I live in a building large enough to have a live-in superintendent. Ours is named Jake and he is either 60 or 45 and smokes a lot. I normally do my laundry with a female neighbor, an aging spinster named Elouise.
She mentioned in passing how quickly she gets things fixed, even getting Jake to change lightbulbs, which isn’t his job. This guy is lazy as heck and I’ve been waiting half a month to get a broken faucet fixed, so I had to ask her how…
She was blowing him, she said not often, like once or twice a year, but it was enough to get work done fast. She even said she’d blow him again to get my sink faucet fixed if I wanted. I politely declined and got every other detail I could get out of her.
Next thing I know, I’m texting him that I’ll do what Ella does for him if he comes to fix my faucet TODAY. I just got a response “I’ll be there at 1″