#superintendant

superintendant + butlr ai

Roadrunner Print & Mail's printing solutions are tailored for the classroom. From vibrant posters to engaging worksheets, our top-notch prints enhance the learning experience for students and educators alike.

There's something about landlord/building superintendents that is inherently awkward.  It's like being slightly creepy is a necessary qualification for the job.  That and being mysteriously Eastern European. 

I've had a lot of awkward interactions with landlords and supers but a certain incident stands out.  I was living in New York and our super was, no surprise, a skeevy Eastern European dude (btw, I'm half Eastern European myself, so no judgment on that end, it's just weird how all building managers happen to be some strange ethnic blend of Russian/Ukrainian/Armenian, basically most nationalities that ends with -ian).  

When we moved in our stove didn't work and six months later... it still didn't work.  My roommate and I weren't exactly culinary masters, but it sucked not to be able to heat up a frozen pizza.  Finally our super sent over a repairman and the guy told us he had to come fix it at 7am on a Saturday because the oven was leaking gas and we could die at any moment.

"Well then hasn't it been leaking gas for six months?" we asked.

"Yes."

"So we could have died at any time for the past six months?"

"I guess so."

"So can't it wait until like 10am?"

"No."

Next the mirror broke off the bathroom cabinet.  As a girl it is very disconcerting not to have a mirror in your bathroom.  We called the super repeatedly and it took him several months to respond.

Then one day he just randomly showed up with his two pre-teen kids.  It was close to Christmas and we had a Christmas tree up in our apartment, complete with glass ornaments.  His kids zoomed into the apartment on those weird rollerblade/shoes like an acne covered tornado.

"Umm, hi..." 

"I'm here to fix the mirror."

He had in no way given us any indication that he would be coming to fix the mirror.  We weren't even sure he had gotten any of our messages.  For all we knew he had given us a fake number.  And then, out of the blue, here he was.

"Oh, ok."

While he took a look at the mirror, the kids zoomed perilously around the living room, knocking into furniture, and causing my dog to have an epileptic fit after which he dug himself a bomb shelter in my bedroom and didn't come out for three days.

"Yeah, I can't fix it.  I don't have the parts.  I'll come back."

"When?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"Oh... ok.  Well my roommate and I are usually at work during the day, so..."

"Yeah, you are very busy, huh?"

"I guess so."

"Too busy to have coffee with me?"

"What?"

"You and me, we should have coffee.  Or we could go out to dinner.  You like Ukrainian food?  We could go dancing after.  I like salsa dancing."

One of his kids zoomed by, crashed into the Christmas tree and knocked a bunch of ornaments onto the ground.  The glass shattered, around his feet, but he ignored it.  The glass crunched under his wheels as he zoomed back the other side of the room.

"So... salsa?  What do you think?"

In my mind I tried to explain this away as some sort of normal superintendent/tenant conversation.  Like maybe he invited all the tenants out salsa dancing... and to dinner... in front of his kids.

"Ummm, like you said, I'm very busy."

"Too busy to have coffee?  No one is too busy to have coffee."

"Will it get my mirror fixed any faster?"

"No, probably not."