Imagine moving into an apartment where the landlord does a lot of annoying things. Would you humor him and comply with his demands, or would you stand up for yourself?

In this story, one couple is in this exact situation, and they comply with the landlord’s demands until they find another place to live. Then, they have nothing to lose by standing up for themselves and refusing to comply regardless of if the landlord is wrong or right.

It’s pretty hilarious the way the landlord reacts when he doesn’t get his way for the first time!

Let’s read all about it.

If you can’t handle the truth…

I once had the stupidest landlord (here on out named SL).

Our first warning came when all three ladies in the local consumer dispute council flinched badly when they heard his name.

Hubby n’me were there to get a standard rental contract because SL’s home made version looked somewhat dodgy when it came to how the deposit should be handled.

The ladies could only say so much.

The ladies all agreed that we had a legal right to use the standard contract and strongly insisted we should avoid signing any other version.

They aren’t allowed to say anything about other peoples’ disputes there, but there were A LOT of meaningful looks getting thrown around.

Both hubby and I noticed and agreed that we had to be cautious onwards.

They didn’t want to stay there long.

We moved in anyway: we were both going to uni and needed roof over our heads.

Still, we immediately started looking into other options.

Which turned out to be a wise move: during the six months we rented there he abused our friend verbally and horribly because he had parked his old car in a public parking spot not too far from the house.

The car was old and cheap, but clean and otherwise perfectly normal.

But that wasn’t the only annoying thing he did.

He asked us repeatedly to move our trash cans to new sides of the house, which we did. It wasn’t hard, but it was annoying that he couldn’t decide where he wanted them.

He tried to sell our sports equipment (skis and bikes), which he had offered to store in his shed when we first negotiated terms.

And I could go on and on, there were something every single day: hundreds of off-putting and petty issues that obviously meant the world to him as he always yelled his orders, looking like imminent heart attack personified.

They eventually had the opportunity to move.

Hubby and I agreed to SL’s many whims: we just wanted to make as little fuss as possible and get the hell out of Dodge.

The single dad to two toddlers renting the apartment next to us moved in after us and out before us; I didn’t know exactly what transpired, but Mr. SL wasn’t any kinder to kids.

Happily, our best other housing option finally came through and we were of course super relived.

But before we managed to give our notice we got the single moment that made up for six months of treading on egg shells.

The landlord complained again.

It was late autumn and the first snow had started falling as we drove home one evening.

The next morning, as we were still putting the kettle on, violent knocking was heard at the door.

Outside stood SL, absolutely livid and yelling that we either had to brush away the snow before parking or park at the public parking spot, because he now had visible tracks in his driveway.

He was right too, you could see the melted tracks there. But, as we had a new (and fantastic) housing contract signed and in our pocket, we for once didn’t give one single damn.

This time, he wasn’t going to get his way.

I: “So?”

SL: “You can’t drive on the snow!”

I: “…”

I was just looking at him, as his face rapidly went through every color in the red spectrum: which was both worrying and somewhat disturbing.

She finally said what she’d been thinking this whole time.

While I pondered his survival chances, he made his near-fatal mistake, as he yelled, top of his lungs:

SL: “DO YOU THINK I’M STUPID?”

I: “… Yes, I do think that.”

I have never been so calm and confident in my life as in that exact moment.

It ended perfectly.

I seriously thought he was going to keel over and die then, right there on our doorstep, but his apoplexy hindered him from any more yelling: there was just steam coming out at that point, so we closed the door on him.

After a few minutes he managed to stagger away and returned not much later with a termination letter, which we accepted with glee and broad smiles as we informed him that we would only need about half the notice period.

Since we had insisted on the standard contract we also got our deposit back intact: he couldn’t point out one new single thing out of order when we moved.

We had documented everything with pictures as we moved in and had the local consumer dispute council firmly at our backs.

I’m surprised this story didn’t end with drama getting the security deposit back. That worked out almost too easily.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a landlord who learned the hard way not to try to keep a security deposit he should have paid.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

It was three ladies not tree ladies.

Another person would’ve handled it slightly differently.

This person doesn’t think the story is really malicious compliance.

But this person explains why it is malicious compliance.

I can’t believe the landlord was trying to sell their sports equipment. That’s stealing! They could’ve reported him for that.

I’m glad they were able to move out fairly quickly and that they took lots of pictures when they moved in. They trusted their instincts about this landlord and made sure they weren’t letting him take advantage of them.

I’m sure moving never felt so good.