All the ins and outs of the situation are too complicated to bore you with (anyone wanting to follow the flatmate from hell saga can look here, here, here, here, here and here - for starters...), but to be (kinda) brief (this may not seem like the simplified version, but trust me), I saw the agent last night, who gave me a copy of the lease, as requested by the taxman. She also let me know that she has no idea where G is these days; that G had been charging me more than half the rent when I was living with her - not really surprised at this stage, but unsure why that never came out before; and that G's dad had said she has always been a liar. True dat. Plus more stuff about how even when the agent had turned up to the apartment to bust her, she was spouting lies about how I (and she pretended I was 'Géraldine' and she was my flatmate) worked nights and wouldn't be back and she should come back during the day - whereas she knew I was right behind her, since we'd been at a mutual friend's place, but she was obviously hoping that she could get rid of the agent and I'd never find out.
Anyway, armed with the lease, I went to the tax office this morning (the whole thing took about 2 hours total). Unfortunately, didn't get to see the guy I saw last time, who got the whole sob story and told me how to sort it out. Instead, I got a woman who seemed much less sympathetic. To be fair, I didn't lay all the cards on the table at first, since I was thinking that, as I had been told I wasn't legally responsible, it didn't really matter what G had done to me. But she started off by saying I could have forged the agent's signature on the lease. I mean, first off, the agent had crossed out the girl who had lived with G THREE flatmates before me (and was never taken off the lease), and just written in that she left in 2008 but G was still there until the end of July this year. Why, if I were the legal-document-forging and lying-to-the-tax-department type, would I have bothered trying to absolve this other girl of responsibility? Wouldn't it have been easier just to leave things as they were?
After a bit of back and forth, thankfully she decided to believe me that I hadn't turned my hand to fraud to get out of a 450€ bill. Then she said she could cancel me off the tax (and thus make G solely responsible for it) but for some reason she couldn't take the TV licence fee out of my name. Why couldn't she? She just couldn't. Of course. Sigh. I pointed out that this was pretty unfair, since it was G's TV (technically - and I didn't tell her this - I did have a TV in my room too, but it belonged to G and I watched it max once a fortnight when the F1 was on, plus it's one fee per residence, not per TV, so didn't make a difference anyway) and she turned all snippy and said that normally everyone had to pay the taxe d'habitation, and I had been living there, so I shouldn't be complaining. Which was infuriating. At this stage, I had mentioned that G had stolen from me and not paid the rent (since she had initially suggested that I just sort out paying the tax between ourselves), so don't bloody talk to me about moral obligations! However, there was no budging her on this standpoint, so I just paid the 123€. At the end of the day, it's less than half the amount, which is what I was expecting to have to pay, and it's done with.
The only thing is, I'm left wondering if the situation is truly resolved now. She said (again, I don't know why) that G would now receive the bill for this tax in January or February. Somehow, I'm not picturing her leaping off to the tax office to fulfil her obligations (obligations? Obligations are for suckers). The agent said that if she doesn't pay, they will end up chasing the landlord for the money. In that case, she mentioned using a rent cheque I gave the agent for June and July (which she hasn't yet cashed because of accountancy issues chasing up the money from G's family - again, won't go into the details) to pay the tax. Sure, I was in the apartment in June and July, so I'm not contesting that I owe rent for those months, but it seems unfair to have that hanging over my head for who-knows-how-long. And the thought that she might just merrily not pay something AGAIN and not really have to deal with any of the consequences AGAIN really, really annoys me. And I feel that that's like, best case scenario - I just have visions of her somehow harrassing me.
This whole thing has been such a drain for the past six months. Even today, I was feeling physically sick to my stomach in the tax place. I just wish I knew it was over.
Showing posts with label flatties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flatties. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
In which nothing has changed
I decided not to go into work today (kind of annoyed about spending another day of holiday, even though I have so many, but oh well) because I was still getting over the tail-end of being sick, I had the tax stuff to sort out and basically I didn't want to. I got woken up around 7.30 by my neighbour leaving his apartment (I would love to know what he does - he often leaves before I'm up in the morning, and he always gets in super late, like 11.30 at night. I have probably blown my chance for neighbourly relations though, by basically running into my apartment and slamming the door the one time our paths crossed in the corridor. It's not my fault, though - studies have shown that 9 out of 10 girls can't distinguish his footsteps on the creaky wooden stairs from those of an angry rapist) and - ding! - that was it, I was awake and worrying about the taxe d'habitation and all it represents (phoning people in French, notably).
I had called the agent on her cellphone a couple of times yesterday, left a message, and also called the agency where I thought she worked, only to be told (confusingly) that she doesn't work there "and she's not in today anyway". Um, okay then. I didn't hear back, so I gave it till 10 this morning and called her again (twice), the second time I got through, she recognised me straight away (for once, the accent came in handy, not like yesterday at the tax place where I said, and SPELLED, my flatmate's name like 10 times and the guy kept on going "Burton? She is English like you?" until I finally got through to him. Damn Rs) but asked if she could call me back in about half an hour.
No problem! Yay! I leant back, congratulated myself on being brave and persistent with the phonecalls and waited for her to call me back and for me to get everything all ship-shape by the end of the day. I don't know why I expected it to be easy. In an universe where someone can lie to and steal from a supposed friend and get away without paying rent for a year without any serious consequences (yes, she technically has to pay the money back to her family, but c'mon...) (and forgetting the whole 'spending years sleeping with a guy who has a partner and kid at home' bit - which, of course, is more his fault, but it's not super classy on her part you must say) and then karma or whatever you call it sticks me with 100% of the tax bill that even the tax office says she should be legally responsible for (leaving any moral questions aside), of course it's not going to be easy. Why would I get a break? And yes, I know I'm *dwelling* but I can't not while this is still not resolved.
So anyway, all that to say that I just waited and waited for her to call back and the call never came. I leapt on the phone once and it turned out to be some crappy autodialling thing which called me 6 times, and there's not even any message or anyone on the line! I looked up the number online (092583697 for any of you in France) and there are pages and pages of people complaining about getting constantly called by this thing. Apparently something to do with Free and Alice selling your number to advertisers or something - and sure enough, in the evening I got a call from an unlisted number and it was Canal Plus telling me that I had been specially selected for a TV upgrade offer. I managed to cut her off by telling her I don't have a TV (you may remember, I - almost - literally threw the TV back in G's face in the moving out process) so mayyyybe they'll give calling me a rest. I guess if you pick up the phone to the stupid machine, you get "selected" for a real person to call you at night.
Anyway, I'm rambling. The obvious question you'll ask is why I didn't call the woman back again. I thought about it, but first I thought I should give it more time, since I'd already called like 4 times (one message, one time actually getting through, oh and the mysterious place where she doesn't work but kind of does as well) and I didn't want to be harassing someone I essentially needed a favour from. And then as the day went on, I just got really down. I'm still down, if you can't tell from my perky post thus far. It's just difficult to have the energy to deal with it. It's hard to feel stupid and unfairly treated and put upon and lost at sea all alone in a foreign country. Plus I'm still kind of sick and I'm just so tired. It's just so hard. And I don't know how I'm going to get up and go to work tomorrow, I just want to lie in bed all the time forever.
Oh yeah, and now I'm officially past due for the tax that I never got official notification of and have no idea what the consequences of that may be (I'm hoping none for me and lots for G, who presumably already knows she's off the hook and is just somewhere cackling with glee about sticking me with it, but like I say, with my luck...)
