Kevin’s Berkeley-Chicago Roadtrip, Part Three
So upon arriving at my new apartment at Chicago on Friday, at around noon, I was stuck waiting for my landlady to give me the keys to the apartment and show me around. Since she only lived a block and a half from the apartment complex, I decided to check it out myself.
The apartment buildings (2 – 10 story buildings with about 20 1-2 bedroom apartments on each floor) is well secured – completely fenced in with two entry points manned by security 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. After some brief inquiries, I decided to go over to the building offices (I am guessing that the building is owned by some big company that hires building staff to run it and sell the apartments individually to other people, who in turn can live there or rent it out to people like Shareena and myself). Upon talking with the building people, I found out that I was suppose to schedule a “move-in” date with them 2 weeks in advance and that we had to pay them $115 ($40 for elevator fee + $75 for security). Of course, I was shocked and at first I tried to set up a date ASAP as I had to pick Shareena, her mom, and our two cats from the airport on the next day (Saturday). They just told me that that is the policy (even though all I had was a car-ful of clothing, computing equipment and misc (bath, kitchen) stuff) and that I should talk with my landlady about this.
So I did and the landlady’s response was that she thought that since Shareena and I were not moving any major furniture or other large items (the largest thing was Shareena’s tub full of bath products…yes, it was larger and heavier than the 19-inch TV and her computer), that we would not have to pay the “move-in” fee. She has a point, but she really should have checked with the building people first before making her own decision about it…
So what did I do? Haha, you will have to wait until the next installment to find out (or just ask me or you already know…)!
