First week on duty

For those who don't know, we're apartment managers for our complex here at UCLA. The gig means that we get reduced rent, a small salary and that UCLA pays our utilities. In return we do rounds in our area each week and we're on after hours phone duty 4 weeks a year and after hours fix-it duty 4 weeks a year. Typically the husband does the 4 weeks where we go out on the calls to fix stuff and the wife does the 4 weeks of phone duty. So Chris' first week was last month. It was pretty quiet for him, lockouts and sink clogs mostly, until Sun morning, when there was a huge plumbing clog and he was gone for 6 hours. Overall, we decided it was worth it.
So my first week was this week. I found it really hard to get everything done during the day in prep for being busy in the evenings, but it was mostly pretty good. Some nights were busier than others and I only had two middle of the night calls. Saturday was really, really busy but today the phone hasn't rung in 6 and a half hours. Knock on wood!!
Some of my favorite calls of the week:
On Monday within a half hour of each other I had to send our friend Travis to clean up a dead rat on a playground and a big pile of fresh, giant man sized poo under the stairs. Today I had to walk a woman through re-setting her circuit breakers. She had no idea what they were or how they worked. She was positively amazed when her electricity went back on when she flipped the switch over. Seriously? Who doesn't know that?? Then there was Mr. W. who called 4 times in one day to complain about his refrigerator that wasn't cooling and that his food was all rotting. When I asked him why he hadn't called before now (it hadn't been working in about 9 days) he said he was just hoping it would get better. Hmm. What do you say to that? :-) Another favorite was a kitchen sink clog Sat night at 11:30. After Travis had plunged it out and gotten it unclogged he called to report and said that the good news was that it was fixed and that the bad news was that it had once been fish stew! Ewh!
My next week is in November so check back then for more gems of human stupidity. :-) :-)