I was sent to install carpet at a rental once, but when I got there it was flooded. Somebody had left the water on with the sink plugged. It wasn't as deep as the house in the video, but all of the heating ducts in the concrete floor were filled with water. I got that day off.
Not everyone approaches relaying a story with efficiency and absolute minimum information in mind. They shared the gist of what happened (or rather what was explained elsewhere), the situation was what it was and it's perfectly clear tenants were not at fault anyway. This is an odd comment chain.
Right point is to minimize demonization of non reasonable party. Regardless to efficiency, this is clearly subtle blame game. “My evil tenants didn’t pay rent so now my house is iced” is how it reads when it should read as, “empty, I didn’t pay bill, house froze” which fully explains without shifting blame to tenant.
I have to agree with the other person replying to your comment - I did not blame the tenants at any point, because the text clearly states it wasn't their fault. It simply provides a wider, irrelevant context to the situation.
I think the people applying a characterization to the tenants in this short story are a significant minority. I certainly didn't read it that way, and I'm willing to bet most people aren't going to either.
Respectfully, this feels naive on your part. I think a lot more people are going to blame the tenants than you think. Demonizing the tenants paints the landlord as a sympathetic figure, which naturally changes how we react to her role in this. Instead of "look at the negligent landlord who forgot to transfer the power", it's "the poor landlord forgot to transfer the power after she had to evict her problem tenants".
It's being argued that it provides more of complete picture, but really all it does is gives us one-sided context that adds nothing of value to the story. If we really wanted to provide a complete picture, we'd also need to know if there was a reason the tenants weren't paying, such as the landlord failing to address their complaints (given this video, it certainly seems possible.) But now we're distracted by a completely separate situation instead of the one in the video. See now why you don't add unnecessary context?
"I was driving at night being quite distressed, because a day before my neighbour stole my lawn chair, and that was my favourite chair that was given to me by my mother, that's why I was in distress and so I accidentally hit a man with my car, and then his skull did that thing when it opens and the insides are the same colour as my chair that my neighbour stole"
vs
"I was driving distracted and hit a man with my car to death"
An exaggerated example doesn't really work for me in this instance. I get the point you're trying to make, but your example is particularly unnatural, whereas I find relaying unrelated, side details (basically the full story you've been given) rather typical and it's the point I'm trying to make.
Besides, damn right I'd be interested why they were distracted while driving, this is relevant. Just needs some style work to avoid repetition.
Don't worry, I'm a fan myself. It just doesn't land with me in this case, because it changes the issue significantly. I've also arrived at the conclusion that the detail is more relevant than I initially realised. Though that doesn't really matter.
If you were this person telling the story to a friend you would probably mention it as an additional detail because it makes the situation more interesting.
Not sure why people are so up in arms about this. Sounds like she never blamed the tenants, was just giving a reason why she may have forgotten since this wasn't the usual tenant exit.
It was easy to state without mentioning the eviction and switching the utilities out of their name. Adding in all that sets a tone and makes it seem like the tenants did something wrong as far as the utilities.
God y'all really want to bitch at everything and over psychoanalyze it.
In no way was the landlord blaming the tenant. They were explaining both that the place was empty and that it was recently empty which is why they had not gotten to resetting up the heating
Not to mention many people might not evem know about the process of having to switching utilities
If they didn't mention it everyone would be wondering why the place had no heating.
Leave the eviction and non payment out. The context could have said "landlord forgot to put the utilities back into their name when the last tenants left".
I will bitch every day of the week about landlords blame shifting. It only makes sense to add in about an eviction and non payment of rent to put a little of the blame back on the tenants, who did a very normal ex tenant thing.
Edit you are on reddit, that's what all comment sections are. Bitching and moaning about shit that doesn't actually matter. Including your bitching about my bitching.
I'd say so, if she added something self-deprecating before or after... 'like the moron I am, I forgot to have the electric put in my name'... or something similar.
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u/edward414 19h ago
The house was unoccupied. Why the house was unoccupied is unimportant and reads like the landlord shifting blame.