Open Letter to Mark Stevens (the guy who owned our house before us)

Mark~

I have come to the conclusion that you do not believe in karma. Your dishonest, greedy, selfish, actions have led me to believe that your main interests lie in yourself and perhaps your family, though I cannot speak for them. I don’t feel like spending too much time on this letter, so I will be rather brief. Below are a list of things about you which either pissed me off, or I simply find bothersome and pathetic. (deeper explanations below)

1. The choice of carpet

Simply put, the carpet you chose for the upstairs apartment is pathetic. It is rude to choose such cheap-ass carpet for your tenants, especially when they are really kind people who spoke so highly of you. I was embarrassed to show the place to new tenants, as the carpet was so terrible. In the future, it might be kind to spend a bit more money. I didn’t even know they made carpet that shitty.

2. The cutting up of the wood floor in the doorway by the bathroom.

This is inexcusable. Here we have a house built in 1881, with original Douglas Fir wood floors. Not only do you cover the wood floors upstairs with that shitty carpet, but when you decide to do some work in the bathroom, you concluded that it would be a fine idea to just cut out a six by eight inch square to replace some two by fours underneath. When Keri and I ripped the carpet up a few weeks ago, I was amazed at your lack of concern for the history of this place. This is sad. I guess you belong in some stupid gated community by a strip mall, full of condos and only white people which is where you went. People like you are the reason why so much history is lost in the world; because you have no understanding of a longer arc of time, one that extends beyond your bloated existence. (I know that I am making countless assumptions here.)

3. The kitchen plumbing.

I cannot believe you did this you piece of shit. This is not the way to do things and you know it. This one is the coup de gras. You cannot use tape instead of pipe. I hope the water damage from the constant leaking didn’t ruin anything in my house you lying, deceptive, asshole. (see drawing)

4. The bathroom vanity.

Have you no taste at all? Could you possibly have found an uglier vanity for the bathroom? And did you really need to buy the faucet that costs $9.00? We’ve upgraded.

5. The “bidding war bullshit.”

Okay. I’m not exactly sure this was your doing (it could have been your realtor) but judging from your other activities I vote yes that it was you. Without going into great detail here, your greed will bite you in the ass. (This is called karma.) Having our realtor tell us that we got the house (we went out to dinner and celebrated) then having her call us the next day to inform us that you had accepted another bid (was there really another bid?) thusly starting a bidding war and getting thousands of dollars more from us was unethical, rude, greedy, and just plain wrong. How is it that you accepted another bid past the 5pm cutoff? I think you planned this out. I hope that someday, you will realize that money is not all that important. Once our basic needs are provided for, it doesn’t really matter how much money we have, for it has little to do with our happiness. I’m sure you’ve heard this many times, but perhaps you need to hear it again. When you’re lying on your deathbed someday, the amount of money you made and spent in your lifetime, will be far from your mind. Instead you will be thinking about your friends, the people you loved, and the experiences you had. Whether you had really lived or not. Stop thinking about money so much, it will make you unhappy.

6. Your attitude at the signing.

You were pretentious, hurried, unfriendly, and just generally rude. You had the air of the middle-class who so badly wants to be a part of the upper class (for all of the wrong reasons) but lacks the spiritual sophistication to grow. This is one of the things that disgusts me most about the apathetic consumer driven society in which we live. The constant searching for more. Your manner was quite unpleasant. Simply an asshole.

7. Lying about the annual property taxes.

Again, I’m not sure if this was your doing, but you quite likely knew it had been misprinted. All of these little deceptions add up. Yet thousands more for us to pay each year. So good work, you tricked us, don’t you feel smart?

8. The broken glass not cleaned up.

Next time, when you move out of a place in a hurry and you break some large glass item in the yard/driveway, please have the decency to clean it up. This is called class.

9. Concealing the fact that the pilot light blows out all of the time.

While this isn’t that big a deal, it would have been nice to know that it just happens on windy days. Telling us about this would be called kindness. A kind gesture. We still would have bought the house. We spent months trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with our hot water heater.

10. The rats.

Not sure if you had rats too, but judging from your track record I would say yes. For this, a big fuck you. It would have been good to know before they started chewing through so many of our electric cables which have been expensive to replace.

11. Lying about the fire.

This is just common courtesy. When you sell someone a house in which there was a fire years before (we found out from the neighbors) you tell them. Just nice to know.

Anyway, I’ve spent more than enough time. Simply wanted to get some of this off my chest. You will likely never read this, but that’s okay. I hope over the years of my life, I can have the courage and general goodness to be honest and kind, and to live with as little greed as possible. You sir, have been a fine example of what not to do, for there is little integrity in your ways.

I hope you're miserable with the strip malls and the condos. Maybe someday enough people will wake up and conclude that suburbia is a failed experiement, and perhaps the greatest threat to wilderness (the environment) and community we’ve ever known, and they’ll move towards a more meaningful life. In this sense, I don’t wish you ill, I just hope you wake up someday.

Yours~
Jefferson Pitcher