Mayhem in Melbourne

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I’m heading to Kylie’s desk when my mobile rings. Mother flashes onto the screen. I have asked myself a hundred times why I don’t change the word to Mum. I thought it was funny when I first put ‘Mother’ in but it always throws me. She is not ‘Mother’. She’s definitely ‘Mum’. I have to make a mental switch every time I answer.

‘How are you darling?’ She always asks that with a voice full of concern as if I’ve been sick for years.

‘Fine,’ I say, ‘And you?’

‘Oh fine too but I won’t be coming down this weekend. It’s going to be too hot. 37 degrees has been projected. I’ll wait until it cools down a bit.’

Mum lives in a hamlet in the Wombat State Forest. She likes the rural, laidback lifestyle. She and her partner Clive have a sort of market garden where they grow produce they can sell at local markets. They have to grow their vegetables under a huge netting frame because wallabies come and eat them. As I’m not working this Saturday she was driving down here and we were going to meet for lunch.

‘That’s fine Mum,’ I say. ‘I think you’re right. Too hot. Another time.’

‘Do you want to come up here? You could come up on Friday evening and stay over.’

‘No, but thanks,’ I say. ‘Too hot to drive.’

What I really mean is that in this hot weather I’m afraid of bush fires. Mum says they have their evacuation plan so there is nothing to worry about. From my bedroom window up there I can see rows and rows of pale grey trunks of gum trees. They are beautiful, but too close for comfort in this weather is my thinking.

‘Yes, you’re probably right. Even on Friday evening it will be hot.’ I know she knows it is because I am anxious about fires but she doesn’t say so. She goes on. ‘Darling have you seen Tim’s latest f*******: post?’

Tim is my ex.

‘Mum you know I’m not interested. I don’t follow him anymore.’

‘I don’t know why you let him go. He’s such a nice man. He’s posted some great pictures. I’ve told you before you should’ve followed him overseas. You could’ve done that. You didn’t need to buy that apartment.’

Mum and I are different. Very different.

I don’t want to discuss Tim so I say, ‘I have to go Mum. It’s very busy today.’

‘Well don’t wear yourself out. Have some fun too.’ She’s always saying that. She thinks I don’t have enough of what she calls ‘fun’. She and Clive often kick back and smoke a joint or two and sip beer or their homemade wine on their veranda. They do a lot of ‘letting life just drift by’. Vegetables do not need constant attention.

While I have been chatting to Mum I have been booting up Kylie’s computer and checking her emails and any applications that have been emailed to her.

No sooner have I disconnected from Mum than Kylie’s phone rings. I hesitate, but feel driven to answer it.

‘What’s this about my rangehood? I want to know what my tenants have done to it.’ The voice is angry. I know nothing about his rangehood but this is part of the job; trying to work out what someone is talking about. This rangehood hasn’t come to my notice before, but I’m sure I’m going to get to know it.

‘Who am I speaking to?’

‘Who are you?’ It sounds rude the way he says it. Little things like that don’t bother me anymore and I answer with my lips stretched into a smile, the physical symbol of putting warmth into my voice.

‘Juliette Davis. I’m Kylie’s manager. Tell me your problem and I’ll see if I can help you. What’s the address of the property?’

He tells me. While we talk, I find the property on the computer so I can take a stab at helping him.

‘Kylie sent me an email to say the rangehood needs to be repaired. I want to find out what the tenants have done to it. It’s always been working. There’s no problem with it. Do they know how to use the thing?’

Why does he think tenants would request maintenance if there was no problem? I keep this thought to myself and say, ‘I see they have been in the property for six months so I’m sure they know how to use it.’

‘Rangehoods don’t just break down. Have they unplugged it? Did they try to clean it and break it that way?’

‘Let me ask them those questions, but if it has just stopped working are you happy for me to get a tradesman to attend to it?’

‘Get a quote! Don’t let anyone do anything without me agreeing to it.’ His voice is hectoring.

‘How about I give the tradesman a spend-limit, say $150, and if it goes over that he can quote?’

‘What do you mean?’ I wonder what he thinks I mean. It sounds clear to me, but then it is Monday and it can take a while to get with the play.

‘I’ll get him to go and look at it. If he can fix it for under $150, let him go ahead. If he can’t fix it for that much, he can quote.’

There is a silence on the line. I’m good with silences. I wait. He comes back with, ‘Why do you want to do that?’

‘Well, he has to come into the office to get the key to go to the property to quote. Why not let him fix it if he can within the spend-limit? Then he won’t have to go again. If it is going to be more than $150, he can quote.’ With a flash of inspiration, I say, ‘That’ll keep the tenants happy. They just want it fixed.’

There’s another silence and I think he is going to refuse then he says, ‘Yes, I can see the point in that but if he charges more than $150 inclusive of GST – notice I said inclusive of GST – I’m not going to pay. I’ll want a quote.’ I wonder if he cares about keeping the tenants happy, or has he just seen sense?

