Adaire/Greystar Review

Where do I begin with the Adaire? It’s a million-dollar question but maybe I can start with the fact that I am a VERY busy, actor, writer, and business owner, and I normally wouldn’t take the time to write something like this; so obviously, it is a big concern of mine if I am. Or, maybe I should start with the fact that I have an entire photo album in my phone with no exaggeration, 97 UNIQUE PICTURES, of things that are wrong with the Adaire and 95 of them were taken within a 1 week span! Imagine if I had been taking pictures the whole 2 months I was there, because I promise you that I have seen more way issues than what is expressed in these pictures (and yes, they all look worse in person!). So, let’s begin.

There are so many thins wrong with this building that I would have to type a whole article about it, so to avoid that, let me just list all the problems that I can think of, that I had faced within my 2 months at the Adaire and I will list them from most minor to most important, so scroll to the bottom if you want to see the crazy stuff. And I hope I can edit this review later because I’m sure that I’ll think of more list worthy stuff that I couldn’t think of before.

1. STAINS/MARKS: There are stains all over all the carpets and marks all over all the walls/cabinets, especially in the lobby.

                  

2. WATER PRESSURE: The water pressure from all the public sinks isn’t even strong enough to drown a spider.

3. COFFEE MACHINE PROBLEMS: The coffee machine is down, most of the time because it is “broken” but I have never had a problem with it. The employees are often just too lazy or won’t bother to take the time to understand the machine to fix it.

4. CIGARETTES: There is a sign that says, “No smoking within 25 feet of all building entrances” but ironically there are always many cigarettes buds right in front of that sign and sometimes even inside the building (usually in the parking garage)!

5. WEED SMOKE: Not only is there a lot of cigarette smoke right in front of and inside of the building but there is always the smell of weed smoke on at least 1 floor of the building.  

6. UNCLEAN/SMELLY: The elevators are always filthy and sometimes stink so bad that you have to take another elevator (so are the stairwells; they usually have spills that become sticky and no one cleans them up for days/weeks, even when reported). I wish that there was a way I post a smell on the internet because if I could then it would vividly depict how much that many parts of the building smell like a dumpster full of rotten eggs and spoiled milk mixed together.

7. BROKEN ELEVATORS: There is always AT LEAST 1 elevator not working and it’s not uncommon for someone to get stuck on the elevator or for the elevator to drop a floor while you’re in it (YES, DROP A FLOOR! IT’S SCARY!). 1 resident even told me that at 1 point, all the elevators had stopped working at the same time and that he had to walk to his apartment (could you imagine living on the 34^th floor?).

8. PET WASTE: People let their dogs pee and poop all over the building (especially in the elevators), all the time and nothing is done to prevent it.

9: JANITORIAL PROBLEMS: I don’t think they even own a broom and dustpan because there isn’t one in the janitor’s closet and one of the janitors (who speaks absolutely no English; they all speak little, to no English), picks up trash and cigarette buds with his BARE HANDS, every single morning! You’d think that with all the money they are making, they could at least get some nice cleaning supplies for their (probably underpaid) janitorial staff.

10. BROKEN GLASS: There is a glass wall around the pool on the roof; one day someone decided to slam the pool door open and because there is no door stopper, the door knob went right through the glass. They can’t prevent that from happening (well, actually they can if they put a door stopper there lol) but it was literally there for 2-3weeks after the fact and nothing was done to fix that glass! All they did was put a wet floor sign in front of it, LOL!

11. PARKING/TOWING/TRAFFIC: Parking sucks at the Adaire. Not only does it suck but the staff are down right heartless when it comes to it. I literally saw that a resident had been told to move his bike and trailer bed to the lower levels into a specific spot by someone in the leasing office and he was towed from there. Upon speaking to the staff about it to seek justice and reimbursement for the resident, one of the employees laughed and was excited about the fact that the resident’s possessions had been towed because apparently, he was the one who called the towing company and he proudly admitted to it.

