{"id":33617,"date":"2025-12-10T08:24:35","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T13:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=33617"},"modified":"2025-12-10T08:27:46","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T13:27:46","slug":"talents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/10\/talents\/","title":{"rendered":"TALENTS"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nI knew a building inspector who could smell rats. He didn’t have to see rat droppings; he could smell<\/em> rats.<\/p>\n

I knew a handyman who could jimmy almost any apartment door with a credit card.<\/p>\n

My talent is figuring out if a tenant has skipped out or not. I knock loudly on the tenant’s door. If there’s no response, I yell “maintenance” a couple times<\/span> and bring out the master key. I yell “maintenance” a third time, and step into the apartment. A couch, a bed . . . always. Skippers leave behind the heavy stuff. TVs, for sure. Everyone upgrades his TV on move-out. Some small items are left behind: beer bottles, pennies, unopened bills. Usually enough to fill three or more garbage bags.<\/p>\n

\"\"The stove is fried. The refrigerator is always missing<\/span> <\/span>a plastic shelf. Why?<\/p>\n

Underwear and socks . . . gone.\u00a0 No socks means no tenant. The guy definitely skipped.<\/p>\n

Some of his clothes are on the floor. Some good, some bad. I found a tux left behind. The guy was 6-4. I had the pants legs shortened. (He wasn’t a skipper. He was a dead man. And his place was clean.)<\/p>\n

I enjoy wrecked apartments<\/span><\/span>. Who doesn’t? A building manager once phoned me with on-the-scene reporting from a wrecked apartment: “It looks like a cyclone went through here crossways!”<\/p>\n

But occasionally a manager will not react positively. “I’m creeped out,” one manager told me, standing in the common-area hallway while I went into the suite. She was creeped out by a few bottles of beers, cat urine and cigarette butts. (Probably because she had to clean it.)<\/p>\n

I phone the skipper to make sure he’s definitely gone. I say, “You out?”\u00a0 Nothing more that than. No lectures about housekeeping. Nobody wants to be criticized on their house-cleaning skills.\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I knew a building inspector who could smell rats. He didn’t have to see rat droppings; he could smell rats. I knew a handyman who could jimmy almost any apartment door with a credit card. My talent is figuring out if a tenant has skipped out or not. I knock loudly on the tenant’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landlord-biz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33617"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33839,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33617\/revisions\/33839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}