The naked eyes

Yesterday, after a stay of a couple of months, we checked-out an alternative circus troop who pitch up in Amsterdam once a year or so. They jiggle, they juggle, one of the guys has a red nose and big shoes. The really cool thing though is, is that people are paying Euro 65 per seat (dinner thrown in) and making a night of it. On talking to the show’s management, their stay in Amsterdam has been a success. It would be pedantic to point out that they’ll not be making use of their option to extend their stay based on insufficient ticket sales to sustain another month.

The politics of housing these guys is a tale of bitter rivalry, hierarchy, and power. Obviously the show's management doesn't doss down with the performers. Can you imagine an acrobat sharing a room with the food and beverages manager? How about the clown and the fat man rooming together - don't make me laugh. Star performers - that is, named on the bill, performing a solo, or pictured on posters - have first dibs on apartments and personal relationships with the accommodation coordinator can give a Polish tight-rope walker considerable pull over, say, one of the midgets. Marlo - a fearsome magician - has very specific requirements that include an international DVD player and a ground floor entrance. No one wants to live next to the bendy boy.

We move on from quirky circus performers to large sweaty horses. Vince has the client in his eager grip and is looking to rent not to the 60 Canadian horses that form the core of the show but to as many of the 120 staff and performers that ride these mighty beasts. I have the feeling that these horses – galloping full belt, prancing on three legs, jogging sideways, and rearing upwards – feel themselves to warrant star status but, alas, top billing goes to the jockeys. The steeds get carrots. The accommodation manager, a Canadian woman with a pronounced French accent she claims is natural but which must surely be the result of hours of cruel practice, felt compelled to provide background. The horses are highly strung, highly strong, only eat grass imported from Canada, and trot on a special type of sand that is kind to hooves and reflects the finale’s light-show lasers just right.

She’s worried though, this Canadian woman. Bugs are on her mind. As we’re checking-out the circus people and wishing them luck with the next tour venue, the horse people are viewing. They exchange glances in the lobby. The horse people represented by the worried Canadian stomp behind Vince to the first apartment in the complex. Her fingers knowingly prod the mattress and gingerly lift the sheets. “Bugs”, she says. Vince studies the square centimeter of laundered sheet that her index finger is pointing to. There are no bugs. He says, “There are no bugs” to which she says, “They are microscopique, you cannot see them with the naked eyes.”

Despite the critters… no. Despite the concerns about possible critters invisible to the naked eyes but not her naked eyes, it seems as though we have genuine interest. The trouble, though, is that there is a weekend’s worth of thinking that often spoils what otherwise would be a beautiful story. Nearly five o’clock. Pub looms. We’ll get back to it Monday.

Spreading it equally

The rental business in Amsterdam is regulated and regulations, as a concept, are fine providing they are clear and equally applied. It can be tough suppressing the feeling that you’re being screwed by the agency enforcing the rules but it can be a tonic if you’re sure everyone else in your profession is also suffering the same oppression meted out with the same gusto.

A bit off the point but anyway… the Dutch tax authority is universally feared, collectively cursed, yet reluctantly accepted and even applauded when, now and again, they return some of the money they’ve stolen in a rebate that feels like a present. Their TV ad promoting electronic tax filing goes something like this: “We can’t make it nicer, but we can make it easier.” We grumble but we all know more or less where we are.

The rental business police – officially named “Dienst Wonen” and part of the local government apparatus – are often mentioned in conversation along with terms like professional, experienced, reasonable, approachable… or are they blinkered, prejudiced, dogmatic and vindictive? On reflection, the latter. Ideal Housing – the good guys – stand accused of doing things the wrong way. “What is the right way?” we cry. Dienst Wonen respond with “It’s not for us who are right to tell us to tell you who are wrong what is right but, rather, it’s for us who are right to insist that you – who are wrong – do it right in the future.” The civil servant delivers this twisted piece of logic with a smirk, sits back in his chair with his gut wedged against the table, and folds his arms across his paunch.

And just what is the Kafkaesque case we are being hauled over the coals about? I’ll tell you. An Israeli couple engages us to find them a rental property. We find one and draft contracts. They receive the draft contracts and use the owner’s contact information (provided on trust) to contact him directly and negotiate a lower price, sign documents without our input and avoid our agency fees. Two years later – that’s right, two years – they complain to rental police that they are paying more than the legally permitted rent. And they are! But they wouldn’t have done if they had completed the process with Ideal Housing that they’d started. Dienst Wonen have taken the position that

• We have brokered an illegal deal (we didn’t because the client did a runner before the deal was complete).
• We have seriously endangered our permit to act as a rental agency and they are considering whether to renew it or not.
• We have to repay the amount of rent paid by this Israeli couple back-dated to the start of the contract. It’s quite a sum.

Reasoning with these gentlemen has no use. We have engaged a lawyer.

A short, little month

You blink, it's gone. That’s just the way it is with February. I’m looking at the turnover numbers for this short, little month and cursing the shortness and littleness of it. The payroll looms like an ice-berg on this final day and the recurring fixed extravagance (some call it getting paid) needs servicing in order to stave off rental consultant tantrums, mutiny, and tantrums. I realise that ‘tantrum’ has been used twice but it’s always worth additional consideration when you have a Ginny on your staff. I’ll do nearly anything to avoid a Ginny meltdown, blow-up, hissing fit, bout of mournful weeping, or primal rage interwoven with entire body-convulsing spasms.

The fact of the thing is this: you need to pay them or they walk. January was fine and March will be fine but now, as I beam my fixed smile and exude just enough conviction to sustain the impression that we have enough funds to finance this month, my stomach does a flip.

Rental clients (you just can’t help hating more of them than you’d imagine) drift in and out of our business as butterflies in a gale. Several blow in unannounced with requirements that would be fine if they were looking for a studio in Lapland but which are laughable in Amsterdam. And yes, we do laugh a lot. Other clients, those with appointments, don’t show or they might show but with other requirements and this really can be galling but what is really, really galling is this: we assign a rental consultant, Jimmy for example, and he does his thing. The thing I refer to where Jimmy chats over requirements with the client, arranges appointments all over town to view, drives the client hither and thither and throws in a sandwich as a deal looks all but done. The client – let’s call him Nobby from England – accepts the lunch, orders a dessert, downs three double espressos and finally, after a final espresso and OK, one for the road then, says he’ll take the apartment.

Back at the office, Jimmy then calls the owner of the property to confirm the deal, draws up preliminary contracts and an invoice. Nobby, eventually located in the kitchen standing very close to our receptionist Charlotte, saunters back to Jimmy’s desk clutching another double espresso (in my cup). He looks at the invoice and says, “Commission? I’m not paying your commission.”

Tomorrow is March. I like March.