I had called the agent on her cellphone a couple of times yesterday, left a message, and also called the agency where I thought she worked, only to be told (confusingly) that she doesn't work there "and she's not in today anyway". Um, okay then. I didn't hear back, so I gave it till 10 this morning and called her again (twice), the second time I got through, she recognised me straight away (for once, the accent came in handy, not like yesterday at the tax place where I said, and SPELLED, my flatmate's name like 10 times and the guy kept on going "Burton? She is English like you?" until I finally got through to him. Damn Rs) but asked if she could call me back in about half an hour.
No problem! Yay! I leant back, congratulated myself on being brave and persistent with the phonecalls and waited for her to call me back and for me to get everything all ship-shape by the end of the day. I don't know why I expected it to be easy. In an universe where someone can lie to and steal from a supposed friend and get away without paying rent for a year without any serious consequences (yes, she technically has to pay the money back to her family, but c'mon...) (and forgetting the whole 'spending years sleeping with a guy who has a partner and kid at home' bit - which, of course, is more his fault, but it's not super classy on her part you must say) and then karma or whatever you call it sticks me with 100% of the tax bill that even the tax office says she should be legally responsible for (leaving any moral questions aside), of course it's not going to be easy. Why would I get a break? And yes, I know I'm *dwelling* but I can't not while this is still not resolved.
So anyway, all that to say that I just waited and waited for her to call back and the call never came. I leapt on the phone once and it turned out to be some crappy autodialling thing which called me 6 times, and there's not even any message or anyone on the line! I looked up the number online (092583697 for any of you in France) and there are pages and pages of people complaining about getting constantly called by this thing. Apparently something to do with Free and Alice selling your number to advertisers or something - and sure enough, in the evening I got a call from an unlisted number and it was Canal Plus telling me that I had been specially selected for a TV upgrade offer. I managed to cut her off by telling her I don't have a TV (you may remember, I - almost - literally threw the TV back in G's face in the moving out process) so mayyyybe they'll give calling me a rest. I guess if you pick up the phone to the stupid machine, you get "selected" for a real person to call you at night.
Anyway, I'm rambling. The obvious question you'll ask is why I didn't call the woman back again. I thought about it, but first I thought I should give it more time, since I'd already called like 4 times (one message, one time actually getting through, oh and the mysterious place where she doesn't work but kind of does as well) and I didn't want to be harassing someone I essentially needed a favour from. And then as the day went on, I just got really down. I'm still down, if you can't tell from my perky post thus far. It's just difficult to have the energy to deal with it. It's hard to feel stupid and unfairly treated and put upon and lost at sea all alone in a foreign country. Plus I'm still kind of sick and I'm just so tired. It's just so hard. And I don't know how I'm going to get up and go to work tomorrow, I just want to lie in bed all the time forever.
Oh yeah, and now I'm officially past due for the tax that I never got official notification of and have no idea what the consequences of that may be (I'm hoping none for me and lots for G, who presumably already knows she's off the hook and is just somewhere cackling with glee about sticking me with it, but like I say, with my luck...)
Monday, November 14, 2011
Flatmate saga - it's not over yet
Warning: Long post about my ongoing flatmate nightmare ahead!
I've just come back from the tax office, since that seemed like a completely fun way to spend my day off. Actually, I first went by in the morning, only for there to be a huge queue in front of me. Since there wasn't that much time left before they closed for lunch, I thought I would be all clever and turn up before they reopened their doors after the break.
Usually, if I need to go to this part of town, I make a detour past the best damn briocherie in Tours. I was kind of embarrassed this morning, cos the lady knew my order without me having to say. Maybe I've been there a couple of extra times lately, with the train trips to Chenonceaux and Poitiers (it's right next to the station), but I swear, normally it's only like once a month max that I end up nearby! Or maybe she just looks at me and thinks "definitely the chocolate chip version for that one"? But anyway, having already got my brioche fix in the morning, I tried to take a shortcut to the tax place and ended up lost in Sanitas, which is officially 'the dodgy part of Tours' - a quartier made up entirely of high-rise HLMs (State Housing) right next to the train tracks. The dodgy bit wouldn't have bothered me too much - it's broad daylight, and it's pretty much just code for 'Here Be Non-White People' I suspect - but I was literally on the wrong side of the tracks and there was no way to get over. By the time I finally found a pedestrian overpass, I had overshot the tax office and had to walk back up the road again, thus negating any possible benefit the 'shortcut' might have had. (On the bright side, this route did lead me past a building which is now a retirement home but was, in the Middle Ages, a home for lepers! You don't see that every day! I had a bit of a chuckle at the symbolism of having a 'ghetto' retirement home in an ex-leper colony. In fact, the leper home ended up giving its name to the whole area, 'Sanitas' being derived from sante - French for health. PS sorry I lost my special short keys to do accents when my laptop crashed, so you'll just have to imagine the accent on sante.)
Normally, I would take this as a Sign From Above to continue eating brioches (and also a good opportunity to work off like 1% of said brioche), but by the time I turned up, 5 minutes before the agency was due to re-open, there was a queue of about 35 people, which swelled to approximately 50 naughty French improper queuers by the time the doors opened.
Why so many? Well, as I would later discover, the taxe d'habitation is due TOMORROW. I still haven't received anything about it in the post, so I had no idea. I had to laugh (and internally hit my head against a brick wall) when I was talking to the tax agent later on and he told me La Poste doesn't forward any mail from the tax department, because otherwise people will try to get out of providing their real addresses to the tax man. This is literally the ONLY reason I paid them 23 euros to forward my mail. I haven't received one piece of forwarded post. Ah hahahaha, you just have to laugh or you'll cry.
Talking of crying, I almost did when I got to Man #1, who was in charge of screening people into the appropriate offices. I explained my whole situation to him - for those who aren't au courant, I was flatting with a French girl, I wasn't on the lease, I gave my rent money directly to her, she didn't pay either her rent or my rent for a year and lived off approximately 4000 euros of my money while quittin' her job to lie in bed all day. When this came to light, we were "asked to leave" the apartment and I had to find a new place without her lifting a single finger to help me with anything. Everything got squared away with the rent money, but I was still left incurring at least a couple thousand euros of expenses in the move. Anyway, I explained a brief version of all this, and the guy was all like "but you weren't on the lease?", "No", "then you shouldn't be responsible for paying". HALLELUJAH! But 2 minutes later he was just all "well, *normally* you shouldn't be responsible for paying, but for some reason the full amount is in your name, nothing's in her name and so hey, guess what, you're on the hook for the full 450 euros". He basically just did his best Gallic shrug when asked why that should be if I was never on the lease and he JUST SAID that I should therefore not be responsible. And then he was all "you can wait to see my colleague if you like, but he's just going to tell you the same thing". This is about the point where I was ready to burst into tears, but I held it together and said I would wait for his colleague, which just earned more "it's your funeral" type shrugging from him.
So, colleague it was, and I must say, this guy was super nice. He took the time to listen to everything I had to say and give me a little fatherly advice about how you should never be in a flatting situation without something in writing, even if it's with friends or partners, even if it's not a proper lease but just something scribbled on the back of an envelope. So yeah, too late for me, but maybe someone reading this will learn from my mistakes...
