It has taken me a week to calm down enough to write about this, getting an apartment turned out to be far more difficult and stressful than I would have imagined. Typically the temporary housing people would take care of everything, we only need to sign the papers and wait for the furniture to be moved in. The management at Cambridge Court (CC) had other ideas. Talking with temp housing I got the impression that the mgmt had no intention of making things either quick or easy, this was my first warning.
The main constraint was that we had to be out of the hotel by noon. I loaded up a fair amount into the rental van (remember the accident, our van was in the shop till the afternoon) and headed over to CC. They informed me that I could not get a key or sign the lease until everyone was there, myself, my wife and son since he is over 18. No way, no go, we don’t give a damn about your situation there are no changes to how things are done. I ask, beg, cajole and get not a little irritated over this huge inconvenience. So, I have been denied entry and cannot empty the van in order to go back and bring the next load, the only option is to load up everything in the van so that I can get out of the hotel by the deadline, back to the hotel. Well, I managed to get everything in the van, been a long time since I could move everything in one car load. So I took my full van over to a dear friends house and stewed there for a few hours since the others would not be available until after 4.
When got back to CC at about 3:30 I was feeling a bit put off, irritated, stressed, ANGRY. That came across in my initial dealings with them, especially irritating that when the person came out of the office she did not have the lease documents. So, as I said I was angry and that feeling was coming across, this woman kept telling me I had to go outside and calm down before she would do anything, the hell with that, I just wanted to get this done. Calmed my self down and after asking her to bring out the lease about 10 times she finally gets down to business. I just wanted to get this done so that when the others arrived they just needed to sign and we could get settled in.
Also, one other thing is that the rental furniture was going to show up at around 4:30, it sure would be nice to have the keys so that we could open the door for them.
I get through the initial document and start on the next one when Kathleen arrives, she is pretty pissed off also and that feeling also comes across fairly strongly. Well, when the woman from CC tries to tell Kathleen what to do her response was somewhat unladylike at which point the CC manager says get out, the deal is off. Just as well, would not want to have to deal with these people for the next few months.
Hmm, well we are essentially homeless at this point but that did not last long. A friend had an extra room available where we could crash for a few days until the next place is arranged. (The previous day when things were looking they were stalling I ran off to a different apt complex, a much nicer (and friendlier) one, the place we should have gone to in the beginning.)
In the end we had a place to lay our heads, a nice little house where we could rest and recuperate from the days events.