My New Job as Property Manager

One family and one set of SAGAs currently have empty apartments that I am Al Masuuleh for. We do this regularly for friends who travel, and they do it for us to. Pay bills, water plants, und so weiter. Never a problem, it is what friends do for one another. It hardly warrants the term “Property Manager”, as our poor American Property Manager (who is also Lebanese) works a lot harder keeping our place going than I have here.

This summer, though, my role has expanded, and since the shoe fits, I’ll wear it . A Jordanian/American family has a father-in-law flat next to theirs, and it has been rented, long and short term, for some time. A single girl moved out after a year there, and there were several groups of tourists coming through.

Then my friend’s Urdani Dad FB’d me and said there was an engaged couple coming to look at the flat, and did the Jaffa-style/Pali-pressure/guilt blanket on me to make sure those folks loved it and signed a lease pronto. Oh my,   I was scared, and excited to please 3ammo. BUT, I had no time to get a cleaner in between the girl leaving and the couple wanting to see it. I knew the girl was a sweetie, I assumed she left the place in good order. I dressed up the way I thought a Jordanian Real Estate Agent would dress and got there a little early to air out the flat and make sure all was ok.

I was WRONG. sometimes sweet doesn’t necessarily mean clean and tidy. There are some stereotypes about American women that pretty much hit the mark, and messy housekeeping is one of them. Maybe it’s just us Californians? Now read on knowing I am FAR from a fastidious housekeeper, I entertain regularly to make myself keep the house clean.

Anyway, the place wasn’t trashed, but, uh, there were dishes in the sink, crumb-covered counters, the garbage can hadn’t been washed, there was a huge pile of fermenting winter clothes and shoes in a closet. The curtains were brown with a year of grime and the windows and balcony hadn’t been washed in at least one winter. And you know what little critters love environments like that, right? Yup. I also found five dead cockroach carcasses laying around.AAAHHHHHHH, and they were coming in half an hour!

I quickly broke a sweat disposing of dead roaches, straightening, dusting, wiping toothpaste and hair out of the bathroom, folding, emptying, oh mercy me I as getting a little ticked at this girl! I forgive, Lord, I forgive her, it became a mantra rather than a prayer!

The young couple came just in time, and dontcha know it, They Were Not Low Maintenance. Sweet as anything, but not a shred phlegmatic, ya know?Ya salam, ya bayay, ya lateef, I was saying all my ‘La’ exclamations under my breath. I spent the next hour apologizing as they poked and inspected, and to my shock they said: “We like it. With our own furniture, a coat of paint, it is a cozy place for us to start”. I liked them even more then, and really laid on the sales pitch, remembering my hang-out-with-Realtor days.

Just as I was feeling smug and happy, I realized the next renters came in two days and I hadn’t been able to confirm the cleaner. Nope, she couldn’t come. The next morning, Oldest Son and I arrived with bags, vacuum and cleaning clothes and we spent two hours getting it presentable. I called the point-gal for this group and explained the official cleaning day was Thursday, that the place was surface clean but needed a going over. No problem, they said. It was a time I just loved non-OCD American tourists, as they probably would not get the white glove out.

Thursday came and I met the cleaning lady. Like dentists, you want your housekeeper to be a tad more OCD about cleanliness than you are. The gal who cleans for me is. Now matter how big a mess I have let it become, she is done in four hours, Period. Well, this gal was not. She was a normal human with no disorders at all. Her jaw dropped as I gave her the list of what I wanted done: windows, balcony, abu-jours, wash and iron curtains (and take off/put on the little silver hooks) cupboards, closets, as well as all the normal floors, kitchen, bathrooms, etc.

It took the poor dear TEN HOURS.

(to be continued)

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