If you care about your job and your workplace, it really shows.

In today’s story, an apartment manager isn’t very good at his job and actually decides not to show up for work when he knows the building is going to be inspected.

Meanwhile, the janitor loves his job and cares about the building.

He’s the only employee there when the inspector shows up, so the inspector assumes he’s the manager.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Dress for the job you want, not the job you have

The management company that oversees my apartment building has always been total crap.

Packages go missing from the mail room, repairs take forever, staff are unfriendly, not at all worth what we pay in fees.

There was only one solid employee, and he almost made up for everyone else’s incompetence — the janitor, Ruan.

He kept everything sparkling clean and even pitched in when other people slacked off (helping with repairs, ID checking in the lobby, and more) just because he took pride in the building.

Someone is coming to inspect the building.

Then the corporate oversight of the management company changed and the new boss was having all the properties inspected to do a quality spot check on the individual building managers.

Our manager, the winner that he is, decided the best course of action would be to not come in the day of the oversight visit so that it would have to be cancelled.

The hope was the checker would just inspect what he could without the manager on site — which wasn’t much — since he’d have already made the trip out there.

My apartment has terrible cell reception and no AC, so I spend a ton of time downstairs in the lobby, which has both.

I was able to overhear most of the planning for this visit as a result.

The inspector assumed Ruan was the manager.

Our janitor, Ruan, knew too and he was spiffing everything up like new in excitement.

Fixing a few broken things the repairs guy ignored and even bringing in fresh cut flowers to the lobby out of his own pocket.

Ruan dressed up in a collared shirt and khakis for the visit.

(He didn’t know the manager was bailing, I just heard it hanging out in the lobby late one night.)

So when the corporate inspector arrived, Ruan was the only guy he saw.

He was dressed up.

So the inspector shook his hand and started rattling off the things he wanted shown to him.

Ruan knows this building better than anyone else on the staff so, you could tell he was a little overwhelmed at being seen as the point person, but he knew the answers to every one of the inspector’s questions.

The tenants made her to praise Ruan that day.

Meanwhile a few tenants and contractors who frequent the building passed and all knew Ruan, brought him concerns about their apartments.

Those on the staff who knew we were being inspected even made a point to say, “Yah, Ruan’s the guy if you’ve got a problem.”

So the end of the inspection must’ve come because they re-congregated in the lobby.

The inspector told Ruan he wanted to get his full name so he could make a note in his employee file of how well he’s run the building so far, and that he’d meet with him later in the week to discuss fixes for the problems he found.

The inspector finally realizes he’s not talking to the manager.

Ruan, shocked, is like “You want to meet with me again?”

And the inspector is like, “Sure, I’m looking forward to a long working relationship. I like to meet with each building once a month. Sorry, what was your name again, for the file?”

Ruan told him and the inspector goes, “Hold on, I thought someone called Eddie was the manager here?”

And Ruan explained, clearly embarrassed and scared he’d done something wrong, that he is not the manager.

The manager didn’t come in today.

Ruan was in for a huge surprise!

The inspector then went and spoke with a few people in the building on his own while Ruan absolutely lost his cool in the lobby, thinking he was going to be fired or get the building censured or something.

Eventually the inspector comes back and he sits Ruan down and tells him he might not be manager in title but he’s manager in action, so if he wants it, he’s got a new job.

The man cried.

Ruan’s been working as a contractor through a janitorial service, not directly for the building.

So no benefits, considered part time, very little job security or support.

And he’d just gone from that to a cushy office job in the building he loves in the blink of an eye.

He verifies that the inspector has the power to promote Ruan.

I was sitting on the couch a few spaces down from them (the lobby has a sitting area with tables and chairs and couches).

I felt compelled to ask, before anyone got too excited, “Hey, excuse me, can you do that? Or could someone veto this?”

Because I hated to think Ruan would be so excited only to have some sort of bureaucracy or old boys club shoot down his promised opportunity.

The inspector turns to me and informs me he’s the new COO of the management company, and final hiring decisions are at his sole discretion.

Things are looking up!

Then he asked who I was and I basically said, “I was just leaving,” and I got out of there before my big mouth complicated things any further.

This week Ruan started officially.

We’ve got flowers in the lobby every day now and a dripping faucet I’ve been waiting six weeks to have fixed is scheduled for repair on Thursday.

He didn’t work there, but he does now!

He definitely deserved that promotion!

And, it serves the manager right for basically hiding from the inspector.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

It’s great that Ruan got promoted.

This person knows that there are a lot of clueless building managers.

It would be interesting to know how Eddie reacted.

This person is also happy about Ruan’s success.

He worked hard, and it showed!

Good for him.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.