Grill Wars

For the first time in 10 years the apartment complex had an inspection completed by the city. Among other random findings they concluded that the grills were considered a fire hazard. The hospital's response was to send an email to all tenants requesting that the grills be removed within two weeks. Grills were not to be stored in our downstairs storage as this was a fire hazard also.

Over half of the 24 apartments have grills. None of the grills are gathering dust...actually most are used almost daily during the spring and summer months. No one is happy about this. So for the past week emails from other residents back to the original sender asking for alternative solutions. One of the problems with the apartments is that we don't really have a landlord. The email about the grills came from the hospitals safety department. Leases are signed with each departments secretary (ob, family practice, internal medicine) and rent is deducted automatically from paychecks by payroll. Engineering/facilities does maintenance and the graduate medical education office determines who gets which apartment. So when trying to figure out what to do with the grills no one has an answer and no one is taking the lead.

I think it is kind of funny because if the policy issue was something that affected the women or kids no stink would probably be raised. However, because the policy has to do with the grills...aka the men's second most favorite past time...this has been a huge battle.

Bret's response has been to do nothing. His argument is that nothing can really be done to him. He looked online at the councils fire code and because we live on the first floor we are fine. It has to do with the balconies that makes it a code violation. The hospital never mentioned this. They made it a blanket policy change. So we sit and wait to see what will happen. There is talk about a community grill area, or moving the grills into the yard. Either way I confirmed this morning with the maintenance guy I know that we are fine. Our grill lives. This was a relief to me b/c it was an expensive grill that I bought for Bret last year for father's day and we are only here for one more year.