THE EPIC SAGA OF THE APARTMENT GESTAPO , PART DEUX

Welcome back, folks. As anticipated, the saga of the Apartment Gestapo continues to provide entertainment to the masses. If you're just joining us, I live with two humans, and one of them believes we need to clean behind the microwave weekly.

On the last episode, I told Apartment Gestapo that doing a weekly deep clean of the entire apartment was unnecessary and unreasonable, considering the fact that one of the rooms is never used, and the other one is fucking immaculately clean all the time. AG responded with a 3-page memo dictating exactly what days we're supposed to clean and pinpointed specific things to "remember" to do. It was maybe the most ridiculous shit I've ever seen.

This weekend I was accosted in the kitchen, because I can't have any peace in my own fucking apartment, and told that I was supposed to clean last weekend but I didn't, so I needed to do it this weekend. I took a quick look at the kitchen, ran my hand over the counter, and made a judgment call that cleaning was not required at this time.

Below are photographs of the area in question. This is exactly what it looked like when I was told to clean it. The images below might be DISTURBING TO SOME VIEWERS if you have any kind of cleanliness-related OCD.

This is the offending area. As you can see, it's filthy. I can barely stand to look at it. You can zoom in if you DARE.

Another view of the room in question. There's a goddamn crumb next to the fridge. I'm a fucking MONSTER to have let this sit there that long!

 This is a wide angle view of the kitchen. It looks like a goddamned murder scene. I should be arrested based on this photo alone.

This one is hard to look at. I mean, there are like 3 crumbs. I can't even believe I can show you such horror.

I have directed your attention to part of the crime scene. I am so embarrassed for you to see this, you'll never think of me as hygienic again.

I know this is hard to look at, but you must. The arrows indicate two stray pieces of uncooked ramen noodles lying carelessly on the stove. What is NOT SHOWN is the OTHER THING that was left on the stove...

THIS PIECE OF FISH. WAS ON. THE STOVE. But who makes fish? Apartment Gestapo! In fact, she made fish LAST NIGHT. So this fish has been there for nearly 24 hours. Likely on purpose to make me clean it up. So there are two ramen crumbs left by Guy Roommate, and then a chunk of day-old fish left by everyone's favorite fascist. So she was upset at how dirty SHE made the stove?

Here is a series of text messages received yesterday by both myself and Guy Roommate. As you will note, it's a pretty one-sided conversation.

10:24am: Novel begins.

Items of note: "can WE clean what WE were supposed to clean last week?"

"FOR THE SAKE OF INTEGRITY"

"small meeting"

Items of note: Oooh, directed at me! "don't forget" lolol

FYI, there was NO food in the drain. I looked.

"last time...I cleaned alone guys" yes, that's correct, because it didn't need to be cleaned, so the reasonable roommates did not think it necessary to clean things that are clean.

"Let's not have a repeat of that" I can't promise that at any given time, even immediately after one of us has undertaken any type of cleaning, that you will be satisfied with the cleanliness because your standards are LIKE A GODDAMNED FANTASY WORLD

Items of note: More use of the word "we" here. Not condescending at all.

"also I didn't clean last weekend!" WE DON'T CARE BECAUSE IT DIDN'T NEED CLEANING.

"next week we are scheduled to clean again" Well, we must do everything by the schedule, mustn't we? It would be completely unreasonable to assess the situation at the time and determine if action was necessary. Or what if I spilled all over the counter on TUESDAY? Should I wait until my cleaning was scheduled?

8:06pm: Almost 10 hours have passed and she obviously had some sort of breakdown because we didn't immediately drop everything and do exactly what she wanted. I'm proud that she was able to hold it in that long. Baby steps.

"I'VE decided that each person must have their own shelf" LOLOL OKAY MEIN FUHRER

"The one with the lesser food is mine" You teach English. There are 3 shelves. Incorrect use of both the word "lesser" and lack of superlative form - "The one with the LEAST food is mine."

"Guess u can throw it out yourselves"  Ohh, full on passive-aggression, nice. And if you would just have resorted to this fucking concept earlier, "guess you can clean up after yourselves," maybe we wouldn't be receiving unsolicited text messages at all hours of the day.

"Coolio" translation: it is entirely NOT coolio.

Then, as I mentioned earlier today, she decided to tell the landlord/our boss that we weren't cleaning. Because that's what adults do. They go cry to their fucking landlord about how their roommates won't go along with their dictatorship and do something because it's "scheduled" (by her, of course). Landlord/boss has not seen our apartment. She just knows what AG has told her, so she assumes we're living in filth. Good thing I took those photos to show how completely fucking ridiculous she is. 

And if you're keeping count, only 5 more days in this prison.

THINGS I NEVER SAID BEFORE MOVING TO KOREA

- I'm running out of socks.

- I think I'm going to lay down on the floor, it's so warm.

- No cabbage on my toast, please.

- I haven't seen a single trash can in two hours.

- Why am I the only person who needs a napkin in this whole restaurant?

- Mmm, this convenience store fried chicken is delicious.

- There's mustard on my breakfast sandwich.

- Damn, octopus for lunch again.

- I just walked through a park at night and no one tried to rob/rape/murder me.

- Can I get more of the fried chicken flavored chips please?

- This subway smells nice.

- This is the toothbrush my bank gave me for opening an account.

- I'll pick up some new makeup in the subway station when I get there.

- Why is my drink so small?

