The Light at the End of the Tunnel
by Pixeleen Mistral on 08/03/07 at 8:01 pm
by hotlips Tornado
My heart really was pounding and my hands were shaking. At last, there was a light at the end of the tunnel and I knew what I had to do.
Nervous, but excited, I walked up to the server and touched it. Up popped the familiar blue menu that I’d seen a thousand times. This time though, I was going to give it some commands that I’d never used before.
I clicked the Voice Command button. A green message appeared: “HTNRS Server v3.0 Whispers. Please type a command; I will listen for 60 seconds”.
I typed the command:
boxes lock
“Contacting boxes, please wait…”
“Rental boxes locked. Payments no longer accepted”
It would have been easy to unlock the boxes again so I had to keep my momentum and make the next move. It’s not so easy to go back on your word. Whilst I was composing the group message, one of my tenants approached me – “Why have you locked my rental box?” she said.
The joy I got from ignoring her! I was about to become a free woman, answerable to no-one. I carried on composing the group announcement, re-read it, then clicked Send before I had any second thoughts.
“Group Notice From: hotlips Tornado
Well, it’s been fun being a landlady, but in my efforts to offer a decent service to my tenants I am finding that it’s taking up all my SL time, and even eating into my RL time. I’m gonna call it quits. All rental boxes are now locked – you cannot make any further payments. I will be putting the land up for sale on Saturday, but wanted to give you all this advance warning so you’ve got time to find somewhere else. Refunds will of course be honoured on outstanding tenancies.”
Past the point of no return. It felt good. No, it felt more than good. SL had again become a place that I wanted to go to, a place where I didn’t arrive to deal with a pile of IMs, pyramid scheme spam, tenants who place 300 prims in a 50 prim apartment, a place where if I wanted to I would never again have to spend an hour a day answering the question “What is a prim?”.
I may perhaps have coped with the daily hassles of renting property if I could have conducted it in an environment that made it easy to do business. I’m not going to give a list of bleating complaints; we all know what the problems are with SL. The final straw was when the email to IM feature stopped working for me, meaning I couldn’t answer the anguished pleas of tenants locked outside of their apartments whilst at my RL job. By the time I’d get in-world they would have terminated their rental and despite my best efforts I’d be the baddy.
So what now? Sell the land and I should have come out of the episode with a little bit of a profit. Tier down and have parties in the lovely little waterfront house I’m keeping. And I’m waiting to see what this Chinese SL is going to be like. Now is not the time for investment and I don’t intend to be left holding the baby.
Khamon
Mar 8th, 2007
Grats for your resolve and reclaimed freedom.
Cocoanut Koala
Mar 8th, 2007
I don’t blame ya.
coco
Prokofy Neva
Mar 8th, 2007
Bah, you need to get your tenants trained better, like I do. I tell them it’s self-service, no frills, they’re on their own.
I print instructions on how to rez a cube and break in passed a locked door or locked teleporter, and promise them they can have ban powers later.
I tell them to pay, send me an IM, and shut up.
I also put up a sign:
YOU MUST HAVE A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA AND READ AT A 12-YEAR-OLD’S LEVEL TO RENT IN THIS APARTMENT.
If they IM me after that I paste them spam
READ THE INSTRUCTIONS.
I’m proud to say I have 4 towers 100 percent filled now with high-school graduates. They’re happy, I’m happy. If they get one prim over, I blow them out of the water and another high-school graduate moves in : )
Khamon
Mar 8th, 2007
There’s always someone else to rent the apartment.
Nacon
Mar 9th, 2007
Sound like college moment, Prok.
Ordinal Malaprop
Mar 9th, 2007
You gave them until Saturday? As in, tomorrow?
Lucy Tornado
Mar 9th, 2007
Hey, cuz, give up all this worker bee stuff and join the Unicycle Knitting Drill team, rehearsing Wed at 6:30 SLT.
hotlips Tornado
Mar 9th, 2007
You think I should have just booted them there and then Ordinal?
Lucy, that sounds more like having fun
hotlips Tornado
Mar 9th, 2007
Prokofy – that’s good advice actually. You’d have charged 5000L for that in-world.
Almost makes me want to carry on renting. Almost
Ordinal Malaprop
Mar 11th, 2007
Well, I was rather thinking that three days was a little short a time. But I suppose it’s academic now, given that it’s Sunday.