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“What The Eff?” Wednesday: Why I Hate Renting

Thembi Ford 20 August 2008 14 Comments

I’ve been living in the same apartment in West Philadelphia for eighteen months now. Having my own place was great at first, but then I started to notice how wack this building really is. Between the groveling black man upstairs who stole my Jet magazine one week and an insect infestation of biblical proportions another week, I started the summer in my one bedroom apartment seriously considering other options. Just this week the ghetto household on the corner was responsible for three neighborhood no-no’s: a domestic disturbance (“Go ahead and call the cops nigger! You on parole anyway! See what they say to you when they get here!”), waking up the whole block by blasting Teddy Pendergrass at 9:00 AM on Sunday, and having a perpetual yard sale of sorts by putting all of their belongings on the street and hanging clothes from a fence while the parolee sits on a Bowflex machine working out all day monitoring the goods. I even ran into my whirlwind disaster of a jumpoff from earlier this summer on the street (he didn’t notice me but I’m also not worried that he read my earlier post about him since he made it clear that he “don’t use the onlines that much”). And let’s not forget about that tomato I found at the local market. Ignoring all of the clear signs that it’s time for Thembi to relocate, I’ve still been procrastinating on finding a new spot. That is, until today, when I noticed some new trash cans by the side of the building. When I got inside, I saw that my ambiguously ethnic landlord, who only comes by to get his mail and never follows through on repairs, posted this notice in the foyer:


This man owns a building and I don’t. I guess I’ll be giving that 30 days notice now.

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14 Comments »

  • Anonymous said:

    NO he DIDNT type that mess up.

    # 20 August 2008 at 7:19 pm
  • mani said:

    ohh…recycling BINS LMAO

    thembi i hate u

    # 20 August 2008 at 7:37 pm
  • MsLindiwe said:

    Did this fool actually type “ATTANATON TEDENEST” and expect somebody to know what the hell that meant? This is crazier than my local Chinese food shop menu.

    # 20 August 2008 at 7:55 pm
  • Kellybelle said:

    Girl, move!

    # 20 August 2008 at 8:13 pm
  • Aida said:

    don’t move too far away from me!

    # 21 August 2008 at 8:54 am
  • Reginald Dorsey said:

    ATTANATON TEDENEST

    This reads like an Imperial edict come down from Augustus Caesar to the people of the province of Hispania that their impudence regarding their payment of Roman taxes will not be tolerated any further,

    # 21 August 2008 at 12:13 pm
  • Anonymiss said:

    My line of work is editing so you can imagine how badly it hurt to read that sign.

    # 21 August 2008 at 1:11 pm
  • A.Smith said:

    These comments are killing me.

    But your situation is killing me more!

    That sign… man… no. Take it back.

    BENZ??? Stop it, sir. Stop it. (Please go write that on the sign with a marker).

    I had to read it 12 times to figure out what the hell that even said.

    # 21 August 2008 at 2:07 pm
  • phx said:

    He got Thank You right.

    # 21 August 2008 at 4:05 pm
  • Thembi said:

    Even funnier yet is the fact that when I left this morning someone apparently took mercy on him and had taken the sign down.

    # 21 August 2008 at 4:11 pm
  • bourgieadventures said:

    Thembi, I feel your pain. I’ve been living in Mt. Airy with the worst neighbors ever. At least my landlord can spell and she’s clearly Black.

    West Philly is full of racially ambiguous landlords, though LOL

    # 21 August 2008 at 9:32 pm
  • What Would Thembi Do? » Blog Archive » “What The Eff?” Wednesday: Ross Dress for Less said:

    [...] the sign above suggests. That is the sign on the outside of the bathroom at the Mercer Mall store. Once again, someone has taken the time to type a ridiculous passive aggressive notice filled with errors and [...]

    # 28 January 2009 at 2:40 pm
  • “What The Eff?” Wednesday: Crazy Critters! | What Would Thembi Do? said:

    [...] current landlord (who could never be worse than my last one), keeps trying to out-think me regarding the mouse problem in this apartment. I’ve seen these [...]

    # 10 June 2009 at 6:24 am
  • Polobear718 said:

    Did you move yet?

    You should consider Francisville. All the cool kids are moving there.

    Seriously, it’s a nice neighborhood. You should check it out.

    # 13 October 2009 at 12:06 am

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