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Imagine moving out of an apartment when your landlord calls and tells you that you’re not getting $100 of your security deposit back because the oven isn’t clean. Would you accept that or insist on coming back and cleaning the oven?

In this story, one renter is in this exact situation and decides to clean the oven. However, when he arrives he notices a big problem. It’s obvious that the floors were recently revarnished.

He’s not sure what to do. Does he walk across the floors even though they’re not dry yet, or does he give up $100 of his security deposit?

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Oh… I’ll clean the oven

Many years ago, a day after I finished moving out of my first appartement, my landlord called me up to say that I would not be getting my security deposit back because I had not cleaned the oven.

I didn’t want to lose that $100, so I asked if I could come back and clean it.

They said it had to be cleaned by X date, so I agreed that it would happen.

On X day I show up ready to clean the oven only to open the door and see that they had, just that day, revarnished the parquet flooring in the appartement.

OP was not about to lose the security deposit!

I called the landlord and explained my predicament and they insisted that if the oven wasn’t clean I lost the deposit.

Queue malicious compliance: I tied my shoes on tight, and slowly walked across the sticky varnish leaving footprints with every step.

It took me 30 minutes to clean the oven and the varnish fumes burned my eyes and lungs, but I got that oven sparkling.

The building superintendent was not happy!

The next day I got a call from the superintendent of the building yelling at me that I ruined the floor and that the new tenants were supposed to move in that day. He yelled that it would cost $400 to fix and that they had to delay the tenant move in on order for it to dry.

I calmly relayed the fact that I had asked the landlord about it and was told that unless that oven was clean I lost my cash.

He apologized and said he was going to have some choice words for the landlord.

Luckily I had already dropped off my keys and got my deposit back.

The landlord really messed up!

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person is glad it worked out for OP.

Another person points out how easy it is to clean an oven.

Here’s another story about an oven.

But this person is surprised at how the story ended.

I think the superintendent understood that the landlord was the one who messed up, not the tenant. He admitted that he called to double check if he should still clean the oven under the circumstances and was basically told yes.

I’m glad he got his money back, but it didn’t work out well for anyone else in this story.

The landlord definitely didn’t think through the consequences.