10:00am | I know I’m lucky. For rather little money I get to live in a historical landmark downtown, the entire building preserved and restored to its original 1920s quiet splendor, a clear view of the Queen Mary from the rooftop solarium.
On that rooftop you find a small laundry room and clotheslines. And this is how I know I live with thieves.
When I moved in four years ago and saw the clotheslines, I was delighted. Not only could I save a little bit on laundry (for some of us, every quarter counts), but this meant that every now and then there would be one less drop in the bucket of energy use.
I don’t recall how many loads of laundry I had hung on the clotheslines when it happened. All I know is that one sunny day I trekked up to the roof to retrieve my clothes and noticed a gap in what was hanging there. Shortly I realized that someone had made off with my favorite blue jeans: a gloriously comfortable Levi’s boot cut that I’d lucked into at the thrift store.
I’m a pretty common size, so it’s not like I can tell the tales that many of my female friends have lived about the struggle to find jeans that fit properly. It wasn’t really the money (which was under $10, anyway). It wasn’t the violation people describe when their house or apartment has been burglarized. What troubled me was that it had been one of my neighbors.
Believe me, there is very little bad that I would put past my fellow humans—pilfering clothing being the least of it—so I’m not so sure it was naïveté that unconsciously led me to let my guard down and not worry about being ripped off like this. Or maybe it was. I guess on some level I figured: Well, these people are my neighbors—we’re in this together, stuck together, nowhere to hide—so….
What made this crime of opportunity all the more brazen was that the perpetrator might very easily have been caught. My building has cameras arrayed on the top floor so that you have to be very deliberate about where you move if you don’t wish to be recorded. There are, however, no cameras on the rooftop, nor in the laundry room itself, and so it is not impossible to escape notice. Which is apparently what happened with the jeans-thief, because the window during which the crime could have taken place was very small, and although I was able to provide the building manager with a pretty specific time frame for the crime, he did not espy the guilty party on the DVR.
What could have been done had we been able to determine who walked off with my pants is something of an open question. I would have had no qualm about either confronting the person or reporting it to police, but what is the most that can happen over stealing a $10 clothing item hanging in a common area? The perpetrator would not go to jail or something; and I wouldn’t have beaten the person up even if I could with impunity.
Had the theft occurred at an apartment complex, I imagine the person could have been evicted, which would be a case of the punishment fitting the crime. But I live in a condominium complex, and if the thief is an owner, it’s not like the HOA could make the person sell. (And even were it a renter, it would be up to the owner to evict the perpetrator.)
‘Justice’ is a term thrown about freely, and almost exclusively, in a legal context. But I’ve always found this application a bit wrong-headed, because by the time a matter makes its way into the judicial system—especially if it’s a criminal (as opposed to civil) matter—justice cannot be had, and what we’re really going for is fitting retribution. The time for justice was before the crime was committed. What would have been just is if the jerkoff had left my jeans hanging there. The just thing is not to steal.
Apparently there have been many other thefts since then, and not only from the clotheslines. I myself lost one rather nice shirt that I believe was stolen (though I cannot be sure), and on a few separate occasions signs have been posted in the laundry room with a variation on a theme: “WARNING: There is a thief who lives in the building. Please do not leave laundry items unattended.”
There does not seem to be any real solution. I have ceased to air-dry my nicer items of clothing (now it’s only bedsheets, towels, and workout clothes), figuring that if I don’t dally after the 45-minute drying cycle is up, the chance for my naughty neighbor(s) to abscond with more of my clothing is small enough that I don’t need to remain on the roof and monitor the well-being of my garments as if they are toddlers.
What is there to be done? Civil libertarian though I am, I have never been especially bothered by cameras monitoring public places, and so of course I wouldn’t mind if one were installed in the laundry room.
But that, of course, costs money, money that would be paid for by the homeowners, most of whom are innocent of any wrongdoing and so suffer an injustice in footing a bill in order to deter the bad behavior of the guilty. Injustice to combat injustice.
Laundry-thieving is by no means the extent of our neighbors’ bad behavior, nor the worst of it. I know from talking with my building manager that my neighbors have done things such as toss debris down the vent shafts that run vertically through the building. On at least one occasion someone vomited down there, which necessitated a hazmat-style cleanup, which cost us all money and the poor manager a rather unpleasant afternoon.
From my employment taking minutes at HOA meetings around town, I know that what has gone on in my building is far from unique. Routinely I have heard stories of residents chronically urinating on stairwell carpeting and letting their dogs defecate on walkways. This is not just showing disdain for their neighbors, this is defiling the very places in which the perpetrators live the majority of their lives.
This is not a column that even hints at possible concrete solutions. Some people are without both concern for others and shame to the point of impracticality the feeds back into their own lives. I do not know how to reach these people. I suppose exposing them would be a start, catching them in their acts where possible and promulgating their actions, so that by way of sheer peer pressure or fear of consequences they might be dissuaded from maintaining their misguided course.
Perhaps my hope is as it always is: that talking about these things, having the conversation, might contribute to changing the climate so that, somewhere along the ripple effect, some of the people who might otherwise have been willing to steal my clothing or defile their own home might choose otherwise. I don’t know.
What I do know is that we all acquire our morals and mores from talk and behavior modeling, and so even if some of those old enough to engage in bad behavior are beyond being reached, the same is not necessarily so of their descendents. After all, parents and friends are not the only ones who hold any sway: there is also society at large. Which is us.
And since the part of society at large that creeps up nearly to their front doors are their neighbors, if you live with thieves (or worse), you are their first line of personal contact with outside ideas about a better way to live. If they don’t get them from you, they may not get them at all.
It’s unjust that any part of this burden falls to you. But what choice do you have?
i Click here for a primer on my conservationist leanings.
ii Not only shocking but downright puzzling, considering the shafts run by the units’ bathrooms, which means someone forwent vomiting in the toilet that was right in front of him/her to do so down the shaft, which eventually created a stink that of course wafted up to the very unit whose residents had caused the stink.