My Experience on the Moon

Once upon a time, you go off to college, you live in the dorms for a little bit, but then, you move up in the world, and start renting... your own apartment. Complete with roommates and appliances and wifi and parking and cable... Well, this sounds great and all, but I am here to tell you today the things that they neglected to tell me when I signed their contract at Moon Apartments.

First off, Management makes it really hard to communicate with them. Email is their primary source of contact while trying to contact you, but notsomuch when you want to contact them. Their office hours are also pretty inconvenient. So how do you talk to management? Rearrange your own personal schedule for a day so you can go into their office hours. Which even then, sometimes there's nobody there, and then you're SOL.

Speaking of cleaning checks, here is a run-down of how they happen. You get an email a few days ahead of time, but not long enough for you to plan on it when you're planning your week, saying that hooray, it's cleaning check day soon! Somewhere in the email, they tell you what time the cleaning checks will start so you know when you have to be done cleaning the apartment by. The day before, Management comes and tapes a chore list to your door. (Which, ironically, one of the chores on this list is to take all the tape on your front door off. Gee. I wonder how all that tape gets there...)

And, if you forget to clean one thing, you get a presumptuously rude, impersonal email afterwards.

Here is the story of how I got this email: I took the kitchen, cleaned it, and blast! I forgot to clean the charred, burned stuff that's been on the inside floor of the oven since we moved in, and that has been there every cleaning we've had! I took the liberty of underlining the incorrect things about this email. Sent to one tenant, yet we all at this problem in common, and have been contacted about it many times. Apparently, I had a lot of problems with the outside of my oven too, and it was "disgusting" when she came in. Cleaning the oven is a very "easy" task, yet I just chose to complete "the parts that you picked to do because they were easy to do." But, obviously they didn't care that much, because they never came back to see if I cleaned it again... like, whatever.

One good thing about cleaning checks though is that when they're here you can tell them about everything that's broken in your apartment! There's a little section on the paper they give you that you report things that are breaking/broken. The only thing about this is that the broken things don't get fixed until they become a safety hazard.

When you move into your own apartment, you kind of guess that you'll have more freedom in general about how you live... but not really.

Noooow, let's talk about the laundry. First, there are only 6 washing machines, 6 driers, for our whole complex. They're all pretty old machines. They're top-load washers that become "unbalanced" during loads, so make sure you check to make sure the machine is still working every twenty minutes. The driers don't completely dry all your clothes in one run, so just buy two. Oh and also, some of the machines don't work after you pay them. Total expense for doing your one load of laundry? $3-$5. #firstworldproblems.

I understand that this is not completely Management's fault. However, the part where they forgot to keep the heat on over Christmas break so the pipes don't freeze, and then the laundry room is out-of-service for a few weeks while they fix the broken pipes, is their fault.

Keep in mind that also, if you happen to have a roommate move out, there are consequences for enjoying the extra space around.

Maybe if you lived here too and you're reading this, maybe you had a better experience. I hope so. I mean, there's a lot of things that I do like about this place. Like how it's so close to campus, and there's a dishwasher, and my room is kind of big when it's clean, and the closet is spacious, and the couches are mostly comfortable, and my roommates... buuuuuut, do I want to live here again? Prolly not...