(essay)

This story is filled with many absurd events and incredible difficulties. It’s worth starting with the fact that one day my father was desperate to find a decent job. The people who knew and liked him just said that he was a big frog in a small pond. He was over-qualified for our feeble labor market. And so he began an amazing, though terrifying sometimes, however, not less exciting chapter of our life called rental housing.

If you do not know all the ropes, I will briefly describe this type of business. At this kind of work, you cannot say, “Thank God it’s Friday!” This is a job that goes on all the time. I mean it takes ALL of your time. You clean the apartment before the guests arrive, then you go home and … clean it too! Such a sort of a busman’s holiday!

Let’s talk about the people who rent our apartments. I have a few words to describe the morons, jerks, assholes, and punks, who passed through our apartments! Not all of them are like that, there were also normal people, but I will never forget that wonderful story when it was completely by accident – I emphasize, by accident! – Gypsies settled in. Ouch! And when I say gypsies, I mean 25 people and a dog. Well, it was a dog-eat-dog world!

Once a woman came to one of our apartments and started yelling out right from the doorway! Oh, how she cried! “Honey, I will not live here! This apartment is atrocious!” That’s what she said.

I have only one request for such people: open your eyes really wide when you are looking at the photos! Generally speaking, this is a difficult job. It seems tempting to work for yourself, but there are many nuances of the market. To roll in this biz, you should try to shoot sky-high.