A new tenant was consistently late with his rent payments.  When I’d call him about the late payment he’d swear that he mailed it on time but then later he’d drop off the rent payment at the front desk.  When he saw the late charges on his statement he got angry and called me about it.

Tenant:  These late fees are outrageous!  You can’t do this!  It’s not my fault you keep sending the rent envelopes back to me!

Me:  You’ve been charged late fees because you’ve been hand delivering the rent payment after the 15th of each month.

Tenant:  Yeah, I’m hand delivering it to you because you keep sending it back to me!  You’re trying to rip me off and charge late fees when you refuse to take the payment when it’s on time!

Me:  I have no idea what you’re talking about.  I don’t send anything back to you.

Tenant:  That’s not true!  I mail the rent out on the first of every month to you and then it comes back to me because you won’t accept it.  Then I have to run down to your office to hand deliver it and it’s late by that point.  It’s not my fault!

Me:  I’ve not received any payments in the mail from you.

Tenant:  I have a bunch of envelopes here that you’ve marked up with your little red stamped messages about how you won’t accept my payments!  I’ll send you pictures of them right now!  I have proof!

It turned out that he was not putting any postage on the payment envelopes that he was mailing to my office.  The messages he was referring to were “postage due” stamps that the Post Office put on the returned mail.  He believed that I was putting that message on his mail and refusing it.  I pointed this out and he had no idea what I was talking about.  This adult man, who ran a small business, did not know that stamps were required to pay for sending something through the mail!

He said he always paid everything online except for the rent and a few other bills that he delivered in person.  Or he’d use FedEx or UPS for other packages.  I asked him if he had noticed that any mail he received had stamps on it and he said he had never thought about it before?  He was pleasantly astounded to find out this “new” information!  He asked how long stamps had been going on?  He was super excited to go buy some and try out this new fangled mailing system.  I told him to go to the Post Office and they’d hook him up.

This seriously happened.  “How long have stamps been going on?”