Another "pro tip" from the pit of despair - we talked about why it would be that it somehow ended up in my name. At first he just said that he didn't know how it worked, but maybe since they had two names on the tax declaration (she did apparently declare she was living there too, which is at least a start I suppose), they just picked one at random. Then he said something interesting - that I might have 'missed something' on the tax form. He explained that you can tick that you're in a flat as an owner, a renter, or that you're living there for free. Now here's the interesting bit - living there for free, in the eyes of the taxman, doesn't necessarily mean you're not paying rent, it just means that you're not legally responsible for the place e.g. you're not on the lease and therefore you don't get assessed for the tax. I had no clue about this, so I obviously ticked 'tenant'. He suggested that she might have been maligne (which means clever, but there's an air of 'sneaky, tricky' about it - you can see the relationship with malignant in English) and ticked that SHE was living there for free, and thus landed me right in it. And you know, that wouldn't bloody surprise me a bit. He also said I was naive - perceptive one, this taxman!
So Mr. Nice Taxman suggested that I needed to get on to the agency that rented us our old flat (rented HER our old flat, I should say) and try to get either a copy of the lease or the etat des lieux de sortie (the paperwork she would have signed on moving out) to prove that she was on the lease and I wasn't, and then they might be able to shift it on to her, which understandably they can't do just on my say-so (even if they have bloody well stuck me with it IMHO unfairly in the first place). If the 450 euros had been divided in two, I would have just paid my part, but it would really kill me to have to pay her part as well, and I know she's never going to give me the money just if I ask for it (for one thing, I "technically" still owe her for the last two months' expenses and supposedly some rubbish tax (as in, stuff you throw away, not bullsh!t) she'd never brought up in the previous 15 months I was there).
So I've called the agency, the woman I was dealing with is not there and wasn't answering her cellphone, so I left a message and am hoping she will get back to me, otherwise I'll have to like try and doorstop her the way she did when she came to get us for not paying rent, ha ha. Meanwhile, I am still legally responsible for this thing that's due tomorrow, and I don't really know what the consequences are for being late with it - the guy said they will "chase me" (although thanks to La Poste not forwarding their letters, I won't know about it ha ha) but I don't really know beyond that. He suggested maybe paying it and getting a refund, but I don't really trust that that will work out. Honestly, I hope that bitch falls into a well, I really do.
I've just come back from the tax office, since that seemed like a completely fun way to spend my day off. Actually, I first went by in the morning, only for there to be a huge queue in front of me. Since there wasn't that much time left before they closed for lunch, I thought I would be all clever and turn up before they reopened their doors after the break.
Usually, if I need to go to this part of town, I make a detour past the best damn briocherie in Tours. I was kind of embarrassed this morning, cos the lady knew my order without me having to say. Maybe I've been there a couple of extra times lately, with the train trips to Chenonceaux and Poitiers (it's right next to the station), but I swear, normally it's only like once a month max that I end up nearby! Or maybe she just looks at me and thinks "definitely the chocolate chip version for that one"? But anyway, having already got my brioche fix in the morning, I tried to take a shortcut to the tax place and ended up lost in Sanitas, which is officially 'the dodgy part of Tours' - a quartier made up entirely of high-rise HLMs (State Housing) right next to the train tracks. The dodgy bit wouldn't have bothered me too much - it's broad daylight, and it's pretty much just code for 'Here Be Non-White People' I suspect - but I was literally on the wrong side of the tracks and there was no way to get over. By the time I finally found a pedestrian overpass, I had overshot the tax office and had to walk back up the road again, thus negating any possible benefit the 'shortcut' might have had. (On the bright side, this route did lead me past a building which is now a retirement home but was, in the Middle Ages, a home for lepers! You don't see that every day! I had a bit of a chuckle at the symbolism of having a 'ghetto' retirement home in an ex-leper colony. In fact, the leper home ended up giving its name to the whole area, 'Sanitas' being derived from sante - French for health. PS sorry I lost my special short keys to do accents when my laptop crashed, so you'll just have to imagine the accent on sante.)
Normally, I would take this as a Sign From Above to continue eating brioches (and also a good opportunity to work off like 1% of said brioche), but by the time I turned up, 5 minutes before the agency was due to re-open, there was a queue of about 35 people, which swelled to approximately 50 naughty French improper queuers by the time the doors opened.
Why so many? Well, as I would later discover, the taxe d'habitation is due TOMORROW. I still haven't received anything about it in the post, so I had no idea. I had to laugh (and internally hit my head against a brick wall) when I was talking to the tax agent later on and he told me La Poste doesn't forward any mail from the tax department, because otherwise people will try to get out of providing their real addresses to the tax man. This is literally the ONLY reason I paid them 23 euros to forward my mail. I haven't received one piece of forwarded post. Ah hahahaha, you just have to laugh or you'll cry.
Talking of crying, I almost did when I got to Man #1, who was in charge of screening people into the appropriate offices. I explained my whole situation to him - for those who aren't au courant, I was flatting with a French girl, I wasn't on the lease, I gave my rent money directly to her, she didn't pay either her rent or my rent for a year and lived off approximately 4000 euros of my money while quittin' her job to lie in bed all day. When this came to light, we were "asked to leave" the apartment and I had to find a new place without her lifting a single finger to help me with anything. Everything got squared away with the rent money, but I was still left incurring at least a couple thousand euros of expenses in the move. Anyway, I explained a brief version of all this, and the guy was all like "but you weren't on the lease?", "No", "then you shouldn't be responsible for paying". HALLELUJAH! But 2 minutes later he was just all "well, *normally* you shouldn't be responsible for paying, but for some reason the full amount is in your name, nothing's in her name and so hey, guess what, you're on the hook for the full 450 euros". He basically just did his best Gallic shrug when asked why that should be if I was never on the lease and he JUST SAID that I should therefore not be responsible. And then he was all "you can wait to see my colleague if you like, but he's just going to tell you the same thing". This is about the point where I was ready to burst into tears, but I held it together and said I would wait for his colleague, which just earned more "it's your funeral" type shrugging from him.
So, colleague it was, and I must say, this guy was super nice. He took the time to listen to everything I had to say and give me a little fatherly advice about how you should never be in a flatting situation without something in writing, even if it's with friends or partners, even if it's not a proper lease but just something scribbled on the back of an envelope. So yeah, too late for me, but maybe someone reading this will learn from my mistakes...
Another "pro tip" from the pit of despair - we talked about why it would be that it somehow ended up in my name. At first he just said that he didn't know how it worked, but maybe since they had two names on the tax declaration (she did apparently declare she was living there too, which is at least a start I suppose), they just picked one at random. Then he said something interesting - that I might have 'missed something' on the tax form. He explained that you can tick that you're in a flat as an owner, a renter, or that you're living there for free. Now here's the interesting bit - living there for free, in the eyes of the taxman, doesn't necessarily mean you're not paying rent, it just means that you're not legally responsible for the place e.g. you're not on the lease and therefore you don't get assessed for the tax. I had no clue about this, so I obviously ticked 'tenant'. He suggested that she might have been maligne (which means clever, but there's an air of 'sneaky, tricky' about it - you can see the relationship with malignant in English) and ticked that SHE was living there for free, and thus landed me right in it. And you know, that wouldn't bloody surprise me a bit. He also said I was naive - perceptive one, this taxman!
So Mr. Nice Taxman suggested that I needed to get on to the agency that rented us our old flat (rented HER our old flat, I should say) and try to get either a copy of the lease or the etat des lieux de sortie (the paperwork she would have signed on moving out) to prove that she was on the lease and I wasn't, and then they might be able to shift it on to her, which understandably they can't do just on my say-so (even if they have bloody well stuck me with it IMHO unfairly in the first place). If the 450 euros had been divided in two, I would have just paid my part, but it would really kill me to have to pay her part as well, and I know she's never going to give me the money just if I ask for it (for one thing, I "technically" still owe her for the last two months' expenses and supposedly some rubbish tax (as in, stuff you throw away, not bullsh!t) she'd never brought up in the previous 15 months I was there).
