The reason is the obvious one – I don’t want to pay the credit card processing fees. In Berkeley, landlords who own older buildings, like me, don’t accept credit cards. Some of the new buildings do accept credit cards, but that is because their rents are vastly higher than the rents in older buildings. In the new apartment houses near campus, a 1-bedroom apartment can cost $3,000 a month – or more. There is an apartment house across the street from campus that is charging $5,000 a month for 1-bedroom apartments, and it’s fully rented. I sometimes look at the students going into these new buildings and think: “I know that building charges $3,500 a month for 1-bedroom apartments. How can college students afford that? They can’t all be rich. They don’t look rich.” Anyway, if I was getting $3,000 or $4,000 a month for 1-bedroom apartments, I would accept credit cards too!
Consider Auto Pay. If you don’t want to write out rent checks every month, consider bank auto-pay. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and most other major banks offer auto-pay as a free service to their customers. With auto-pay, you can instruct your bank to print and mail checks on a regular basis to anyone who you wish. I use auto-pay myself to mail checks to people who I have to send money to on a regular basis.
Have you heard about President Trump’s Diet Coke button? When Donald Trump moved into the White House, he had a wood box with a large button in the middle of it placed on the president’s desk. See picture below. Whenever President Trump pushed the button, a butler would come into the Oval Office with Diet Coke. The butler then followed a formal protocol or SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for serving Diet Coke. President Trump’s Diet Coke SOP has been published. Here it is.
1. The butler discreetly presents a small bottle of hand sanitizer. (Added to the procedure after Covid.) 2. The butler greets the president and presents a polished silver tray to the president for his inspection. On the tray are chilled bottles of Diet Coke and chilled glasses, some with ice in them and some without ice. 3. The butler asks the president if he wants his Diet Coke with or without ice. There is an ice protocol that governs the size, shape, and number of ice cubes to be placed in the glass. Donald Trump prefers ice cubes to shaved ice in his cold beverages. So do I. 4. The butler then opens the bottles in front of the president and never not out of his sight. (Donald Trump has a fear of being poisoned.)
5. The butler is to hold the bottle opener by the lower third and the bottle of Diet Coke in the same position while removing the bottle cap. (See photo below.) 6. The butler is to place the glass of Diet Coke on President Trump’s right-hand side with a cocktail napkin underneath. There is also a napkin protocol.
Donald Trump drinks a lot of Diet Coke, and I mean A LOT of Diet Coke. According to numerous published reports, Trump drinks 12 bottles and/or cans of Diet Coke every day. Frankly, I don’t see how that is possible. How could anyone drink 12 bottles of Diet Coke a day? You know, some people do drink a staggering amount of soda. I know someone who had coronary bypass surgery, and he drinks a minimum of 3 one-liter bottles of regular Coca Cola every day. Have you looked at the largest size soft drink cups at fast food restaurants? They are huge. Below is a picture of a boy drinking a 64-ounce Big Gulp from 7-11.
One of the first things Joe Biden did when he moved into the White House was to remove the Diet Coke button from the president’s desk. I wonder what they did with it. That’s the kind of presidential memorabilia that sells for big bucks at auctions. I know people who would love to have a Diet Coke button and a Diet Coke butler. My nephew said that the Diet Coke button was: “the best thing he (Trump) ever did as president.” I suppose that my nephew could make his own Diet Coke button, but it would be useless because he doesn’t have a Diet Coke butler. Who has a Diet Coke butler?
A lot of people assume that when a landlord decides who to rent an apartment to, he picks the applicant who makes the most money, but experienced landlords don’t do that. Naturally, a landlord does want to be sure that an applicant can afford to pay the rent, but the #1 thing a competent landlord is looking for in an applicant is someone who likes the place and wants to live there. I’ve been a landlord for a long time. I know that if I rent an apartment to someone who has a lot of money but who hates the place, that person will be miserable living there, and he will make my life miserable too.That is why I didn’t offer an apartment to the woman I called the Kitchen Crier.
The Kitchen Crier. I once rented a 1-bedroom apartment on McAuley Street in Rockridge during a particularly hot rental market. Several dozen people came to my one and only showing, and 10 of them turned in applications. At the end of the showing, I sat down on the living room couch to review the applications I received. I thought I was alone until I heard the sound of someone crying. I got up to investigate. To my surprise, I found a woman sitting at the kitchen table, stooped over, crying, and holding a handkerchief over her eyes. There was a partially filled out rental application form on the table in front of her. I said: “Are you OK?” She nodded her head and said: “Yes,” so I went back to the living room, wondering what was going on but not knowing what to say. After a while, she came out of the kitchen holding the rental application form. She looked around the living room, paused, and then burst into tears again. I said: “Is there anything I can do?” She shook her head, looked down into the fireplace and said: “No. It’s just that my mother warned me that I’d wind up in a place like this, but I didn’t believe her.” Then she handed me her application form, walked out, and drove away – still crying. It seemed to me that this woman was not going to be happy living in this apartment, so I decided to rent the place to somebody else.
When people living in states with low Covid vaccination rates (like Mississippi and Alabama) are asked why they won’t get vaccinated, they say it is because they are suspicious of the vaccine. They say they suspect that there may be something bad in the vaccine. Strangely, these are people who have been eating hot dogs, cold cuts, dollar store sausages, and gas station pastries all their lives. I know someone who says that he hasn’t taken the vaccine because: “I’m not sure what’s in it.” He said this as he was pouring generic ‘creamer’ into his coffee, ‘creamer’ that needs no refrigeration and has no expiration date. This guy is around 60 years old and is well educated. And he knows that over 90% of all the people in the U.S. who have died of Covid are over 50. There are millions and millions of people in the U.S. just like this guy. I don’t get it. Do you?
