The Staged Apartment

I had a tenant who was a bit odd.
He would sit at the picnic table in the middle of the courtyard and stare into my apartment all day.
Kinda creeped me out.
He looked like he never showered, shaved, changed his clothes or ate.
He would retreat back to his apartment at sundown, return at sunrise, and sit there.

But he payed his rent.

As one would imagine, I was quite pleased when he turned in his 30-Day notice along with his rent.
Around 11:58 p.m., the night before the last day of the month, I get a call on the emergency line.
This tenant said he would need an extra day to get all his stuff out of the apartment.
Side note: This is NOT an emergency.

A day later than planned, he turned in his keys.
He said he was able to get everything out of the apartment.
He did not want to do a move-out inspection, nor did he have a forwarding address.
He said he would call me with this information when he figured it out.
Side note: I always send the reconciliation to the apartment if I don't have a forwarding address, because the post office may have one, and then I can't be accused of not sending out the deposit. But you probably already knew this.

Moving on.

I entered the apartment and, it was clean.
And not just clean, but immaculate.
It was also filled with his brand new furniture.
It was as if he staged the apartment before he left.
No clothes left behind.
Cabinets stocked with new dishes.
The refrigerator empty, and looked to have never been used, and I swear he sprayed air freshener before he left.
It was so bizarre.
I am used to finding destroyed apartments, this was so the opposite, that I found myself getting a little weirded out.
As if I were the subject of some hidden camera prank.


I tried calling him.
Several times.
He never returned my call.

As nice as the apartment was, I have to lug his furniture out of the there and store it for the required amount of the time.
Side note: That was annoying.
Upon clearing out the apartment, we found a drawer filled with sauce packets from a variety of different fast food restaurants.
Ketchup, hot sauce, soy sauce, tempura sauce, honey mustard....you name it, he had it.

I, of course, threw it all out, and stored all his brand new Ikea furniture in the garage.
I mean, sauce packets don't hold value, they are free.

I finally got a call several weeks later.
It was the creepy tenant.
He said, in a super casual way, "I think I may have left a few things behind in the apartment."

Uh, yeah.

When he showed up to collect his belonging, he had no interest in the furniture, dishes or fridge.
He didn't even care about the check with the remaining deposit owed to him.
He was, of course, looking for his sauce collection.
And he was quite upset when he found out that I had thrown them away.

I mean, it is rather annoying when you run out of soy sauce.