Wiener World: Trumpism on the Home Front

Before I share with you the experience I am having with my landlord, let me give you a little analogy.

Let's say you have two good friends—a married couple. One day they notice a sound coming from under your car hood and suggest they know someone in the garage business that may be able to fix it. On return from the garage they hand you a three page contract offer to replace the engine for $20,000. Shocked, you ask what did they find was making the noise. Your friends respond: “Oh, he didn’t lift the hood to check any engine facts. But he did recognize without question you have an engine noise under the hood. Replacing the engine will take care of everything.” Then your friends add, “We regard your friendship so much we are going to keep your car and keys in our possession until you decide to make the engine replacement."

Staff at Westminister Suncoast where I live entered my apartment to inspect and express disgust at my clutter. They noticed in front of an air supply vent on the living room ceiling an area of black mold—I think most people with any experience of living in Florida would recognize it. This was the only vent with it. Despite the fact the landlord changes the filter beneath the return air (monthly I think is the planned schedule), they alleged a recent obstruction near the vent caused the mold. Rather than advising getting a bucket and brush and cleaning it, they immediately called Restoration Companies specializing in mold removal whose bids include figures around $20,000 for their specialized service. In addition, with such services all your possessions are to be contained and eventually meticulously cleaned or utterly destroyed. As a staff member wrote to me—it would probably be less expensive to throw all your household possessions away than try to keep them. During this bidding process the landlord locked me out of my home.

Now here is the Trumpism kicker to all this…the people offering $20,000 bids to clean up are prevented by Florida law from assessing if mold found is dangerous or benign (for obvious conflict-of-interest reasons).. In other words, I was being given staccato draconian ultimatums (I was being demanded by my landlord to replace my engine without once their looking at the engine to find true condition—with the hood raised—or in the case of mold, to assess mold genus.)

During this time I asked for a second opinion. I contacted someone they suggested for an objective assessment. He came to campus and a whole troop us went with him to my apartment. While in my apartment, the bidder soon donned a mask that could have been part of a costume for the world’s most tragic opera on the far-side of the moon. He asked about my duct-work. The operations chief in charge said it had all been recently replaced. I corrected him that only the plenum was replaced when new a/c air handler was installed. (Was this an innocent error or intentional Terumpism?) We then all went to the formal conference room for a lengthy, somber dog and pony show. Remember—all this without knowing more than what a 3-year old child could access---“Yep, that’s mold on my bread.”.

Thinking the world must finally be going crazy, for $575 I engaged a licensed accessor.. (Gee, I must be a Trump-like genius to want to raise the hood and find out a fact or two—never let a dearth of facts get in the way of money grubbing and towering success.) The accessor came and obtained three air samples—outside, living room, bedroom. He also took a swath sample from patch by air vent. He sent them to a micro-bio lab with a specialty in mold identification. Results: neither mold found (the penicillin mold nor mold near vent) was dangerous.

So at long last we find that we do not need hazardous contamination specialized cleaning services—at the most some hoarding clutter organizing or storing off-site and a deep cleaning. The price for these services are geometrically less expensive than hazardous contamination cleaning.

In my view, I am owed an apology from Westminster for putting me through hell on earth thinking I must destroy all my possessions and further pay $20,000 or more for hazardous cleaning when, in fact, at no time were their dire threats based on scientific fact nor, apparently, did they make any attempt to get the facts.. The operative Trumpism—If we say it’s true, it’s true...march to our drummer or be damned!.

I think you will find the following documents interesting but not unfamiliar in today’s corporate-pack world where there is a surfeit of glowing compassionate resounding objectives surrounding a heart indifferent and sometimes even rejoicing in the infliction of personal pain.