So I've called the agency, the woman I was dealing with is not there and wasn't answering her cellphone, so I left a message and am hoping she will get back to me, otherwise I'll have to like try and doorstop her the way she did when she came to get us for not paying rent, ha ha. Meanwhile, I am still legally responsible for this thing that's due tomorrow, and I don't really know what the consequences are for being late with it - the guy said they will "chase me" (although thanks to La Poste not forwarding their letters, I won't know about it ha ha) but I don't really know beyond that. He suggested maybe paying it and getting a refund, but I don't really trust that that will work out. Honestly, I hope that bitch falls into a well, I really do.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Haunted city
For me Tours has become a haunted place. Everywhere I look I seem to see the ghost of my old flatmate. And the sad thing is, I'm actually frightened at the thought of seeing her. It's like breaking up with a boyfriend and wondering what you'll do or say if you run into them again, except with less worrying that they might think you're looking fat or be with someone else, and more worrying that they'll just skitz out at you. Come to think of it, breaking up with my boyfriend of six years was both more amicable and less financially complicated...
I'm quite shortsighted, and every time I see someone in the distance or from behind who looks a little bit like her, my heart is in my mouth. The other day, I thought she got on the bus (even though she never takes the bus). Then I thought I saw her in the supermarket and I had to go hide down a different aisle until I was sure it wasn't her. I don't even know if she is still in Tours, or if she left to move in with one of her parents, but I still think I see her everywhere.
I hate feeling like this. Firstly, I'm not sure why I'm so nervous. Surely, in her position, if she saw me she wouldn't want a confrontation. What do I think she's going to do? Scream at me? Attack me? Secondly, it's ridiculous. I did nothing wrong. She stole from me, lied to my face, quit her job and spent 6 months lying in bed living off my money while I was getting up and going to work every day, and she topped it off by finally causing me to lose my home... So why am I sure that I'm the only one dreading the thought of running into her?
Even on a practical level, the repercussions of what she did are not over. Very soon we will have to pay a tax which is based on where you live (kind of like rates, but tenants have to pay it too) and should, at least in theory, be in both our names. I went to the tax office last month to explain the situation and ask if we could be assessed separately. They told me it was too late for that, but it was too early to tell me if the bill was in fact in both our names. It should be, because they calculate it off your tax return and I assume she at least had a grain of responsibility (or self-preservation, more likely) left and declared her taxes properly. Still, it was a bit disquieting when they gave me a piece of paper with just my name and the full amount showing on it. The question is, what happens next? If her mail is getting forwarded too, I don't know what the post office will do with a letter addressed to both of us. I really don't want to talk to her, I definitely am not going to give her money to pay on my behalf, and I don't want to be stuck with the full amount (450 euros). I'm hoping the bill will come to me and I can persuade the tax people to just let me pay my half, give me some document to say I'm not responsible for the other half, and to hell with her. It's so effed up that this is still affecting me.
On the other hand, you may remember that I told her to send me copies of all the outstanding bills, plus copies of all the utilities bills for the time we lived together, and I'd make a decision on what I thought was my fair share of them. 2 1/2 months later, I haven't received anything from her, so I feel like I have a clean conscience on that front. Lots of people told me not to give her a cent anyway, but I'm glad I at least left the door open on it and she's the one who didn't follow up, so I still have my integrity intact. My suspicion is that she had actually inflated the electric bill and that's why she hasn't responded. Even if it was only 20 euros extra a month or whatever, over a year and a bit that's not a negligible sum of money. I did see a couple of bills, but after everything that's happened I think she was quite capable of strategically showing me a couple of very high ones and just blagging it that that was what it was every month. It's not that I can't read an electricity bill - I'm not stupid, and I even briefly had a job where I was responsible for paying the EDF bills for some 200 properties (and took great pleasure in analysing the nitty gritty of them and refusing to pay out for the portions of the bills I thought our company wasn't responsible for). I was just trusting, and I therefore didn't look at anything too closely, or question her about anything.
Now, of course, I feel stupid about that, but at the same time I don't want this to destroy my general faith in human kind and expectation that someone I'm close to probably won't be secretly screwing me over on a long-term basis. Let's hope it somehow works out with this tax thing so that I can finally start to feel like most of this episode is behind me. And maybe then I can stop seeing the ghosts of flatmates past.
I'm quite shortsighted, and every time I see someone in the distance or from behind who looks a little bit like her, my heart is in my mouth. The other day, I thought she got on the bus (even though she never takes the bus). Then I thought I saw her in the supermarket and I had to go hide down a different aisle until I was sure it wasn't her. I don't even know if she is still in Tours, or if she left to move in with one of her parents, but I still think I see her everywhere.
I hate feeling like this. Firstly, I'm not sure why I'm so nervous. Surely, in her position, if she saw me she wouldn't want a confrontation. What do I think she's going to do? Scream at me? Attack me? Secondly, it's ridiculous. I did nothing wrong. She stole from me, lied to my face, quit her job and spent 6 months lying in bed living off my money while I was getting up and going to work every day, and she topped it off by finally causing me to lose my home... So why am I sure that I'm the only one dreading the thought of running into her?
Even on a practical level, the repercussions of what she did are not over. Very soon we will have to pay a tax which is based on where you live (kind of like rates, but tenants have to pay it too) and should, at least in theory, be in both our names. I went to the tax office last month to explain the situation and ask if we could be assessed separately. They told me it was too late for that, but it was too early to tell me if the bill was in fact in both our names. It should be, because they calculate it off your tax return and I assume she at least had a grain of responsibility (or self-preservation, more likely) left and declared her taxes properly. Still, it was a bit disquieting when they gave me a piece of paper with just my name and the full amount showing on it. The question is, what happens next? If her mail is getting forwarded too, I don't know what the post office will do with a letter addressed to both of us. I really don't want to talk to her, I definitely am not going to give her money to pay on my behalf, and I don't want to be stuck with the full amount (450 euros). I'm hoping the bill will come to me and I can persuade the tax people to just let me pay my half, give me some document to say I'm not responsible for the other half, and to hell with her. It's so effed up that this is still affecting me.
On the other hand, you may remember that I told her to send me copies of all the outstanding bills, plus copies of all the utilities bills for the time we lived together, and I'd make a decision on what I thought was my fair share of them. 2 1/2 months later, I haven't received anything from her, so I feel like I have a clean conscience on that front. Lots of people told me not to give her a cent anyway, but I'm glad I at least left the door open on it and she's the one who didn't follow up, so I still have my integrity intact. My suspicion is that she had actually inflated the electric bill and that's why she hasn't responded. Even if it was only 20 euros extra a month or whatever, over a year and a bit that's not a negligible sum of money. I did see a couple of bills, but after everything that's happened I think she was quite capable of strategically showing me a couple of very high ones and just blagging it that that was what it was every month. It's not that I can't read an electricity bill - I'm not stupid, and I even briefly had a job where I was responsible for paying the EDF bills for some 200 properties (and took great pleasure in analysing the nitty gritty of them and refusing to pay out for the portions of the bills I thought our company wasn't responsible for). I was just trusting, and I therefore didn't look at anything too closely, or question her about anything.
