356 Broadway

November 3, 2015

So my landlord comes into my office with a smirk on her face and says "What? You don't have a response to the email we sent?"

Like what she wanted was some kind of response, some sort of emotion out of a notice requiring us to vacate the premises.

I said "Yeah, I had a response."

In fact, the entirety of my response had been in an email which I sent back to her within minutes of her sending the lease termination was as follows: "Wow. This is... sudden. I hadn't realized this was a problem. Perhaps someone should have said something before it became a "lease termination" issue."

But my big concern is getting our security deposit back. My thinking is thus: if they're willing to invoke the nuclear option of terminating the lease and surrendering the property by the end of the month, they're probably thinking they can just hold onto the security deposit for either good or bad reasons.

I'm so pissed off that I have to put pictures of squirrels here to get my calm.

I told her I was appalled at how she tried to get me to help her find someone to fill one of the other offices within five hours of sending me the lease termination. She muttered something about how she hadn't realized that Ben needed to send out that termination on that day.

She then tried to tell me that I should have known this was coming. I said that other than the conversation we had on Friday about sound, there had been no notice about anything. She was snide and patronizing "Well that's clearly the way you choose to remember it." So I (of course) said
Me: "When? When did it happen?"
Her: "Oh, many times."
Me: "Specifically, when?"
Her: "Well, I don't know, maybe Ben has something in his calendar."
Me: "The reason you cannot list a specific time is because it did not happen."
Her: "Well, that's just the way you choose to feel about it."

She tried to convince me that the notice was not the nuclear-level of hostility I was interpreting it as. She asked me "Have you read the letter?"
I said "Yes, I've read the letter." (Like seriously, do you think that of all my faults and foibles, reading comprehension is one of them?)
So she starts reading from the letter but choosing more innocuous parts in the middle and I say "No no no, read the top. What does the top of the letter say?
Her: "Well, it says 'Notice of Lease Termination', but that's just legalese, that's all..."
Me: "What does the bottom of the letter say?"
Her: "Well that's just legalese..."

What it says is this:

You are required to surrender the premises to the Landlord upon expiration. Please return the premises to the same condition as you found it upon moving in. You are required to return all keys when vacating the premises.

Sincerely,

Jody Susler
356 Spaces, LLC

I told her she had to give me back my security deposit. She demurred that it would be given back after I vacate if it's all swept clean and there's no damage. Which is absurd because I probably have the cleanest office in the whole space and it certainly wasn't swept when I moved in. 

So I told her she had to pay me back my security deposit and I threw her out of my office.

ºº