Writes Tim in Berkeley: “Although this note is over 17 years old, I think it’s still worth submitting, at the very least as an example of notes from a bygone era. I received this note from the apartment manager when I was a senior at Rice University, living in an off-campus apartment. Admittedly, I wasn’t the cleanest tenant — but what 20-year-old college kid living alone in a studio apartment is?”
Adds Tim: “The really sad thing was that I had cleaned my apartment before this note — she should have seen the place before!”
related: be informed, homeland security will be
169 responses so far ↓
#1
orangetiki
Roahes? If that’s anything like HO’s then hey let the player play.
Also on another note that last sentence was cold hearted
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:10 pm rating: 3
#2
Matt
Interesting, but neither passive-aggressive nor aggressive.
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:14 pm rating: 4
#3
Reeses Lover Lover
“I hope you read this letter slowly, and understand what I am telling you.”
I did read it slowly and I think I do understand what you’re telling me.
I have cable now!!!! WAHOOOOO!
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:15 pm rating: 103
#4
aaa
Geez, Tim, don’t admit to the entire internet that your place was a pigsty! This is PAN, not PostSecret! We all know that you’re supposed to lie and say that the note-writer is completely in the wrong, even if nobody will ever know who Tim in Berkeley is! You’re doing the internet wrong!
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:20 pm rating: 23
#5
anglophile
Team Mrs. Norsworthy.
If you are a college-attending adult and can’t make the connection between dirty kitchen and roaches, then you deserve to be told to read something slowly.
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:24 pm rating: 19
#6
oi!
ahh! stop it! that was my first reaction.
So many things to point at. Don’t even know where to start. capital letters, condensation, insults/threats. My head is spinning. Go FLo-rida!
It is downright PA. Did somebody say it is not?
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:25 pm rating: 8
#7
Mark
Excellent, Tim! I went to Rice (Baker, ’98). Which OC apartment was this?
Yes, the landlady should have taken a look at, say, Fish House for a REAL pigsty.
Also, Mrs Norsworthy clearly LIKES TO SHOUT, even before the invention of teh internets. And she’s using a truly old-skool typewriter (“I” as the number 1… doesn’t she know that a lower case “l” looks a lot better?)
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:25 pm rating: 8
#8
anglophile
I love the salutation.
Timothy. full stop
It perfectly conveys her exasperation and shock.
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:26 pm rating: 12
#9
oi!
What is deal with cross marked yu and M in man?
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:29 pm rating: 2
#10
T to the O
What is with the all caps? Did she engage the caps lock on her Smith Corona typewriter to show she meant business? Was this a telegram?
TIM APARTMENT A MESS -STOP- CLEAN IT OR OUT YOU GO -STOP- YOU GOT CABLE -STOP-
MRS. NORSWORTHY-THROCKMORTON III
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:31 pm rating: 21
#11
Wade
“You will have to leave the apartment as clean as it was when you moved in.”
Timothy immediately called the local pet store to order 3 dozen mice and 6 rats.
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:33 pm rating: 22
#12
Mark
1. Doesn’t he have a lease? The landlady can’t just “ask him to move.”
2. Does the landlady think that he cares about his deposit? “Fine, keep it, ya old bag! Have fun cleaning up my fecal mist!”
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:36 pm rating: 9
#13
Buzz
I was in school then too. We had an old couple as landlords and I remember reading the agreement, which did not allow unmarried opposite-sex couples sharing the apartment, or any opposite-sex people sleeping over.
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:40 pm rating: 4
#14
oi!
I am wondering how messy his apartment have to be to receive this note. That is after he cleaned it. The landlady sounds really appalled.
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:47 pm rating: 1
#15
SuperMe
This was written before people came to equate typing in all caps with yelling. This woman was ahead of her time. The yelling was appropriate.
Mrs. Norsworthy sounds like the last name of a Disney character.
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:49 pm rating: 7
#16
snicklefritz
That bitch doesn’t even know the Maintenance Man’s name, or how to spell maintenance. And who is Miss Behr? The Heiress to the Behr paint conglomerate?
Tim, why’d you smear shit on the faux textured wall?
As a rule I don’t poop on walls, but I was with the Sheryl Crow.
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:54 pm rating: 7
#17
Reeses Lover Lover
I wonder if Mrs. Nosworthy was Reeses-worthy; she certainly doesn’t strike me as sponge-worthy.
Apr 21, 2009 at 6:56 pm rating: 3
#18
mamason
I just have one question…
Did Timothy ever get his deposit back?
Apr 21, 2009 at 7:10 pm rating: 4
#19
NoExit
My only concern here is that the submitter has kept this note for 17 (!) years. Perhaps somehow he knew there would someday be a forum for such notes. . .
And Mrs. Norsworthy? What, are we in a Dickens novel?
Apr 21, 2009 at 7:16 pm rating: 12
#20
kmd
Team Mrs. Norsworthy.
“Boys will be boys” does not extend to being a filthy pig in a place you don’t own.
Apr 21, 2009 at 7:25 pm rating: 2
#21
Grimfool_Reluctant
“As a rule , I do not go through the apartments” . . . Mrs. Norsworthy, oh Mrs. Norsworthy . . . we know what happens to liars, don’t we, Mrs. Norsworthy?
Apr 21, 2009 at 7:49 pm rating: 21
#22
TheOldSchool
This Mrs. Norsworthy….
Did she own lots of big apartment buildings? Any hotels, shopping malls, or casinos?
What about her physical attractiveness? Age? Height? Weight? (Not that any of the answers in this paragraph matter, provided the answers to the previous paragraph’s questions are satisfactory.)
Marital status: Widowed, Divorced, or Obstacled? Does she have any DNA-certified children or pseudo-legitimate-nuisance-suit-wannabe heirs?