Now, of course, I feel stupid about that, but at the same time I don't want this to destroy my general faith in human kind and expectation that someone I'm close to probably won't be secretly screwing me over on a long-term basis. Let's hope it somehow works out with this tax thing so that I can finally start to feel like most of this episode is behind me. And maybe then I can stop seeing the ghosts of flatmates past.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
New apartment
Bahaha
I won't have internet at home until after my holiday, so I will probably put up some photos of the new place then - hopefully it will be in order by that time! The move went well, got it all done well within the time the truck was rented for. The 4 flights of stairs were rather unpleasant, but manageable. I was super grateful to have 2 guys from work helping! They took care of all the heavy stuff without a murmur, cheers!
The next day, I got an oven, fridge/freezer and washing machine delivered. I was super-impressed - they're all from a second-hand dealer, he delivered them the same day, came the first time, moved the washing machine and oven in, came back a second time after calling a third guy to help with the fridge (it is massive, and the stairs are really steep and narrow, especially the last flight) and then came back a THIRD time because the plug on the oven was too big for a normal socket, so he got a new plug and wired it all up. Took him 2 hours total, poor thing! I was so super grateful slash super embarrassed to be sitting there doing nothing while they were dying hauling this stuff up. Yes, I had paid for the delivery, but only 35 euros. Gave him a bottle of wine to assuage my middle-class guilt :)
The place is more or less in order, by which I mean it's still a complete tip, but obviously the whiteware's in, I've put together all the Ikea furniture (except for the door on a cupboard, which I can't figure out how the hinges go on for the life of me), and things are generally unpacked. Hopefully I'll get it sorted this weekend so that I can come back to a nice place after my holiday.
Yesterday I got a text from Geraldine - after I had moved out, she had finally offered me the one and only bit of assistance she deigned to give, the offer of the small TV I had had in my room. I went early in the morning to get it, partly because I woke up really early anyway, and partly to avoid her. I had some suspicions that this was a ploy to lure me back and ask me for money. Possibly that was paranoia, but here's her response to the text I sent to say thanks for the TV:
"No worries, glad someone can get some use out of it. However we need to see each other about the rent for June and July. And it would be good if you could clean your room (including the windows) before Saturday. I'll take care of all the rest and the torn wallpaper in your room. I am moving my cartons tonight so the room will be accessible from tomorrow. And you also need to give me the keys back before the inspection on Saturday morning"
N'importe quoi! Okay, I can understand about the rent, other than the fact that I've TOLD her already that I gave the cheques to the agent and she was sorting it out. She hasn't cashed them, but no way I'm giving G another set of cheques. And the agent told me to drop the keys off at her office, so that's what I'll be doing. But honest to god, can you believe she asked me to come back and clean, and acted like she was doing me a favour cleaning the rest of the apartment? Other than the fact that she knows it's her security deposit at stake (I didn't give one) so it doesn't really concern me, I always did 90% of the housework - I stopped bothering for the last couple of weeks and you could seriously see the difference. And the 'torn wallpaper' she mentions is the work of her cats, as she very well knows, not my fault at all. Besides, while it's true I didn't bother cleaning up after the move, it's an empty room, not a pigpen. Apart from the precious windows (which I cleaned in spring), all it needs is a vacuum. Honestly you'd think you'd be ashamed of mentioning that to someone who you got evicted from their home! I got a variety of amusing responses on facebook as to exactly how I should tell her where to go, but I think I'll just ignore it. If she's dumb enough to turn up at the inspection on Saturday without making provisions to clean the place, good luck to her. Honestly I am starting to think there's something not right about how she can't see the consequences of her actions or how someone else might see the situation!
Oh and PS OMG, EDF opened an account for me over the internet? I'm waiting to find out it's some sort of horrible trap or portent of the apocalypse or something, because I find it hard to believe that the giant company with a (near-)monopoly on France's energy infrastructure is capable of such quasi-efficiency (only took them 2 weeks to respond to the web request and everything!)
Friday, July 01, 2011
Apartment angst
Got a call on Tuesday night (I still hadn't seen Géraldine since getting back from Strasbourg) from the agent, saying that G's family had agreed to pay back the money but not to be her guarantors, so we had till the end of July to move out. I asked about the possibility of staying on and finding a new flatmate, but she didn't sound too favourably disposed to that. I have a meeting with her tomorrow (right on the other side of town, real pain) so perhaps we can talk more about that. She mentioned the possibility of my staying till the end of August, but I don't really know under what conditions (i.e. if I would have to cover the whole rent, which I can't) and anyway all the electricity etc. is in G's name, so I can't really take that over for one month if I had to leave afterwards. She said that G's parents had agreed that she could move in with either one of them, either near Tours or in the Ile-de-France.
So in a way it was at least good that I didn't have to make a decision on what to do. But on the other hand, now I have to move. I really like this apartment for one, and moving is a giant hassle for another. I have started looking at flats, and, while maybe I'm being too fussy, they all kind of suck. Either too small or badly situated or seem too noisy or too hot or too expensive, and then as I said, there's the problem of furnishing them, especially as several I've seen don't even have so much as a fridge or a couple of burners to their name. The French really take 'unfurnished' seriously...
Above all, it's just stressful. I'm not sleeping very well, as you can tell from the 2.45 am posting, I'm teary and not concentrating at work. Yesterday I was only actually at work for about 5 1/12 hours between apartment viewings, and spent half of the morning answering my phone. In a way, I don't care, and no-one's likely to say anything, but it does pretty much take the piss. I don't feel psychologically ready to make a decision, partly because I don't yet have everything firm in my mind about whether I might be able to stay on here, and partly just the whole "I don't want to move" thing. I saw one place yesterday where they were very keen to have someone sign the contract for tomorrow (1st July), there was another guy viewing the place who was very eager, and I was just struggling not to cry because I felt so pressured by the situation and the guy questioning me about how quickly I could come up with a deposit and all about how much I made etc. etc. He even asked if he could call me early tomorrow morning - "would about 6 am be okay?" I actually blurted out "oh God no" in English and then clapped my hand over my mouth ha ha. I don't think he understood me though!
Am feeling increasingly bitter towards Géraldine. She has apologised, but has yet to ask me about what I'm going to do and how I'm coping. On Tuesday after I got the phone call, I was worried and texted to ask if she was okay - it was getting quite late and I was imagining her really upset somewhere. Then she comes in and is all "oh, I don't know what the problem with the guarantor is, I haven't been able to talk to my dad yet, that's probably why he said no". Firstly, why haven't you talked to him? It had been almost a week by then and the agent obviously had managed to speak to him. And secondly, either she's in denial about the situation or is just not taking it seriously. Not that I want her to be weeping and begging my forgiveness at every turn, but it doesn't seem fair that she seems to be all "oh like, whatever" about the situation when I'm so stressed out - and I don't have the luxury of having family I can go to. She hasn't offered me any help finding somewhere or finding someone to live here, or to give (or at least sell) me any of her furniture and stuff if she is going to move in with her parents. I feel like I've been very understanding and concerned about her and I'm just not getting any of that back, even though she's the one who's completely screwed up my life (and I know that sounds VERY dramatic - I don't mean my entire life forever and ever, I just mean my life as it is right now in this apartment, I just don't know how else to put that).
Anyway, I'm pretty upset so I'll leave it there. For what it's worth, Strasbourg was nice, I managed to relax and forget about all this temporarily, which was good. Even managed a few cultural things between stuffing myself with Alsatian food.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Shocked and awed
Long & dramatic post ahead! You may recall that I hated my last flat, specifically being rendered miserable by a flatmate I couldn't stand. So it was a great relief to quickly find a nice flat in Tours with someone around my age, in a good area, for a reasonable albeit not cheap cheap rent, and as time went on, we became friends and hang out together often. Well, well, this week brought a lesson that things are not always as they seem...
