apartment hunt, chapter 3

so, monday morning i took in the letter from maurice's mother (the usual "yes, i'm an oral surgeon, and i give my son enough money to pay rent" deal), only to find that the lady i had been talking with (who had even started to warm up to me just a little bit, i think) was now on vacation for three weeks. [insert boilerplate rant on stupid european august vacations here.]

this meant i had to talk with the other girl, who of course treated me like dirt since we'd never seen each other before. but she took the letter, and told me that our file was now complete. obviously, my next question was "so when do we sign?" but she then told me that it didn't look like they had decided yet. i countered with, "then why did you send me all over christendom collecting these stupid forms?" and get this: "oh, we always do that to everyone." yes, yet again, the swiss have proven that they still have the market cornered in shitty customer service.

she went on to claim that the original girl would deal with it when she got back. now, remember that she's gone for three weeks, that it's august 7th at this point, and that the contract is supposed to change on september 1st. it's pretty clear that we're not dealing with the brightest crayons in the box. i attempted to convince her that this was unacceptable, and she brushed me off saying that something would probably be done "soon." how's that for nebulous?

next, yesterday evening, i got a message from the current tenants asking if i knew what was going on, since last thursday they had been told that the decision should be made by last friday, and that it was most likely going to be us (this is good news that i didn't previously have). i responded asking if they might be willing to call the agency and ask, since i don't want to pester them too much for fear of pissing them off and having them give it to someone else.

i guess that just brings us back to the standard "waiting uneasily for something to happen..."