‘Right,’ I say. ‘I’ll make that clear on the work order.’

Thinking of the rangehood makes me remember my toilet at home. The flush is broken. We can push the button as often as we like, but no water gushes forth. We heave a bucket of water from the bath into it to flush – or at least, I do. My roommate Amy went to stay with her boyfriend, Brett.

How could I have forgotten that? I’ve been so busy, and it is the rangehood-landlord who brings it to mind. He gets me wondering what I could have done to have caused the problem. Did we push the button incorrectly? I have been pushing it the same way since I bought the property about a year ago, but you never know, it could be the wrong way.

I’m with the rangehood landlord here – flush systems do not just break down.

I grab the plumber’s number. I don’t want to continue pouring a bucket of water down it every time it needs flushing and I have Amy to consider. I dial the plumber and it goes to voicemail. I leave a message.

I like the space here that Kylie has created for herself. I study her pinboard. Most of us use our pinboards to display printouts of the properties that we have up for lease. This way we can see them at a glance. Kylie has her properties interspersed with fashion pictures. Mainly pictures of shoes. She has a passion for shoes. This is a good city to live in if you have an on-going love affair with shoes. Every shopping strip has a profusion of shoe shops; Chapel Street in South Yarra and Acland Street in St Kilda just to mention a couple and then there is David Jones and Myers. Kylie has a picture of a stunning yellow shoe that looks as if the heel is made of glass. I am sure I saw one like it in David Jones, but there are so many beautiful shoes it could have been in any one of the hundreds of windows I have browsed. Then there is the retro shop Shag full of eye-popping stuff. I am more a boots person and boots that have a solid heel for stomping about. Even these pretty summer ones I am wearing have what my mother calls ‘a sensible heel’. There is nothing sensible about the heels Kylie is displaying or that she wears.

Sitting to the right of her computer is a large noticeable mauve mug, sporting a picture of a red shoe with a spiked heel. At the moment it is also sporting some old milky tea that only needs a dead fly floating on it to make it really gross. No one else is allowed to use this mug, so the revolting tea is Kylie’s. Most of us don’t have a special mug, so new people can think this one is for general usage. Kylie immediately points out their mistake and they never use it again.

Her inbox is flooded with emails. Many of them dated yesterday and today. I scroll through. Some of them are personal.

I try not to have too many personal emails coming through the office except perhaps from friends or previous colleagues making lunch or drinks dates. I don’t know why anyone would make their office email their personal one – you can set up any number of free email accounts and access them from your phone. There is no need to let the office know your life and the problems with it.

Once I took over the portfolio of someone who had been sacked. I’m not sure why but she was asked to collect her things and depart. It is often done that way. The real estate company decides they can live without your services and you are gone. Here one minute and gone the next. I sometimes remind myself of that when I am getting too comfortable or complacent.

This property manager had no chance to delete emails or even clear out all the food and snacks in her drawers. Perhaps she didn’t care about the food, but if I had been her I would have wanted to organise my emails. What an interesting collection – I began to know her whole life. Family matters, like a row with her mother about attending her grandmother’s birthday, a message from a bank about a mortgage application, contact with friends and an acrimonious discussion with an old boyfriend about some DVDs she had ‘stolen’ from him. I loved it.

After a few days she rang to say she had set up a Hotmail account and could I forward all her personal emails there? I did that but I couldn’t resist reading them first. Eventually, the personal ones ceased to arrive. I missed them.

Kylie’s emails appear to be more of the lunch and drinks variety.

She has a few minor maintenance requests. They do not seem urgent so I leave them for her. The guy with the dripping tap has not emailed yet.

There are two applications to be printed off and checked, and a very long, detailed and angry complaint from a tenant who has just vacated his rental property about the final inspection and the release of the bond. I notice he has copied in everyone he can think of including our two directors, Emily and for some reason the trust accountant. I cannot see her caring about this issue. She has no involvement.

As I read the complaint, I find it far too complicated for me to want to follow up. I will leave it to one of the people copied in to respond. It is a good example of how things can go wrong.

The owners of the property have been living overseas and we were leasing out their house for them. They have just returned to take possession of it.

Kylie did the final inspection for the release of the bond. She asked the tenants to go back to do some extra cleaning in the bathroom and to wash down the kitchen benches and the floor, as well as some extra outside garden maintenance. They returned to do the interior clean and asked Kylie if they could clean up outside in a couple of days because of time constraints with moving into their new place. She agreed. This is all outlined in the email.

When they returned they found painters on ladders and trestles scraping and chipping away at the house. They went inside and found more painters and ladders. The bath they had done extra cleaning on was full of venetian blinds, dust was everywhere and the drop-sheets left areas of the carpet they had paid to have steam cleaned covered in dust. The lawn and garden were decorated with chips of paint. They took photos of it all including a large pool of paint on the edge of the lawn and the front path.

