Psycho!
If you asked me to give you a one-word description of one of our former landlords when my then-wife Sharon and I owned a weekly newspaper in southwestern Pennsylvania, Webster’s definition hit the nail on the head.
And for anyone who has ever seen Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 cinematic masterpiece, the building, in which our business was located, owned by Rae and her husband, Tony, looked eerily similar to the house on the hill occupied by Norman Bates and his domineering mother.
The day I sat in our offices listening as Rae blasted music from a radio and screamed at the top of her voice while dancing up and down the corridor on our wing of the building, I knew I was definitely dealing with a psychotic.
Not long after purchasing a weekly newspaper in my then wife’s hometown, we began searching for a new location to move our publication. With no convenient parking for ourselves or our customers, it was problematic at best.
After a couple weeks, my then-wife “heard through the grape vine” that one of our former classmates, along with her spouse, was renovating the old coal mine office building in the next town over.
More than a century old, the two-story brick facade building with a large usable attic space towered over every other building in Ellsworth. It’s counterpart, abandoned by the school district nearly 30 years ago had been since demolished and replaced by senior citizen housing.
The Ellsworth Commons was one of the last historical structures in the small coal mining town.
Against my better judgment, I agreed to meet with the owners and hear their pitch. But mostly, I was interested to find out the price tag for this little piece of “paradise” as Sharon was calling it.
Going by first impressions, the entrepreneurs seemed to have a sound business proposal with grand plans for the future. Rae seemed to be genuinely happy to see two of her former classmates and was excited that we would potentially be a part of this colossal undertaking.
Their goal was to fill the building with a wide variety of businesses; and they already had a good start. Fit’n 30, a women’s fitness center, had already taken up one half of the first floor and BCAC Academy of Tae Kwon Do, a martial arts school, occupied the third floor — a.k.a. the attic.
If we committed to moving there, we would be the third business as a tenant. Plans were already in the works to have a massage parlor, tanning beds and ear candling.
Hold the phone! Did you say massage parlor? I just looked at my then-wife and rolled my eyes. However, it turned out to be a legit business and we ended up becoming good friends with the owner. But what the heck was ear candling?
Nonetheless, after a quick tour of the facility and seeing our potential workspace with 20-foot ceilings and hardwood floors, I was ready to sign the paperwork. And as it turned out, our rent would be the same along with giving the landlord a full-page ad in our weekly each month.
We were actually going to have two office spaces — one for Sharon so the teacher in her could start a tutoring business on the side and the other for the newspaper office.
But after seeing Rae exit the building one afternoon with her entourage — her husband, brother, and his girlfriend — in tow while wearing a tiara to walk across the street to the beer distributors, I knew something was amiss.
Our landlord’s odd behavior started out small and slowly escalated from there.
Even though the shared community restroom was a work in progress for the entire eight months we occupied our space, Rae didn’t want any garbage in the lavatory’s trash can.
We were notified in writing concerning this change in policy after we found a smashed Coke can and a used feminine product in the newspaper’s drop box outside our office door.
Then our shared storage space became an issue. We had to remove the few items packed away to make room for the litter box of the new resident mascot, which roamed all over the premises.
The shared break room was next on our landlord’s laundry list. We were no longer allowed to put our drinks in the fridge because it somehow interfered with her ear candling business. However, it was all right for them to continue using our microwave.
But when I discovered the building’s proprietor had been banking her full page advertising, I had enough.
I explained to my then-wife that if we allowed Rae to do this, she would come calling for her ads to appear all at once. This meant we wouldn’t have any room for our paying advertisers.
You can’t operate a business without generating income. Besides, our contract stipulated they had to use the advertising each month. They couldn’t bank it like we were some sort of savings and loan.
So after having a sit-down to hopefully resolve these insane new policy modifications, Rae’s behavior went into hyper drive, and I promptly moved our microwave into the newspaper office.
She began posting flyers all over the walls, which made it difficult for customers to see the directional signs to our offices. She took over the foyer as a reception area for her tanning bed and ear candling businesses.
Unbeknownst to us, she started locking the main doors to the building for lunch. The main entrance was our customers’ only way to reach our offices.
But the day our landlord cranked up the music on her radio and began her disturbing antics through the hallway while I was on the phone with one of the borough secretaries was the last straw.
We moved out in short order, after which we were sued for breach of contract. At that point, none of that mattered. I was just glad to escape the horror movie I’d been living in at the Bates Motel.