Please post the addresses of all of her major property holdings and anything else of relevance in her portfolio.
(The only reason I ask is because she seems like a tidy lady, and I’m one of those men who just adore meeting tidy elderly people.)
Apr 21, 2009 at 8:03 pm rating: 4
#23
zenvelo
if Tim had used a bong maybe he wouldn’t have a roach problem.
Apr 21, 2009 at 8:55 pm rating: 16
#24
Girl Friday
The cucaracha, the cucaracha,
Doesn’t want to travel on
Because she hasn’t,
Oh no, she hasn’t
Marihuana for to smoke.
Apr 21, 2009 at 9:43 pm rating: 2
#25
Seitz
Every time I read the “You dirty kitchen” part, I wanna do it in a James Cagney voice. Which is appropriate, since the apartment sounds like it also may have had rats.
Apr 21, 2009 at 10:42 pm rating: 11
#26
Flaboy2425
And he thougth he went to college to get away from mother.
“They’re everywhere! They’re everywhere!”
Apr 22, 2009 at 1:07 am rating: 3
#27
TheOldSchool
I’ll bet Tim did a lot of masturbating in that dank, filthy abode.
Sad.
Apr 22, 2009 at 2:21 am rating: 2
#28
An On
OMG. I lived in those apartments! At that same time. Miss Behr was the maintenance supervisor. She lived on site and I was in her apartment once. She obviously cleaned, but she smoked like a chimney and the walls were all stained yellow from it.
They were actually pretty nice apartments for a cheap student place. They were old, with all the problems old buildings have, but my place was bright and sunny and clean, and everything worked. Since I was on a $900 a month stipend, I was totally happy with a $300 apartment from which I could bike to campus. And at that price I didn’t have to have a roommate.
They’re gone now. The University bought them at some point and used them for married grad student housing. Then they tore them down and built (or maybe are still building) new student housing on the site.
Apr 22, 2009 at 10:57 am rating: 2
#29
CS Harmonikah
TYPING IN ALL CAPS ISNT ANNOYING. IT IS RETRO!!!!!!!!!
Apr 22, 2009 at 11:47 am rating: 0
#30
GhostWriter
Mrs. Norsworthy writes like another older woman I’ve heard of:
Sing-along link to the greatest concert ever he played…
I hope you read this letter slowly, understand my tone,
I’d hoped you keep it clean, like Missus Behr,
I look around the dirty kitchen, see your filthy clothes,
Roaches on the ground- they’ll stay until you clean.
As sure as I’m Mrs. Norsworthy.
Sorry ‘bout this, but I have to say…
This is the Truth,, Mr. Timothy,
Beer cans and your filthy clothes must go,
Woah, woah, woah…
As a rule, in your apartment I will never go,
…but I went in, with the Cable People.
It was nasty, you got roaches, beer cans on the chairs.
Most of all, your whole deposit you’ll forfeit.
I’ve said the Truth, signed Mrs. Norsworthy,
Understand what I am telling you!
For God’s sake, please, Mr. Timothy.
Miss Behr and the Maintenance Man were clean,
Know what I mean?
I’ve been quiet so far, but your lazy attitude’s
gonna get your room deposit held.
Laugh about it? Out you go! Then-
Where you gonna snooze?
Every way you look at this you lose.
While we were hooking up your video,
Our noses turned a lovely shade of blue.
Watch what you say, Mr. Timothy.
Norsworthy will make you move away,
Hey hey hey,
Hey hey hey…
Apr 22, 2009 at 12:09 pm rating: 3
#31
claw71
The funny thing is, later in the week when Tim was having beers with Mr. Norsworthy on the front stoop he expressed these very same sentiments…about his wife’s vagina. It wouldn’t have bothered him if the cable installers hadn’t complained. “She’s really let herself go,” he said before taking a long pull from a can of Stoh’s.
Tim nodded but had Mr. Norsworthy realized that it was a nod of informed agreement rather than just sympathetic understanding, well, let’s just say we might not be enjoying this throwback submission right now.
Apr 22, 2009 at 12:22 pm rating: 3
#32
Rebecca
I got a similar but much more nicely worded note from my super a few years ago, after I told them I had an ant problem. The note basically said “maybe you wouldn’t have ants if you did your dishes a bit more often” (my sink was piled high with dishes when the exterminator came.) They had a point. Ah, to be young and ignorant.
Apr 22, 2009 at 2:37 pm rating: 3
#33
bald outing
i like how she tells you to read the letter slowly. haha, too funny.
Apr 22, 2009 at 5:39 pm rating: 0
#34
Shannon
He should have called the exterinator for the roahes.
Apr 22, 2009 at 6:34 pm rating: 0
#35
Irene Norsworthy
I haven’t the foggiest what are the odds of this but I am Irene Norsworthy, the super of which you speak. I do indeed remember Tim…he smelled vaguely of garlic and he always acted much nicer than he really was.
I had no reason to think much of it until that fateful day. I was so distraught and distracted by the mess I turned my face away and right into the exterminator’s spray.
I have never been the same since. I went from passive aggressive to aggressive aggressive and soon lost the management position at the apartment building.
I couldn’t stop squishing my face into the front loading laundry machines in the building as they were turning and trying to make out the articles of clothing as they spun. I would sing Beach Boys songs as I did that.
Now, I’m waiting for my niece to decide which assisted living facility she’ll put me in and I’m thinking she’s going to pick a messy one, but hopefully with frontloaders.
You all ought to spend some time outside while you’ve still got your health and vigor. Read that slowly MFs.
-IN
Apr 23, 2009 at 7:27 pm rating: 3
#36
Isa
PEOPLE WITH A POOR GRASP OF GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION RULES ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TYPE UPPITY LETTERS.
Apr 27, 2009 at 7:57 pm rating: 0
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