Death to L.J.H.oo.ker

I have this love/hate relationship with my real estate agents. I love to hate them. ;-)  So, I pulled a Stupid Lori Trick today. All was going ok, I actually got up after only hitting the snooze button like 4 times (instead of 10!) and grabbed my purse and ran out the door and just as I was pulling my apartment door shut (and locked) I realised that I did not have my keys. Doh!

And the friend who had my spare keys for the last year just gave them back to me last week because she's moving further away and will no longer be my key keeper.  So my spare keys were also in my apartment along with my main keys.  Doh.

And for some stupid reason I had taken home my other spare house keys, which were also, useless to me, in my apartment.  Doh.

I have never actually done this before - I have never left my apartment without my keys before, in 5 years. Which is pretty surprising, considering what a preoccupied flake I can be.  Sure, I did accidentally drop my keys down the elevator shaft of my building a couple years ago, but that could happen to any good klutz! ;-)

To make things extra exciting, my real estate agents are notoriously unreliable, ridiculous, and stupid. It's always a hassle to get them to do anything, including returning a call.  And even more exciting is that Heather arrives from Melbourne tonight and was expecting to stay with me, so it was not fun to send her a message this morning going, "Um, don't panic, but I'm currently locked out of my apartment and the real estate agent won't call me back...."

Of course, I couldn't even remember who my main agent was now. It changes all the time. Stupid Melissa is gone, but that does not mean anything. So I got in touch with my main agent, Alex, and he was like, "No problem, let me just make sure we actually have your key here, and I'll call you right back!"

6 hours later, I had still not heard from Alex. I had left 3 messages on his work voicemail and 2 messages on his mobile. Nada! The receptionist wanted to kill me, I'm sure. Every time I kept trying to explain what happened and ask if someone else could just have a quick check on my keys she cut me off and put me through to Alex's voicemail.

At 4.30pm, I gave up and decided to just go over there and try to talk to someone in person, thinking I'd be harder to ignore that way.

So I turn up and Alex is gone getting coffee for the office.  He comes in the office, hears I'm waiting for him and is all smiley with me when I announce that I am the tenant who has been stalking him all day, since I am locked out of my apartment. He was all, "Oh yeah, I tried to call you several times, but it said you were out of range." I was like, "Really...yeah, cause I was just in Surry Hills all day, you know, in the city and then he goes, "I also sent you a text message - did you get that?" Of course I didn't because the bastard so did not send me one and he so did not call me either.  My phone never says I am "out of range" even when I am - it just goes to voicemail. I'm not a "fresh off the boat" American, so obviously Alex didn't know who he was dealing with.  He then tried to start flirting and joking with me going, "Oh, it's not that cold today, you could have slept outside!" Ha. Ha. Ha.  He was cute, but cute wasn't going to cut it!  Idiot! ;-) I decided to keep my snotty comments to myself and instead was sweet as sunshine to my agent. If I ever lock myself out again, I don't really want to make it even harder for myself to get him to actually return my call! :-)

And the best part is, my real estate agent did not ask me for any ID. I love it! So basically anyone could have pretended to be me and get copies of my keys from this guy!  I was like, "Um, don't you need to see some ID?" and he goes, "No, I trust you!" And I was like, "No, really, check my ID!" so he looked at it and handed it back to me. I said, "Don't I need to leave it here when I take the keys?" and he goes, "Nah, that's alright" and smiles at me.
Dumbass!


I went down the road to make a copy of my keys and I got the sweetest keycutter. He was young and cute and kept winking at me and he actually cared enough to point out that two keys were nearly identical and he offerred to put a cut in one of them so I could tell them apart. What a doll!

So, in typical Lori form, I worried all day about something that turned out just fine in the end.  

I'm going to find out if I can get my keys surgically attached to my body ;-)