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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

#53 Henry Meadows

This is a tale that is not my own, but rather, one I have observed for the past several months.

My company owns the loft building next door.  My coworker, Stephanie, is the building manager.  This building is a little more expensive, so her tenants lean more towards "entitled babies" rather than my "asshole babies."  It's a real toss-up as to which set of babies is worse.
Stephanie and I each only have one day off a week.  Her's is Tuesday, mine is Wednesday. We take each others' baby monitors on the other one's day off, so once a week, we have to deal with two phones/two buildings/400 units/more bullshit. 
Stephanie has only worked here for about eight months or so.  In her first month, I have her phone on a Tuesday, and I get a call from one of her babies at 8pm:
"Hey, where's Stephanie?"
"It's her day off.  I'm the manager next door. I can answer any general questions you have, otherwise call her tomorrow."
"Well, there is a homeless guy trying to get into the loft next door to mine."
"Tell Security to escort him out."
"I did.  This homeless guy is saying he lives here and he just moved in today."
"What?  There's no way that's real."

I call our leasing agent, Charlotte, and she tells me the story. This homeless guy named Henry Meadows won some sort of lawsuit, and now he's rich as fuck.  Charlotte is then forced to take this guy's application because otherwise, she would be discriminating against him.  He qualifies for a loft since he's got a shit ton of money.  Now that Henry Meadows is rich and has money, he can get himself a place and move on with his life as someone who is no longer homeless.  She hoped it would be a Rags to Riches, My Fair Lady-type tale of transformation. Charlotte bought him new clothes and soap for him to scrub up and be a part of society.
This is not the case. 
Henry Meadows has been homeless for decades.  He doesn't know what it's like to live like a normal functioning human being. Even though he is no longer homeless, he still looks, acts and smells like a homeless zombie.

Henry Meadows is Stephanie's Pigeon
He has been a pain in her ass since she started this job, as Pigeon has been mine since she moved in a month after I started working.  It's a different ass pain. 
The guy that hates Henry Meadows more than Stephanie, is the neighbor that called about him...who in turn, annoys Stephanie every day about how he is not comfortable with a homeless man next door and how he smells. This guy is like a secondary Pigeon, who would not exist if it were for her first Pigeon (who if you're keeping score, is the equivalent to my Pigeon, but not the real Pigeon).
The neighbor, however, is not making shit up.  In the rare occasion I have to walk the halls of the building next door, I smelled something off. 
I walked by a hall inlet and found this:
This is the hall that Henry "the no-longer-homeless-guy homeless guy" Meadows and his neighbor live in. 
Those are air freshners fastened to the neighbor's door and along the hall.  The tall door next to it is the entrance to Henry's unit.

Let me tell you, those air freshners didn't do dick.  It smelled like a weird combination of swamp ass and ball sweat with a light hint of Summertime Magnolia.

The smell got so bad that the company had police go in to assess the place, since Henry would not let anyone else in.  They found bags of tied up piss lining the apartment.  There is a fucking toilet that flushes, as well as sinks with running water.  Why he ties up bags of piss and collects them remains a mystery.
I actually wish homeless guys did bag up their piss.  It would make the streets smell less like bum pee.  I can just see the signs, "Please Curb Your Dog and Your Urine."  What a Utopian society this would be.  It's like Burning Man, but where people can shower..and maybe not as many opiates.

We all have one.  Stephanie's is Henry Meadows.  She shares this awful, horrible gig.
 
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