So you’ve moved into an apartment building or complex. Congratulations on your new, environmentally-friendly home! There are a few things the people living underneath, beside, and/or on top of you would like you to know about this kind of living arrangement.
- If there is a communal laundry room, empty your machines as soon as possible. Your clothing will start to smell like mildew in your quiet, dark closet just as quickly as it would if you let it sit in the same washing machine for days on end.
- Do you feel like juggling bowling balls in your living room? Fantastic! Please save your juggling practices for the daylight hours, though. They’ll make the same delightfully raucous noise in the middle of the day as they would at 10 pm, and they’ll be much less likely to irritate the people living below you then.
- Open a window if your overcooked dinner sets your home fire alarm off. If you open your front door, the smoke will drift into the hallway and set off the main fire alarm. When the main fire alarm goes off it will loudly blare into every single apartment in the complex until the fire truck arrives. This is the sort of thing that should only happen when there is an actual fire spreading from one apartment to the next. See also: The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
- Speaking of fire alarms, smoking cigarettes also sets them off. Yes, this still counts if you open a window or sneak a cigarette in the emergency staircase. Be sure your
sinsmoke will find you out. - Please tell me how your dog has learned to identify the floor he lives on by sniffing the elevator door. I am fascinated every time I see him figure out exactly when you will be disembarking and barking his approval of it.
- If you allow a canvasser to slip behind you into the building, we’re sending him or her to your house.
- Let the preschoolers press the ground floor button on the elevator. It will make their day.