This is the motto my apartment complex. It just seems weird that any apartment let alone my apartment has a motto, but there it is. It would be an acceptable motto, if they could, you know, live up to it. I mean, who wouldn't want coming home to be the best part of your day? However they don't even come close so coming home tends to be the most aggravating part of my day, and I don't particularly care for my job, so this is saying something. So when I call the management office to talk to someone about a problem and I get the voicemail message that says, thank you for calling Ballena Village Apartments where coming home is the best part of your day, I want to rip the fucking phone out of the wall. Rest assured, in the unlikely event that I do ever own an apartment complex, you can bet your ass that it will not ever have a fucking motto.

Good. Now that I've got that off my chest, I can get down to business. I've been in my place about a month now. I should have been writing about my experience as it was happening, but it was a slow drip, like Chinese water torture that only finally came to a boil last night. Let me try to recap some of the problems.

I visited the apartment on a Monday and decided I would take the place. I was told I would be able to move in on Thursday. It turned out that I wasn't able to move in until Saturday. The reason: the guy who showed me the place was off Tuesday and Wednesday and no one else in the office wanted to do the paperwork. I should have taken this as a bad sign and told them to fuck off.

The day I come with the movers, the elevator is flooded and inoperable. This wouldn't be so bad except the key they gave me doesn't work in any of the outside doors.

I'm told that the office will accept packages that are too big to fit in my mailbox, but the first time I get a package, it isn't accepted and I have to go all the way to the Oakland airport to pick it up in person during my lunch hour.

The first time I tried to do laundry, I put a load in the washer, then I put the soap in. I went to put the quarters in, but there are no quarter slots, only a slot for a card. There's no machine in the laundry room in my building to buy a card. I go down to the main laundry room near the pool to get a card. There's a machine, but there's a hand written sign on it that says it's broken and won't be fixed for two days. So my laundry is sitting in the washer covered with soap. I have to take it out, put it back in the hamper and drive to the closest laundromat. Did I mention it was freezing outside?

I gave a list of things that needed to be fixed in my apartment to one of the onsite managers before I moved in. He said it would all be taken care before I moved in. Was it? Of course not. It took a month of persistent pestering to get them to work on my place.

There's a note taped on my door the first week after I move in telling me that the water needs to be turned off from 8:30-4:30 one day. Not a problem since I'm not in the apartment, usually, during those hours. When I come home after work and turn on the tap, it gurgles to life and spits out an effluvia of brackish brown sludge like some third world nightmare hotel. This water kills my Brita filter that's supposed to be good for three months in less than a week.

On December 31st, less than two weeks after I moved in, I get a long letter from the management telling me that there is going to be major plumbing work in my building and in my apartment. Did they mention this when I was thinking about moving in? Take a guess. People are going to have to come in and out my place for 7 days. I'm instructed, if I have pets, and I do, to keep them in the bedroom and keep the door shut. This is great advice except there is no door between my bedroom and the bathroom in my apartment. I tell them this and they provide an apartment two floors down where the cats can stay during the day. Bringing Fil down is no problem. But every time I take Mak out of the apartment, he wails like we're headed for kitty Auschwitz. It's even worse because there are all these plumbers around making horrible noises as they cut through dry wall and pipes. I have to leave my cats in this empty apartment all day.

Meanwhile the plumbers are working away on my apartment. One day I come and the toilet seat has been ripped from the toilet. No note. No nothing. Just the broken toilet seat. I say something and the next day I come home and the toilet seat has been replaced but the toilet doesn't work. One Sunday I came home from Tahoe to find that the plumbers had turned on the heater and left it running all weekend. They always leave the fucking lights, inconsiderate bastards.

Then I got a call from the management who said that the plumbers needed to work on the apartment where the cats were staying during the day and I needed to lock them in the bedroom of that apartment. On Tuesday, I ran into the foreman who told me that on that day and on Thursday (yesterday) I wouldn't have to move the cats downstairs, because they wouldn't be working on my place. They'd only need to come in for an inspection.

On Thursday I get a call from the management telling me they rented the apartment where I have my cats and I can't keep them there any longer. I'm not given another apartment as a replacement. When I come home Thursday night, the cat food and blankets that I left in the borrowed apartment are sitting on my door step. I open the door. Only one cat comes. This is unusual, but not alarming. Maybe Fil was sleeping when I came home and didn't want to get up.

I start looking for her. I can't find her in the usual spots. I look some more. Then I hear some faint meows coming from the bathroom. I look, but no cat. I can still hear the meows. They are coming from BEHIND THE FUCKING WALL. Like I said, the plumbers had cut massive sections of dry wall to get at the pipes. Fil had wandered in there and the stupid ass plumbers encased her in the walls. I got out my power screwdriver and liberated her. She was stunned.

I was so fucking pissed. And this on a day when the plumbers, according to the foreman, were not even supposed to be working in my place. When I talked to the foreman this morning, he apologized profusely, but insisted that he didn't me tell not to move the cats on Thursday. What was I going to do, sit there and argue with him about what he told me? Unbelievable.

The big question now is what to do. I don't want coming home to be the worst part of my day, but I fully expect this sort of bullshit to continue over the next 11 months. The complex is owned by a large real estate conglomerate located conveniently in Walnut Creek. I think I'm going to have to go pay them a little visit.