- Hmm, it looks like I'm going to need to use the MEAT SCISSORS on this piece.

- Where can I get tea that DOESN'T taste like grain?

- Good thing I brought my own toilet paper.

THINGS TEACHERS THINK (OR AT LEAST THIS TEACHER)

I'm sure that there are some other teachers out there that think these things...I hope...

1) I have become aware of exactly how beautifully long even 5 minutes can be. Between my first 4 classes, there are no breaks. Not even enough for me to go to the bathroom. Literally no minutes. So when one of the classes is a few minutes late, I enjoy every lingering second of silence and freedom. Every. Single. One.

Sometimes I wonder if any of my teachers thought this (answer: most definitely yes) - but those precious few seconds I have to myself between :05 and :10 for the last 3 hours of the day ARE MINE AND MINE ALONE.

Don't you DARE come in early. This is my private quiet time where I can be an adult for 5 minutes and have a goddamned Ding Dong because I haven't eaten for hours. If you so much as BREATHE in the direction of the door before that clock hits 10 after, I WILL END YOU.

2) Some of my students are very smart. This doesn't necessarily mean they're super great at English, just that they understand what I'm saying and can follow directions. I love these kids. They are glorious and make me happy. There is a small handful of them (maybe 4) who are dense as a goddamned pile of concrete. These kids frustrate me to no end. We will literally do the exact same thing as we did last week, and the week before, and these kids will act like they have no concept of what is happening.

Most of the kids are middle ground kids, which is perfectly acceptable. But some of them have the attention span of a goldfish - they can remember how to say "ambulance" (WTF, that word is hard!) but they cannot remember to SHUT THEIR DAMN PIE HOLES WHILE I'M TALKING.

Me: Guys, quiet down. Teacher is talking. No talking while teacher is talking.
Kids: Ok teacher... *10 seconds pass*
*talking resumes*
Me: Seriously. If I have to tell you to stop talking again, you won't get a sticker. If you don't get a sticker, then you won't get candy *audible gasp from class* YEAH. So quiet.
*10 seconds later, talking resumes*
Me: *in my head but it feels like I'm yelling it* SWEET MERCIFUL SHIT, IF YOU DON'T SHUT YOUR MOUTHS WITHIN THE NEXT MILLISECOND, I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL KILL ANYONE YOU'VE EVER LOVED

3) The vast majority of the issues come from the kindergarten classes. The older students have their moments, but are generally reasonable and listen to me to a degree I can at least tolerate. The kindergarteners can literally not sit in chairs correctly. They're always turning around, putting their feet on someone else's chair, flailing about like an inflatable tube man at a car dealership. And they TRY. That's the part I can't understand. I see they're genuinely considering listening and obeying me when I tell them to turn around and be quiet. They don't do it to be dicks, they just have some crazy monster inside them that forces them to move AT ALL TIMES.

I have experience with this since I was, yes, once a child. We can have my parents fact-check this if you like, but I KNOW I never had a problem understanding IN ANY LANGUAGE when I was supposed to sit down and shut up. If a teacher told me to do something, I did it, immediately. And yes, this was when I was their age. Yes, I remember. I never talked when I wasn't supposed to. I never randomly got up and walked around. I never yelled. I didn't sit like a fucking gymnast twisted into a pretzel. IT IS REALLY NOT HARD TO FUNCTION AS A CHILD, I KNOW BECAUSE I DID IT.

I don't remember having some giant internal struggle to keep myself quiet and semi-still during class or other quiet times. I'm pretty sure it didn't need to be explained more than once. When an adult is talking, you are quiet. It's pretty fucking simple, yet it's an insane struggle AT LEAST once or twice a week in each class.

4) Sometimes the kids have to do "projects" - quotes are because it's basically drawing or coloring something that we told them to draw or color. There's always one kid who either cannot draw himself out of a paper bag, or one who just doesn't want to do whatever it is we're doing.

A week or so ago, the kids were coloring a project. They were supposed to draw animals. Many (most) of the animals look like they were contaminated with radioactive waste and melted into small blobs of animal parts, but there were a couple of kids who just couldn't do anything. One kid had drawn a few orange penguins and came up and told me "teacher finished!" I look at it and am like "Well, whatever. If you think you're done, you're done." As I was holding the entirely orange drawing, I was told that it "wasn't enough" because if their parents saw that, "they'd be very disappointed."

Well not in me, I didn't draw it. Get mad at your kid for really liking orange. It's not my fault they're completely untalented at drawing. This isn't a drawing class. I'm sure Sally or Elsa or T-Rex is fantastic at some other subject, so art may not be their thing. But no, I was supposed to stand over the child and force them to draw more things. If you're upset that your kid can't draw, shouldn't you take that up with the kid?? I mean the damn kid can remember "ambulance" and pronounce it correctly, why the living hell do you care about a couple of misshapen orange penguins?

5) There's also one kid that's just a straight up sociopath. Like on the pathway to becoming a serial killer. "But how do you know he's a sociopath?" Good question. One I would have asked a mere two months ago. But when you are put face-to-face with a kid that stares into your soul with dead eyes that have no emotion as he does something you explicitly told him not to do, you just know. I'd never met a sociopath before either, but it's one of those "you don't know it till you see it" things. Like he just straight up has no emotions. He doesn't even get mad when I punish him. It's pretty creepy. The whole class I'm just thinking about how I hope to god there are no small animals in his neighborhood.