12. THIEVES: There were thieves running around the building, who apparently never got caught for their wrong doing, because no one took the initiative to call the cops on them before they “got out of dodge” (even though there was proof of who it was on camera!). Apparently, they managed to steal money out of a woman’s purse, bicycles, a computer mouse from the lobby, and all the lobby coffee mugs were stolen as well, so it’s probably safe to assume that they stole most (if not all) of those too. I’m sure more was stolen by them that I don’t know about.

13. HUMAN POOP: Someone put HUMAN POOP on a paper plate and decided to throw that plate off their balcony and it splattered all over the ground right in front of the main entrance to the building! (I wish I had taken pictures of the splatter but I definitely took a picture of the plate).

14. TRASH CHUTE BACK UP: At one point, one of the residents had put a mattress, or bedframe, or something along those lines, that was obviously too large to go down the trash cute. Once again, the Adaire can’t control stuff like this from happening (but it’d be nice if they put cameras on the residents’ floors too see who is doing stuff like this. In turn, the trash chute was backed up for 2-3weeks and the lobby stunk so bad people were literally gagging and almost throwing up every time they walked through the lobby. They did nothing to fix the problem.

15. WARNING FROM FIRE MARSHALS: On Tuesday, September 26^th, 2017, someone had tipped off the fire marshals (surprising it wasn’t me lol) about the trash chute back up so they came to inspect the place. Because of what they saw, they decided to demand that a fire walk be done every 30 minutes to ensure that no signs of fire happen since the trash chute was such a fire hazard. I mean, just imagine a 37-story building (35 floors and 2 underground parking levels) to have its entire trash chute backed up. If 1 single piece of trash caught on fire then the entire building would essentially catch on fire, especially the people who live on the side of the building with the trash chute because it is connected to the stairwell. Needless to say, those people would either have to run through a fiery stairwell or they would have to jump off their high, deathly balconies.

                                                            

16. STRUCTURE DEEMED “UNFIT FOR HUMAN OCCUPANCY”: On Wednesday, September 27^th, 2017, a warning was issued from the local fire marshals and they requested that the trash chute problem be fixed within 24 hours, otherwise the entire building would have to evacuate! Not only that, but I also heard that the sprinklers weren’t fully operational either (talk about a double fire hazard)! When the fire marshals had arrived again and saw severity of the situation because nothing had really been done to correct the issue, they issued 4 notices of violation and posted these notices all over the building. The notices deemed the building (and I quote) “unsafe” and “UNFIT FOR HUMAN OCCUPANCY”! Shannon wrote an email to all residents brushing off the situation and saying things like (and I quote) “What these notices are communicating is that you may not live inside the trash room or elevator lobbies” LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL! If that isn’t the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard in my ENTIRE life (LOL AGAIN!).

17. NEWS CREWS COME BECAUSE OF FIRE MARSHAL WARNINGS: On Thursday, September 28^th, 2017, a NBC4 Washington news crew came to the building because they apparently got word of the fire marshal warnings and I guess they were interviewing residents about it. Shannon and the Adaire team still continued to lie to residents and even disciplined employees for telling the truth as if they were Aryan soldiers in Hitler’s army. I literally watched employees lie straight to residents faces about what was going on and making things seem like they were all good when they weren’t (I’ve never seen anything like it)! To put the icing on the cake, I had been working there for 2 months straight, 11pm-7am, Sunday-Thursday, and it just so happens that the one day that a news crew is about to come, I “ironically” get cut from my shift (probably because they knew I was going to expose them to the news crew). Then they have the nerve to bring me in for one last night to do fire watch as the employee replacing me works the front desk right in front of my face. J

18: SHOOTINGS AND FLEEING CRIMINALS: Fortunately, I do not know of any shootings that have happened in the direct vicinity of the Adaire but at the sister building that you can see right across the street, The Ascent, apparently, there were 3 SHOOTINGS IN 6 MONTHS! Not only that, but apparently 3 ladies had stolen fro or robbed some stores inside of Tysons Corner mall and they split up, 1 of which ran to the Adaire and hid in the parking garage. A resident was walking down to the dumpsters to through away her trash and the police assumed it was the suspect so they drew their guns on her and yelled at her to get on the ground, leaving her shaken up and probably scared for life (luckily the found the real suspect later). Please ask yourself, aside from the building, does this even sound like an area you would like to live in?

