I love this holiday season. One of my favorite things I like about it is all the things that you can do for others and how you can let them know how you feel this time of year.

One example of doing things to go out of my way to let others know how I feel is with a lady named Sherrie. Here is the simple Christmas card that I would like to send to her.

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year...

with the money you stole from me this Christmas season.

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Well as you probably guessed, I am not too happy with Sherrie, and I do want her to know how I feel this holiday season. I want her to know I am very unhappy with her for being a thief of a landlord. Before you judge me for having a bad attitude, let me explain why I feel this way about her.

First of all, my landlord Sherrie has us under contract to clean the apartment each month. I signed the contract with her because I thought she would treat it like every other land lord I have ever had where I have done my standard cleanings each month and have always passed. On the contract it says that she will do a cleaning check and if we don't pass the first time there will be a recheck fee and then when she comes back if we don't clean up the problem areas, she will have the cleaning lady clean and she will charge us for what was not done. I think that this is fair. The problem with this situation is that I did not realize that she would just decide to not pass me on my cleaning checks and steal my money.

My roommates have given up hope on passing cleaning checks. My roommate Jason is one that has given up hope and now never cleans. He used to clean but the cleaning lady would not pass him no matter how good things looked. One time he spent 3 hours cleaning the bathroom and he still failed and was charged for not cleaning. Our land lady somehow lost the papers and still charged him. He was getting charged no matter what, so instead of wasting 3 hours to clean the apartment, he finds more value in not cleaning and having someone that will clean up the whole mess. Why do most of the work and clean for 3 hours and still getting charged 12 dollars by the cleaning lady because she says it was only partially cleaned..

I have not passed my past cleaning checks and I was determined more than ever to pass. The night before the initial check for the month, I cleaned the kitchen better than ever. The whole thing was spotless. I went above and beyond cleaning up extras and doing things that the cleaning lady had missed for months. I told my roommates that I would wish our land lady ill blessings this holiday season if I did pass my cleaning check. My roommates were making jokes about my cleaning saying things like, "you did not wipe off the underside of the refrigerator", and "you forgot to wipe off the piping underneath the sink".

And probably not to your surprise, I did not pass my cleaning check this month. I did forget to wipe down the hood of the stove and that was my fault, but it took a whole 5 seconds to fix that. Other things I did not pass this month on was that some spots that have been on the cupboards were not scrubbed off, and I also forgot to lift up the oven burners and I forgot to wipe down the insides of the stove. This cleaning took about 3 minutes to finish.

Last month I did not pass because I don't know why. I read the paper that said I did not pass and so I called up Sherrie and she told me what I did not pass and as of yesterday I noticed that she charged me $12 for not cleaning. I cleaned and she charged me so I think she is an ass and is going to burn in hell.

I thought that my cleaning checks would be cleaning checks, not deep cleaning checks "spotless checks" each month. The problem I have is that there is a double standard with what we have to do and what the cleaning lady does. We can spend hours cleaning when our cleaning lady will clean the whole house in an hour. With one hour you cant clean the house the way she expects us to clean, but since she is doing it and she is the judge she gets away with doing a second rate job.

This last cleaning check, our cleaning lady did a crappy job and still charged all of us money for not doing a good job. She left trash out, she did not clean our mirrors, she forgot many things. When I forget to do little things, she says that it is my responsibility to make sure everything is done. So I am going to hold her to her own standards. When she does a bad job or if I find something not done, I am going to hold her against it and tell them that I am going to charge them and take money off my rent. I probably won't get away with it, but it will prove my point I think.

What I want to do is work with the system to get the money out of her that I deserve. Since I clean and do a good job each month, she has to do nothing but gets away with charging me. For this next cleaning check, I plan on doing the opposite of cleaning. I am planning on making a huge meal and I plan on messing up the kitchen. I am under contract to clean each month and if I don't clean the cleaning lady is under contract to clean for me each month for $25. So my plan is to make a huge mess of the kitchen that will take hours to clean and by doing this she will realize that I do a decent job and she will realize that she can't get away with robbing me of my money each month by saying I did not clean. If I am going to have to pay, I am going to earn my $25 worth of cleaning.