Buzzing

I consider the buzzer in my building something of an IQ test, one which is failed by 100% of all visitors, which means that either everybody is stupid, or the test is too difficult. You can decide which.

For reasons unknown, the landlord neglected to include my apartment (and my neighbor) on the list of buzzers. We live in the last 2 apartments, number-wise, so maybe the paper they were printing on was too short, or it went to page 2 and they didn't notice, or whatever, we aren't there.

The buzzer system, a keypad like the kind on a phone, is logical. Apartment 1 corresponds to punching in the sequence 001. Apartment 15 is buzzer 015. It doesn't seem a stretch then that someone could look at my apartment number and figure out how to decode and dial it. But that isn't the case. 100% of the people who arrive, do not attempt to figure it out. Instead, they assume they have the wrong apartment number. They always believe in the list and it is always a surprise when they find out that the list is wrong. Once, after a particularly heated discussion with a deliveryman on the phone, I had to come downstairs for my food because he refused to follow my directions of which numbers to dial "because it's not listed."

So what does one do? I put my buzzer number on a neat and attractive p-touch sticker and affixed it to the glass that covers the list. Problem solved? Ha! You would be wrong again batman.

Over the course of the next two nights strangers and police were buzzing my buzzer in the middle of the night. to get in. Somehow the sticker stood out to them, yelling "CHOOSE ME" and so they did. The buzzer ringing used to happen rather frequently 10 years ago when the neighbors were more active (ie drunk), losing their keys and whatnot, but it could be ignored, it was a buzzer. But this new keypad system rings on my PHONE, and I don't know until I answer it whether it is an actual phone call or someone buzzing me. So then I am awake. And if you read this blog regularly, or you know me in real life, then you know that waking me up is like awakening the devil from his happy place - you just don't want to do it.

So I took the sticker down, and continue to argue with the delivery guys about my existence. Today, I received 2 phone calls while I was at work, from both UPS and Fedex who were standing in front of my building (about an hour apart from each other), telling me they have an incorrect apartment number because it's not listed. Sigh.