The Torments of a Somewhat-Blind Man, Episode III: The Musical Christmas Episode About the Wookiees

If you want to understand the full history of this post, you should first make sure that you have read this earlier post. That post tells the story of how I discovered the true definition of "She credited you a little extra", straight from Webster's Dictionary of Unskilled Apartment Management: "She didn't actually credit you a little extra, I just didn't want to have to admit to having done the math wrong again."

I found out today that the new edition of Webster's DUAM contains a new alternate definition: "We know we didn't really credit you anything the first time, but as it turns out, we should have. Our bad." I got an email today from someone whose job title is "AR/Evictions" informing me that, while reviewing the ledger for my account, she had noticed a problem. Surprising as that may be — the noticing being the surprise, not the fact that there was a problem — it turns out that for the last six months (i.e., ever since the most recent time they evicted me for not being charged correctly by their accounting department), I have been overcharged $55.00 per month, hence they will be deducting $330.00 less from my bank account in the January billing. The writer of the email also informed me that she had left me a voicemail with the same information, and assured me that through "the remaining [sic] of your lease we will deducted [sic] the correct rent amount." If I remember correctly from my Greek six years ago, that particular conjugation of the verb "deduct" is the Future Almost Perfect tense.

All in all, despite this occurrence of a sixth accounting error making the occurrence of a seventh that much more likely, it's not such a bad thing to find out. However, I did discover a rather odd offer when I went to check my voicemail: "If this credit is a problem and you want us to deduct more, we can of course make an additional withdrawal on Monday. Just let us know if you want us to do this." Ridiculous as that sounds, it may not be such a bad idea; it's not entirely unlikely that six months from now after my lease has expired and I have moved out, they "will discovered" yet another mistake and try to evict me again for an "unpaid balance."