When I very first arrived at the Adaire, as an ongoing temp, on 7/30/17, there were issues walking into the door that only got better upon my fixing, and the things that were out of my control, only got worse and worse over time. I worked there for exactly 2 months and couldn’t get something as simple as a password to the wifi but that’s neither here nor there.

What is important to know though, is the fact that since I was working through a temp agency (that I won’t disclose the name of), I was only getting paid $12.50 an hour, which was fine because that’s what I signed up for and I was more happy about the fact that I had finally gotten the on-going, Sunday-Thursday, 11pm-7am shift that I had requested. With that being said, I filled out an application and took the required test from Greystar within a week or two of me being there, with the hopes that they would at least interview me for a chance to be hired directly by them so I could keep my desired schedule and also make more money. I even offed to pay the buyout fee that is requested by my company because I wanted the job so bad. I pretty much did everything in my power to get hired by Greystar, preferably at the Adaire for the entire 2 months they had me working there and they didn’t even have the decency to respond to a single email or call. To make matters worse, I was still comfortable making $12.50 an hour for about a month and some change until I found out that after that amount of time they were ignoring the person in charge of running their building overnight, they had hired someone else who had never worked there before, starting out at $19 an hour! I’m not one to pocket watch or care about what the next man is making but you talk about a slap in the face! Let me RUN your building for 2 months straight at $12.50 an hour and don’t even have the respect to have 1 conversation with me, then just replace me with someone to make practically double what I did!?

But, how could I be mad at the Adaire? You are only as strong as your weakest link and who’s to say that the Adaire is the Greystar’s weakest link? What I’m saying is, how can I be mad at a lower chain of command when the higher chain of command does the same thing!? I say this because I had called Greystar for about 2 weeks straight to report the negligence of management at the Adaire and they did the same exact thing that the Adaire did! They ignored me and when I finally did get ahold of people, they would just transfer me to the district manager who would never answer the phone or they would tell me that they were going to relay my messages that probably also got ignored. It finally escalated to the point where practically warned them that these bad reviews were coming and that this poor management would be exposed if they did not get back to me “ASAP” and I even stated, “Greystar is in hot water if I am not responded to”! Welp Greystar, your time is up. Just like Shannon at the Adaire, I’m sure you will only take someone seriously when they decide to expose you to the internet or you literally have a news crew at your building again, so here you go! Feel free to bribe me to take this post down just like Shannon does with all the bad Yelp/Google reviews LOL!

DON’T BE FOOLED BY THE SIZE OF THE BUILDING, ALL THE NICE AMMENITES, AND THE BENTLY DEALERSHIP OUT FRONT. ALL THIS IS TO SAY THAT SHANNON IS UNFIT TO RUN THE ADAIRE AND IF GREYSTAR CARES ABOUT THEIR BUILDING/RESIDENTS THEN THEY NEED TO REPLACE HER IMMEDIATELY! THEY ALSO NEED TO ADDRESS ALL THE PROBLEMS AT THEIR BUILDING, THE ASCENT, ACROSS THE STREET AS WELL! THE FACT THAT I GAVE THEM ABOUT 3 WEEKS WORTH OF WARNING THAT I WAS GOING TO POST REVIEWS AND STILL NEVER GOT A RESPONSE IS JUST AN EVEN BIGGER SIGN OF SHANNON AND GREYSTAR’S NEGLIGENCE THAT NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED ASAP!

P.S. Shannon/Greystar next time you choose to ignore someone or “pick a battle” with them, just make sure that person isn’t an award-winning writer J!