On Wednesday evening I went round to my friend Liz's place, feeling a tiny bit hungover after la Fete de la Musique the night before, to help her move flats, where we were joined by my flatmate & Liz's boyfriend. After a couple of hours, we had her moved in, and decided to go straight home as I was pretty tired & my flatmate Géraldine was intending to meet up with her sister to celebrate the end of her exams.
Liz's new place is only about 5-10 minutes away on foot, but G had her bike and thus made it back to our place faster than I did. I had my key in the front (street) door when suddenly it flew open, G ran out and slammed it behind her, and she rapidly said to me "I'm not Géraldine, you're not Gwan, we don't live here, we're here to feed the cats for our friends". No sooner were the words out of her mouth than the door opened again, and there stood a businessy-looking woman who I'd never seen before. She immediately started asking if I was G or someone else, who I now know was G's old flatmate. I said no, and then she started asking who I was and if I lived there. I sort of gaped at her and looked at G, standing next to her, who shook her head. I sort of half shook my head as well, but the woman responded something along the lines of "I think you do".
It's a bit blurry, but I think the next thing she said was that we were in serious trouble and if we didn't 'fess up and talk to her, she'd be calling the police. Bear in mind that at this stage, I still had no idea who this woman was and what she was doing in my house. She asked to see my ID, and I said I didn't have any on me, at which stage she realised I wasn't French. Somehow I think this helped convince her that I had no clue what was going on - the ignorant foreign type, I suppose. I think it's about now that she revealed that she was there because my flatmate had not been paying rent for more than a year. I presumably gaped even more at this news, and as we made our way upstairs, the threats of calling the police having convinced G to come clean, I said to her that I had no idea, and she replied that she was pretty sure where the blame lay in the situation.
Anyway, to cut the rest of a long story short(er), up we went and I had to show this woman ID, my chequebook, bank account, payslips etc. to back up that I had indeed been paying rent. It's complicated, but it turns out that G had not only not been paying rent, but that recently she'd been living off my money to boot. Eventually, the woman had me write an 'attestation' that she dictated, declaring that I had been paying rent in good faith, and G and I both signed it.
She threatened to pretty much kick us out, but G asked whether, if she could pay back the money, we could start at zero and stay in the flat. She agreed to set a deadline of the 11th July to receive all the back rent, around 8000 euros, took a lot of her details and set a meeting the next day, when they were to ring her parents together to check whether the money would be coming. I wasn't saying much through all this, but the woman wasn't holding back about how G had defrauded me & put me in a bad situation, plus of course the landlords (she was some sort of agent I suppose, I never did get her name or job title) etc. etc.
After she finally left, G apologised and explained that she had been unable to cope with her student loan debt and said she hadn't meant for any of it to happen, and she was sorry she had been lying me (this whole time, I may add). She said that she expected her rent guarantee deposit would be covering the rent, which neither I nor the woman believed. I believe that she probably started out thinking that she could let it slide for a couple of months, the deposit would kick in, and she would somehow be able to get back on track. Then as time went on, of course she just got further behind with everything, quit her job, and started taking my money as well (at first she wasn't cashing my cheques, as they were made out to the agency - long story). But she's a smart girl, and I don't believe she thought her guarantee would cover the rent for an entire year with nary a peep, she just closed her eyes to the situation and hoped it would go away.
At the moment, it looks like she is going to be lent the money from her family. But of course that doesn't make the situation go away. I'm really hurt that someone I consider(ed) to be a friend would treat me like that - even if I don't think she had a grand plan to defraud me, she lied to me this whole year, and actually escalated the whole affair by taking my money after I was no longer just a stranger to her. Then there's the issue of whether I can trust her from now on. Even if I think, intellectually, she's unlikely to do the same thing again, I imagine this probably would cause tension and awkwardness every month - would I be always wondering if the rent's been paid? Even beyond that, I don't know how, given the problems she already had, she can add on a debt to her parents and suddenly be magically able to cope and pay the rent in the future.
On the other hand, I'm in a bad situation because, not only do I like where I live, I can't afford to move. I didn't pay a deposit here, because I'm not on the lease, so I don't have money aside to pay for rent in advance and a deposit elsewhere, which would probably run to over 1000 euros. I also have a reasonable amount of furniture in my bedroom, but nothing else - washing machine, microwave, pots and pans, etc. etc. So I have too much for a furnished place and not enough for an unfurnished one. And of course furnishing a flat with all that kind of stuff would be thousands more, a particularly significant investment when I only have a one-year contract guaranteed. I've had a look at available flats, but haven't seen any where it's not either sharing with about 4-5 others and/or living with young students, neither of which I want to do. But if she moved out - which I think, regardless of my own situation, she probably really should, since she obviously can't afford this flat and there are definitely cheaper options - and I stayed here, I might end up having to cover all of the rent while finding a flatmate, which I can't afford to do either (plus I would still be left with the furniture problem). Tours is a student town, so summer is not the ideal time to try and fill a vacancy - I don't want to live with a student anyway, but that means the market is flooded with options and would likely make finding a flatmate at this time difficult.
So right now I don't know what to do. Obviously we have to have a proper conversation, but I was too shocked on Wednesday, yesterday I went round to Liz's until late at night because I didn't want to deal with it, and today I'm here shut up in my room, because I still don't know how to respond to this situation. I don't want to 'punish' her, despite what she did, and I do sympathise despite everything. At this stage, I do still wish that we could somehow work things out, but I just don't know if we can. I also feel really stupid, like I've been duped. Looking back I can think maybe there were some signs I should have paid attention to (I wondered how she was managing financially after she stopped working, but didn't like to ask; the whole deal with my cheques being 'sent back' by the agency etc.) but I suppose there's no point beating myself up about it. Perhaps it isn't such a good idea to trust a stranger, but I definitely didn't think she was lying to me a year in, you know?
On a happier note, I am going to Strasbourg from tomorrow morning till Monday evening, which is an even more welcome break after the stress of this week. I'm hoping I can just put these anxieties to one side and enjoy some flammekueche and try sauerkraut and see the famous cathedral clock and people-watch in Petite France and all the rest of it. (And I got return tickets for only 60 euros, thanks to a friend of a friend who works for SNCF - saving about 120 euros on what it would otherwise have been, at least at this short notice).
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Flat"mate"
So, I just realised that one of my ex-flatmates from Nice unfriended me on facebook. This is fine because I really, really disliked her, and it just confirmed for me that her gushing farewell to me was as fake as everything else about her.
So, formerly, I was careful never to say anything related to my flatting experience in Nice, because, after all, I had to live with the girl and although I didn't think she read my blog, it was a possibility since it was linked off my facebook and off the assistants forums. But now I feel I can finally unburden myself.
This might come across as spiteful - although I'm fairly certain she'll never see it - but I'm not writing it for that reason. I haven't decided yet whether I'll even publish this post. I'm writing this because I really, sincerely regret that I ever flatted with her. It would be going too far to say it completely ruined my time in Nice, but I really didn't have the experience I would have liked and expected, and it really was due in large part to not getting along with her. Note: I'm not saying "it was her fault", I'm saying we didn't get on, and yes it takes two to tango.
