Servicemen in your home

OCD is the icing on the cake. I have a no shoes policy and they're all wearing shoes. It would be ridiculous to tell them to take their shoes off since they're in and out the front door with eight foot pipes and 100 pound radiators. Plus I have to keep three cats in one room. If you've ever gone in and out of a room 3 panicked cats are trying to escape from without letting one out, then you must have some kind of superpower.

Another xanax naps? Sure why not.

This is why we need robots. But then they'll make them convincing robots, so I think we're back to square one..

come on, man, I'm suffering here.

you could have avoided this whole situation if you had simply decided to forgo heating your apartment

I used to take for granted the moderate climate of the place where I come from (it can be both a little too hot and a little too cold sometimes, but there's never an actual need for climate control). I learned to value it after being abroad. I used to think of this kind of climate as the rule, but it looks like worldwide it's very much the exception. And it's definitely a major consideration when you have a choice between two places. Existence takes a lot more effort (and/or money) when the weather conspires against you.

I had windows put in a month back but it was just in one room at the other side of the house. I just vegetated at the other side. If people were in and out of the room I was in, that would drive me crazy. This is why I learn skills to do everything myself. However, if the landlord? is paying then my issues will take a backseat to my frugality.

anathegram wrote:you could have avoided this whole situation if you had simply decided to forgo heating your apartment

The ironic thing is that I never get enough heat anyway. The building is poorly isolated. It averages 64º in my apartment during the winter. This new system is obviously going to be cheaper to run, so I can guarantee it's going to be even colder from now on. Besides, I hate the cold. 70º is cold to me. In the summer I keep the air conditioner fan on pretty much all the time, but it has to break 90º in here for me to turn on the compressor.

emillionth wrote:Existence takes a lot more effort (and/or money) when the weather conspires against you.

This is true. Thanks for that post before, by the way. I could have written it myself. Anxiety from uncertainty is an OCD thing for me. If someone invites me out, I need to know where we're going, how we're getting there, how long it will take, what the alternative route will be in the event of a meteor, who will be there, and how long we will be staying. For starters.

I tell my landlord I usually never know if I'm working until the day before, which is, of course untrue. But it works. I complain about him but I've actually got him trained quite well. I'm one of his better tenants, so I can use that to my advantage.

iabsurdlyexist wrote:I had windows put in a month back but it was just in one room at the other side of the house. I just vegetated at the other side. If people were in and out of the room I was in, that would drive me crazy. This is why I learn skills to do everything myself. However, if the landlord? is paying then my issues will take a backseat to my frugality.

They were in every room at once, drilling through walls and cutting metal pipes. And worse. I walked into my spare room where I have a desk with a hutch where I keep all my collectibles and various stuff which I've either had forever or is valuable, there were all three of them, holding the hutch upright as it tilted just enough to not spill it's contents. One side of it had lost it's purchase of the desktop, so the whole thing was literally teetering. I helped them right it, and only lost two objects.

Also I will have to rearrange a lot of my furniture because instead of having radiators in the wall, I now have baseboard heaters, so there are a lot of things that will no longer be able to be flush against the wall. The landlord poked his misshapen head in at one point and told me I caaht kee mah sofa again da heetahs. As if they actually will emit any heat.

You know how I got through it? Beer. Beer is good.

90º indoors = I have already been dead for some time

this has not been a good summer

I'm "semi"-ocd I guess, if people are coming in I need to assure myself once they are gone I can clean up to back how I want things, but I don't mind the presence of servicemen in my place, I am very aware of them being around but I try to minimize their existence as much as I can e.g. once I had to have a new bathtub, and I showed him the bathroom, I might have asked if he wanted a cup of tea, but whatever I did or didn't say, I just closed the living room door and watched some tv, or show or film, probs while on laptop. I cool it with the Hitler speeches over my speakers and the extreme pornography when people are working inside but overall I just do the courtesy thing I learned of asking if they want a cup of tea and then I leave them be to do my thing...it mostly is fine, unless they start using drills and other power tools that make insufferable noise.

I could see how OCD would make it worse (because people are inevitably interfering with your habits and normal structure), but I'd say it's not even necessarily a pathological thing. I'm guessing normal people get this way too; maybe they're just a little less drained by it. It's pretty much an invasion of someone's private, sweat-pants and rage-face life by public expectations to be a shiny, happy person.

It's not really the same situation, but I think the motive is the same as one funny anecdote I have. Once I was hanging out with some friends in a large city, and at 2 AM they decided they really wanted to go to a club. The doorman kept saying he couldn't really let us in (they begged enough and he eventually did).

I asked him at one point, "So you're a local; if you could be anywhere in the city right now, where would you go?" And without flinching, he answered back, "Dude, if I could, I would be at home either eating a pizza and watching Netflix or asleep in bed." I immediately liked the guy (I may have slipped him a $20 when he let us in).

anathegram wrote:for a second there I thought this thread was going to be about some moneymaking scheme

Funny enough, when I first saw "servicemen," I thought of military personnel and was like, "Wait, isn't that what the 3rd Amendment is for?"

emillionth wrote:I'll be focusing on staying within my comfort zone and making it as comfortable as possible with the least possible effort and money. I don't even do chores (like cleaning the place) unless/until it feels like it's absolutely necessary, because even though I'm not consciously thinking about it, the unresolved issue still makes me operate in "wait-and-survive mode". Because "any non-immediate effort that might go beyond my basic comfort zone would surely be frustrated by their unpredictable invasion of my time and space and schedule and patience, so there's no point". As soon as I think of doing something beyond bare-minimum-comfort-zone, a bell rings in my head: "nope". I have to be prepared to, at some unspecified and unpredictable time, not only act like I'm perfectly fine with them being here completely disrupting my entire sense of home and basic routine, but also perfectly fine with them having no respect for my time and peace of mind.

That... is pretty much a good summary of my 20s. Just replace the apartment maintenance people with society itself.