If you moved into an apartment that needed a bit of work in order to be a nice place to live, would you do the repairs yourself if you knew how, or would you call the landlord?

In this story, one handy college student is in this situation and decides to do the repairs himself. When his landlord finds out, he has to come up with a different plan.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Landlord doesn’t want me to fix anything? Fine by me.

Quite a few years ago, I became a student in some 85000 people town, and having a bit of money on the side from late grandpa, I decided I would find myself a one room flat instead of campus, where I would probably be drinking and doing stupid stuff.

I found a fairly cheap flat to rent, just at the outskirts of the town, not in the best condition, but, who cares. It’s a living.

Landlord seemed ok, in his late 40s or early 50s, we signed a contract and it was all done.

Now, before I start writing further, I always paid rent (and everything else, water electricity…) on time, and there was no issue with that, or noise from me, or anything of such kind.

The unit wasn’t in the best condition.

Now, once I moved in I noticed the flat was a mess, everything was waiting to collapse, from old wooden chairs with messed up wood joints, mold on the shower curtain, semi-broken window frame and a mattress you wouldn’t have slept on because it was completely worn out.

The guy cleverly managed to hide it and I missed all of it… But never mind, me being a bit handy with everything, I decided to fix most of it myself, so I bought bleach for the toxic sludge in the bathroom, some wood glue for the chairs, tile glue for the floor etc.

This guy comes in for rent next month and sees the tiles are in order (I removed the ugly yellow carpet).

He was angry. And I mean REALLY angry.

He decided to take the landlord very seriously.

“IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM, YOU CALL ME, DON’T FIX IT YOURSELF, STUPID VILLAGE IDIOT” (village idiot is maybe the nicest translation given that he insulted me based on me coming from a 500 people village).

Wanna play that way? Fine by me!

I’m not an agressive or confrontational guy, but I hold a grudge and I’m smart enough to make a bit of a ruckuss. I decided to take it literally enough and call him for every-little-flea-sized-problem-i-can-find.

So, a plan was made.

He put the plan into action.

I took pictures and documented EVERYTHING, from bigger issues to smallest (including a slightly bent night lamp leg). I looked up his scheldule (early days of social media were perfect for that) and crossed it with mine, so I knew when to call for repairs.

Now, under contract, he wasn’t allowed in unless I gave him permission to be there with me, so I decided I would make him do repairs while I’m there.

How to ensure he would fix everything? Easy. Backup all pictures with damages and say it will end up on all the social media and even the local newspaper if need be.

Or thanks to my buddies at college, ensure that his name would come out in a mandatory information e-mail for new students at the beggining of the school year so everybody would avoid him in the future.

The plan worked better than expected.

And…it worked, a bit to my suprise!

And the hell started for him.

He wasn’t used to manual labor (an “investor” dealing in grey areas of the economy), but he was too cheap to pay somebody to do it for him. He didn’t know how to screw in a lightbulb, let alone fix a kitchen table or window still.

I regularly called him to reschedule to most idiotic times like 6:00 am or 11:00 pm, sometimes even letting him start driving his car to the flat, only to call him back that I’m unavailable.

He took it as far as he could.

I was a monster, sending him requests to repair the smallest ant bites in the rug, and annoying him all the time, like humming a song he despised… until 2 months in when I realized he was white as talk powder and tired as infant.

It turned out he started smoking again due to stress, and couldn’t get any sleep because of me for days at a time.

Finally, when he went to unscrew the drain pipe in the mini kitchen, I asked him “want me to take care of it?”.

He looked at me the same way Bernie Sanders looks at Sweden’s spending budget and APOLOGIZED for being a jerk.

Finally, the flat was fairly ok to live in, and after the contract ended, I signed up for the campus room.

Living on campus definitely sounds like a better option in this case. You shouldn’t have to be that handy just to make an apartment livable.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

The ending was kind of surprising.

This does seem unusual.

The landlord was clearly stressed out.

The landlord never should’ve complained.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.