on the level
Good Maintenance Help Is Hard to Find
By Riley
As the resident manager, I process the rents, calculate the increases, provide janitorial and small maintenance services, and hire vendors for low-dollar maintenance, among many other things. It has been said that the resident manager should not be in possession of too much power and that their duties must be limited to reduce liabilities. However, I am also conscientious to a fault, disproving the theory that a resident manager with too much power will take advantage.
I consider my building to be a source of pride. I believe that it is my job to maintain the safety and well-being of the tenants who reside in this building, at the sacrifice of my privacy. I also have an open door policy with the tenants. Granted, the open door policy only goes so far and, as documented in previous columns, I do have my limits. (A knock on the door at four in the morning from a tipsy tenant trying to buzz in the pizza delivery person is not tolerated, so I suppose the open door is actually only partially open.)
Among the many duties of this resident manager, besides relieving the pizza guy of his pain, is hiring vendors, a task that can test my patience more than any situation concocted by the tenants. By definition, a vendor is a person who provides a service or goods for fee payment. So why don’t all vendors just do what the ever-increasing fees in San Francisco demand? Fix the problem! Why is it so darn hard to hire someone to unclog a toilet, fix the boiler, or make a seemingly easy adjustment to a time clock so the lights turn on at the right time?
Early in my managerial years, I had my first encounter with a troublesome vendor. He was my guy for small as well as large jobs, and he shall remain nameless to prevent legal action as my thoughts on his work are hardly complimentary. One small job: a single piece of wood needed to be replaced at the bottom of a cabinet in a bathroom. It needed to be replaced as there was about an inch of dry rot that had crept in from the floor. It seemed to me to be a very simple job—just cut off the offending piece of wood and replace it.
I told the contractor, licensed and insured to the hilt—as I require—what I wanted done and his response was that because I was a woman I did not know what I was talking about. In his opinion, the whole cabinet needed to be replaced and since the cabinet was tiled into the sink, the walls, the tub and the floor, I should consider doing a $20,000 remodel of the bathroom to rid myself of one inch of dry rot. Needless to say, the vendor was escorted off the property by this “fool” of a woman, and another vendor was found to do the job that I intended done. Amazingly, the apartment and its pristine white bathroom tile is, to this day ten years later, still intact without further spreading of the dry rot or the collapse of the cabinet. The contractor and his opinions have since gone out of business; was it because I referred my business elsewhere? Probably not, as the small jobs I used him for did not pay much, but I bet I was not the only manager insulted by this man and was not the only customer who felt conned by the unnecessary work he recommended.
Don’t get me wrong. I also have vendors who go above and beyond what is required. Two weeks ago I went to sleep later than I usually do (as I am getting up there in years and making it to midnight on a Friday night is basically the equivalent of an all-nighter for me). At 2:30 in the morning, there was a banging on my door that brought me out of the deep sleep of the dead. I opened the door with one eye still closed to find two roommates from a top-floor unit so upset they could not coherently tell me what happened. As my fog lifted, I finally understood that they had gone to a dance club together, and one of the girls had her purse stolen between 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. By the time they arrived home at 2:15 a.m., everything of value had been taken from their unit, leaving them feeling violated and unsafe in their apartment. The thieves had carefully taken the building keys off the key ring and left the rest of the keys in the unit; clearly, they were coming back.
I called one of the long-term vendors for the building at three in the morning, telling the owner that I needed the locks to the unit and the front door to the building rekeyed immediately. After he came out of his own sleep coma, he said he was on his way and asked how many keys I would need for the building door. He did not grumble or groan when I told him that 40 Medeco keys were necessary for the front door; with a little sigh, he said he was on the way. He arrived with his shirt buttoned wrong, his hair sticking straight up on one side and terrible morning breath, but he had a smile on his face and he made me and my tenants feel safe in the building, at least for a small amount of time.
There is no way to make those girls feel completely safe after someone has breached their home, but this vendor went out of his way to make a bad situation just a bit better. The building security was maintained and all of the tenants besides the victims slept quietly, oblivious to what had happened until they received notices to pick up the new door keys the next day as they ventured out for the day.
I learned a valuable lesson that night—there are vendors I value and appreciate who will be there for me when I really need them. I also learned, as I was up until 6:30 p.m. the next night, that I am far too old to pull a real all-nighter and remain coherent.
I have had great vendors over the decades and I have seen the worst: those who do not do the job, those who do work that falls apart, those who I have to hound just to do what they say they are going to do, and those who say they are licensed but really are not. Each vendor is different and once I find a good one I keep the telephone number close at hand.
If anyone out there knows a good vendor who will do small jobs and is also
licensed, bonded and insured, please share the name. There has to be someone who will show up with bed head and a smile to fix broken things when I need them
fixed the most.
As a conscientious resident manager who sometimes opens the door only to find the need for a vendor on the other side, my needs are the same as every property manager, resident manager, or owner: to find a vendor who will deliver service as promised, reduce my liabilities, and make my building safe and comfortable for all.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of SFAA or SF Apartment Magazine. “Riley” has been a San Francisco resident manager in a large, well-cared for building for 12 years. The names of the tenants, as well as the columnist, have been changed to protect the building and all involved from the court system and irate neighbors. Copyright © 2008 by SF Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.