[sudo-discuss] No more pews

Apparently I am our landlord's new preferred liaison. He called my phone at 10:45 tonight and complained at length about the common area. Specifically, he said the pews need to go by the end of the month. He says he never gave permission for them, and he's hated them from the beginning. He also suggested they be donated to the Joshua Christian Church in West Oakland which was apparently smashed up by a car last week. He said if they're not gone by the end of the month he will remove them himself, possibly by bludgeoning them into pieces and carrying the pieces to a dumpster. I did not say yes or no. It was very hard to get a word in edgewise, but I repeated several times, "I cannot speak for sudoroom. I will relay your message to the group. Thank you for letting us know." For context, the common area is actually cleaner today than it's been in almost two weeks. To be perfectly honest, the timing tells me that he's been stewing in frustration for quite a while. I think seeing a moderate improvement gave him some clarity in terms of what he wants. Frankly we've abused his flexibility about the common area. The pews do encourage people to act irresponsibly, to forget we are guests out there, to neglect to clean up after events, to turn it into a garbage dump. By evicting the pews he's saying the party's over, stay in the area you're paying for, unless you want to pay for the rest of it. He did offer to quote us on the full square footage of the common area, if we want... It didn't have to be this way. If it was just the pews, I think he'd deal. But he sees them as a slippery slope, a gateway to an overall sense of entitlement beyond what he owes us, and I can't say I'm surprised.