I am one of the least confrontational people ever. This isn't a good thing. It means I let people walk all over me without saying what I think. I just hate making people mad with me or causing uneccesary arguments. Well getting an apartment and having roommates does require me to voice my opinion. When we got our apartment my roommates talked about having a mini charcoal grill. We live on the fourth floor. They talked about how they are going to grill on the deck even though technically it's against the law. They said if anyone said anything they'd say they didn't know. Well day came to sign our lease, and the rules about grilling were included. We had to initial and sign. The rules for grilling at our apartment includes not only not grilling on the deck, but also needing to be a good 10ft away from the building (aparently one of the apartment complexes the company owns had a fire due to a grill be too close to the building).
One day a couple weeks ago my roommates decide to grill hamburgers. They begin grilling on the deck. I make some kind of sarcastic comment like, "I'm not paying for the fine if you get caught" trying to let them know I don't agree with them grilling out there. The next time they get ready to grill I bring it up again about how we could get into big trouble for grilling on our deck. It's illegal and we signed our lease. Technically we could get evicted if we get caught. Of course since I don't want to make a big argument, again I jokingly say all of this mentioning how they will be the ones paying for the fines. Well then they have friends over this weekend and they all decided to grill again. This time its a bit windy out so as they are finishing, we do get some smoke into our apartment. This worries me because I could just see our smoke detectors going off and we will get in big trouble if they do. Luckily they don't go off. I then realized that I was going to have to work up the courage to confront them about this issue.
Last night I went on a walk with one of my roommates. Somehow the conversation got on grills because we walked past a couple. I then bring up the fact that our smoke detectors could have gone off with that smoke in our apartment (which I had already mentioned during the time) and how I'm willing to sit out in the parking lot to do the grilling when we want something grilled. My roommate then said that we will probably begin grilling out in the parking lot from now on andhow probably all of us will just sit outside there with it. What relief! I finally got them to listen to me without a big argument. I think the reason they grilled out on the deck in the first place was becasue they were used to breaking rules and getting away with it, and I think they finally realized that maybe grilling on the deck is something we mgiht not be able to get away with afterall.
Ok I know to most of you (or probably all of you) this whole situation is not a big deal. To me it was something that had been bugging me for the past couple weeks. I knew what the right thing to do was, but I didn't want my roommates angry at me over something that small. I guess God just provides a way for me to do what I need to do. It was definitaly not my persuading that changed my roommates minds.
Maybe I'll take this situation, and be able to work up enough courage to confront when needed.
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2 comments:
i'm not a very confrontational person either... and it definitely left me really frustrated sometimes when i was living with jenni. so i know i'm going to have to work on that stuff too in a couple weeks when i make my move. i think with the grill issue, you definitely needed to say something. those balconies aren't very big and since it's such a small space and so close to the indoors, things could go wrong pretty quickly. hope they'll be willing to stick with the rules.
*yay* for amanda :)
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