As archetypal nightmares go, ending up naked in front of strangers is right up there, but for one red-faced renter, this bad dream turned into a real-life morning-mare when she strolled out of her bedroom in nothing but her birthday suit to find a man she didn’t know in her living room. And, because everything is if you trace it back far enough, somehow it was all her landlord’s fault.
TikTok user Lauren Scharf got the app’s attention by beginning her video, “Today I started my day with a strange man in my living room while I was traipsing around naked as the day I was born.” Lauren then jumps back a month to explain the full story of how the bureaucratic meltdown that led to her flashing fiasco took place. It all started when Lauren’s landlord informed her he needed her to clear her stuff out of her garage, as he was taking it back so that he could knock it down and build a new apartment.
Not long after, Lauren had a random inspection of her apartment which found that she had paint peeling in the top corner of her room (right above where she keeps stuffed animal Hugsy, “her bedtime penguin pal”). Here’s the problem, though: Lauren got a notice on her door informing her that maintenance had intent to enter her “parking garage” in order to fix the paint problem in her “bedroom.” Wait, what?
Naturally, Lauren chased this up for clarification, but when she called them a woman from the maintenance department told her that this wasn’t a mistake and the bedroom part was the typo. Although she thought it was pointless of them to want to fix a paint problem in a garage that was about to be demolished, seeing as the garage didn’t have anything to do with her anymore, Lauren washed her hands of the whole thing… Until the whole “Lady Godiva has a home invasion” incident.
Yes, the woman from the maintenance department had gotten it wrong — in fact, Lauren explains that her neighbor also received a notice saying someone was coming to fix the carbon monoxide detector in their parking garage… even though it’s not in their parking garage. Lauren has two theories for what’s going on here. A) that for some reason their computers can’t differentiate between the words “parking garage” and “apartment” or B) that they’re deliberately trying to drive the residents away so they can knock all the apartments down and rebuild.
This whole situation is giving TikTok the heebie-jeebies, with many citing this as genuinely their worst nightmare. “This is why the deadbolt is on if I am not clothed. once clothed, I may unbolt the deadbolt,” someone said. Alarmingly, it turns out this is exactly what Lauren did. “Yeah the same key that opens my regular lock opens the deadbolt so they unlocked both to come in,” she replied.
Others feel there’s definitely something Lauren can do about the egregious way she’s been treated. “I feel like that’s a lawsuit,” one suggested, while another rightly pointed out that she should at least be due a rent reduction: “Did they also reduce your rent because they are taking part of the totality of your apartment???” As for the bizarre notice typos, someone may have solved that: “I bet they’re using ‘AI’ to handle these notices. surely actual people can’t be this bad at their job.”
Despite a recent British study finding that a majority of renters have a positive experience with their landlords (58% of those aged 35-54 and 74% of those aged 55 and over), you’d never believe it with all the renting horror stories so many of us, like Lauren, have experienced. Having said all that, Lauren should maybe think about letting them fix the paint in her bedroom. I’m with the following comment on this one: “Hugsy (your bedtime penguin pal) deserves a nicely repainted corner though.”