Our shower door was seriously effed up. So we let our apartment complex’s maintenance people know. On a random morning at about 8:45 am, the maintenance guy pounded – and I mean earth-shattering pounding here – on my door, scaring the bejeezus out of me.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you would be coming this morning!” I said. The bedroom – which is between the maintenance guy and the bathroom – was covered with little mountains of dirty laundry.

Also, I was WORKING. In my jammies. Without a bra. Cause that’s how I roll.

Maintenance Guy shrugged and tromped through the living room in his work boots. I scurried ahead of him, to move the laundry away from his giant, boot-clad feet. He stomped past me into the bathroom.

“Oh here, let me move that out of your way,” I said, pointing to our beautiful blue bath mat in front of the shower. The one upon which my husband and I dry our squeaky clean, freshly showered feet.

“That’s okay,” Maintenance Guy said, standing Right On Top of the Bath Mat.

***

This is not new. At our old apartment, I refused to call the maintenance people. For three years. Because every time we called them during the first year we lived there, they’d make a Huge Mess. They’d track mud in on their boots. They’d leave paint and sticky black stuff all over the bathroom. They’d leave crud in the bathtub. It would take me at least an hour to clean up after them.

Plus, one time a maintenance guy showed up DRUNK. It was a… um… plumbing emergency. So we’d called him after hours. But he was putting off fumes, he was so far gone.

So I just stopped calling. The handle fell off the stove? Eh… We can deal with it for three years. The tile is falling off the wall in the bathroom? Yeah, let’s just cover it up with something… for three years. The heater doesn’t work in the guest room? Honey, you can wear a sweater when you’re in there, right? The guest room ceiling has a gaping hole in it? Well, we never have guests anyway. No big deal.

***

For the first eighty bajillion weeks we lived here, our cable service was spotty. We had to take the brand new cable box/DVR into the cable office and exchange it for a scratched up old cable box which didn’t work.

After fifteen thousand phone calls with the cable company – where they tried (and FAILED) to fix the problem remotely – they sent out a service worker.

This guy – Cable Guy 2 – showed up and fixed the problem in about five seconds. But for some reason, he had to call the home office and do something over the phone. I was in the middle of the workday, so I was concentrating on work… figuring that a phone call needed no supervision. But while he was on the phone, he walked around. He unscrewed the little wall doohickey and fiddled around with the wires inside.

Then he WALKED INTO MY BEDROOM.

And STARTED LOOKING AROUND.

Dude.

It’s possible that he was looking for another cable box. (Despite the fact that I’d told him that the living room is the only room with a TV. Despite the fact that the bed was unmade. Despite the fact that there was possibly UNDERWEAR strewn about.)

What the hell, Cable Guy 2? Stop poking around in my personal space!

***

The FedEx guy showed up the other day with a 103-pound package. (Heh heh heh – that sounds dirty. And frightening.)

Anyway, it was so big he had to wheel it into the building on a dolly. (Now my mind is STUCK in the gutter.)

“Can you put it by the couch?” I asked him.

“Sure,” he said. “But I’ll have to wheel the dolly over the carpet. Is that okay?”

That’s when I fell in love. A man who cares about possibly muddying the carpet?!?! Delightful!

This is about six months since I fell in love with Cable Guy 1. First, he called me BEFORE he was scheduled to show up. Then – before he set a SINGLE FOOT inside my apartment – he covered up both his shoes with the little paper booties surgeons wear.

Madly in love.

Cable Guy 2 and every apartment maintenance man I have ever known? See how it SHOULD be done?