Eviction

Diary Entry: November 12, 2024

A notice was affixed to my door today. A crisp, white proclamation of bureaucratic warfare, demanding I pay approximately $700 within five days or face eviction.

My trust in the American judiciary is a void, so I will not fight this — not directly. I am going to pay. In this absurdly planned economy they masquerade as a free market, securing new housing in the middle of the year is a practical impossibility. I am cornered. So, I will yield to the extortion. But this payment is merely a tactical retreat. There is no denying I am going to get their ass back for this.

The genesis of this corporate shakedown is almost laughable in its pettiness. I returned from my New York getaway to find I’d forgotten my keys. I had to impose on two men in the building, strangers, just to use a phone. I called the company — ”Smile Student Living,” or as I prefer, “Smile at Student’s Living,” a name that captures their predatory glee — and they dispatched someone. The man came, he opened the door, and that was that.

Or so I believed.

Apparently, this functionary wrote a report claiming that when he arrived, no one was there to greet him. A pure fabrication. From this phantom offense, a “service fee” of around $200 materialized on my account. A $200 lie which, because I rightly refused to pay it, has since metastasized into this $700 ultimatum.

My attempts at reason were, naturally, futile. I explained that I was there. I explained that there was never an agreement for a paid service. Their response was a masterpiece of circular logic: “The operator must have explained it over the phone.” This, they insist, is the bedrock of their claim. It is not an answer; it is an insult.

I could not convince them to cancel a debt they had invented for profit. And so, they make their move in the bleakest part of November. I even wrote to the clerk of the court, a last, pathetic gesture toward a system I know is rigged. I realized that if I lost — and they make sure to hear eviction cases with chilling speed — I would be in catastrophic trouble.

This is a bad country, in every way, shape, and form. It is not dysfunctional; it is functioning precisely as intended — a machine designed for procedural theft. Just a bad country, populated by bad people.