Today's Learning Experience

As I write this, I am emotionally exhausted. Spent. My inner introvert is whimpering, and I wasn't even surrounded by people today.

Instead, I just spent the last three hours combing over e-mails and forwarding them to the powers that be. The powers that be are looking for something to use against a long-gone former tenant in a potential criminal matter. And yes, I really do save every e-mail every tenant ever writes me.

I don't know if what I looked through today will help or not. The e-mails were mostly pretty benign: "Where's the rent now?", with the tenants coming up with new, somewhat plausible, excuses with every return message.

But the e-mails painted a larger picture too. Were they employed when they said they were? Did they really go to Florida when they told investigaors they said they did? Or, did they instead go to Mexico? When they told me scenario A, does that match up to the alibi they threw out to those who are looking at alibis? Benign or not, these people told me more than they expected to.

After reading through these notes, I can tell you this: I was a sucker. I allowed myself to be manipulated because I so wanted to believe these people were good at heart. I discarded the business end of my business into the corner every time I talked to them. I made excuses to myself, justifying their situation. After all, they were just in a tight spot. When the reality is they were just buying time.

What burns me the most is how often I advise landlords to be hard-nosed and strict. Marty has assured me many times over, it was these experiences with idiots like these former folks that made me hard-nosed and strict.

Right now, I am beating myself up over mistakes of the past. I can't believe I allowed them to stay in my home and take advantage of me. As I re-read everything, piecing together what I know now, I keep thinking, "Why didn't I see the pattern of stupidity?" I dealt with a lot of garbage I didn't have to. Why didn't I just evict their butts to the street months earlier than I did? It could have saved me the hassle and annoyances. What was I thinking? I don't remember any more. And even if I could, it certainly wasn't worth it.

If there is a silver lining, I did come up with a new rule: Any tenant who e-mails me more than two times in a six month period with excuses for late rent is gone. Just to make sure I am following my rule, I did a quick inventory of all my tenants. Nope, nobody has done this lately. No silly stories. No excuses.

Maybe I did learn something after all.