My apartment is in a co-op building, so some of the people who live there actually own their apartments…(well, they own shares in the idea of their apartment. Co-ops are weird.)

When I moved in, I got the keys from the super, but the few small details that I needed taken care of when I first moved in were handled by some other random guy. I haven’t needed any repairs since (and by “haven’t needed”, I mean that I turned off the hot water in the bathroom sink last spring when it started leaking), but I knew that I was supposed to contact my landlord for any repairs and have always had a vague sense that the in-building super was not “for” me as a lowly renter, unless there was an imminent emergency.

So the cold water started dripping a week or two ago, and I have enough of a sense of guilt about wasting water that I knew it was time to call.

Conveniently enough, I had also recently opened a kitchen cabinet after work one night and had the glass cabinet door window fall out and shatter. (No thumping; 3J must have been asleep.)

So I emailed my request, specifying that I did not care if they fixed the kitchen cabinet; I just didn’t want to be charged for it when I moved out.

Fast-forward a few days, and the super is knocking on my door. The text message from a mystery handyman had not materialized…it seemed like the super was going to be the one to do the work after all.

Now it’s hella awkward. Definitely an Allie Brosh moment. (man, do i miss her!!!)

Did I do the wrong thing? Was I supposed to ask him directly? (In the world of the blog entries that could have been, I was going to write about how I thought he was fishing for a Christmas tip my first year there; wish I had finished that one!)

I felt a little better when he said something about having to get approval from the office and that he had to put in a purchase order for the replacement faucet…I guess I did follow the correct procedure after all?

But now he has to come back next week to do the work.

And that’s gonna be super awkward.