Breaking and Entering

My boss and I had a house to stage today that was going to be incredibly easy.  In and out in nothing flat.  We only had to go buy a couch, run by our storage unit to pick up a few things, and go to the house and put it all in.  It was a light staging so we figured it would take about an hour.

Usually when we think that, something is bound to go wrong.

Or in this case, several things.

Our business owns a couch but it's currently in a house that is almost sold.  Since the appraisal hasn't been done it was decided to leave it there.  No problem, we were just going to run to the store and get another one.  It was only $125 so it would be a good investment.  But of course, they didn't carry that couch anymore.  So we bought a $250 one.  Sigh.  It was loaded into the truck and we set out for the storage unit.

The storage unit we use is owned by an apartment complex.  The apartment manager manages both.  We pulled up to the gate and punched in the number to make the gate open....but nothing happened.  Lisa tried again. Nothing.  That's happened before.  No problem.  She whipped out her phone and called the maintenance guy who has helped us before.  And that's about the time that we learned the maintenance guy now lives in Alabama.  No problem again.  We pulled around and headed to the manager's office.  The door was proudly displaying the OPEN sign.  The locked door that is.  Lisa called the managers number and left a voicemail.  And then we waited.  And then she called again.  And again.  After about 20 minutes I had an epiphany.  If she backed the truck up I was pretty sure I could climb from the bed of the truck, over the fence, and onto the gate mechanism box.  And guess what?  I could. 

I made it over, she handed me the keys and the list of things we needed...and left me.  I kind of thought she'd be joining me.  Instead she went back to the office and waited outside.  It was then that I realized my cell phone was still in the truck.  So I just got busy pulling items.  After about 10 minutes she was over the fence and had joined me.  I knew she wanted to.  She was a bit frustrated though.  Can't say that I blame her.  We had a realtor waiting at the house for us and we just kept hitting problems.  When this happened we just had to laugh.

I mean, what else could happen at this point?

After we had everything out we decided to hand everything over the fence, load it into the truck, and head on our merry way.  As Lisa was perched on top of the fence who do you think would be walking up??  Yep, the manager.  Let's just say she was not amused.  I believe she said she hates it when people climb her fence.  Well you know what?  We hate when our rent is paid and we can't get in and you won't answer your phone.

I continued pushing stuff through the fence as Lisa talked to her.  Rent has to be paid within the first five days of the month, which it had, but she'd chosen not to post payments yet.  Um, hello.  You're asking for people to break in!  She said she'd go post the check so that I could get out.  I just waited for her to start walking back to the office and climbed back over. 

As we drove by the office on our way out I couldn't help but feel victorious.  Don't mess with us!  And then my eyes caught something...the black all over the front of my jeans from the fence.  Oh well, they're just part of the memory!