another run-in

In our apartment building, people occasionally leave items in the hallways with signs indicating that they are free for any who wants them.  One day my neighbor picked up a huge work of art.  3x2 feet in approximation.  She asked if I wanted it, and I said I was holding out for the other picture like it that I saw in my other neighbors house.  We decided to hang it up in the hallway.  We got a kick out of ourselves as I went into my closet to find a bunch of posters from my younger years.  We hung them all up and it really made the place look good.  All the neighbors were commenting on how nice it was to personalize the hallway a little, and it seemed to be a pleasant move for all.

Until the other night.  I came home from my family Christmas party and was told that they took all the artwork down.  I said, "Who did?"  They said the manager of the building.  I'll leave her nameless because I'd rather say what a piece of shit manager she is.  Getting anything done is like pulling teeth, and it's not because she's trying to protect the landlord...it's because she couldn't be bothered with our silly issues, such as my heat doesn't work, my toilet's broken, our refrigerator died, and so on.

So I headed down to the dumpster, and by complete coincidence I ran into the manager heading out the door.  I asked her what she did with my stuff and she said, "you can't put those up there" I said, "That's not what I asked you, I asked you what you did with them."  She said she put them in the dumpster.  Satisfied I went to the dumpster while she was trying to tell me that I KNEW that I wasn't allowed to put those up.  I don't remember seeing that in the handbook, but my focus was on getting my stuff back.  Everyone in my building knows that I put the artwork up.  Don't you agree that the civil thing to do would have been to ask me to take the stuff down, or take them down and give them to me? 

With every intention to clean up after myself, I started digging through the dumpster looking for my stuff.  I say intention to clean up because I live here, and I don't want to live in a pig-sty.  Maybe a pig-pen, but not a pig-sty...haha.  The police showed up, naturally.  I didn't look too happy, I was ripping trash out of the dumpster, and I was wearing a new mohawk to boot.  He asked me what I was doing, I told him I was looking for my stuff that the manager threw away, and I assured him I would clean it all up.  So he took my ID and joked, "Let me make sure the FBI isn't after you, or anything," which seemed funny to me, but I didn't smile I just said, "I know they're not."

     At this point a second cruiser pulled up, they didn't need backup, but how are they to know?  Meanwhile my neighbor was out there pleading with me to calm down, pleading my case to the police.  Both of us telling my neighbor to get away and not worry about it.  I said, "My neighbors love me, I help them dig out their cars after snow storms, I help them move in and out of the building, I help them carry their groceries in from the parking lot."  When the officer was out of earshot, I lowered my voice in a solemn manner, and told my neighbor, "Don't worry dude, I know what I'm doing...let me handle this."  The cop said, "It doesn't matter how much your neighbors like you, we're here to protect the owner."  The back-up police officer asked if my car was the one in front of the building with the ladder on it, I said it was...how the fuck did he know that?  Did he cross-reference my ID?  Did he have his eyes on my truck already?  I do not know.  I just started spitting out social values and the importance of our brotherhood.  They plainly stated that they were here to protect the owners.  I told them that they are put in place to protect the money of a man who doesn't live here, has no idea what it means to live in Holbrook and the police are protecting this man from us...his brothers and sisters who make his life better, day after day.  I told him that I respected him for trying to keep the public safe and feed his own family, but that he was merely protecting money, and letting his brothers suffer.  The back-up policeman smiled, put his head down and turned around.  I kept repeating something ain't right, something's wrong...we are more important than money, and as long as we protect money, we will suffer more thefts, murders, and so on.  They didn't seem to be opposed to my viewpoint, but of course they couldn't say a whole lot.  They let me go, I had asked them if I was breaking a law they should tell me now, so I could stop.  They assured me that I wasn't breaking a law, that they appreciated that I was keeping my word by cleaning up aftermyself, and that they believed the manager could have dealt with the situation a little better.  That's all I wanted.