Before I got to Nice, I swore to myself that I would live with French people - not because of any particular dislike of the non-French amongst us, but in order to avoid living in an English-speaking ghetto. However, it didn't work out that way. I realised through the assistants forum that I was booked at the same hostel as another assistant, E, and I agreed to go looking for flats with her and another girl, just to see what was out there. It didn't take too long to decide that having company on the flat-search was much more reassuring and less stressful than going it alone. We found a flat that looked good, but there was just one problem - the third girl thought it was too far out from town. E and I got along really well, we liked the look of the flat, and most of all we just wanted to get settled. So we decided that if we could find a third flatmate, we'd take the place.
On the evening before orientation, I had to go into town to do something, and when I came back to the hostel where everyone was now staying before orientation, E presented me with something of a fait accompli - K, who was literally fresh off the plane and only too happy to step into a flat where the leg-work had already been done. From the start, I wasn't crazy about her - she was really loud and talked incessantly, mostly about herself. But it wasn't all bad, she told some amusing anecdotes, and I tried to keep an open mind.
In the beginning, the three of us all hung out quite a bit - it was all so overwhelming, moving to France and having the stress of finding the flat, moving in, setting up all the admin things like our bank accounts and social security, starting a new job with no experience etc. So at first we would all be home by about 5 pm, watch TV together and talk, and be in bed by about 9, exhausted.
Already at this stage there were things that grated on me. Such as her thinking she was the hottest thing on two legs. Sure, she was pretty, but hearing every day "oh my god, I was jogging around the park and these old men could NOT stop looking at me, it was so gross!" or sitting next to her and getting eyed up by guys in a passing car: "ew, gross, did you see how those guys were staring at me?" - yep, "me", not "us" - or "my students all keep hitting on me, it's disgusting". I'm not denying these things happened, but when you bring it up every single day, it's hard to believe you actually find it that intolerable.
Worse than that was the way she talked about other women. We would often watch game shows in the early evening, things like Wheel of Fortune for example, and she would say things about the contestants like, "oh my god what are you wearing!?!". Well, that's normal, right? We all make fun of people on TV a little bit, it's fun. It wasn't that that bothered me, it was what inevitably came next - "whore!" Or "brush your hair, bitch", or - about a contestant on a celebrity look-alike show "well you have one thing in common with Britney Spears, you're both fat".
I would say "god knows what she thought of me if she thought that girl/Britney Spears was really fat", except I do pretty much know, thanks to her little passive-aggressive remarks. Like "oh my gooood, Gwan, I just don't know how you eat pasta so much!" Pretty much the last straw as regards my tolerance for her was when I invited her out for drinks with a friend of mine, in an effort to be nice. After spending pretty much the whole night going on about how all the ugly French guys wanted her (and, according to her, every guy in France was ugly), we decided to call it a night, but had missed the last bus home. We all had a collective whinge about not wanting to walk home, an uphill walk which normally took me about 45 minutes (and yes, I did the walk regularly), when suddenly K changed her tune and started having a go at me for not being too keen on the walk. I should point out at this stage that I was wearing high heels and she was not. Allow me to quote from an email I sent the day after:
"so I made some sort of comment about how it was a long way in heels (I was the only one in heels although she claimed her boots 'had a slope to them' - not the same thing) and so this unleashes all her comments "I know I exercise a lot more than most people, but this is nothing for me". I pointed out that the walk per se wasn't the problem, but that I was in heels, and that I actually walk up the hill about 2-3 times a week "oh, you need to be doing cardio 4-5 times a week girlfriend" and then periodically she kept saying things all the way home like "I walked about 8 miles today, this is like a cool down for me" "If you're struggling with this walk, you have problems y'all", "It should get easier for you around this corner" (why, is a magical fairy going to come and give me better shoes?). I'll point out that me and S walked so much faster than her that we had to stop at one point for her to catch up, and she finally comes up going "little legs! little legs!"
I honest to god wanted to punch her. It was quite amusing that the next time I met up with my friend S, weeks later, she enquired how K was - "still getting a lot of exercise?"
It got so bad that I just couldn't stand to be around her at all. Just the sound of her voice became like nails on a chalkboard to me. Every little thing - every time she would pointedly wash her 5 dirty plates but leave the one knife I had left in the sink, for example - would be a source of intense irritation to me. I was always civil to her when our paths crossed, and would say hello (sometimes, without getting a hello back), and sometimes engage in chitchat, but I would try to limit my contact with her to the extent that I would just stay in my room if I could hear her walking around the kitchen or whatever. Sadly, while when we first moved in E used to complain about the same things as I did about K, they somehow became the best of friends and so refusing to hang out with K meant isolating myself from E as well. And it also meant not joining in/being invited to the nights out they had with other assistants. Frankly, I had met the other assistants they hung out with and didn't think it was a big loss in any case, but, while I made friends of my own in Nice, it was still sad. One night, K and E invited a bunch of other assistants over to dinner, in our flat - and didn't invite me. K even told me about it to my face i.e. "I hope you don't mind, but we're having some people over", and didn't invite me. Sitting in my room listening to them talking and laughing was a real low, and I think a really nasty thing for them to do. I had envisioned having this instant, awesome network of friends in my fellow assistants, like I had with my CELTA classmates in Prague, and like I've read about on the blogs of other assistants, who had the time of their lives and made great friends for ever. I ended up only hanging out with one assistant regularly, the other assistant at my school, and became good friends with one other assistant who unfortunately lived in a different town, so I didn't see a lot of.
Is this K's fault? No, of course not. It's my problem that I found her so draining to be around, that I couldn't stand her fake gushing when I knew she actually couldn't care less about me, her endless stories that I would end up hearing at least three times - told to me and to various people on Skype, her negative bitchy comments directed to me and to others, the fact that she spoke at the exact same (LOUD) volume whether you were right next to her or in another room, or whether it was 1 pm or 1 am... It's my problem that I let all that get to me to the extent that I didn't feel at home in my own flat and I hardly socialised with other assistants (fyi, even in the early stages when I was still making an effort/hanging out with K, there was really a lack of things going on amongst the Nice assistants, which really surprised me). But it just seems such a shame that, while I still had an okay time in Nice, it fell so far short of what I had hoped from my assistant experience.
Anyone reading this will probably think I'm crazy to have been affected so much by her. I don't think these little vignettes can explain how much she rubbed me up the wrong way, and of course I'm quite willing to admit that minor things became major irritations for the mere fact that I disliked her so much. But still, I think the decision to live with her - and it wasn't really even a decision I made - was one of the most unfortunate of my life to date, and I can't help but wistfully imagine the experience I may have had if I hadn't ended up in that situation. I was just so, so happy the day I left the flat in Nice - to that gushing goodbye from K, where it was literally like she flipped a switch inside her and turned on that fake charm one last time, despite the fact that clearly she intended that to be the last time we'd ever talk to each other just as much as I did.
Thankfully this time I have a flatmate who is actually nice (French, by the way) and although it is, as ever, hard and a bit lonely being in yet another city where I don't know anyone - and this time I don't even have the theoretical benefits of an instant network like with the assistantship, I am starting to make some friends & hoping for a better overall experience here than I had in Nice... *Long* post, I expect the only people to read it will know all this already, but it was good to get that whole disappointment off my chest anyway.
So, formerly, I was careful never to say anything related to my flatting experience in Nice, because, after all, I had to live with the girl and although I didn't think she read my blog, it was a possibility since it was linked off my facebook and off the assistants forums. But now I feel I can finally unburden myself.
