally fix the unit at 2 PM. We ask them what they did. They said “A lot of things” We again said “what did you do” the reply was “we can’t tell the tenants”.

RED FLAG ALERT!

We contacted our realtor, she said she would look into what was done. She sends an email later that night that says “they changed the refrigerant from r22 to r410a.” I tell the facilities guy “No way dude. Thats like putting gas in a diesel motor, they’d have to change out the entire system. They didn’t do that in 4 hours” They basically duct taped and wd-40’d that thing back together and it will run poorly for a month or so, then give out, and we’d be stuck with a replacement.

Things continued to be miserable.

Day 4. Still no running water to some areas, still workers on site, the AC can’t keep up with the noonday sun, and it still hits around 80 by the end of the day. AC runs continuously. We’re packing up all the stuff we moved in and moving out. I notice all the fire sprinklers look like they have moved, and the metal protection around the drop tile has fallen to the floor.

The sprinklers are no longer protruding from the tiles in places, in others, they are quite a bit lower than they were. Yep, the AC fools STOOD ON THE FIRE SPRINKLERS to fix their lousy duct work. We are looking for a friendly way out. We contact the landlord and say “You haven’t delivered a finished building, we’re moving out, the lease is broken” Landlord has a 36 page lease. Landlord won’t let us out of the lease, its 5 years. This is NOT starting off well.

So it was time to get an attorney involved.

We get in contact with the corporate lawyer and the realtor, they both agree we’re kind of screwed. We are desperate for any way out. I start looking at the fire system (I used to run all kinds of low voltage lines, fire, security, etc). There is no fire panel in our portion of the building. No smoke detectors are hooked up to anything. More red flags.

One of our employees that was moving the heavy gear says “Oh yeah, I meant to mention, I never saw any building permits anywhere” DING DING DING. They did this buildout, including demolition, running new plumbing and power lines, and destroying the fire system— WITHOUT A CITY PERMIT. Cue the call to city inspectors office.

And then things got ugly for the building owner.

Day 5. I wasn’t here for this part, but the facilities manager told me this: “The city inspector pulled the permits for the building. There weren’t any. He finds multiple violations of city code. Red tagged our area, removed the certificate of occupancy. When I told him to check the fire system like you said, he just goes ‘Oh no, no, no, I have to make a call’. He calls the fire marshal.”

Day 8. Fire marshals arrive on scene. Find no active alarm system in our portion of the building. Red tag. Find the sprinkler riser for the ENTIRE building in our area. No water pressure. Condemned the entire building.

And then things got REALLY ugly.

Basically, they wouldn’t let us out of the building because we signed a lease, even though they never delivered a building in any semblance of working order. Called the building inspector, got them smoked, who then called the fire marshal, who condemned the entire building.

They are still trying to fight us over it, but we’re pushing for them not only refunding our deposit and the rent, which they have already done, but for all the time spent moving gear in and out, and all the wiring. Our lawyer says they don’t have a leg to stand on, and he’s happy for them to pay his fees as well.”

And here’s what people had to say.

This person was impressed and happy with the outcome.

Another individual didn’t think that these conditions sounded too bad.

This reader said they might have even saved lives by doing this.

One reader warned of certain traps with contracts.

And this Reddit user said some bad apples give the construction industry a bad name.

All I kept picturing while reading this story was the movie The Money Pit.

Admit it, you did the same thing!