I had this theory…

…that my building's maintenance guy was peeing on the rug in front of my couch.

It all made sense considering our past with him. The abridged back story is that he is a lazy good for nothing who works “on call.” In some instances, an “on call” job is somewhat similar to not having a job, except you get paid. Once you get used to getting paid without working, actually getting a call to go into work kind of throws you off.

When we call him, he’s usually in New Jersey at his girlfriend’s place. He told us this when we were still cool. The coolness factor wore off when we couldn’t get him to come and deal with the deadly mold factor. He’d say, “I’ll take care of it,” seemingly just to shut us up for a few days, but then would never show. The deadly mold factor attracted slight media attention after I posted our management company’s name on this blog. My tracking reports indicate that people Googling the company’s name have been directed to my post as a result. A representative from my management company is one of these people. After having found their name on the site, it was only a day later that someone was at our apartment taking samples from our wall. Coincidence? I think not. We had called the company daily for two months without a response. I suspect they never planned to tend to this.

But getting back to the pee. Last Thursday I noticed a urine odor in my living room. I thought I was imagining it until The Geeze claimed, minutes later, that “it smells like piss in here.”

I woke up the next morning to a revelation: The maintenance guy came in here and pissed on the rug!

It made complete sense. He must have gotten yelled at by the management company and, from there, took matters into his own medieval hands.

The smell went away for a few days, and then it returned yesterday. I was lying on my bed and it was stronger than ever. I had to get to the bottom of it. It wasn’t too difficult—I just followed the scent. The root of the problem was a leather purse, which I had spilled coffee all over last week. I had stuck it in a corner to dry (I didn’t know what else to do with it). Evidently, dried coffee on leather produces an odd urine odor. And that was that.

As for the maintenance guy, I don’t feel bad for suspecting him. I wouldn’t put this sort of thing past him. He’d totally pee on my carpet if he was motivated enough to actually come to my building.