As if Part 1 wasn't enough of a debacle, here is Part 2. If you have not read Part 1, obviously go do that because this is Part 2 and one comes before two in the order of things.
The next day, I am zen for like the first hour of being awake. A girl with a working toilet! What possible care in the world could she have?! None. I had no cares until after swiftly getting ready for work, flouncing out of the apartment on the kind of buoyant cloud one walks upon when they have functioning indoor plumbing, pulling my front door closed with a satisfying click that says "no one will be be robbing me today!" I realized I had just locked myself out of my own apartment. So fuck. The zen is gone. I can picture my keys, resting on my desk where I left them, taunting me like "HA HA HA have a great day without us! We will be here at home! You'll never see the inside of this apartment again! Should have made a copy of us shouldn't you?" I know. I KNOW.
First order of business was texting my roommate (obviously). Her response was something along the lines of "ohhhh nooooooo :( not going to be home until thursday." I look at my personal agenda and see it's Tuesday (just kidding, I don't have one of those and I knew it was Monday) so waiting for her return seemed highly unlikely. Second order of business was going to work because there was nothing I was going to be able to do until the dreaded property management company opened its dismal office doors for another day of business as usual aka ruining my life.
At the office, I truly watch the minutes count down until 8am at which point I pick up the phone and speak with the very same receptionist who tried to tell me the day prior that the maintenance man may or may not come promptly to my apartment to fix the toilet. This time I was going to take matters into my own hands. I explain that I've locked myself out and do they happen to have a spare set that I can possibly come by and pick up and then promptly return? She does. They have a set of keys. I can come and retrieve them in Noe Valley (which might as well be the South Pole) at 3:30 pm and then return them before their office closes at 5pm. Lucky me.
At 3pm I leave the office and take my swift Uber chariot to their offices. After a bit of reminding the receptionist who I am and why I am here, she hands over the goods (the keys), and thinking that I am making SUCH good time I will take the bus back to my sweet, sweet little apartment and be there in a jiff.
WRONG. I have taken public transit so many times in my life and I don't think I have ever gotten anywhere in a "jiff". In fact, the moment you think you are going to use the bus and get to your destination at any pace above glacial, you are gravely deluded. On this pleasant ride we stopped at every single stop, and waited for 5 minutes in the middle of the road when the driver abruptly got up and shouted a rider off the bus for smoking a cigarette. So yes, it took longer than expected to arrive at my apartment with the second set of keys in my hot little hand.
Once at the front grate to my apartment, I realize I have an issue. The key does not fit into the lock. Curious, I think. But then I realize that the front latch is actually ajar so maybe this security concern is just a tiny blessing and I walk up the two flights to my front door with each step convincing myself further that the front grate key was just a mistake and this one will work out no problem. I am wrong. No key opens my apartment and I continue to be locked out of my apartment. I am certain I am about to lose complete control of my body and mind to a total fit of hysteria. It's 4:30. I call the property management company and re-explain to my favorite receptionist who I am and what the situation is (yes, I tell her, I agree it is quite confusing, how could the keys have not worked?! no one knows). So I ask if the maintenance man will be sent. Yes, it is confirmed he will be sent. ETA of the maintenance man is 25 minutes. Okay.
I resign myself to sitting directly outside my front door, dejectedly, and open my laptop and discover that I can in fact access my own apartment's wifi from our stairwell. This is the one and only small, bobbing beacon of light in the interminable mist of fuck-ups of my life. Obviously I am only using my laptop at this point to text anyone and everyone this tale. My sister informs me that all bad things happen in threes. I receive a number of sympathetic crying cat emojis. Someone tells me to start live tweeting. This is 2016.
In my tunnel-visioned need to overshare via text, I see that the time has simply FLOWN by. It's 5:02 and THE MAINTENANCE MAN HAS NOT ARRIVED AND NOW THE MANAGEMENT OFFICE IS CLOSED. I cannot even call them to tell them the maintenance man is not here! What if he is just never coming! What if I never get into my house again? I succumb to a tizzy of terrible hypothetical scenarios, all of which end with me sleeping in my stairwell. Until Thursday. At this point I do what I do whenever I feel totally calm and in control of my fate (jk): I start crying. This obviously helps everything a lot (not).
Sometime shortly after I cannot even keep my body upright and slowly slump to an entirely horizontal position outside my own door (about 12 minutes later), I hear a rumbling and a truck door slam. I get up. I walk to the window in the stairway and stick my entire upper body out of said window. I see the poor, poor maintenance man walking towards my front grate and shout down to him, "Oh my god are you the person here to help me?!" Understandably, he is confused and I am crying all over again from relief. Truly I cannot win against the tears. Half of my body is hanging out a window and I am shouting/crying at a man on the street. It was not a high point in my life, I feel comfortable admitting that.
The maintenance man, by the goodness of all things holy, has been outfitted with a set of working keys. And upon him unlocking the apartment, I rush in and fling my body onto my bed in the way you might imagine someone who has just spent the last three days lost in the woods would—with a great amount of drama and not a lot of grace.
And that was it. That was the whole deal. And since I have told you this winding and infinitely frustrating story, I'm going to promptly remove it from the back of my mind and leave it here on the internet for me to revisit only when I want to be reminded that few things could be as bad as when I didn't have a working toilet and then once I did have a working toilet, I immediately locked myself out of using it. Whatever.