A BUG
Mr. Cleveland, a tenant, said he had bedbugs and couldn’t sleep at night. The exterminator sprayed Mr. Cleveland’s apartment and set up insect monitors – sticky paper. In a few days, the exterminator had found one spider, a flea, a nymph, and no bedbugs.
I told Mr.Cleveland, but he was not placated. I said, “You want out of the lease? Because if you do, you can move.” (I didn’t want a complainer.) He said he wanted to stay. He said he had a used mattress and bed spring.
“What! “I said. “Don’t you read the papers or watch TV?”
He bought a new mattress and bed spring. And then saw a new bug on his insect monitor.
“Get over it,” I said. “You have a bug. So do I. So does everybody else, except maybe the ER at the Cleveland Clinic, which they scrub every hour.”
“Get over it sounds condescending,” he said.
“Get over it! Do you want me to send the exterminator again — a third time — for a bug? You have a bug in your apartment. I have a bug in my house.”
“You are very condescending.”
“You don’t have bedbugs. You don’t have cockroaches. We’re crazy to be talking about this – a bug.”
“Can I move out?” he said.
“No, that deal is off. That was before I spent $205 on exterminators, with another $100 coming up.”
3 comments
Only appropriate that you mention these transactions as elementary schools in the area report bedbug infestations.
Between lice and bedbugs, being a school kid these days requires a healthy mental attitude on the merits of challenging one’s immune system with bug bites. Bert, you should charge, like Lucy, for psych counseling for your tenants.
My understanding, from afar, is that the preferred bedbug treatments are either freezing or heating them…extermination by chemical, which you implied suggests that your exterminator may have been also an extortionist.
It could be worse, it could be mice or even worse rats.
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