An oil truck for a company I represented was making a delivery on Park Avenue and 68th Street when the hose ruptured and spilled about thirty gallons of thick, black, smelly number 6 oil on the pavement.
The driver and building superintendent scampered to contain the spill and block off the sidewalk so no one would walk into the mess and slip and fall. The driver was applying speedy dry, a sawdust like material that resembles kitty litter.
She designed clothing for movie shoots. She had a son that was very strange, to put it mildly. He wore plastic gloves all the time and never spoke with anyone but was a visible presence in the neighborhood every day. One day I saw him praying to the pavement in front of their building. Their building was next to my office.
I was at an event, chatting to a Resident Manager who worked in a high end building. We we talking business, but as the alcohol began to flow, he started to rant and rave about how dumb his cousin was, the stupid things he did, and how he was so angry that he thought he would never speak to him again.
Turns out that his cousin was on staff at a 100 Centre street. When he was cleaning in the building, he found a letter in the garbage which turned out to be a letter from Richard Gere to Cindy Crawford (who lived in the building) apologizing to her for sleeping with Julia Roberts.
This happened in a building on Park Avenue. There was a tenant who was a pain in the ass and complained about everything. He had a Napoleon complex (he was only 5’3”). When it came time for him to renew the lease he insisted on a bathroom upgrade, despite the fact that there was nothing wrong with it.
The manager was sick of the tenant’s constant complaints, and wanted to make him happy just so he didn’t have to listen to it. The tenant was also an accountant for the building, so he was in a position of being able to make managements’ lives miserable. The building had recently been sold, and the owner kept the original manager on staff, so the manager was also eager to prove to the new owner that he could handle difficult tenants.
I was a doorman, working my way through College. I had the graveyard shift 2 of the 5 days. I was engaged to a girl that I met right next door in a luxury building. She now lives in the suburbs. One night she decided to spend the night with me at the building. We were not naughty by any stretch . But we went downstairs at 2am and just began chatting. The tenants did not have keys to the front door, so they relied on the doorman to open it for them. Tragedy struck. We fell asleep. One of the tenants rang for almost half an hour before I woke up. I noticed the finger was on the buzzer pressed firmly, a hint that this person was full of rage. Twisted tie and all I ran to the door. Just my luck—it was the Board President’s daughter, who I loathed. I think she didn’t like me either. She threatened to have her father fire me.
She lived up to her threat and by the next morning I was gone. Six years down the drain! Lucky the super liked me and he found another job for me down the block through his superintendent buddy connection.
But now the anger set in. I thought to myself that if I ever see this girl again I would smack her up. I was in the subway with my then wife when what have we here? The girl who got me fired was standing in front of me. My wife begged me not to say anything. I didn’t listen. And I cursed her out in front of everyone. She ran away in fear.
Ironically, years later my father in law interviewed for this very building and got the job. I had to come clean to him. He told the board. They took it well but let me tell you I was walking on eggshells every time I walked in the building. What they say is true – never burn your bridges.
Joe is one of those veteran Resident Managers that exist in the city. He is an unassuming gentleman who has seen it all, and doesn’t hint that he ever has. Like the other 75% of the resident managers we speak to, he is convinced that one day he will publish his book with the aid of his ghostwriter. He was reluctant to give up his stories, but in his good-natured way, he finally relented with this one:
So, I was training a young salesman who worked for me at a well known oil company. His family was in the funeral business and he did not have what it takes to be an undertaker as he was very squeamish and had a nervous stomach.
On the second day of his training we made a cold call on a Resident Manager of a large, well known building on Central Park West. This guy was a real character and asked us to sit down on the two chairs in front of his desk in his very small basement office.The Resident Manager immediately started yelling about how the oil companies got him sick the year before with the high prices, crappy oil and shitty service and how all oil companies were alike.
In 1982 I was selling a product to a certain group of realty managers from Eastern Europe who happened to also own buildings up in the Bronx. This one particular Resident Manager asked that I call him on the telephone at home on a Sunday to set up an account that he owned off Pelham Parkway.
Like a good, conscientious sales rep, I called him at 11 o’clock in the morning which was the appointed time.
A very heavily accented woman answered and I asked for the gentleman in question. She asked who was calling and I identified myself. Evidently, she was awaiting my call.
I heard this story many years ago just after it happened, and was really amused by it, so with a lot of persuasion I finally managed to get the superintendent of the building to re-tell it. He is a quiet man: a true old-world-style gentleman in every sense of the word, so this story was even funnier coming from him. After much prodding (and plenty of alcohol), he finally gave in and with his head slightly bowed and a deep blush, started talking.
A very frail elderly lady had just returned to the building with her miniature dog. She had a very long leash on the dog that would drag on the floor. As she entered the elevator, the dog decided to walk out of the elevator and back into the hall. The lady did not notice or feel the leash pull because it was laying on the floor. The elevator doors closed and the elevator went up. The dog was dragged back up against the elevator door and then pulled up to the ceiling. The quick-thinking Doorman rushed up to unhook the dog. As he did, the dog urinated all over him. The lady returned to the lobby, and her dog was fine, but the Doorman was never able to wear that uniform again.
