All the FMLs

Wow. So many trolls. I'm the author, forgot to sign in when I posted it. First, I live in Northern Virginia, not DC, although I'm not far from it. There aren't people banging on the door to get in here, though. Second, it's an apartment complex so no bank or mortgage involved. Third, I had been sick in the hospital for most of the past 3 weeks. So my rent was 2 days late due to illness. I paid the late fee of $200 dollars without a complaint. (Most late fees are only $50 in comparison.) I simply misread the amount of the late fee. The $6.25 seemed to be an admin fee of sorts. They absolutely had the power to cut me some slack since it's such a small amount. It's just a poorly run office. Fourth, VA isn't very nice to renters as a rule. They absolutely could've gone to the courthouse and gotten a '5 day pay or quit' notice. Which means if I didn't pay, on day 6 a sheriff's deputy would have showed up at my door and forcibly removed me, my daughter and our belongings. As an aside, homeowners in VA who get evicted are given about a week, not 30-60 days to move. Fifth, I desperately wanted to pay it in pennies. But they wouldn't even accept a personal check. It had to be a cashiers check or money order. So yes, I had to drive crosstown to the Walmart with the working money order machine and pay an additional 70 cents for a money order. Finally, when I turned in my rent + $200 late fee the man behind the desk made me wait while he opened the envelope and checked to see if the amount was correct. He told me it was fine so I thanked him for his time and left, thinking all was okay. They waited until 3 full days later to tell me about the 6.25, never admitting that the guy behind the desk had given me the wrong information and told me everything was okay, when it clearly wasn't. I had one business day to get it handled and I had a lot of important stuff going on that I had to put on hold bc of their incompetence. And yes, I will be writing to the higher ups to complain about it. To the poster who asked, I think I will write my next rent check in ******* dollars and goddamn cents. To all the trolls saying I'm trying to take advantage, I sincerely hope you never make an honest mistake after being sick in the hospital for 3 weeks.

Hey, OP here! First published post! I hadn't actually told them that I think it's the washer yet, next time I complain, I'm going to let them know. If they still don't fix it properly, I'm going to tell them I'll to do it myself. I've done some simple plumbing fixes like that before, so I don't think it'll be too hard or long a process. The main problem with fixing it myself is I'm in college and it's essentially an off campus dorm room (owned by the school, which kind of helps explain the quick fix mentality), and I don't have any tools here.

So this actually happened a few years ago. Last week a couple of friends and I were talking about funny/awkward relationships and I remembered this story. Decided to submit it but didn't think it would get published. By the way, no-we are no longer together but that is for unrelated reasons.

OP here, Firstly, thanks to everyone who has been comforting me about this. I was pretty upset and distraught when it happened (my whole job being to save and protect people), but now I see it as a learning curve. To answer tour questions/comments; 1) Yes, the centre manager has (finally) granted us a bigger budget for maintenance and we will be replacing all doors within the week. 2) the little girl is A-okay. There were no signs of bruising, swelling, laceration/graze, break, strain, sprain or anything else. I think she was more scared than anything else, but she was dancing around about 5 minutes after I gave her an ice pack, so that's a plus. 3) Yes, everything in Australia tries to kill us. Except volcanoes. We don't have a single active one (and we're the only continent to be able to say that!!!). Again, thanks to everyone for your support. I love my job and I was so scared I was going to lose it, and so worried that I had done this little girl harm. Apparently she just sees it as a cool story to tell at school (her aunt told us this when we made the follow-up phone call).

Hey, OP here. The FML was poorly written, mostly because they never get published so, who would care, right? Oops. Sorry! My husband and I have been actively trying to conceive for a while now, and he's a truck driver who's only home on weekends, so it's doubly difficult. These past few weeks, I've been very moody and having odd (for me) food wants, so we were really hopeful, but Aunt Flo showed up, so hopes were dashed. Looking back, I've had some new stresses in my life that probably contributed to the moodiness, as I'm usually a fairly even-tempered person. And, as I can't afford healthcare (we make too much for assistance but not enough to actually afford any plans), getting checks would cost more than we could pay. In a month or so, his job will offer company-wide health care, so we'll see what happens then. :)