Strata managers are not nice people

Letter from Princess Sam

He irons his socks and rules his backyard domain with a tight little iron fist. He takes no prisoners and has no friends. He’s a Sydney strata manager. Lips are pursed, arseholes are tight. Grey formica tables are surveyed. Answering machine switched on from 5.05pm until 8.35am in the mornings.

A receptionist with the attention span of a goldfish and a door between the front desk and ‘the office’, where he will recite his Strata Schemes Management Act 1997 with great sound and fury.

This is the type of person you don’t ordinarily choose to deal with. It’s like supping with racists or bathing in kerosene. It aint fun and it aint pretty.

Unfortunately, sometimes princesses have to get their hands dirty.

And so it was that I found myself phoning Juan Nathaniel, proprietor of a caravan with Sydney Strata Managers scrawled in crayon on its sides, at 8.30am on a Friday morning. Earlier that fine day, I had discovered that my toilet bowl was singing along with me in the shower.

Shared pipes in glorious Marrickvillean flats and all that. Could I get away with not dealing with the inner west’s version of The Office’s Gareth? Alas, as I stepped onto the bathroom tiles, I realised that I was about to take a second bath. Or ring the fucker. Step in shit or speak to it. Sophie’s choice, really.

Of course, at 8.30am on a Friday morning, the answering machine was on. I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down to watch the effluent rise.

At 8.35am, Nathaniel himself answered on his mobile phone.

“Could you possibly fax your request to me?” he had asked.

Could he not hear my request? My flat was beginning to flood.

“Yes, but I need proof that this is a genuine call.”

Now, when you’re staring at a rising tide of other people’s poo and wee (gotta love living in a ground floor flat!), you tend to have a tinge of desperation in your voice that is hard to mask. It’s kind of like Ivan Milat would sound if he were a woman and he was in labour. You notice this desperation. You certainly don’t fuck with it. At least, if you have an IQ of more than 12 you don’t fuck with it.

Mr Nathaniel, of course, took some extra convincing.

Eventually, however, I managed to establish that I wasn’t in fact a prank caller (highlight of the rampant prank calling scene in Sydney is to ring Juan Nathaniel, apparently, and try to pull the wool over his penetrating gaze). I’ll give him his due: the plumber called me sharpish and was around within the hour. Unfortunately, an hour was all it took for the entire block’s effluent to reach my ears – or at least, to flood all of my bathroom, much of my living room, my adjoining linen cupboard and, in my bedroom, my inbuilt wardrobe.

Nice.

Juan “the Gareth” Nathaniel, however, was having none of it. “We’ll pay for the plumbing but we are not responsible for the repercussions of any strata plumbing fault. Goodbye.”

And that, my friends, is how I have been lumped with a stinky flat and thousands of dollars damage. This is the third time this has happened. No-one in strata has fixed it. And I ask you: are we to wallow in shit and neighbours’ pubic hair under the yoke of people who iron their socks and recite the Strata Schemes Management Act 1997?

Is Marrickville – nay Sydney? - to be placed in the hands of idiot children in possession of a grey formica desk, an Officeworks account and a teeny dick?

I think it’s time that Sydney flat dwellers arise against the likes of the Juan Nathaniels in our midst. Let’s reclaim our shit-free flats from the shits.

You know it’s right.