Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Negative Assumptions

Most of the time they are bad. But sometimes negative assumptions are good.

Kelly's landlords have been pretty bad at keeping the house's appliances fixed, and Meredith, the manager who takes care of the quadruplex that Kelly inhabits, has been flaky, and potentially dishonest. For example, she claims a repairman came by two weeks ago when nobody could let him in, when I was actually at the house and did not hear anyone come by.

This unpleasant situation led me to look up tenant rights in the state of Washington. Turns out those are pretty nonexistent. There is no real hard set deadline for repairs to be made by landlords, and if tenants complain, it is easy for landlords to retaliate with an eviction notice, without legal consequences.

Therefore, for a week or two, Kelly assumed that her roommate Zoe's boyfriend, Ciccio, wouldn't be allowed to move in by her landlords, and that there was nothing to be done about it. That would mean that Kelly would either have to find a new roommate, or find a new apartment, because Zoe would have to move out. It was quite a stressful time for her, especially since finding this particular house had been so difficult already.

Furthermore, for the past week, Kelly and I have been trying to book her an airplane ticket on the same flight as mine for Christmas, but the ticket was taken off the United website. So we pretty much kissed that plan goodbye.

However, two days ago, Kelly's landlords decided to allow a third roommate! And today, the airplane ticket was put back on. Now we are both strangely happy about something that we would have taken for granted otherwise. While days of stress can be a bummer, these moments of pure joy are truly priceless. In this case, the end most definitely justifies the means.

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