This might come across as spiteful - although I'm fairly certain she'll never see it - but I'm not writing it for that reason. I haven't decided yet whether I'll even publish this post. I'm writing this because I really, sincerely regret that I ever flatted with her. It would be going too far to say it completely ruined my time in Nice, but I really didn't have the experience I would have liked and expected, and it really was due in large part to not getting along with her. Note: I'm not saying "it was her fault", I'm saying we didn't get on, and yes it takes two to tango.
Before I got to Nice, I swore to myself that I would live with French people - not because of any particular dislike of the non-French amongst us, but in order to avoid living in an English-speaking ghetto. However, it didn't work out that way. I realised through the assistants forum that I was booked at the same hostel as another assistant, E, and I agreed to go looking for flats with her and another girl, just to see what was out there. It didn't take too long to decide that having company on the flat-search was much more reassuring and less stressful than going it alone. We found a flat that looked good, but there was just one problem - the third girl thought it was too far out from town. E and I got along really well, we liked the look of the flat, and most of all we just wanted to get settled. So we decided that if we could find a third flatmate, we'd take the place.
On the evening before orientation, I had to go into town to do something, and when I came back to the hostel where everyone was now staying before orientation, E presented me with something of a fait accompli - K, who was literally fresh off the plane and only too happy to step into a flat where the leg-work had already been done. From the start, I wasn't crazy about her - she was really loud and talked incessantly, mostly about herself. But it wasn't all bad, she told some amusing anecdotes, and I tried to keep an open mind.
In the beginning, the three of us all hung out quite a bit - it was all so overwhelming, moving to France and having the stress of finding the flat, moving in, setting up all the admin things like our bank accounts and social security, starting a new job with no experience etc. So at first we would all be home by about 5 pm, watch TV together and talk, and be in bed by about 9, exhausted.
Already at this stage there were things that grated on me. Such as her thinking she was the hottest thing on two legs. Sure, she was pretty, but hearing every day "oh my god, I was jogging around the park and these old men could NOT stop looking at me, it was so gross!" or sitting next to her and getting eyed up by guys in a passing car: "ew, gross, did you see how those guys were staring at me?" - yep, "me", not "us" - or "my students all keep hitting on me, it's disgusting". I'm not denying these things happened, but when you bring it up every single day, it's hard to believe you actually find it that intolerable.
Worse than that was the way she talked about other women. We would often watch game shows in the early evening, things like Wheel of Fortune for example, and she would say things about the contestants like, "oh my god what are you wearing!?!". Well, that's normal, right? We all make fun of people on TV a little bit, it's fun. It wasn't that that bothered me, it was what inevitably came next - "whore!" Or "brush your hair, bitch", or - about a contestant on a celebrity look-alike show "well you have one thing in common with Britney Spears, you're both fat".
I would say "god knows what she thought of me if she thought that girl/Britney Spears was really fat", except I do pretty much know, thanks to her little passive-aggressive remarks. Like "oh my gooood, Gwan, I just don't know how you eat pasta so much!" Pretty much the last straw as regards my tolerance for her was when I invited her out for drinks with a friend of mine, in an effort to be nice. After spending pretty much the whole night going on about how all the ugly French guys wanted her (and, according to her, every guy in France was ugly), we decided to call it a night, but had missed the last bus home. We all had a collective whinge about not wanting to walk home, an uphill walk which normally took me about 45 minutes (and yes, I did the walk regularly), when suddenly K changed her tune and started having a go at me for not being too keen on the walk. I should point out at this stage that I was wearing high heels and she was not. Allow me to quote from an email I sent the day after:
"so I made some sort of comment about how it was a long way in heels (I was the only one in heels although she claimed her boots 'had a slope to them' - not the same thing) and so this unleashes all her comments "I know I exercise a lot more than most people, but this is nothing for me". I pointed out that the walk per se wasn't the problem, but that I was in heels, and that I actually walk up the hill about 2-3 times a week "oh, you need to be doing cardio 4-5 times a week girlfriend" and then periodically she kept saying things all the way home like "I walked about 8 miles today, this is like a cool down for me" "If you're struggling with this walk, you have problems y'all", "It should get easier for you around this corner" (why, is a magical fairy going to come and give me better shoes?). I'll point out that me and S walked so much faster than her that we had to stop at one point for her to catch up, and she finally comes up going "little legs! little legs!"
I honest to god wanted to punch her. It was quite amusing that the next time I met up with my friend S, weeks later, she enquired how K was - "still getting a lot of exercise?"
It got so bad that I just couldn't stand to be around her at all. Just the sound of her voice became like nails on a chalkboard to me. Every little thing - every time she would pointedly wash her 5 dirty plates but leave the one knife I had left in the sink, for example - would be a source of intense irritation to me. I was always civil to her when our paths crossed, and would say hello (sometimes, without getting a hello back), and sometimes engage in chitchat, but I would try to limit my contact with her to the extent that I would just stay in my room if I could hear her walking around the kitchen or whatever. Sadly, while when we first moved in E used to complain about the same things as I did about K, they somehow became the best of friends and so refusing to hang out with K meant isolating myself from E as well. And it also meant not joining in/being invited to the nights out they had with other assistants. Frankly, I had met the other assistants they hung out with and didn't think it was a big loss in any case, but, while I made friends of my own in Nice, it was still sad. One night, K and E invited a bunch of other assistants over to dinner, in our flat - and didn't invite me. K even told me about it to my face i.e. "I hope you don't mind, but we're having some people over", and didn't invite me. Sitting in my room listening to them talking and laughing was a real low, and I think a really nasty thing for them to do. I had envisioned having this instant, awesome network of friends in my fellow assistants, like I had with my CELTA classmates in Prague, and like I've read about on the blogs of other assistants, who had the time of their lives and made great friends for ever. I ended up only hanging out with one assistant regularly, the other assistant at my school, and became good friends with one other assistant who unfortunately lived in a different town, so I didn't see a lot of.
Is this K's fault? No, of course not. It's my problem that I found her so draining to be around, that I couldn't stand her fake gushing when I knew she actually couldn't care less about me, her endless stories that I would end up hearing at least three times - told to me and to various people on Skype, her negative bitchy comments directed to me and to others, the fact that she spoke at the exact same (LOUD) volume whether you were right next to her or in another room, or whether it was 1 pm or 1 am... It's my problem that I let all that get to me to the extent that I didn't feel at home in my own flat and I hardly socialised with other assistants (fyi, even in the early stages when I was still making an effort/hanging out with K, there was really a lack of things going on amongst the Nice assistants, which really surprised me). But it just seems such a shame that, while I still had an okay time in Nice, it fell so far short of what I had hoped from my assistant experience.
Anyone reading this will probably think I'm crazy to have been affected so much by her. I don't think these little vignettes can explain how much she rubbed me up the wrong way, and of course I'm quite willing to admit that minor things became major irritations for the mere fact that I disliked her so much. But still, I think the decision to live with her - and it wasn't really even a decision I made - was one of the most unfortunate of my life to date, and I can't help but wistfully imagine the experience I may have had if I hadn't ended up in that situation. I was just so, so happy the day I left the flat in Nice - to that gushing goodbye from K, where it was literally like she flipped a switch inside her and turned on that fake charm one last time, despite the fact that clearly she intended that to be the last time we'd ever talk to each other just as much as I did.
Thankfully this time I have a flatmate who is actually nice (French, by the way) and although it is, as ever, hard and a bit lonely being in yet another city where I don't know anyone - and this time I don't even have the theoretical benefits of an instant network like with the assistantship, I am starting to make some friends & hoping for a better overall experience here than I had in Nice... *Long* post, I expect the only people to read it will know all this already, but it was good to get that whole disappointment off my chest anyway.
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