As I was reading, Emily came by the desk. She has been away sick lately which is unlike her. Today she is clearly unwell, pale and with shadows under eyes, but still looks elegant in a loose shirt-dress in rich cream that comes just below her knees. The colour is a little paler than a lemon. It is a good colour for a sunny Monday morning. Clear and positive. She is tall, willowy, with light brown hair, a beautiful smile and wears elegant and sexy clothes. There are no dreary charcoal suits for her. The day she interviewed me for the job, she wore a clinging red dress and her hair was held up with a large flower clip. She smiled a welcome smile and I was blown away. My immediate thought was, let me work for this woman.

I had worn my lucky stone; a piece of nephrite jade and I put my hand to my throat and stroked it. It worked or something did. She hired me. And here I am, three years later and still admiring her.

At the moment, though, I am not admiring her quite as much as usual. She has been sick for several weeks now and is soldiering on; coming in and spreading whatever bugs she has got around the office. I want to tell her that she is not doing us any favours by being noble. She should stay home until she is cured. Of course I don’t tell her that, but I often think it when I see her pale washed out face and she says she has got an upset tummy and she is dealing with it – whatever ‘dealing with it’ means. She needs to add the words ‘curing the problem’ in there somewhere. I am not impressed with noble. I wish she would take her bugs somewhere else.

She looks at what I am reading and says, ‘I should do something about that.’

Then she gives a sigh, ‘I can understand these tenants being angry. It’s a wonder they’re not asking for a refund for the steam cleaning. It’ll be easier if I respond and copy in the directors. I remember these owners. They were never good communicators. I bet they’ve hardly spoken to Kylie. And I’m sure they won’t have said anything about painting.’

They may not be good communicators, but is it not a courtesy to tell your tenant you plan to paint and there is no need to get the carpets steam cleaned? There should be some thought for the tenants who cared for your property and paid rent and consequently your mortgage while you enjoyed yourselves overseas. It smacks of arrogance to me, but then I don’t know the owners. There may have just been a misunderstanding. I feel sorry for the tenant. I’m on his side.

‘He wants his bond.’

‘Yes. Can you process the form for me and I can attach it to the email? I’ll be full of apologies. We don’t want them claiming any money back.’

Emily troubleshoots and generally manages the department. She is also our BDM (business development manager), and pitches for new business. She gets the new business and her trouble-shooting usually prevents a disgruntled landlord from taking business away from us; in this case, a tenant claiming a refund from us.

There is just one thing to remember about her. She holds a grudge. If someone leaves, she won’t hire them again. She believes under her management, Caruthers Real Estate is the best and there is no need to leave to find that out. With this attitude she can lose good people who left for a legitimate reason and now want to return. She has taken a stand and that’s that. It’s a silly stand in my view – pigheaded. That’s not a word I would usually use for her.

Despite this, Emily is one of the best managers I have had. It is like her to see instantly see the mistake is likely to be the landlord’s and not Kylie’s. In some companies if someone complains, it is always the property manager’s fault. Property managers don’t last long in those companies. It is probably one of the reasons some people who have left here apply to return.

The bond is held by the Residential Tenancies Bond Authority or RTBA, as it is called by its friends, customers and just about everybody. In the last few years they have upgraded their website so all forms can be filled out online. It is so much easier than working with the paper ones, and harder to make a mistake. So many forms used to be filled out incorrectly, with names misspelt and incorrect maths for deductions. Now all this is part of the online claim form and mistakes are rare.

I email a couple of Kylie’s landlords to get their approval for maintenance repairs and I reply to a couple of emails saying she will contact them tomorrow. I work from Kylie’s desk so her name is on them. Then, I collect the applications and head to my desk to check them out. I can create the bond claim from here, too. This way I cannot see what is dropping into Kylie’s inbox and be distracted by it. I call it time management.

Emily’s desk is upstairs where Hayley, the administration assistant, and the accounts department are located. The residential sales people in our company have an office down the road but we hardly see them. Emily is a sort of buffer between us and them and the directors. I like it that way.

I email the bond claim form to her so she can attach it to her email to the tenants.

She comes down to thank me. She is looking very pale. She should have called in sick.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask. ‘You don’t look well.’

‘No, no. I’m fine. I just need some food. I didn’t get breakfast this morning. Got up a bit late.’

I look at my watch and find it is lunch time. Obviously this is not a day for a leisurely 60-minute relax in a café.

‘I’m going to get some sushi. Do you want me to get you some?’

‘No. No, I think I’ll go home.’ Emily lives about a ten-minute drive from the office. ‘I’m thinking of something settling like Weet-Bix.’

‘Weet-Bix?’ I couldn’t help myself.

‘Yes, something that is easy on the stomach. I should have had it for breakfast. I got it out but then I noticed the time.’ She glances at her watch now.

‘I’ll be on my mobile if you need me.’ She is another one who always says this.

She heads out presumably thinking about her Weet-Bix. Weet-Bix?!! Each to their own, I suppose.