There’s nothing worse than when you know you’re not in the wrong, but someone keeps insisting you are!

That’s what happened to this man and his husband when someone from their rental company decided to be rude to them.

This escalated quickly and led to some harsh words, phone calls, and hopefully, a happy ending.

Let’s get into it…

Boss of Condescending Employee Needs to Apologize for His Behavior

About 7 years ago, I (25M) and my husband (32M) (our ages 7 years ago) were renting in an old building where all the apartments had 2 water meters (hot and cold), one in the kitchen and one in the bathroom, EXCEPT ours.

In fact we only had a hot and cold water meter in the bathroom.

Every year, around June, we had to read the meter and write down the numbers on a sheet in the lobby of the building.

This sheet was put in place by the real estate agency which managed the water charges (A little weird but it was specific to the neighborhood).

Everything went well for the 5 years preceding the story (From 2013 to 2018).

They’ve lived there for some time now…

One day, while we were having lunch in a well-known fast-food restaurant, I received a call with the following speech (I do the best I can remember and we will call the correspondent Gertrude)”

Gertrude: “Hello, I’m Gertrude with [the real estate agency], I’m calling you because we are missing the water meter readings.”

Me: “Oh? I’m sure I wrote them down on the sheet in the building. I could give them back to you when we get back.”

Gertrude: “You noted the ones in the bathroom but we are missing the ones in the kitchen.”

[Ambient noise from the fast food restaurant that forces me to ask him to repeat]

Gertrude: “I know that young people often party but you could go elsewhere to answer me.”

Me: “Madam, we are outdoors, plus we do not have a water meter in the kitchen and never have.”

Gertrude: “You obviously have a meter in the kitchen and it is indicated on your lease.”

Me (starting to get a little annoyed): “Madam, I assure you that we only have one meter, we fill it every year this way and it has never been a problem. But I can check on the lease.”

Gertrude: “Everything is noted in the lease, that is if you haven’t lost it.”

She’s coming in hot…

Throughout the conversation she was extremely condescending, “insinuating” that because we were young we were always having parties and not putting anything away so we had probably lost our copy of the lease.

It angered me off like I’ve never been angered before. Even my husband was surprised by my anger.

As soon as we got home, I retrieved the copy of our lease which was stored at the top of the “Apartment” folder in our ADMINISTRATIVE cabinet.

I took a photo of where it was noted that we only had ONE water meter in the bathroom.

I opened it in Paint, and circled it in red with arrows pointing to it. I then wrote an email to one of his colleagues (below, because I keep everything):

“Good morning, I am coming to you today to inform you that one of your colleagues who did not give us her name has been calling us since yesterday, September 4, 2018, to have our cold and hot water meter readings that we had previously provided on the sheet provided for this purpose in the lobby of our building at [address].

Despite our constant repetitions that the meter is ONLY in the bathroom, she absolutely wants the ones in the kitchen which DO NOT EXIST.

We therefore give you as an attachment a scan of our inventory showing the location of the meters and proof that we know what we are saying. Please provide it to your colleague.

In case she did not note the information here are our meter readings again:

Cold water (meter number [censored]) 00444 503 cubic meters

Hot water (meter number [censored]) 00249 133 cubic meters

Thanking you for your attention and wishing you a good day.”

A scathing email!

As you can read, I was very salty. But as you might expect, it doesn’t end here.

The next morning, when I woke up, my cell phone rang again with the same number as the day before.

I hand my phone directly to my husband and tell him I want nothing to do with her and that he needs to take over. So he is the one who answers.

She begins to insult him, that our email was not very cordial and very condescending.

She then told him that she checked her files and that our building did have 2 meters (one in the kitchen, one in the bathroom) and that she blamed us for being late in reading the water meters.

That if we did not provide her with this information, she would have to have a technician come at our expense to retrieve the reading.

He repeats to him that we only have one water meter and that unless we knocked down a wall, dismantled the kitchen or it was hidden behind the VMC we had never found it.

That all the other apartments had 2 meters but that the owner of ours had all put them in the same one.

And that the email attachment clearly proved what we said.

Then he told her that if she didn’t believe us she could check it with the building manager and that if she had nothing more to add we were going to have a good morning without her and he hung up.

We don’t really know what happened next on his side, however late the same evening, at more than 8 p.m., we received a new call from another number.

Hopefully it’s resolved…

On the line, the Rental Management Director. He manages the entire rental portfolio of the city’s real estate agency.

He introduces himself, he tells us that the situation with our water meter has been resolved, that in fact we only have one water meter and that he is very sorry that we were disturbed by his colleague. And that it wouldn’t happen again.

You could tell he had other things to do with his evening but that he had to do this.

We were never contacted by Gertrude again (not even for an apology) and we don’t really know what happened to her but since it was the Director who called us we can say that she got a good slap on the wrist.

Let’s get into the comments.

This person had a pun-y response!

While others liked the story but were unsure about “revenge”.

And this commenter didn’t think it was worth their time.

Seems like a lot of wasted energy and anger on everyone’s part.

I’m glad it’s over!

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.